ver. He had been given a prescription, most
valuable prescription--what for he wouldn't say. Was it medical?
'Damn you! What are you fishing after?' I apologised. Dignified
sniff and cough. He resumed. He'd read it. Five ingredients. Put it
down; turned his head. Draught of air from window lifted the paper.
Swish, rustle. He was working in a room with an open fireplace, he
said. Saw a flicker, and there was the prescription burning and
lifting chimneyward. Rushed towards it just as it whisked up the
chimney. So! Just at that point, to illustrate his story, out came
his arm."

"Well?"

"No hand--just an empty sleeve. Lord! I thought, _that's_ a
deformity! Got a cork arm, I suppose, and has taken it off. Then, I
thought, there's something odd in that. What the devil keeps that
sleeve up and open, if there's nothing in it? There was nothing in
it, I tell you. Nothing down it, right down to the joint. I could
see right down it to the elbow, and there was a glimmer of light
shining through a tear of the cloth. 'Good God!' I said. Then he
stopped. Stared at me with those black goggles of his, and then
at his sleeve."

"Well?"

"That's all. He never said a word; just glared, and put his sleeve
back in his pocket quickly. 'I was saying,' said he, 'that there
was the prescription burning, wasn't I?' Interrogative cough.
'How the devil,' said I, 'can you move an empty sleeve like that?'
'Empty sleeve?' 'Yes,' said I, 'an empty sleeve.'

"'It's an empty sleeve, is it? You saw it was an empty sleeve?' He
stood up right away. I stood up too. He came towards me in three
very slow steps, and stood quite close. Sniffed venomously. I
didn't flinch, though I'm hanged if that bandaged knob of his, and
those blinkers, aren't enough to unnerve any one, coming quietly
up to you.

"'You said it was an empty sleeve?' he said. 'Certainly,' I said.
At staring and saying nothing a barefaced man, unspectacled, starts
scratch. Then very quietly he pulled his sleeve out of his pocket
again, and raised his arm towards me as though he would show it to
me again. He did it very, very slowly. I looked at it. Seemed an
age. 'Well?' said I, clearing my throat, 'there's nothing in it.'

"Had to say something. I was beginning to feel frightened. I could
see right down it. He extended it straight towards me, slowly,
slowly--just like that--until the cuff was six inches from my
face. Queer thing to see an empty sleeve come at you like that!
And the