Plot:
The narrator introduces Mr. Adrian Borlsover, who was good with his hands, able to illustrate his own scientific paper, and carve wood. At the time, the narrator was a child, and Mr. Borlsover was elderly. He’d lost his eyesight in midlife but adapted, learning Braille and maintaining his ability to write.
Mr. Borlsover had no children. He had a nephew, Eustace, who visited him seldom but regularly. Like most of his family, Eustace was an accomplished naturalist, having advanced degrees from universities on the continent. He has traveled to the East and South America.
On his final visit to his uncle, he notices the elderly man is failing. Adrian tells him he is leaving him no legacy, as he is well provided for, but is leaving him his books. Adrian dozes but seems to write. For the most part, it is nonsense, bits and pieces, like a child learning to write, but the words respond to questions Eustace asks. When Adrian wakes, he says he’s been dreaming and dispenses avuncular advice, including a warning to choose his friends wisely.
Eustace glances at the writing: “It’s too late, Adrian. We’re friends already, aren’t we, Eustace Borlsover?”
Two months later, while he is in Milan, Eustache reads Adrian’s obituary.
Eustace returns to his uncle’s home with his secretary, Saunders, to try to figure out what to do with all the books. A package arrives with something bouncing around in it, some kind of animal, no doubt. As Eustace opens the package, the whatever flees into the library before he can get a good look at it.
Oh, well. Where is it going to go? It’ll come down when it’s good and hungry. He hears it scuttling around, knocking books down.
And then he sees it…
Thoughts:
This is a creepy little story. Among Adrian’s avuncular advice is a note that toward the end of life, people tend to request odd things. Eustace is to ignore the odd things he requests.
Hmmm…
After a note from Adrian’s solicitor arrives, stating that Adrian had requested to be embalmed and had further requested that his right hand be sent to Eustace, the nephew begins to piece things together. While believing the hand is secure in the house safe, Eustace and his secretary take a vacation.
Letters from the house staff start coming, tendering resignations, and claiming there are toads in the house. The housekeeper writes to say that others have quit with stories about the big, old, empty house being haunted—not that she believes the stories for a moment, her mother having always been a Wesleyan.
The hand grows sinister, stalking Eustace for no apparent reason. He wonders if he’s paying for his sins. He’s no worse than other men, though he mentions some “dirty business in San Diego,” which he promptly blames on Saunders (what are personal secretaries for?).
“It’s not that, of course,” Saunders assures him. “We are in the twentieth century, and even the parsons have dropped the idea of your old sins finding you out.” He adds that the hand was malevolent from the beginning. Only since Eustace fought it did it focus on him.
What’s behind the hand’s inherent malevolence? That’s more difficult to discern. It shows independence from Adrian while he is still alive, as well as a spark of mischievousness. In his last speech to his nephew, Adrian says, “Education is good so long as you know to whom and for what purpose you give it. But with the lower orders of men, the baser and more sordid spirits, I have grave doubts as to its results.”
Is he being a snob? Or is he speaking of over-educating his hand? It’s a bit in the weeds.
As for tension, this is a good read. Just when you think the beast is done for, there’s a knock at the door, and it’s not Thing with the mail.
This story was adapted into a 1946 movie of the same name, directed by Robert Florey and starring Robert Alda, Julie Holden, and Peter Lorre. The names and some of the elements were changed considerably, but the creepiness remained.
Bio: William Fryer Harvey (1885-1937) was a UK writer and journalist who, according to the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, became a “semi-invalid” after saving the life of a comrade during WWI. As a practicing Quaker, he served in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit and later as a surgeon-lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Among his writings is a memoir, We Were Seven (1936), but he wrote primarily psychological horror.
This story can be read here:
This story can be listened to here: (1:04:44)
And just a gentle reminder: if you live in a state with an election this November, please vote. Something truly scary could happen if you sit this one out.
Happy Halloween!
Title: “The Beast with Five Fingers”
Author: William Fryer Harvey (1885-1937)
First published: The New Decameron, Basil Blackwell (Oxford), 1919; The story was revised for its first book publication in 1928. All subsequent publications will probably reprint the revised version
Length: novelette
Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old 
The film version scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. I remembetr watching itvwith my dad on a sat afternoon. I was in the couch he was in the floor. He reached up to grab a pillow and I thought his hand was the beast 🫣🤣
Oh, I can see that. I imagine a little kid jumping out of his skin. Awww…
That certainly sounds like a creepy story. I did not read the book and I did not see the movie but I’ll bet the Thing in the Addams family borrowed from this story. Happy Halloween.
Yes, you’re probably right. But this hand is sooo unlike the helpful thing.
Yes I can imagine. Not helpful but very scary instead, but maybe the idea.
Exactly, 🙂