At first I
could see nothing, presently, as my eyes became accustomed to the faint
light, I was aware, with a thrill which all my scientific absorption
could not entirely prevent, that something was moving slowly along the
line of the wall. A gentle, shuffling sound, as of soft slippers, came
to my ears, and I dimly discerned a human figure walking stealthily from
the direction of the door. As it emerged into the patch of moonlight I
saw very clearly what it was and how it was employed. It was a man,
short and squat, dressed in some sort of dark-grey gown, which hung
straight from his shoulders to his feet. The moon shone upon the side of
his face, and I saw that it was chocolate-brown in colour, with a ball
of black hair like a woman’s at the back of his head. He walked slowly,
and his eyes were cast upwards towards the line of bottles which
contained those gruesome remnants of humanity. He seemed to examine each
jar with attention, and then to pass on to the next. When he had come to
the end of the line, immediately opposite my bed, he stopped, faced me,
threw up his hands with a gesture of despair, and vanished from my
sight. I have said that he threw up his hands, but I should have said his arms,
for as he assumed that attitude of despair I observed a singular
peculiarity about his appearance. He had only one hand! As the sleeves
drooped down from the upflung arms I saw the left plainly, but the right
ended in a knobby and unsightly stump. In every other way his appearance
was so natural, and I had both seen and heard him so clearly, that I
could easily have believed that he was an Indian servant of Sir
Dominick’s who had come into my room in search of something. It was only
his sudden disappearance which suggested anything more sinister to me. As it was I sprang from my couch, lit a candle, and examined the whole
room carefully. There were no signs of my visitor, and I was forced to
conclude that there had really been something outside the normal laws of
Nature in his appearance. I lay awake for the remainder of the night,
but nothing else occurred to disturb me. I am an early riser, but my uncle was an even earlier one, for I found
him pacing up and down the lawn at the side of the house. He ran towards
me in his eagerness when he saw me come out from the door. “Well, well!” he cried. “Did you see him?”

“An Indian with one hand?”

“Precisely.”

“Yes, I saw him”—and I told him all that occurred. When I had finished,
he led the way into his study. “We have a little time before breakfast,” said he. “It will suffice to
give you an explanation of this extraordinary affair—so far as I can
explain that which is essentially inexplicable. In the first place, when
I tell you that for four years I have never passed one single night,
either in Bombay, aboard ship, or here in England without my sleep being
broken by this fellow, you will understand why it is that I am a wreck
of my former self. His programme is always the same. He appears by my
bedside, shakes me roughly by the shoulder, passes from my room into the
laboratory, walks slowly along the line of my bottles, and then
vanishes. For more than a thousand times he has gone through the same
routine.”

“What does he want?”

“He wants his hand.”

“His hand?”

“Yes, it came about in this way. I was summoned to Peshawur for a
consultation some ten years ago, and while there I was asked to look at
the hand of a native who was passing through with an Afghan caravan. The
fellow came from some mountain tribe living away at the back of beyond
somewhere on the other side of Kaffiristan. He talked a bastard Pushtoo,
and it was all I could do to understand him. He was suffering from a
soft sarcomatous swelling of one of the metacarpal joints, and I made
him realize that it was only by losing his hand that he could hope to
save his life. After much persuasion he consented to the operation, and
he asked me, when it was over, what fee I demanded. The poor fellow was
almost a beggar, so that the idea of a fee was absurd, but I answered in
jest that my fee should be his hand, and that I proposed to add it to my
pathological collection. “To my surprise he demurred very much to the suggestion, and he
explained that according to his religion it was an all-important matter
that the body should be reunited after death, and so make a perfect
dwelling for the spirit. The belief is, of course, an old one, and the
mummies of the Egyptians arose from an analogous superstition. I
answered him that his hand was already off, and asked him how he
intended to preserve it. He replied that he would pickle it in salt and
carry it about with him. I suggested that it might be safer in my
keeping than in his, and that I had better means than salt for
preserving it. On realizing that I really intended to carefully keep it,
his opposition vanished instantly. ‘But remember, sahib,’ said he, ‘I
shall want it back when I am dead.’ I laughed at the remark, and so the
matter ended. I returned to my practice, and he no doubt in the course
of time was able to continue his journey to Afghanistan. “Well, as I told you last night, I had a bad fire in my house at Bombay. Half of it was burned down, and, among other things, my pathological
collection was largely destroyed. What you see are the poor remains of
it. The hand of the hillman went with the rest, but I gave the matter no
particular thought at the time. That was six years ago. “Four years ago—two years after the fire—I was awakened one night by a
furious tugging at my sleeve. I sat up under the impression that my
favourite mastiff was trying to arouse me. Instead of this, I saw my
Indian patient of long ago, dressed in the long grey gown which was the
badge of his people. He was holding up his stump and looking
reproachfully at me. He then went over to my bottles, which at that time
I kept in my room, and he examined them carefully, after which he gave a
gesture of anger and vanished. I realized that he had just died, and
that he had come to claim my promise that I should keep his limb in
safety for him. “Well, there you have it all, Dr. Hardacre. Every night at the same hour
for four years this performance has been repeated. It is a simple thing
in itself, but it has worn me out like water dropping on a stone. It has
brought a vile insomnia with it, for I cannot sleep now for the
expectation of his coming. It has poisoned my old age and that of my
wife, who has been the sharer in this great trouble. But there is the
breakfast gong, and she will be waiting impatiently to know how it fared
with you last night.