The Living Mummy by Ambrose Pratt — Read

It was the hand of a mummy. It had been half snapped, half torn from the forearm, just above the wrist. Thus the edges of the stock were ragged and the tendons were drawn out and torn; the bone, however, had fractured clearly, just as glass breaks, leaving a hard, smooth edge. But the hand was not an ordinary mummy's hand. The bones were covered with mummified flesh truly, but, although dry, it was neither stiff nor brittle. On the contrary, it possessed the tough consistency of leather and was resilient and kneadable like rubber. The phalanges, when pulled straight, returned to their ordinary and original position, like springs, immediately the pressure was removed. The colour of the skin was a very dark chocolate. It was marvellously preserved.

The very pores were still discernible, and the veins and arteries beneath the epidermis, which had been converted by age into fine black cords, could be traced with ease. Now, whose hand was it? From what mummy torn? And how had Weldon become possessed of it? I gave up the attempt to solve the first two problems as soon as I had mentally propounded them. The third, however, answered itself. I knew Weldon too thoroughly to admit a doubt that he would ever have carried about with him such a ghastly trophy. Like most healthy young Englishmen, he had a horror of such things. Well, then he must have snatched the hand, then invisible, from the grasp of someone -- in the very moment in which he had been falling to his death. But no one had been near him. That is, no one visible to us or him.