Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 2 (1924-05-07).djvu/53

 was coatless, and his immaculate sleeves were turned back to the elbows on two powerful arms. The burning eyes that held my own seemed charged with actual physical force, some super-animal magnetism. My glance wavered to the bed, where his coat, carelessly tossed, assumed to my amazed vision the well-defined outlines of some hideous couchant animal, stark against the whiteness of the linen.

But that which held me spellbound, seeming by its horrible actuality to freeze the blood within me, inhibiting my powers of speech and motion, lay on the table, white in the brilliant light, clean and snowy, and, were it not for the ghastly story it told, even alluring.

I gasped, "Great God! I am dreaming!"

A low laugh, softly modulated, yet carrying conviction of sincere amusement, brought my startled gaze to the other end of the table. A girl sat there, a girl whose beauty beggars my powers of description, though I recall her every feature with a clarity of remembrance that will go with me to the grave. Faultless she was, in clear pure beauty that allows me no play of words on any feature that contributed to her loveliness. Hair of magic gold that glistened with inviting temptation to the touch; azure eyes, surpassing in their wondrous beauty Nature’s own painting of the eternal skies; skin that gleamed like ivory-porcelain on neck and shoulders that would be models for some sculptor's everlasting fame. A fairy-woman, yet real enough as she smiled at me in unaffected mirth.

For the first time I became aware of two other occupants of the room—two men who sat at the other end of the table, slightly in the rear of the big map opposite me. My first horror-stricken gaze had so centered on what lay on the shining blood-red mahogany table that I had failed to notice them. Both were dressed and groomed with exceeding care. Both were likewise of professional aspect, and neither seemed moved by any emotion other than mild amusement at what must have been my grotesque, frozen attitude.

The calm matter-of-factness of these four people, and the smile on the face of the beautiful girl, terrified me with the fear my mind was leaving me. It was all too revolting, too ghoulish, too sickening for credence except to a dethroned reason.

On the gleaming, polished wood of the table, in almost the exact center, within reach of any of the four who sat about it, lay—My God! can I ever forget it?—a woman's hand!

A woman's hand!

Cleanly severed at the wrist, a dashing diamond sparkling from the platinum mounting on the third finger, each well-kept nail gleaming pinkly in mute testimonial of much studied care, it was a grisly exhibit well calculated to stun the mind of any normal witness. My knees sagged and I dropped unbidden into a chair.

A woman's hand!

Do you not see why it was that my soul grew ill and I doubted my own sanity? Have you thought, perhaps, that mine must be a lightly balanced, hysterical temperament that I should so easily grow horror-stricken over what was so surely but an anatomical specimen, on display before these evidently scientific gentlemen for some legitimate purpose? A woman's hand! Surely this was not the first time such an object had served the purposes of science.

True—all of it true—but never such a hand as that at which I stared. Never such a hand, plump, unshriveled and pink with glowing life as was this. Never such a hand, so cleanly amputated with never the loss of a single drop of blood. Never a victim of so horrible a loss as she who smilingly raised a rounded wrist from which the hand was missing.

Was it a dream? No! Except for a numbed horror, I was never more fully awake. The sound of the elevator reached me as its doors slammed on some distant floor. From the street came the roar of passing street cars, and the occasional blast of a motor horn. No, it was not a dream! Would to God it were, that time might erase the sleep-destroying memory from my brain.

Unnerved, weakened, sickened, I sat and stared in unbelieving fascination at the huge man who held my gaze and on whose face a slow smile began to creep. The sight I have just described had taken but the briefest moment to stamp itself upon my consciousness, and his easy gesture of casual welcome seemed to follow immediately upon my entrance into the room. None of those present seemed surprised or alarmed at my intrusion, and he who dominated the small assembly now spoke in a quiet, assured voice that reached me with all the emphasis of a command.

"You are just in time, Mr. Ferrell, to witness a revolutionary performance in modern surgery."

He held up a peculiar S-shaped tube in which a greenish liquid seemed to move sullenly.

"This preparation is the most complete and marvelous anesthetic ever dreamed of. Applied externally, it instantly kills every nerve, halts every drop of blood, so that an amputation may be performed under the eyes of the patient with never a sense of pain nor feeling. Applied immediately afterwards to the wound, it seals it hygienically and almost immediately transforms itself into skin, so that any operation may be performed and recovery assured within an hour. As a matter of fact," (he waved his hand negligently toward the grisly thing on the table) "that extremity was removed only five minutes before you came."

I stared in speechless wonder at the girl, who again raised the severed wrist for my inspection. The stump was as though nature had planned a perfect woman but stopped short of perfection by failing to endow her with a hand. The skin seemed to grow smoothly around the end of the wrist. I could discern no evidences of recent surgical treatment. From the other end of the table one of the men spoke.

"Perhaps Mr. Ferrell would care to make a closer examination of the subject before witnessing the next operation."

I shrank back in my chair, my voice squeaking with excitement as I shrilled, "Another operation? My God, no! I will not be a witness to such monstrous malpractice."

Yet in my soul I knew I could not move from where I sat. Some unseen force gripped my heart. Its horrible restraining fingers held me inert in this charnel house of infamous trickery.

The big man spoke smoothly, ignoring my protest as if my voice had failed to reach him.

"Mr. Ferrell, being a layman, would doubtless prefer to remain seated, where he can witness what is done, unaffected so far as possible by his obviously morbid imagination."

The others nodded their agreement, and he turned to the girl, who moved closer to the table with apparently fanatical interest. Her gruesome efforts to use the hand, once a part of her beautiful body, and the fumbling ineffectiveness of the pitiful stump, brought a curse to my lips, but the callous heartlessness of the others seemed unaffected. The big man spoke.

"Freda, your consent to this operation, which is to some extent a mutilation of your physical charms, is most gratifying, but I have decided the second operation need not affect your appearance. You are not suffering any effects from the loss of your hand?"

The girl, Freda, as he called her, smiled reassuringly. "None whatever,