The Hand
A circle had been formed round Monsieur Bermutier, examining magistrate, who was giving his opinion on the mysterious Saint Cloud affair. For the past month all Paris had been wildly excited over this inexplicable crime. No one could make head or tail of it.
Monsieur Bermutier was standing with his back to the fireplace and was talking, threading the evidence together, discussing the various theories, but drawing no conclusions.
A number of women had risen to draw near to him, and were still standing up, their eyes fixed on the magistrate’s clean-shaven lips, whence his grave observations issued. They shivered and trembled, their nerves on edge with inquisitive terror, with that greedy and insatiate desire to be terrified which haunts their souls and tortures them like a physical hunger.
One of them, paler than the rest, remarked during an interval of silence:
“It’s horrible. It verges upon the ‘supernatural.’ No one will ever get to the bottom of it.”
The magistrate turned to her.
“Yes, madame,” he said, “probably no one ever will. As for the word ‘supernatural’ which you have just used, it has nothing to do with the case. We are dealing with a crime planned with the greatest skill and executed skilfully, so well entangled in mystery that we cannot unravel it from its attendant circumstances. But once upon a time I myself had to deal with an affair in which an element of fantasy did really appear to be involved. We had to let that one go too, owing to lack of the power to clear it up.”
Several women cried at the same time, so rapidly that their voices sounded as one:
“Oh, do tell us the story!”
Monsieur Bermutier smiled gravely, as an examining magistrate ought to smile.
“But please do not believe,” he resumed, “that I could for one moment imagine that there was anything supernatural about this adventure. I only believe in normal causes. But if, instead of employing the word ‘supernatural’ to express that which we do not understand, we use merely the word ‘inexplicable,’ it will be much more useful. At any rate, in the affair which I am going to relate to you, it is more especially the attendant circumstances, the preliminary circumstances, which appealed to me. Here are the facts of the case:
“In those days I was examining magistrate at Ajaccio, a little white town lying on the shores of a delightful bay entirely surrounded by high mountains.
“The affairs with which I was most particularly concerned in those parts were the affairs of vendetta. There are some magnificent vendettas, as dramatic as they could well be, ferocious, heroic. In this district we come across the finest stories of revenge that you could possibly imagine, hatred centuries old, appeased for a moment, never wiped out, abominable plots, murders become massacres, deeds of which men were ready to boast themselves. For two years I heard tell of nothing but the price of blood, of the terrible Corsican custom which obliges a man to revenge every wrong upon the person who committed it, upon his descendants and those near to him. I have seen old men’s throats cut, and their children’s and their cousins’; my head was filled with these stories.
“Now one day I learnt that an Englishman had just taken, for a number of years, a small villa at the end of the bay. He had brought with him a French manservant whom he had engaged at Marseilles on his way out.
“Soon everybody began to take an interest in this strange person, who lived alone in his house, never going out except to shoot or fish. He spoke to no one, never went into the town, and, every morning, spent an hour or two at pistol and carbine practice.
“Legends grew up about him. People suggested that he was an important personage who had left his native land for political reasons; then it was stated that he was hiding after having committed an abominable crime. They even quoted circumstances of a peculiarly horrible nature.
“I was anxious, in my position as examining magistrate, to get some information about this man; but I found it impossible to discover anything. His name he gave as Sir John Rowell.
“I was content, then, with keeping him under close watch; but in fact I had no cause to believe in any suspicious circumstances connected with him.
“But as the rumours about him continued and grew, and became common property, I resolved to try and see this stranger for myself, and I made a habit of shooting regularly in the neighbourhood of his property. For a long time I waited my chance. At last it presented itself in the form of a partridge which I shot at and killed under the Englishman’s nose. My dog brought it to me, but, taking it with me, I went to make excuses for my discourteous act and to request Sir John Rowell to accept the bird.
“He was a big man with red hair and a red beard, very tall and very stout, a polite and placid Hercules. There was about him no trace of the so-called British stiffness, and he thanked me warmly for my civility in French of which the accent was unmistakably from the other side of the English Channel. At the end of a month we had chatted together five or six times.
“At last one evening, as I was passing his gate, I saw him smoking a pipe, straddling a chair in his garden. I greeted him, and he asked me to come in and drink a glass of beer. I did not oblige him to repeat his invitation.
“He received me with every mark of that meticulous English courtesy, spoke enthusiastically of France and Corsica, declaring that he was delighted with cette pays and cette rivage.
“Thereupon, with the greatest care and under the form of a lively curiosity, I asked him some questions about his life and his plans. He answered without a sign of embarrassment, and told me that he had travelled a great deal in Africa, India, and America. He added with a laugh:
“ ‘Oh, yes, I’ve had plenty of adventures.’
“Then he began to tell me hunting-stories, and gave me most interesting details about hunting hippopotamuses, tigers, and even gorillas.
“ ‘They are all formidable animals,’ I observed.
“ ‘Oh, no,’ he said with a smile, ‘the worst is man.’ And his smile changed to a laugh, the pleasant laughter of a hearty happy Englishman.
“ ‘I’ve hunted man a lot, too.’
“Then he began to speak of weapons, and invited me to come in and be shown his various types of guns.
“His drawing room was hung with black—black silk embroidered with gold. Large yellow flowers twisted upon the dark material, gleaming like flames.
“ ‘It’s a Japanese material,’ he told me.
“But in the centre of the largest panel a strange thing caught my eye. Upon a square of red velvet a black object lay in sharp relief: I went up to it; it was a hand, a man’s hand. Not the hand of a skeleton, white and clean, but a black, dried hand, with yellow nails, the muscles laid bare, and traces of stale blood, like dirt, on the bones that had been cut clean off, as though with a blow from an ax, at the centre of the forearm.
“Round the wrist an enormous iron chain, riveted and welded on this foul limb, fastened it to the wall by a ring strong enough to hold an elephant.
“ ‘What is that?’ I asked.
“ ‘That’s my best enemy,’ answered the Englishman calmly. ‘It came from America. It was cut off with a sabre and the skin torn off with a sharp stone and dried in the sun for eight days. Oh, it was a fortunate thing for me.’
“I touched this human relic, which must have belonged to a colossus. The fingers, excessively long, were attached by enormous muscles which in places still retained shreds of flesh. The hand was frightful to see; flayed in this wise, it instinctively made me think of the revenge of some savage.
“ ‘The man must have been very strong,’ I said.
“ ‘Oh, yes,’ said the Englishman sweetly, ‘but I was stronger than he. I put that chain on to hold him.’
“I thought the man was jesting, and said: ‘The chain is quite useless now; the hand will not escape.’
“Sir John Rowell replied in a grave voice:
“ ‘It was always trying to get away. The chain is necessary.’
“With a swift glance I examined his face, asking myself:
“ ‘Is the man mad, or has he merely a poor taste in jokes?’
“But his face remained impenetrable, placid and kindly. I began to speak of other matters, and expressed my admiration for his guns.
“I noticed, however, that three loaded revolvers were lying about on various pieces of furniture, as though the man lived in constant fear of an attack.
“I revisited him on several occasions. Then I went there no more. People had grown accustomed to his presence. They were all completely indifferent to him.
“A whole year went by. Then one morning near the end of November my servant woke me and announced that Sir John Rowell had been murdered during the night.
“Half an hour later I entered the Englishman’s house with the commissioner-general and the chief of police. The valet, quite desperate and at his wit’s end, was weeping in front of the door. At first I suspected this man, but he was innocent.
“The criminal was never discovered.
“As I entered Sir John’s drawing room, I saw at the first glance the body, lying on its back, in the centre of the room.
“The waistcoat was torn, and a rent sleeve hung down; everything pointed to the fact that a terrible struggle had taken place.
“The Englishman had died of strangulation. His face, black and swollen, a terrifying sight, wore an expression of the most appalling terror; he held something between his clenched teeth; and his neck, pierced with five holes which might have been made with iron spikes, was covered with blood.
“A doctor joined us. He made a long examination of the fingerprints in the flesh and uttered these strange words:
“ ‘It’s just as if he had been strangled by a skeleton.’
“A shiver ran down my spine, and I turned my eyes to the wall, to the spot where I had formerly seen the horrible flayed hand. It was no longer there. The chain, broken, hung down.
“I stooped over the dead man, and I found in his distorted mouth one of the fingers of the vanished hand, cut, or rather sawn, in two by his teeth just at the second joint.
“We proceeded with the formal investigations. Nothing was discovered. No door had been forced, no window, no article of furniture. The two watchdogs had not awakened.
“Here, in a few words, is the servant’s deposition:
“For the past month his master had seemed to be very agitated. He had received many letters, which he burnt as soon as they arrived.
“Often he would take up a horsewhip, in a rage which savoured of madness, and beat furiously the dried hand sealed to the wall and removed, no one knew how, at the very hour of the crime.
“He had a habit of going to bed very late, and carefully locked all the doors and windows. He always had weapons within the reach of his arm. Often, at night, he would speak in a loud voice, as though quarrelling with someone.
“That night it happened that he had made no noise, and it was only when he came to open the windows that the servant had found Sir John murdered. He suspected no one.
“I communicated what I knew of the death to the magistrates and public officials, and a detailed inquiry was made over the entire island. Nothing was discovered.
“Then, one night, three months after the crime, I had a fearful nightmare. It seemed to me that I saw the hand, the horrible hand, run like a scorpion or a spider along my curtains and my walls. Three times I awoke, three times I fell asleep again, three times I saw the hideous relic career round my room, moving its fingers like paws.
“Next day the hand was brought to me; it had been found in the cemetery, on the tomb in which Sir John Rowell was buried, for we had been unable to discover his family.
“The index finger was missing.
“There, ladies, that is my story. I know nothing more.”
The ladies, horror-stricken, were pale and trembling.
“But that is not a dénouement, nor an explanation!” exclaimed one of them. “We shall not sleep if you do not tell us what really happened, in your opinion.”
The magistrate smiled austerely.
“Oh, as for me, ladies,” he said, “I shall certainly spoil your bad dreams! I simply think that the lawful owner of the hand was not dead, and that he came to fetch it with the one that remained to him. But I certainly don’t know how he did it. It was a kind of vendetta.”
“No,” murmured one of the ladies, “that should not be the explanation.”
And the judge, still smiling, concluded:
“I warned you that my theory would not appeal to you.”