II

I packed my portmanteau next day and returned to my home in the country.

All desire for amusement in town was gone, and the faculty to transact

business had departed as well.

A languor and qualms had come over me, and my head was in a maze. I was

unable to fix my thoughts on anything. At times I was disposed to

believe that my wits were deserting me, at others that I was on the

verge of a severe illness. Anyhow, whether likely to go off my head or

not, or take to my bed, home was the only place for me, and homeward I

sped, accordingly. On reaching my country habitation, my servant, as

usual, took my portmanteau to my bedroom, unstrapped it, but did not

unpack it. I object to his throwing out the contents of my Gladstone

bag; not that there is anything in it he may not see, but that he puts

my things where I cannot find them again. My clothes--he is welcome to

place them where he likes and where they belong, and this latter he

knows better than I do; but, then, I carry about with me other things

than a dress suit, and changes of linen and flannel. There are letters,

papers, books--and the proper destinations of these are known only to

myself. A servant has a singular and evil knack of putting away literary

matter and odd volumes in such places that it takes the owner half a day

to find them again. Although I was uncomfortable, and my head in a

whirl, I opened and unpacked my own portmanteau. As I was thus engaged I

saw something curled up in my collar-box, the lid of which had got

broken in by a boot-heel impinging on it. I had pulled off the damaged

cover to see if my collars had been spoiled, when something curled up

inside suddenly rose on end and leapt, just like a cheese-jumper, out of

the box, over the edge of the Gladstone bag, and scurried away across

the floor in a manner already familiar to me.

I could not doubt for a moment what it was--here was the finger again.

It had come with me from London to the country.

Whither it went in its run over the floor I do not know, I was too

bewildered to observe.

Somewhat later, towards evening, I seated myself in my easy-chair, took

up a book, and tried to read. I was tired with the journey, with the

knocking about in town, and the discomfort and alarm produced by the

apparition of the finger. I felt worn out. I was unable to give my

attention to what I read, and before I was aware was asleep. Roused for

an instant by the fall of the book from my hands, I speedily relapsed

into unconsciousness. I am not sure that a doze in an armchair ever does

good. It usually leaves me in a semi-stupid condition and with a

headache. Five minutes in a horizontal position on my bed is worth

thirty in a chair. That is my experience. In sleeping in a sedentary

position the head is a difficulty; it drops forward or lolls on one side

or the other, and has to be brought back into a position in which the

line to the centre of gravity runs through the trunk, otherwise the head

carries the body over in a sort of general capsize out of the chair on

to the floor.

I slept, on the occasion of which I am speaking, pretty healthily,

because deadly weary; but I was brought to waking, not by my head

falling over the arm of the chair, and my trunk tumbling after it, but

by a feeling of cold extending from my throat to my heart. When I awoke

I was in a diagonal position, with my right ear resting on my right

shoulder, and exposing the left side of my throat, and it was

here--where the jugular vein throbs--that I felt the greatest intensity

of cold. At once I shrugged my left shoulder, rubbing my neck with the

collar of my coat in so doing. Immediately something fell off, upon the

floor, and I again saw the finger.

My disgust--horror, were intensified when I perceived that it was

dragging something after it, which might have been an old stocking, and

which I took at first glance for something of the sort.

The evening sun shone in through my window, in a brilliant golden ray

that lighted the object as it scrambled along. With this illumination I

was able to distinguish what the object was. It is not easy to describe

it, but I will make the attempt.

The finger I saw was solid and material; what it drew after it was

neither, or was in a nebulous, protoplasmic condition. The finger was

attached to a hand that was curdling into matter and in process of

acquiring solidity; attached to the hand was an arm in a very filmy

condition, and this arm belonged to a human body in a still more

vaporous, immaterial condition. This was being dragged along the floor

by the finger, just as a silkworm might pull after it the tangle of its

web. I could see legs and arms, and head, and coat-tail tumbling about

and interlacing and disentangling again in a promiscuous manner. There

were no bone, no muscle, no substance in the figure; the members were

attached to the trunk, which was spineless, but they had evidently no

functions, and were wholly dependent on the finger which pulled them

along in a jumble of parts as it advanced.

In such confusion did the whole vaporous matter seem, that I think--I

cannot say for certain it was so, but the impression left on my mind

was--that one of the eyeballs was looking out at a nostril, and the

tongue lolling out of one of the ears.

It was, however, only for a moment that I saw this germ-body; I cannot

call by another name that which had not more substance than smoke. I saw

it only so long as it was being dragged athwart the ray of sunlight. The

moment it was pulled jerkily out of the beam into the shadow beyond, I

could see nothing of it, only the crawling finger.

I had not sufficient moral energy or physical force in me to rise,

pursue, and stamp on the finger, and grind it with my heel into the

floor. Both seemed drained out of me. What became of the finger, whither

it went, how it managed to secrete itself, I do not know. I had lost the

power to inquire. I sat in my chair, chilled, staring before me into

space.

"Please, sir," a voice said, "there's Mr. Square below, electrical

engineer."

"Eh?" I looked dreamily round.

My valet was at the door.

"Please, sir, the gentleman would be glad to be allowed to go over the

house and see that all the electrical apparatus is in order."

"Oh, indeed! Yes--show him up."