ounted for the low, shuffling sound
which he made as he walked. As on the previous night he passed slowly
along the line of bottles until he paused before that which contained
the hand. He reached up to it, his whole figure quivering with
expectation, took it down, examined it eagerly, and then, with a face
which was convulsed with disappointment, he hurled it down on the floor.
There was a crash which resounded through the house, and when I looked
up the mutilated Indian had disappeared. A moment later my door flew
open and Sir Dominick rushed in.

"You are not hurt?" he cried.

"No--but deeply disappointed."

He looked in astonishment at the splinters of glass, and the brown hand
lying upon the floor.

"Good God!" he cried. "What is this?"

I told him my idea and its wretched sequel. He listened intently, but
shook his head.

"It was well thought of," said he, "but I fear that there is no such
easy end to my sufferings. But one thing I now insist upon. It is that
you shall never again upon any pretext occupy this room. My fears that
something might have happened to you--when I heard that crash--have been
the most acute of all the agonies which I have undergone. I will not
expose myself to a repetition of it."

He allowed me, however, to spend the remainder of the night where I was,
and I lay there worrying over the problem and lamenting my own failure.
With the first light of morning there was the Lascar's hand still lying
upon the floor to remind me of my fiasco. I lay looking at it--and as I
lay suddenly an idea flew like a bullet through my head and brought me
quivering with excitement out of my couch. I raised the grim relic from
where it had fallen. Yes, it was indeed so. The hand was the _left_ hand
of the Lascar.

By the first train I was on my way to town, and hurried at once to the
Seamen's Hospital. I remembered that both hands of the Lascar had been
amputated, but I was terrified lest the precious organ which I was in
search of might have been already consumed in the crematory. My suspense
was soon ended. It had still been preserved in the _post-mortem_ room.
And so I returned to Rodenhurst in the evening with my mission
accomplished and the material for a fresh experiment.

But Sir Dominick Holden would not hear of my occupying the laboratory
again. To all my entreaties he turned a deaf ear. It offended his sense
of hospitality, and he could no longer permit it. I left the hand,
therefore, as I