n murdered
during the night.

"Half an hour later I entered the Englishman's house, together with the
police commissioner and the captain of the gendarmes. The servant,
bewildered and in despair, was crying before the door. At first I
suspected this man, but he was innocent.

"The guilty party could never be found.

"On entering Sir John's parlor, I noticed the body, stretched out on its
back, in the middle of the room.

"His vest was torn, the sleeve of his jacket had been pulled off,
everything pointed to, a violent struggle.

"The Englishman had been strangled! His face was black, swollen and
frightful, and seemed to express a terrible fear. He held something
between his teeth, and his neck, pierced by five or six holes which
looked as though they had been made by some iron instrument, was covered
with blood.

"A physician joined us. He examined the finger marks on the neck for a
long time and then made this strange announcement:

"'It looks as though he had been strangled by a skeleton.'

"A cold chill seemed to run down my back, and I looked over to where I
had formerly seen the terrible hand. It was no longer there. The chain
was hanging down, broken.

"I bent over the dead man and, in his contracted mouth, I found one of
the fingers of this vanished hand, cut--or rather sawed off by the
teeth down to the second knuckle.

"Then the investigation began. Nothing could be discovered. No door,
window or piece of furniture had been forced. The two watch dogs had not
been aroused from their sleep.

"Here, in a few words, is the testimony of the servant:

"For a month his master had seemed excited. He had received many letters,
which he would immediately burn.

"Often, in a fit of passion which approached madness, he had taken a
switch and struck wildly at this dried hand riveted to the wall, and
which had disappeared, no one knows how, at the very hour of the crime.

"He would go to bed very late and carefully lock himself in. He always
kept weapons within reach. Often at night he would talk loudly, as though
he were quarrelling with some one.

"That night, somehow, he had made no noise, and it was only on going to
open the windows that the servant had found Sir John murdered. He
suspected no one.

"I communicated what I knew of the dead man to the judges and public
officials. Throughout the whole island a minute investigation was carried
on. Nothing could be found out.

"One night, about three mo