This part of the story is calm and I could compare it to a soft autumn wind when a human is dreaming and he is thankful for his existence. But suddenly the wind is getting stronger blowing his dreams away and the reader gets back to reality exactly when the children imagine that the man is a murderer of rich women.
The reader does not suppose that it is true but his desire for the truth gets stronger and the wind changes to a hurricane.
When the children pass the rooms they know they enter the room which was the mysterious one from the beginning because it was the only room with curtains. Both children and reader know that discovering of it will make a break through in the whole story and tell the truth about the man.

That what is discovered by children are rows of different dolls and it can be surprising and unexpecting enough for the reader because he could expect anything but this.
I think that these dolls are the same strong element of mystery as the man himself and so the story could be titled as ‘The Dolls’ as well as ‘The Man’.
Why dolls, different and maybe from every country in the world? Is the man a traveller or collector or the dolls are the symbol of something more important? Here comes the mysterious man to explain us everything but another confusing thing appears and the reader is not sure what to expect from the man.
First it was a mysterious figure of the man himself, than the rows of dolls, which seem without any connection with him and now the man described in these ways:
- when he finds the children with his dolls. ‘He stood there, and his face was set in hate.’(Stone, p. 129)
- a few lines further when the children realise that they made a mistake and want to apologise to a man. ‘… he was smiling! He was smiling all over,… (Stone, p. 130).
Is it just another wind, which will be replaced by a hurricane? No. The man is saying his story: ‘I was married. I was happy. My wife was never strong, and three weeks before she had our baby she was ill. She died when our daughter was born.’(Stone, p. 131)
And what about those dolls? He made them for his daughter and when she died he went on making them. By doing this he kept his commemoration of his daughter and also wife because she was such like the daughter. It is emotional and maybe some readers’ eyes will be wet but the loss of the daughter and wife does not seem to me very original as the reason for making dolls. Maybe the author could think about any other reason and maybe I am just a pretentious reader who is looking for something new in literary works.
When the children left they never came back.