Frank noticed those hands for the first time. Although the fingers were long, they were also thick and muscular, and there was something about them suggestive of great strength. The man saw Merriwell looking at his hands, and a strange, chilling smile hovered on his face.
“I saw you looking at them. Are they not very strong?”
“They are. There are no hands in Paris like them. They are the most famous hands in all this city.”
Frank wondered what the man could mean by all this.
“What do I care about your hands!” he cried, forgetting for the moment his assumption of suavity. “I did not stop here to talk of them.”
“No, monsieur; you stopped here because the door was closed.”
“I am sure I am right,” he said. “But I saw you looking at my hands. They attracted your attention. It is not strange. They are very strong. Look.”
He spread the sinewy fingers out till his hands looked like huge talons, and then he brought them slowly together, as if gripping something, and crushing it. There was something so horribly suggestive about this action that the lips of the American youth were pressed together, and there was a frown on his forehead.
“If I had something within the grasp of those fingers,” purred the man across the table, “they would close just the same. They can crush anything but iron, and that they can bend.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Frank impatiently. “Was it to boast of the strength of your hands that you induced me to stay?”
“I thought of telling you about it, my cool young friend from America. After I have told you all, we will talk of something else.”
The hands unclosed, and lay on the table. Surely, there was something fascinating about them, and Frank took his eyes from them with difficulty.
“Now,” said the Frenchman, in that same purring voice, “suppose that those hands were to close on a human throat, Monsieur American. What chance would the owner of that throat have to escape with his life? They would crush the windpipe, and end a human life with ease. I did not lie to you when I told you those hands were the most famous in all Paris. They have given me my name.”
“I have used those hands,” continued the man, “and I expect to use them again—perhaps to-night. They have felt human throats!”