dful emptiness
of the room.

The End

THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD HAND

As first published in Atlantic Monthly, August 1904

I

"Above all," the letter ended, "don't leave Siena without seeing Doctor
Lombard's Leonardo. Lombard is a queer old Englishman, a mystic or a
madman (if the two are not synonymous), and a devout student of the
Italian Renaissance. He has lived for years in Italy, exploring its
remotest corners, and has lately picked up an undoubted Leonardo, which
came to light in a farmhouse near Bergamo. It is believed to be one of
the missing pictures mentioned by Vasari, and is at any rate, according
to the most competent authorities, a genuine and almost untouched
example of the best period.

"Lombard is a queer stick, and jealous of showing his treasures; but we
struck up a friendship when I was working on the Sodomas in Siena three
years ago, and if you will give him the enclosed line you may get a peep
at the Leonardo. Probably not more than a peep, though, for I hear he
refuses to have it reproduced. I want badly to use it in my monograph on
the Windsor drawings, so please see what you can do for me, and if you
can't persuade him to let you take a photograph or make a sketch, at
least jot down a detailed description of the picture and get from him
all the facts you can. I hear that the French and Italian governments
have offered him a large advance on his purchase, but that he refuses
to sell at any price, though he certainly can't afford such luxuries; in
fact, I don't see where he got enough money to buy the picture. He lives
in the Via Papa Giulio."

Wyant sat at the table d'hote of his hotel, re-reading his friend's
letter over a late luncheon. He had been five days in Siena without
having found time to call on Doctor Lombard; not from any indifference
to the opportunity presented, but because it was his first visit to
the strange red city and he was still under the spell of its more
conspicuous wonders--the brick palaces flinging out their wrought-iron
torch-holders with a gesture of arrogant suzerainty; the great
council-chamber emblazoned with civic allegories; the pageant of Pope
Julius on the Library walls; the Sodomas smiling balefully through the
dusk of mouldering chapels--and it was only when his first hunger was
appeased that he remembered that one course in the banquet was still
untasted.

He put the letter in his pocket and turned to leave the room, with a
nod to