“Your uncle’s heirs — who are they?”
Our client looked momentarily startled. “Why, I suppose Nick and I are his only heirs,” she said. “I know nothing of his affairs, Mr. Pons. But there is no one else. All our relatives of my uncle’s generation are dead, and Nick and I are the only ones of our generation. Nick has no children, so there is no coming generation, either.” She took a deep breath and asked impulsively, “Mr. Pons, can you get to the bottom of this mystery? It troubles me very much to see Uncle Burton — well, preparing for death. That’s what he’s doing, Mr. Pons, it really is.”
“Your uncle has no knowledge of your coming here, Miss Morland?”
“None. I left at dawn. He seldom rises before eight o’clock.”
“Then you’ve not had breakfast, Miss Morland.”
“No, Mr. Pons.”
“Allow me!” Pons strode to the door, opened it, stuck his head out and called, “Mrs. Johnson, if you please!” He turned back to our client. “Pray give me a few minutes to ponder your problem, Miss Morland. In the meantime, Mrs. Johnson will be happy to prepare breakfast for you in her quarters. Will you not, Mrs. Johnson?” he asked of our long-suffering landlady as she appeared on the threshold.
“That I will, to be sure, Mr. Pons. If you’ll come with me, Miss?”
Miss Morland, too surprised to protest, allowed herself to be led from the room by Mrs. Johnson.
The door had hardly closed behind them before Pons was once again at the box, opening it. I was drawn to his side.
“Is this not an unique warning indeed, Parker?” he asked.
“I have seldom seen anything as gruesome.”
“It was intended to be. I submit that this severed hand must have a deep significance for our client’s uncle. What do you make of it?” I bent and peered closely at it, examining it as well as I could without disturbing it or removing it from the box. “A man’s right hand,” I said. “Of probably about forty, not much older, certainly. It is brown-skinned, not only from age. Eurasian?”
“Native. See how beautifully kept the nails are! This man did little work. There are no observable callouses. The hand is smooth even to the fingertips. How long would you say this hand has been severed?”
“Without more scientific apparatus, I should think it impossible to say.”
“Could it be as old, say, as Colonel Morland’s tenure in Malacca?”
“I should think so. But what could it mean to Morland?”
“Ah, Parker, when we can answer that question we will know why it was sent to him.” He smiled grimly. “I fancy it concerns some dark episode of his past. He retired at fifty-five. Is that not early?”
“His health, perhaps, demanded his retirement.”
“Or his conduct.”
“Miss Morland speaks of him as a model of rectitude.”
“And as something of a martinet. Conduct in search of rectitude may be as reprehensible as its opposite.” He touched the silk bands. “What do you make of these, Parker?”
“If I may venture a guess, white is the color of mourning in the Orient,” I said.
“The bands are new,” observed Pons.
“That is certainly elementary,” I could not help saying. “I can think of several reasons why they should be. What puzzles me is the reason for being of the hand in the first place.”
“I submit its owner kept it as long as he lived.”
“Well, that’s reasonable,” I agreed. “It has been properly mummified. Are we to take it that the owner is not still alive?”
“If he were sufficiently attached to this appendage while he lived, would he so readily have sent it off?”
“Hardly.”
“Unless it had a message to convey or an errand to perform.”
“Absurd!”
“Yet it did convey a message to Colonel Morland. It may be gruesome, but surely not so much so as to cause a normal and healthy man to swoon at sight of it. It reminds me of that horrible little trifle of wizard lore known as the glory hand, the bewitched, animated hand of a dead man sent to perform its owner’s wishes, even to murder.”
“Superstitious claptrap!”
“Colonel Morland, at least, is convinced that his life is in danger, and that the threat to it emanates from Malaya. Let us just have a look at the ship’s registry before our client returns to determine the number of ships that have docked from Malaya in the past few days.”
We had time to search back five days before our client returned from Mrs. Johnson’s quarters; during those five days no ship from Malaya had docked at England’s ports, though a freighter, the Alor Star, was listed as due within twenty-four hours. At Miss Morland’s entrance, Pons thrust the papers aside.
“Thank you, indeed, Mrs. Johnson,” said Pons as our landlady turned at the threshold. “And now, Miss Morland, two or three questions occur to me. Pray be seated.”
Our client, now somewhat more composed and less uncertain in her manner, took her former seat and waited expectantly.
“Miss Morland, when your uncle came around, did he say or do anything significant?” asked Pons.
“He didn’t say a word,” she answered. “He was very pale. He looked for the box and seemed relieved to find it closed. He picked it up at once. I asked him, ‘Are you all right, Uncle?’ He said, ‘Just a trifle dizzy. You run along.’ I left him, but, of course, I did watch to be sure he would be all right. He hurried straight to his bedroom with this box. He hid it there, for when he came out again in a few moments, he no longer carried it. He then locked himself in his study, and within two hours his solicitor came. He could only have sent for him, because Mr. Harris would certainly not otherwise have come to call at that hour.”
“You evidently found the intarsia box, Miss Morland.”
“My uncle has in his bedroom only a cabinet, a bureau, and an old sea chest which he fancied, and which had accompanied him on his journeys. He served a short term in the Royal Navy as a young man, before entering the foreign service. He acquired the chest at that time. I knew that the box had to be in one of those three places, and I found it carefully covered up in the chest while my uncle was closeted with Mr. Harris. Last night, about eleven o’clock, after he went to sleep, I slipped in and took the box so that I might be ready to come to you without the risk of waking Uncle Burton by taking the box this morning.”
“Did your uncle mention the box to anyone?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Pons. But I should think that, if he had spoken of it to Mr. Harris, he would have shown it to him. Yet Uncle Burton never left the study while Mr. Harris was in the house; so he could not have done so.”
“I see. I think, then, Miss Morland, our only recourse is to ask your uncle the questions you cannot answer.”
Our client’s hand flew to her lips; an expression of dismay appeared in her eyes. “Oh, Mr. Pons,” she cried, “I’m afraid of what Uncle Burton might say.”
“Miss Morland, I believe your uncle’s life to be in great jeopardy. This belief he evidently shares. He can do no more than refuse to see us, and he can certainly not take umbrage at your attempt to be of service to him.”
Her hand fell back to her lap. “Well, that’s true,” she decided.
Pons looked at the clock. “It is now nine. We can take the Underground at Baker Street and be at Watford Junction within the hour. Let us leave the box, if you please.”
Our client sat for but a moment, undecided. Then, pressing her lips determinedly together, she got to her feet. “Very well, Mr. Pons. My uncle can do no worse than give me the back of his tongue!”