‘You can’t take that doll,’ said Alicia Coombe. ‘Give her back to me.’

The child looked at her. She was a skinny little girl about eight years old, with a slight squint. Her face was defiant.

‘Why should I give ’er to you?’ she said. ‘Pitched her out of the window, you did—I saw you. If you pushed her out of the window you don’t want her, so now she’s mine.’

‘I’ll buy you another doll,’ said Alicia frantically. ‘We’ll go to a toy shop—anywhere you like—and I’ll buy you the best doll we can find. But give me back this one.’

‘Shan’t,’ said the child.

Her arms went protectingly round the velvet doll.

‘You must give her back,’ said Sybil. ‘She isn’t yours.’

She stretched out to take the doll from the child and at that moment the child stamped her foot, turned, and screamed at them.

‘Shan’t! Shan’t! Shan’t! She’s my very own. I love her. You don’t love her. You hate her. If you didn’t hate her you wouldn’t have pushed her out of the window. I love her, I tell you, and that’s what she wants. She wants to be loved.’

And then like an eel, sliding through the vehicles, the child ran across the street, down an alleyway, and out of sight before the two older women could decide to dodge the cars and follow.

‘She’s gone,’ said Alicia.

‘She said the doll wanted to be loved,’ said Sybil.

‘Perhaps,’ said Alicia, ‘perhaps that’s what she wanted all along . . . to be loved . . .’

In the middle of the London traffic the two frightened women stared at each other.

The Hound of Death

It was from William P. Ryan, American newspaper correspondent, that I first heard of the affair. I was dining with him in London on the eve of his return to New York and happened to mention that on the morrow I was going down to Folbridge.

He looked up and said sharply: ‘Folbridge, Cornwall?’

Now only about one person in a thousand knows that there is a Folbridge in Cornwall. They always take it for granted that the Folbridge, Hampshire, is meant. So Ryan’s knowledge aroused my curiosity.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Do you know it?’

He merely replied that he was darned. He then asked if I happened to know a house called Trearne down there.

My interest increased.

‘Very well indeed. In fact, it’s to Trearne I’m going. It’s my sister’s house.’

‘Well,’ said William P. Ryan. ‘If that doesn’t beat the band!’

I suggested that he should cease making cryptic remarks and explain himself.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘To do that I shall have to go back to an experience of mine at the beginning of the war.’

I sighed. The events which I am relating took place in 1921. To be reminded of the war was the last thing any man wanted. We were, thank God, beginning to forget . . . Besides, William P. Ryan on his war experiences was apt, as I knew, to be unbelievably long-winded.