Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 5 (1926-05).djvu/42

 New Jersey, New Jersey,' I say to me. 'Why, that is the place where my dear Trowbridge lives, and where these so mysterious burglaries have taken place.'

"So back I come to Sergeant Costello and ask him if any stranger whose mode of income is unknown has lately moved into this vicinity. I have a picture of this Professor Mysterio which the New York police give me from their archives, and I show the picture to the good Costello.

Pardieu' (in English) he say, 'but I know the gentleman! He live in the Berryman house, out on the Andover Road, and do nothing for his living but smoke a pipe and drink whisky. Come, let us gather him in.'

"While Sergeant Costello and I ride out to that house I do much thinking. Hypnotism is thought, and thought is a thing—a thing which does not die. Now, if this dead woman had been in the habit of receiving mental commands from Professor Mysterio for so long, and had been accustomed to obey those commands with all parts of her body as soon as they were given, had she not formed a habit of obedience? Trowbridge, my friend, you are a physician, you have seen men die, even as I have. You know that the suddenly killed man falls in an attitude which was characteristic of him in life, is it not so?"

I nodded agreement.

"Very well, then," de Grandin continued, "I ask me if it is not possible that the hand this professor have commanded so many times in life can not be made to do his bidding after death? Mon Dieu, the idea is novel, but not for that reason impossible! Did not that so superb Monsieur Poe hint at some such thing in his story of the dying man who remained alive because he was hypnotized? Most assuredly.

"So, when we get to the house of Professor Mysterio, Sergeant Costello points his pistol at the gentleman and says, 'Put 'em up, buddee, we've got the deceased wood upon you!' Meanwhile, I search the house.

"I find Monsieur Richards' jewelry and his bonds; I find Monsieur Kinnan's cup of Monsieur le Marquis de Lafayette. I find much else, including this hand of a dead woman which are not itself dead. Dieu de Dieu! When I go to take it from its case it attack me like a living thing, and Sergeant Costello have to promise he will blow the top from the professor’s head before he order it to be quiet. And it obeyed his voice! Parbleu! When I see that, I have the flesh of the geese all over me."

"Rot!" Richards flung the contemptuous comment like a missile. "I don’t know what kind of hocus-pocus made that hand move; but if you expect to make me believe any such nonsense as this stuff you’ve been telling, you’ve got the wrong pig by the ear. I shouldn’t be surprized if you and this Professor What's-His-Name were in cahoots in this thing, and you got cold feet and left your confederate holding the bag!"

I stared aghast at the man. De Grandin's vanity was as colossal as his ability, and though he was gentle as a woman in ordinary circumstances, like a woman, he was capable of sudden flares of vixenish temper when his regard for human life became no greater than his concern for a troublesome fly. If the little Frenchman had launched himself at his traducer like a bobcat attacking a hound I should have been less surprized than I was at the ominous calm with which he replaced the cover of the cardboard box containing the hand.

"Friend Trowbridge," he asked, the muscles of his jaws standing out like whipcords as he strove to prevent a telltale quiver from creeping into his face, "will you be good enough to represent me—ha!"