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The man was just on the boil, and my
question boiled him over. He had been given a prescription, most
valuable prescription—what for he wouldn't say. Was it medical?
'Damn you! What are you fishing after?' I apologised. Dignified
sniff and cough. He resumed. He'd read it. Five ingredients. Put it
down; turned his head. Draught of air from window lifted the paper.
Swish, rustle. He was working in a room with an open fireplace, he
said. Saw a flicker, and there was the prescription burning and
lifting chimneyward. Rushed towards it just as it whisked up the
chimney. So! Just at that point, to illustrate his story, out came
his arm."
    "Well?"
    "No hand—just an empty sleeve. Lord! I thought,
that's
a
deformity! Got a cork arm, I suppose, and has taken it off. Then, I
thought, there's something odd in that. What the devil keeps that
sleeve up and open, if there's nothing in it? There was nothing in
it, I tell you. Nothing down it, right down to the joint. I could
see right down it to the elbow, and there was a glimmer of light
shining through a tear of the cloth. 'Good God!' I said. Then he
stopped. Stared at me with those black goggles of his, and then
at his sleeve."
    "Well?"
    "That's all. He never said a word; just glared, and put his sleeve
back in his pocket quickly. 'I was saying,' said he, 'that there
was the prescription burning, wasn't I?' Interrogative cough.
'How the devil,' said I, 'can you move an empty sleeve like that?'
'Empty sleeve?' 'Yes,' said I, 'an empty sleeve.'
    "'It's an empty sleeve, is it? You saw it was an empty sleeve?' He
stood up right away. I stood up too. He came towards me in three
very slow steps, and stood quite close. Sniffed venomously. I
didn't flinch, though I'm hanged if that bandaged knob of his, and
those blinkers, aren't enough to unnerve any one, coming quietly
up to you.
    "'You said it was an empty sleeve?' he said. 'Certainly,' I said.
At staring and saying nothing a barefaced man, unspectacled, starts
scratch. Then very quietly he pulled his sleeve out of his pocket
again, and raised his arm towards me as though he would show it to
me again. He did it very, very slowly. I looked at it. Seemed an
age. 'Well?' said I, clearing my throat, 'there's nothing in it.'
    "Had to say something. I was beginning to feel frightened. I could
see right down it. He extended it straight towards me, slowly,
slowly—just like that—until the cuff was six inches from my
face. Queer thing to see an empty sleeve come at you like that!
And then—"
    "Well?"
    "Something—exactly like a finger and thumb it felt—nipped my
nose."
    Bunting began to laugh.
    "There wasn't anything there!" said Cuss, his voice running up into
a shriek at the "there." "It's all very well for you to laugh, but
I tell you I was so startled, I hit his cuff hard, and turned
around, and cut out of the room—I left him—"
    Cuss stopped. There was no mistaking the sincerity of his panic.
He turned round in a helpless way and took a second glass of the
excellent vicar's very inferior sherry. "When I hit his cuff," said
Cuss, "I tell you, it felt exactly like hitting an arm. And there
wasn't an arm! There wasn't the ghost of an arm!"
    Mr. Bunting thought it over. He looked suspiciously at Cuss. "It's
a most remarkable story," he said. He looked very wise and grave
indeed. "It's really," said Mr. Bunting with judicial emphasis, "a
most remarkable story."

Chapter V - The Burglary at the Vicarage
*
    The facts of the burglary at the vicarage came to us chiefly
through the medium of the vicar and his wife. It occurred in the
small hours of Whit Monday, the day devoted in Iping to the Club
festivities. Mrs. Bunting, it seems, woke up suddenly in the
stillness that comes before the dawn, with the strong impression
that the door of their bedroom had opened and closed. She did not
arouse her husband at first, but sat up in bed listening. She then
distinctly heard the pad, pad, pad of bare feet coming out of the
adjoining dressing-room and