The Complete Works of Arthur Morrison (Illustrated). Arthur Morrison

been effected, we learned, not very long after we had left the wood, as they returned by another route to Ranworth. We brought our prisoner into the Colonel’s library, where he and Mr. Hardwick were sitting.

      “I’m not quite sure what we can charge him with unless it’s anatomical robbery,” Hewitt remarked, “ but here’s the criminal.”

      The man only looked down, with a sulkily impenetrable countenance. Hewitt spoke to him once or twice, and at last he said, in a strange accent, something that sounded like “kekin jinnavvy.”

“Keck jin?7 asked Hewitt, in the loud, clear tone one instinctively adopts in talking to a foreigner, “Keckeno jinny?”

      The man understood and shook his head, but not another word would he say or another question answer.

      “He’s a foreign gipsy,” Hewitt explained, “just as I thought — a Wallachian, in fact. Theirs is an older and purer dialect than that of the English gipsies, and only some of the root-words are alike. But I think we can make him explain to-morrow that the Fosters at least had nothing to do with, at any rate, cutting off Sneathy’s hand. Here it is, I think.” And he gingerly lifted the folds of sacking from the ghastly object as it lay on the table, and then covered it up again.

      “But what — what does it all mean?” Mr. Hardwick said in bewildered astonishment. “Do you mean this man was an accomplice?”

      “Not at all — the case was one of suicide, as I think you’ll agree, when I’ve explained. This man simply found the body hanging and stole the hand.”

      “But what in the world for?”

“For the Hand of Glory. Eh?” He turned to the gipsy and pointed to the hand on the table: “Yag-varst8 eh?”

      There was a quick gleam of intelligence in the man’s eye, but he said nothing. As for myself I was more than astounded. Could it be possible that the old superstition of the Hand of Glory remained alive in a practical shape at this day?

      “You know the superstition, of course,” Hewitt said. “It did exist in this country in the last century, when there were plenty of dead men hanging at cross-roads, and so on. On the Continent, in some places, it has survived later. Among the Wallachian gipsies it has always been a great article of belief, and the superstition is quite active still. The belief is that the right hand of a hanged man, cut off and dried over the smoke of certain wood and herbs, and then provided with wicks at each finger made of the dead man’s hair, becomes, when lighted at each wick (the wicks are greased, of course), a charm, whereby a thief may walk without hinderance where he pleases in a strange house, push open all doors and take what he likes. Nobody can stop him, for everybody the Hand of Glory approaches is made helpless, and can neither move nor speak. You may remember there was some talk of ‘ thieves’ candles ‘ in connection with the horrible series of Whitechapel murders not long ago. That is only one form of the cult of the Hand of Glory.”

      “Yes,” my uncle said; “I remember reading so. There is a story about it in the Ingoldsby Legends, too, I believe.”

      “There is — it is called ‘The Hand of Glory,’ in fact. You remember the spell, ‘ Open lock to the dead man’s knock,’ and so on. But I think you’d better have the constable up and get this man into safe quarters for the night. He should be searched, of course. I expect they will find on him the hair I noticed to have been cut from Sneathy’s head.”

      The village constable arrived with his iron handcuffs in substitution for those of cord which had so sorely vexed the wrists of our prisoner, and marched him away to the little lock-up on the green.

      Then my uncle and Mr. Hardwick turned on Martin Hewitt with doubts and many questions:

      “Why do you call it suicide?” Mr. Hardwick asked. “It is plain the Fosters were with him at the time from the tracks. Do you mean to say that they stood there and watched Sneathy hang himself without interfering?”

      “No, I don’t,” Hewitt replied, lighting a cigar. “I think I told you that they never saw Sneathy.”

      “Yes, you did, and of course that’s what they said themselves when they were arrested. But the thing’s impossible. Look at the tracks! ”

      “The tracks are exactly what revealed to me that it was not impossible,” Hewitt returned. “I’ll tell you how the case unfolded itself to me from the beginning. As to the information you gathered from the Ranworth coachman, to begin with. The conversation between the Fosters which he overheard might well mean something less serious than murder. What did they say? They had been sent for in a hurry and had just had a short consultation with their mother and sister. Henry said that ‘ the thing must be done at once ‘; also that as there were two of them it should be easy. Robert said that Henry, as a doctor, would know best what to do.

      “Now you, Colonel Brett, had been saying — before we learned these things from Mr. Hardwick — that Sneathy’s behaviour of late had become so bad as to seem that of a madman. Then there was the story of his sudden attack on a tradesman in the village, and equally sudden running away — exactly the sort of impulsive, wild thing that madmen do. Why then might it not be reasonable to suppose that Sneathy had become mad — more especially considering all the circumstances of the case, his commercial ruin and disgrace and his horrible life with his wife and her family? — had become suddenly much worse and quite uncontrollable, so that the two wretched women left alone with him were driven to send in haste for Henry and Robert to help them? That would account for all.

      “The brothers arrive just after Sneathy had gone out. They are told in a hurried interview how affairs stand, and it is decided that Sneathy must be at once secured and confined in an asylum before something serious happens. He has just gone out — something terrible may be happening at this moment. The brothers determine to follow at once and secure him wherever he may be. Then the meaning of their conversation is plain. The thing that ‘ must be done, and at once,’ is the capture of Sneathy and his confinement in an asylum. Henry, as a doctor, would ‘ know what to do ‘ in regard to the necessary formalities. And they took a halter in case a struggle should ensue and it were found necessary to bind him. Very likely, wasn’t it?”

      “Well, yes,” Mr. Hardwick replied, “it certainly is. It never struck me in that light at all.”

      “That was because you believed, to begin with, that a murder had been committed, and looked at the preliminary circumstances which you learned after in the light of your conviction. But now, to come to my actual observations. I saw the footmarks across the fields, and agreed with you (it was indeed obvious) that Sneathy had gone that way first, and that the brothers had followed, walking over his tracks. This state of the tracks continued until well into the wood, when suddenly the tracks of the brothers opened out and proceeded on each side of Sneathy’s. The simple inference would seem to be, of course, the one you made — that the Fosters had here overtaken Sneathy, and walked one at each side of him.

      “But of this I felt by — no means certain. Another very simple explanation was available, which might chance to be the true one. It was just at the spot where the brothers’ tracks separated that the path became suddenly much muddier, because of the closer overhanging of the trees at the spot. The path was, as was to be expected, wettest in the middle. It would be the most natural thing in the world for two well-dressed young men, on arriving here, to separate so as to walk one on each side of the mud in the middle.

      “On the other hand, a man in Sneathy’s state (assuming him, for the moment, to be mad and contemplating suicide) would walk straight along the centre of the path, taking no note of mud or anything else. I examined all the tracks very carefully, and my theory was confirmed. The feet of the brothers had everywhere alighted in the driest spots, and the steps were of irregular lengths — which meant, of course, that they were picking their way; while Sneathy’s footmarks had never turned aside even for the dirtiest puddle. Here, then, were the rudiments of a theory.

      “At