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 months after the crime, I had a terrible
nightmare. I seemed to see the horrible hand running over my curtains
and walls like an immense scorpion or spider. Three times I awoke,
three times I went to sleep again; three times I saw the hideous object
galloping round my room and moving its fingers like legs.

"The following day the hand was brought me, found in the cemetery, on
the grave of Sir John Rowell, who had been buried there because we had
been unable to find his family. The first finger was missing.

"Ladies, there is my story. I know nothing more."

The women, deeply stirred, were pale and trembling. One of them
exclaimed:

"But that is neither a climax nor an explanation! We will be unable to
sleep unless you give us your opinion of what had occurred."

The judge smiled severely:

"Oh! Ladies, I shall certainly spoil your terrible dreams. I simply
believe that the legitimate owner of the hand was not dead, that he came
to get it with his remaining one. But I don't know how. It was a kind of
vendetta."

One of the women murmured:

"No, it can't