The Dead Hand
One evening, about eight months ago, a friend of mine, Louis R., had invited together some college friends. We drank punch, and smoked, and talked about literature and art, telling amusing stories from time to time, as young men do when they come together. Suddenly the door opened wide, and one of my best friends from childhood entered like a hurricane. “Guess where I come from!” he shouted immediately. “Mabille’s, I bet,” one of us replied. “No,” said another, “you are too cheerful; you have just borrowed some money, or buried your uncle, or pawned your watch.” A third said: “You have been drunk, and as you smelt Louis’s punch, you came up to start all over again.”
“You are all wrong. I have come from P⸺ in Normandy, where I have been spending a week, and from which I have brought along a distinguished criminal friend of mine, whom I will introduce, with your permission.” With these words he drew from his pocket a skinned hand. It was a horrible object; black and dried, very long and looking as if it were contracted. The muscles, of extraordinary power, were held in place on the back and palm by a strip of parchment-like skin, while the narrow, yellow nails still remained at the tips of the fingers. The whole hand reeked of crime a mile off.
“Just fancy,” said my friend, “the other day the belongings of an old sorcerer were sold who was very well known all over the countryside. He used to ride to the sabbath every Saturday night on a broomstick, he practised white and black magic, caused the cows to give blue milk and to wear their tails like that of Saint Anthony’s companion. At all events, the old ruffian had a great affection for this hand, which, he said, was that of a celebrated criminal, who was tortured in 1736 for having thrown his legitimate spouse head foremost into a well, and then hung the priest who married them to the spire of his church. After this twofold exploit he went wandering all over the world, and during a short but busy career he had robbed twelve travellers, smoked out some twenty monks in a monastery, and turned a nunnery into a harem.”
“But,” we cried, “what are you going to do with that horrible thing?”
“Why, I’ll use it as a bell handle to frighten away my criditors.”
“My dear fellow,” said Henry Smith, a tall, phlegmatic Englishman, “I believe this hand is simply a piece of Indian meat, preserved by some new method. I should advise you to make soup of it.”
“Don’t joke about it, gentlemen,” said a medical student, who was three sheets in the wind, with the utmost solemnity. “Pierre, if you take my advice, give this piece of human remains a Christian burial, for fear the owner of it may come and demand its return. Besides, this hand may perhaps have acquired bad habits. You know the proverb: ‘Once a thief always a thief.’ ”
“And ‘once a drunkard always a drunkard,’ ” retorted our host, pouring out a huge glass of punch for the student, who drank it off at a gulp, and fell under the table dead drunk. This sally was greeted with loud laughter. And Pierre, raising his glass, saluted the hand: “I drink to your master’s next visit.” Then the conversation turned to other topics, and we separated to go home.
As I was passing his door the next day, I went in. It was about two o’clock, and I found him reading and smoking. “Well, how are you?” I said. “Very well,” he answered.
“And what about your hand?”
“My hand? You must have seen it on my bell, where I put it last night when I came in. By the way, fancy, some idiot, no doubt trying to play a trick on me, came ringing at my door about midnight. I asked who was there, but, as nobody answered, I got back to bed and fell asleep again.”
Just at that moment there was a ring. It was the landlord, a vulgar and most impertinent person. He came in without greeting us, and said to my friend: “I must ask you, Sir, to remove at once that piece of carrion which you have attached to your bell-handle. Otherwise I shall be obliged to ask you to leave.”
“Sir,” replied Pierre very gravely, “you are insulting a hand which is worthy of better treatment. I would have you know that it belonged to a most respectable man.”
The landlord turned on his heel and walked out, just as he had come in. Pierre followed him, unhooked the hand, and attached it to the bell in his bedroom. “It is better there,” he said. “Like the Trappists’ memento mori, this hand will bring me serious thoughts every night as I fall asleep.” An hour later I left him and went home.
I slept badly the following night. I was nervous and restless. Several times I awoke with a start, and once I even fancied that a man had got into my room. I got up and looked in the wardrobes and under the bed. Finally, about six o’clock in the morning, when I was beginning to doze off, a violent knock at my door made me jump out of bed. It was my friend’s servant, half undressed, pale and trembling. “Oh, Sir,” he cried with a sob, “they’ve murdered the poor master.” I dressed in haste and rushed off to Pierre’s.
The house was full of people, arguing and moving about incessantly. Everyone was holding forth, relating the event and commenting upon it from every angle. With great difficulty I reached the bedroom. The door was guarded, but I gave my name, and I was admitted. Four police officers were standing in the centre of the room, notebook in hand, and they were making an examination. From time to time they spoke to each other in whispers and made entries in their notebooks. Two doctors were chatting near the bed on which Pierre was lying unconscious. He was not dead, but he looked awful. His staring eyes, his dilated pupils, seemed to be gazing fixedly with unspeakable terror at something strange and horrible. His fingers were contracted stiffly, and his body was covered up to his chin by a sheet, which I lifted. On his throat were the marks of five fingers which had pressed deeply into his flesh, and his shirt was stained by a few drops of blood. At that moment something struck me. I glanced at the bedroom bell; the skinned hand had disappeared. Doubtless the doctors had taken it away to spare the feelings of the people who came into the patient’s room, for that hand was really dreadful. I did not ask what had become of it.
I now take a cutting from one of the next day’s papers, giving the story of the crime, with all the details the police could procure. This is what it said:
“A horrible outrage was committed yesterday, the victim being a young gentleman, Monsieur Pierre B⸺ a law student, and a member of one of the best families in Normandy. The young man returned home about ten o’clock in the evening, he dismissed his servant, a man named Bonvin, saying he was tired, and that he was going to bed. Towards midnight this man was aroused suddenly by his master’s bell, which was ringing furiously. He was frightened, lit a lamp and waited. The bell stopped for a minute, then rang again with such violence that the servant, frightened out of his wits, rushed out of his room and went to wake up the concierge. The latter ran and notified the police, and about fifteen minutes later they burst in the door.
“A terrible sight met their eyes. The furniture was all upset, and everything indicated that a fearful struggle had taken place between the victim and his aggressor. Young Pierre B⸺ was lying motionless on his back in the middle of the room, his face livid, and his eyes dilated in the most dreadful fashion. His throat bore the deep marks of five fingers. The report of Doctor Bourdeau, who was immediately summoned, states that the aggressor must have been endowed with prodigious strength, and have had an extraordinarily thin and muscular hand, for the fingers had almost met in the flesh, and left five marks like bullet holes in the throat. No motive for the crime can be discovered, nor the identity of the criminal.”
The next day the same newspaper reported:
“M. Pierre B⸺, the victim of the awful outrage which we related yesterday, recovered consciousness after two hours of devoted attention on the part of Doctor Bourdeau. His life is not in danger, but fears are entertained for his sanity. No trace of the guilty party has been found.”
It was true, my poor friend was mad. For seven months I went every day to see him at the hospital, but he did not recover the slightest glimmering of reason. In his delirium strange words escaped him, and like all insane people, he had an obsession, and always fancied a spectre was pursuing him. One day I was sent for in great haste, with a message that he was worse. He was dying when I reached him. He remained very calm for two hours, then all of a sudden, in spite of our efforts, he sat up in bed, and shouted, waving his arms as if in prey to mortal terror: “Take it! Take it! He is strangling me! Help! Help!” He ran twice around the room screaming, then he fell dead, with his face to the ground.
As he was an orphan, it was my duty to follow his remains to the little village of P⸺ in Normandy, where his parents were buried. It was from this village that he came on the evening when he found us drinking punch at Louis R.’s, where he had shown us the skinned hand. His body was enclosed in a leaden coffin, and four days later I was walking sadly, with the old priest who had first taught him to read and write, in the little cemetery where his grave was being dug. The weather was glorious; the blue sky was flooded with light; the birds were singing in the hedgerows, where we had gone so often as children to eat blackberries. I fancied I could see him again creeping along the hedge and slipping in through the little hole which I knew so well, down there at the end of the paupers’ plot. Then we used to return to the house, with our cheeks and lips black with the juice of the fruit we had eaten. I looked at the bramble-bushes; they were covered with berries. I mechanically plucked one and put it into my mouth. The priest had opened his breviary and was murmuring his oremus. At the end of the avenue I could hear the spades of the gravediggers, as they dug his tomb.
Suddenly they called to us, the priest closed his prayerbook, and we went to see what they wanted. They had turned up a coffin. With a stroke of their picks they knocked off the lid, and we saw an unusually tall skeleton, lying on its back, whose empty eyes seemed to be looking at us defiantly. I had a queer sensation, for some unknown reason, and was almost afraid. “Hello!” cried one of the men, “look, the ruffian’s hand is cut off. Here it is.” And he picked up a big, dried-up hand, which was lying beside the body, and handed it to us. “I say,” said the other man laughing, “you would think that he was watching you, and that he was going to spring at your throat and make you give him back his hand.”
“Come along,” said the priest, “leave the dead in peace, and close that coffin again. We will dig a grave somewhere else for poor Monsieur Pierre.”
Everything was finished the next day and I set out for Paris again, after having left fifty francs with the old priest for masses for the repose of the soul of the man whose grave we had disturbed.