Dolls!

I sat thinking. Walters had bought a doll. And in that same unknown place where she had bought it, she

had sustained the injury which had so worried her-or rather, whose unorthodox behavior had so

worried her. Nor was there doubt in my mind, after hearing Robbins' story, that it was to that injury she

had attributed her seizure, and had tried to tell us so. We had not been mistaken in our interpretation of

that first desperate effort of will I have described. She might, of course, have been in error. The scald or,

rather, the salve had had nothing whatever to do with her condition. Yet Walters had been strongly

interested in a child. Children were the common interest of all who had died as she had. And certainly the

one great common interest of children is dolls. What was it that Ricori had discovered?

I called Braile, but could not get him. I called up Robbins and told her to bring the doll to me