Again he interrupted me: "The stab in my heart…the doll that killed Gilmore…the doll that murdered
Braile…the blessed doll that slew the witch! You call them illusions?"
I answered, a little sullenly, the old incredulity suddenly strong within me: "It is entirely possible that,
obeying a post-hypnotic command of the doll-maker, you, yourself, thrust the dagger-pin into your own
heart! It is possible that obeying a similar command, given when and where and how I do not know,
Peters' sister, herself, killed her husband. The chandelier fell on Braile when I was, admittedly, under the
influence of those same post-hypnotic influences-and it is possible that it was a sliver of glass that cut his
carotid. As for the doll-maker's own death, apparently at the hands of the Walters doll, well, it is also
possible that the abnormal mind of Madame Mandilip was, at times, the victim of the same illusions she
induced in the minds of others. The doll-maker was a mad genius, governed by a morbid compulsion to