The Withered Hand.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2516, 25 August 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Withered Hand.

STORY OF A TERRIBLE VENGEANCE. A MYSTERIOUS MURDER. There was quite a crowd around M. Bermutier, the great criminal lawyer, as he discussed the mysterious Saint Cloud affair. For a month this inexplicable crime was the sensation of Paris. Nobody could make anything out of it. M. Bermutier, with his back to the fireplace, arrayed proofs and cited different opinions, but drew no conclusion. Several ladies had risen and drawn near him, and remained standinsr, with their eyes fixed upon the smoothly-shaven mouth of the attorney, whence fell such weighty words. The women shivered, chilled by their inquisitive fright, by that insatiable hunger for the dreadful which haunts their souls. One of them, paler than the rest, exclaimed— " It is frightful. It approaches the supernatural. It will never be cleared up." The great lawyer turned toward her. "Yes; it will probably always remain a mystery," he said " But the word " supernatural" you used, is hardly called for. The matter we are discussing is a cleverly-devised, cleverly-executed crime, so developed in darkness that we cannot disentangle the impenetrable network of circumstances surrounding it. But I confess that I was once called upon to follow a case which really seemed to have some hint of the fantastic about it. We were, iu fact, compelled to give it up for want of data on which to proceed." All the women cried with one voice— " Oh, tell us about it 1' M. Bermutier smiled gravely, as a great criminal lawyer should smile, and continued— "I do not myself admit that there can be any such thing as a superhuman agency. I should substitute the word "inexplicable" for "supernatural." "In the story 1 am going to tell, it was the surrounding or preparatory circumstances which impressed me. The facts were as follows :—At the time I speak of I was examining magistrate at Ajaccio. My business was principally the prosecution of cases of vendetta. In Corsica, as we all know, this sort of family vengeance has given rise to superbly dramatic, highly heroic incidents. For two years I heard of little besides the avenger of blood—the Corsican cod? which revenges murder on the murderer who commits it or his descendants and relatives. have seen old men, children, an distant cousins massacred. M head was tilled with such doings. " I heard one day that an Englishman had rented a villa on the gulf for several years. He, had a French servant, engaged at Marseilles, on his way to Ajaccio. Soon the whole place was taking an interest in this old individual, who lived alone, and who only went ou to shoot and fish. He spoke to nobody, never came to town, and practiced shooting at a mark every morning for an hour or two. "Stories began to be told about him. It was said that he was a man of high birth, who had fled from his country for political reasons. Then rumour ran that he was in hiding on account of some dreadful crime he had committed, of which specially horrible details were given. As examining magistrate, I desired to obtain some trustworthy information about the man. But I could learn nothing. He gave Sir Rowell as his name. I had him watched, but nothing suspicious about him was reported. Still, as gossip about him grew more general and extraordinary, I determined to see him for myself, and took to hunting in the neighbourhood of his estate. "The occasion presented itself , upon my killing a partridge under 1 the Englishman's very nose one day. 1 My dog brought me the bird, which r I at once presented to Sir John , Rowell, apologising for my intru--3 sion. He was a large mau, with t red liair and beard, tall and strong, s a placid, polished ITcrcules. He s bad none of the so-called British r stiffness, and thanked me iu French, :1 but with the decided accent of the r other side of the Channel. Within if the month we had chatted together " five or six times. l, " At last, one evening, as I passed .s his gate, I.saw him smoking a pipe, e sitting astride a chair in his garden, e I bowed, and he asked me to come in, and drink a glass of beer. ] d did not wait to be urged. He re it ceived me with the scrupulous cour

tesy of the British, and began to praise France and Corsica. " Then with the greatest precaution, making my curiosity under the form of deep interest in him, I asked a few questions about his life and his plans. He answered with unembarrassed frankness, told me he had travelled a great deal in Africa, the Indies and in America. He added, laughing— " Oh, yes! I've had a great many adventures." " I began to speak of hunting, and he gave me the most singular details of hippopotamus hunting, tiger and elephant hunting, and even gorilla hunting. I remarked that such animals were dangerous game. He smiled : " No ! man is thii worst." Then he laughed outright, a big Briton's laugh. " I've hunted men a good deal, too," he said. Then he spoke of weapons, and invited me into his house to show me different kinds of guns. His parlour was hung with black silk embroidered with gold. Great yellow flowers sprawled over the sombre material, as brilliant as fire. He announced that it was a Japanese stuff. ' But in the middle of the largest panel a strange thing caught my eye. On a square of red velvet there was a black object, I drew near ; it was a hand, a man's hand. Not a skeleton hand, white and clean, but a dtied-up black hand, with yellow nails, starting muscles, and traces of blood, which was like mud, on the cleanly cut off bones, severed as with an axe near the middle of the forearm. Around the wrist an enormous iron chain, riveted and soldered to the uncleanly limb, fastened it to the wall by a staple strong enough to hold an elephant. I asked what it was. The Englishman coolly answered— " That was my dearest foe. He came from America. That was cut off with a sword, and the skin scraped off with flint, and dried in the sun for eight days. Pretty good for me, wasn't it T' ' I touched the remnant of humanity, which must have belonged to a Colossus. The immoderately long fingers were attached by enormous tendons, to which shreds of the skin still adhered. The hand was frightful to behold, flayed as it was. It naturally suggested a barbarous revenge. ' " The man must have been very powerful," said I. ' " Oh, yes," said the Englishman, gently, " but I was stronger than he was. I put that chain on it to hold it." ' Thinking that he was jesting, I said— '" The chain is rather useless now. The hand won't get away." ' Sir John replied seriously, " It's always wanting to get away. The chain is necessary." " I gave him a quick look, wondering whether he was a madman or a practical joker. But his face remained unmoved,calm and kindlyI changed the subject, and examined his guns. I noticed, however, that three loaded revolvers lay in different places on the furniture, as if the man lived in constant fear of an attack. I called on him several times, and then went no more. Everyone had grown accustomed to his presence, and consequently wholly indifferent to him. A whole year went by, when one morning my servant awakened me with the news that Sir John Rowell had been assassinated in the night. Half an hour later I entered the Englishman's house with two police officials. The French valet, frightened and overcome, was wringing his hands at the door. He was the man I first suspected, but he was innocent. The murderer was never disco- , vered. 'Entering Sir John's drawingroom, I at once perceived his body lying stretched on the floor in tho middle of the room. His coat was ( torn, one sleeve was wrenched off and hanging ; everything gave evi- } dence of a terrific struggle- The Englishman had been strangled to „ death. His black, swollen face expressed the most horrible fear. He held something between his clenched teeth ; and his throat was pierced j with five bleeding holes, as if made by iron points. A surgeon joined 3 us, and examined the finger-marks ' in the flesh. He uttered the singu- £ lar words— ' I should say he had been [ strangled by a skeleton.' r ' I felt the chills run down my [ back, and glanced up at the wall r- where I had seen the horrible flayed i hand. It was there no longer ! The 3 chain hung broken. I bent over ! the corpse, and found in its teeth 1 one of the fingers of the vanished > hand, cut, or rather shaved off by ) the teeth just at the second joint, f The inquest was held. But nothing was discovered. No door had been f forced, no window opened, no furnir ture displaced. The two watch- . dogs had not awoke. i " The servant's testimony was i about as follows :—For a month past ! — his master had appeared troubled. [i He received a great many letters, j, which he burned as fast as they e came. Often, picking up a riding h whip in a rage which approached i, insanity, he would lash the driec e bawd which was fastened to tin n wall, and which had been reraovec >r so mysteriously on the night of th< crime. He went to bed very late d locked himself in carefully, anc 3, always kept weapons close a l. hand. He would often speal ie out loud at night, as if he wen I quarrelling with someone. On tin e- night in question, as it happened r- he made no sound ; and it was onl;

when the servant came to open the . windows that he discovered that Sir John had been assassinated. He had 110 suspicions of anybody. I reported the whole matter to the proper authorities ; and the island was minutely searched. Nothing came to light. "Now, one night, three months after the crime, I had a frightful nightmare. I dreamed that I saw the hand, the hideous hand, running like a scorpion, or a spider, up and down my walls and curtains. Three times I awoke, three times I went to sleep again, and three times I saw the fleshles3 horror crawl around my room, moving its fingers like legs. Next day the thing itself was brought to me. It had been found in the graveyard on Sir John Rowell's tomb. He had been buried there because his family could not be traced. The hand lacked its first finger, That is the story ladies. There is nothing more to it.' The terrified women were pale and trembling. One of them exclaimed — ' That's not a solution ; nor is it an explanation. We shall none of us sleep to-night unless you tell what you think really took place.' The lawyer now smiled severely. "0, I shall certainly spoil your terrible dreams, ladies," he replied. "I simply think that the legitimate owner of the hand was not dead at all, and that he came to get his severed hand back with the one he still possessed. But I certainly never discovered how he managed it. The whole thing was a vendetta. " One of the women murmured — " I don't believe it was that way at all." And the great lawyer, continuing to smile, concluded with— " I warned you, you know, that my explanation would not suit you."