The Hand*

*

Everyone had gathered around the judicial investigator, Mr. Bermuthier, as he gave his opinion on the mysterious incident in Saint-Clou. For an entire month, this inexplicable crime had been the talk of Paris. No one understood anything.

Mr. Bermuthier stood leaning against the fireplace, speaking about the case, presenting one piece of evidence after another, discussing various opinions, yet drawing no conclusions.

Several women rose from their seats and moved closer, keeping their eyes fixed on the clean-shaven lips of the judicial officer as he spoke important, weighty words. The ladies shivered, quivering with torturous curiosity, fear, and an insatiable craving for the terrible, which seizes the female soul and gnaws at it like hunger.

When a minute of silence fell, one of the listeners, the palest among them, said:

— This is horrifying. It borders on something supernatural. Nothing will ever be known here.

The judicial officer turned to her:

— Yes, madam, it is quite likely that no one will discover anything. However, the word “supernatural” that you used has nothing to do with it. We are faced with a crime very cleverly planned, very skillfully executed, and so expertly shrouded in mystery that we cannot comprehend the circumstances under which it was committed. But I once had to handle a case in which it seemed as if something fantastical truly was involved. That case, however, had to be abandoned due to the complete impossibility of bringing any clarity to it.

Several women spoke simultaneously, so quickly that their voices merged:

— Ah, tell us about it.

Mr. Bermuthier smiled importantly, as a judicial investigator should, and continued:

— Do not think, however, that I ever, even for a moment, considered the involvement of anything supernatural in this case. I believe only in real explanations. Therefore, it is far better if, instead of using the word “supernatural” to describe what is incomprehensible to us, we simply use the word “unexplained.” In any case, in the matter I am about to tell you about, it was the incidental circumstances—the preparations for the crime—that most intrigued me.

Here is how it happened.

At the time, I was a judicial investigator in Ajaccio, a small, snow-white town resting on the shore of a wonderful bay at the foot of high mountains.

Most often, I had to investigate cases of vendettas there. Remarkable cases, dramatic to the last degree, cruel, heroic. We encounter there the most astonishing instances of revenge one can imagine, with century-old hatred that sometimes slumbers but never fully dies out, with vile cunning, with murders that resemble either a slaughter or a feat of heroism. For two whole years, all I heard about was the price of blood, about that dreadful Corsican superstition that compels one to avenge every insult, both to the guilty party and to all their descendants and relatives. I came across the murders of the elderly, children, distant relatives, and my mind was full of such events.

One day I learned that an Englishman had rented a small villa for several years, located deep in the bay. He had brought with him a French valet, hired along the way in Marseille.

Soon, this strange man, who lived in complete solitude and left his house only for hunting and fishing, attracted general attention. He spoke to no one, never appeared in town, and every morning spent an hour or two practicing with a pistol and rifle.

Legends began to form around him. It was said he was some high-ranking official who had fled his country for political reasons; then it was claimed he was hiding after committing a terrible crime. Even the horrifying details of this crime were circulated.

By duty as a judicial investigator, I thought it necessary to gather information about this man, but I learned nothing. He called himself Sir John Rowell.

I therefore limited myself to careful observation, but, truth be told, nothing suspicious was noted about him.

However, since the rumors about him did not cease and instead grew and spread, I decided to try meeting the foreigner personally, and for this I began hunting regularly near his estate.

I waited a long time for a favorable opportunity. He finally appeared when I shot a partridge right under the Englishman’s nose. The dog brought me the game, but I immediately apologized for my rudeness and asked Sir John Rowell to accept the killed bird.

He was a very tall, broad-shouldered man, with red hair and a red beard—something like a mild-mannered and polite Hercules. He had none of the so-called British stiffness; he warmly thanked me in French for my courtesy, though with a strong English accent. Over the course of a month, I spoke with him five or six times.

One evening, passing by his villa, I noticed him smoking a pipe in the garden while perched on a chair. I bowed, and he invited me to come in for a glass of beer. I did not need to be asked twice.

He received me with fastidious English politeness, praised France and Corsica, and declared that he loved “this country and this shore” very much.

Then, extremely cautiously and with lively interest, I asked him a few questions about his life, about his intentions. He answered without hesitation and told me he had traveled extensively in Africa, India, and America. He added with a laugh:

— I have had many adventures. Oh, yes!

I then steered the conversation toward hunting, and he recounted many fascinating details of hunting hippopotamuses, tigers, elephants, and even gorillas.

I said:

— What dangerous animals!

He smiled.

— Oh, no! The worst animal is man.

And he laughed the hearty, satisfied laugh of an Englishman in good health.

— I have hunted men too.

Then he spoke of weapons and offered to show me the guns of various systems in his house.

His living room was draped with black silk embroidered with gold. Large yellow flowers scattered across the black fabric sparkled like flames.

He announced:

— This is Japanese material.

But then my attention was caught by a strange object hanging in the center of the largest panel. On a square of red velvet, something dark stood out. I approached closer: it was a hand—a human hand. Not a skeleton hand, white and clean, but a black, dried hand with yellow nails, with exposed muscles and traces of congealed blood resembling dirt, the bones severed in the middle of the forearm as if struck by an axe.

Around the wrist was a thick iron chain, riveted and welded to this filthy hand, which was fastened to the wall with a ring strong enough to hold even an elephant.

I asked:

— What is this?

— It was my greatest enemy. He came from America. The hand was cut by a saber, and its skin torn by a sharp stone, and it was dried in the sun for one week. Ah! This hand is very good for me.

I touched this severed human limb, which must have belonged to some giant. Incredibly long fingers clung to enormous tendons, and pieces of skin still hung from them. The sight of this flayed hand was terrifying, naturally suggesting thoughts of a savage’s revenge.

I said:

— This man must have been very strong.

The Englishman modestly replied:

— Ah! Yes. But I was stronger than him. I put this chain on him to hold him.

I thought he was joking and said:

— But now the chain is unnecessary; the hand cannot escape.

Sir John Rowell replied seriously:

— It always wants to go. This chain is necessary.

I studied my interlocutor closely, asking myself: “Is he mad or a jester?”

But his face remained imperturbably calm and polite. I spoke of other things and began praising the guns.

I noticed, however, that on the table and the shelf lay three loaded revolvers, as if this man lived in constant fear, anticipating an attack.

I visited him a few more times. Then I stopped. Everyone had grown accustomed to his presence and treated him with complete indifference.

A whole year passed. One morning at the end of November, the servant woke me and reported that Sir John Rowell had been murdered during the night.

Half an hour later, I was entering the Englishman’s house with the chief police commissioner and the gendarmerie captain. The distraught valet sat in despair at the door, crying. At first, I suspected this man, but he was innocent.

The criminal was never found.

Entering Sir John’s living room, I immediately saw the body lying on its back in the middle of the room. The vest was torn, one sleeve completely ripped off; everything indicated a terrible struggle had taken place.

The Englishman had been strangled! His blackened, swollen, and terrifying face expressed immeasurable horror; his clenched teeth bit something, and the neck, marked with five small wounds as if made by iron spikes, was covered in blood.

Soon a doctor joined us. He studied the fingerprints on the body for a long time and uttered a strange phrase:

— One might think a skeleton strangled him.

A shiver ran down my spine, and I glanced at the wall where I had once seen the terrible hand with flayed skin. It was no longer there. Only the broken chain hung.

I then bent over the corpse and saw in the clenched mouth one of the fingers of that vanished hand, which he had bitten—or rather sawed off with his teeth—at the second joint.

Then the investigation began. It yielded nothing. No doors, windows, tables, or cupboards had been broken. Both guard dogs had not awakened.

Here, in a few words, are the valet’s statements.

During the last month, his master seemed agitated. He received many letters and burned them.

Often he would take a whip and in a rage, almost mad, furiously strike this withered hand, chained to the wall, which mysteriously disappeared at the very moment of the crime.

He went to bed very late and locked himself in carefully. His weapons were always at hand. Often he spoke loudly at night as if quarrelling with someone.

But on that very night, his bedroom was silent; only in the morning, when opening the windows, did the servant find Sir John dead. He suspected no one.

I reported what I knew about the deceased to the judicial authorities and the police, and thorough searches were conducted across the island. But nothing was found.

One night, about three months after the crime, I had a terrible nightmare. I seemed to see that horrible hand, watching it run across my curtains, across my walls like a scorpion or spider. Three times I woke, three times I fell asleep again, and three times I saw that disgusting severed limb moving in my room, wiggling its fingers like little claws.

The next day, the hand was brought to me, found on Sir John Rowell’s grave, who had been buried in the Ajaccio cemetery because his relatives could not be located. The index finger of the hand was missing.

And so, ladies, that is the whole story. I know no more.

The stunned women were pale and trembling. One exclaimed:

— But this is neither a resolution nor an explanation! We will not sleep unless you tell us what, in your opinion, happened.

The officer smiled and said seriously:

— Oh, ladies, I can only ruin your dreadful visions. I simply believe that the rightful owner of the hand did not die, that he came for it and took it with his only remaining hand. But how he did this, I could not discover. It is a kind of vendetta.

One of the women muttered:

— No, that cannot be; something is wrong here.

And the judicial investigator, smiling, concluded:

— I told you my explanation would not satisfy you.

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