placidly sewing…as though she were alone…as though she were unaware of us…as though Ricori's pistol
were not pointed at her heart…sewing…singing softly…
The Walters doll was on the table before her!
It lay prone on its back. Its tiny hands were fettered at the wrists with twisted cords of the ashen hair.
They were bound round and round, and the fettered hands clutched the hilt of a dagger-pin!
Long in the telling, but brief in the seeing-a few seconds in time as we measure it.
The doll-maker's absorption in her sewing, her utter indifference to us, the silence, made a screen
between us and her, an ever-thickening though invisible barrier. The pungent aromatic fragrance grew
stronger.
McCann dropped the body of the girl on the floor.