Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/316

 It seemed now suffused with blood; now it glowed with pale green; then a blinding ray of pure yellow shot forth. It seemed to hold impossible distances and atomic cosmic worlds within its shell. It winked like a living thing; it glared and blushed; it was at once baleful and beautiful.

The hand, however, seemed never to have had to do with life or motion. Dried like a mummy, strung with tendons like a turkey's claw, wrinkled, stiff, all color dulled into the hue of earth, it was a horrid thing. Valeska turned away from it in disgust; but Astro still peered at it, examining it, inch by inch, from the long coarse nails to the dissevered wrist.

"Well?" said McGraw.

"A negro's hand," Astro replied. "It has been buried. A man of at least forty. Cut from the arm during life. And yet—" He did not finish the sentence; instead, he said abruptly, "Take us to the laundry."

At the basement McGraw left them, Astro preferring to be alone with Valeska during his investigation. The two entered the cellar after McGraw had introduced them to the proprietor. She pointed out where the child had last been seen, and then went on with her work.

The front of the basement was used for one of the small wood and coal depots common in the poorer districts of New York. Partitioned off with rough boarding was a little chamber where the Italian who sold fuel lived. Behind this was the laundry where two girls, bare-armed, were washing. Two of them lifted a basket of wet linen and went out into the yard with it while Astro and Valeska watched.

In each of these rooms Astro spent considerable