We are both much indebted to you for your
gallantry, for it takes something from the weight of our misfortune when
we share it, even for a single night, with a friend, and it reassures us
as to our sanity, which we are sometimes driven to question.”

This was the curious narrative which Sir Dominick confided to me—a story
which to many would have appeared to be a grotesque impossibility, but
which, after my experience of the night before, and my previous
knowledge of such things, I was prepared to accept as an absolute fact. I thought deeply over the matter, and brought the whole range of my
reading and experience to bear upon it. After breakfast, I surprised my
host and hostess by announcing that I was returning to London by the
next train. “My dear doctor,” cried Sir Dominick in great distress, “you make me
feel that I have been guilty of a gross breach of hospitality in
intruding this unfortunate matter upon you. I should have borne my own
burden.”

“It is, indeed, that matter which is taking me to London,” I answered;
“but you are mistaken, I assure you, if you think that my experience of
last night was an unpleasant one to me. On the contrary, I am about to
ask your permission to return in the evening and spend one more night in
your laboratory. I am very eager to see this visitor once again.”

My uncle was exceedingly anxious to know what I was about to do, but my
fears of raising false hopes prevented me from telling him. I was back
in my own consulting-room a little after luncheon, and was confirming my
memory of a passage in a recent book upon occultism which had arrested
my attention when I read it. “In the case of earth-bound spirits,” said my authority, “some one
dominant idea obsessing them at the hour of death is sufficient to hold
them to this material world. They are the amphibia of this life and of
the next, capable of passing from one to the other as the turtle passes
from land to water. The causes which may bind a soul so strongly to a
life which its body has abandoned are any violent emotion. Avarice,
revenge, anxiety, love, and pity have all been known to have this
effect. As a rule it springs from some unfulfilled wish, and when the
wish has been fulfilled the material bond relaxes. There are many cases
upon record which show the singular persistence of these visitors, and
also their disappearance when their wishes have been fulfilled, or in
some cases when a reasonable compromise has been effected.”

“_A reasonable compromise effected_”—those were the words which I had
brooded over all the morning, and which I now verified in the original. No actual atonement could be made here—but a reasonable compromise! I
made my way as fast as a train could take me to the Shadwell Seamen’s
Hospital, where my old friend Jack Hewett was house-surgeon. Without
explaining the situation I made him understand exactly what it was that
I wanted. “A brown man’s hand!” said he, in amazement. “What in the world do you
want that for?”

“Never mind. I’ll tell you some day. I know that your wards are full of
Indians.”

“I should think so. But a hand——” He thought a little and then struck a
bell. “Travers,” said he to a student-dresser, “what became of the hands of
the Lascar which we took off yesterday? I mean the fellow from the East
India Dock who got caught in the steam winch.”

“They are in the _post-mortem_ room, sir.”

“Just pack one of them in antiseptics and give it to Dr. Hardacre.”

And so I found myself back at Rodenhurst before dinner with this curious
outcome of my day in town. I still said nothing to Sir Dominick, but I
slept that night in the laboratory, and I placed the Lascar’s hand in
one of the glass jars at the end of my couch. So interested was I in the result of my experiment that sleep was out of
the question. I sat with a shaded lamp beside me and waited patiently
for my visitor. This time I saw him clearly from the first. He appeared
beside the door, nebulous for an instant, and then hardening into as
distinct an outline as any living man. The slippers beneath his grey
gown were red and heelless, which accounted for the low, shuffling sound
which he made as he walked. As on the previous night he passed slowly
along the line of bottles until he paused before that which contained
the hand. He reached up to it, his whole figure quivering with
expectation, took it down, examined it eagerly, and then, with a face
which was convulsed with fury and disappointment, he hurled it down on
the floor. There was a crash which resounded through the house, and when
I looked up the mutilated Indian had disappeared. A moment later my door
flew open and Sir Dominick rushed in. “You are not hurt?” he cried. “No—but deeply disappointed.”

He looked in astonishment at the splinters of glass, and the brown hand
lying upon the floor. “Good God!” he cried. “What is this?”

I told him my idea and its wretched sequel. He listened intently, but
shook his head. “It was well thought of,” said he, “but I fear that there is no such
easy end to my sufferings. But one thing I now insist upon. It is that
you shall never again upon any pretext occupy this room. My fears that
something might have happened to you—when I heard that crash—have been
the most acute of all the agonies which I have undergone. I will not
expose myself to a repetition of it.”

He allowed me, however, to spend the remainder of that night where I
was, and I lay there worrying over the problem and lamenting my own
failure. With the first light of morning there was the Lascar’s hand
still lying upon the floor to remind me of my fiasco. I lay looking at
it—and as I lay suddenly an idea flew like a bullet through my head and
brought me quivering with excitement out of my couch. I raised the grim
relic from where it had fallen. Yes, it was indeed so. The hand was the
_left_ hand of the Lascar. By the first train I was on my way to town, and hurried at once to the
Seamen’s Hospital. I remembered that both hands of the Lascar had been
amputated, but I was terrified lest the precious organ which I was in
search of might have been already consumed in the crematory. My suspense
was soon ended. It had still been preserved in the _post-mortem_ room. And so I returned to Rodenhurst in the evening with my mission
accomplished and the material for a fresh experiment. But Sir Dominick Holden would not hear of my occupying the laboratory
again. To all my entreaties he turned a deaf ear. It offended his sense
of hospitality, and he could no longer permit it. I left the hand,
therefore, as I had done its fellow the night before, and I occupied a
comfortable bedroom in another portion of the house, some distance from
the scene of my adventures. But in spite of that my sleep was not destined to be uninterrupted. In
the dead of night my host burst into my room, a lamp in his hand.