The Beast with Five Fingers

"the hand was writhing in agonized contortions, squirming and wriggling upon the nail like a worm upon a hook. 'We'll keep it there until it dies,' he said. 'May I burn in hell, if I ever open the door of that safe again.'"

"The Beast With Five Fingers, by W. F. Harvey, published in 1928, is a fantastically creepy horror story by an often underappreciated old master of the genre. Eustace, an affluent English bachelor, receives a legacy from his uncle Adrian (who was blind). The legacy consists of a large library and a box, with air holes in it. Eustace imagines the box contains a small animal. It's definitely alive and it's definitely not benign. Animal? Not really.