The Hand That Signed the Contract

Count Černín ordered his architect to build him a palace that none in Prague should equal in size. The architect set to work and met all the costs out of his own pocket, so that he even ran into debt; but it did not trouble him, for he knew that the count would pay him well once the building was finished. The palace stood in all its splendour and the architect was preparing to travel to the count's country estate, to invite him to Prague and hand over the palace. Just then word came from the country that the count had been carried off by a sudden death while hunting. The architect therefore went to the widowed countess to have his outlay for the building made good, but she put him off, telling him to produce a bond confirmed by the count. In vain did he plead the count's custom of always paying his craftsmen only after the work was done. In his difficulty he asked the advice of his brother, who was a freemason, and the brother promised him help. He brought him into an assembly of the masons, where the architect laid his request before them and begged their aid. The grand master performed certain conjurations and then gestured towards the rear of the hall. There a curtain parted and from it stepped the figure of the dead Count Černín, as he had been in life. It was the count's ghost; it approached the table on which the architect's contract lay awaiting signature and laid its hand upon the sheet. Then the ghost vanished, and on the contract the hand remained as though burnt into it. And when the contract with this strange signature was laid before the countess, she no longer refused to pay the architect his money.