The Dead Hand
by
Seabury
Quinn
"That hammer was held in a hand—a woman’s hand! No arm, no body, just a hand, that floated through the air as if it were attached to an invisible body."
"MORBLEU," exclaimed Jules de Grandin, passing his coffee cup across the breakfast table for its third replenishment, "but it seems, almost, Friend Trowbridge, as if I exercise some sinister influence on your patients! Here I have been your guest but one little week, and you all but lose that Mademoiselle Drigo, while, hélas, the so excellent Madame Richards is dead altogether entirely."
“I hardly think you can be blamed for Mrs. Richards' death," I replied as I handed back his refilled cup. "The poor lady suffered from mitral stenosis for the past two years, and the last time I examined her I was able to detect a diastolic murmur without the aid of a stethoscope. No, her trouble dated back some time before your coming, de Grandin."
"You relieve me," he asserted with a serio-comic expression on his alert face. "And now you go to offer your condolences to her sorrowing husband, yes? May I accompany you? Always, Friend Trowbridge, there is an opportunity for those who will to learn something."
"NOM d'un nom, but it is the good Sergeant Costello!" de Grandin cried delightedly as a heavy-set man closed the door of the Richards mansion behind him and strode across the wide veranda toward the steps. "Eh bien, my friend, do you not remember me?" He stretched both his slender, carefully groomed hands toward the huge Irishman. "Surely, you have not forgotten"
"I'll say I haven’t," the big detective denied with a welcoming grin, shaking hands cordially. "You sure showed me some tricks I didn’t know was in th' book. Dr. de Grandin, when we was in that Kalmar case. Maybe
