"The Hand" (180?) By Guy de Maupassant From Maupassant Original Short Stories(180?), Complete Text copied from Online-literature There's another version of this story known as "The Flayed Hand," but this one is the longer version. The one featured is probably the scariest. All were crowding around M. Bermutier, the judge, who was giving his opinion about the Saint-Cloud mystery. For a month this in explicable crime had been the talk of Paris. Nobody could make head or tail of it. "It's terrible. It verges on the supernatural. The truth will never be known." The judge turned to her: "I said: "He said: