The bridegroom nodded, and took the other’s cold dry hand for an instant.  The men who had overheard the short conversation looked upon it as a meaningless incident, the memory of which would disappear from the lieutenant’s brain with the vanishing wine fumes.

The ball was now over.  The bride left the hall with her husband and several of the guests who were to accompany the young couple to their new home.  The lights went out in the old house.  The door of the dancing hall had been locked from the outside.  Lieutenant Flemming Wolff remained alone in the room, having hidden himself in a dark corner where he had not been seen by the servants, who had extinguished the lights and locked the door.  The night watchman had just called out two o’clock when the solitary guest found himself, still giddy from the heavy wine, alone in the great dark hall in front of the mysterious door.

The windows were at only a slight elevation from the street, and a spring would take him to safety should his desire to remain there, or to solve the mystery of the sealed room, vanish.  But next morning all the windows in the great hall were found closed, just as the servants had left them the night before.  The night watchman reported that he had heard a hollow-sounding crash in that unoccupied part of the house during the night.  But that was nothing unusual, as there was a general belief in the neighborhood that the house was haunted.

For hollow noises were often heard there, and sounds as of money falling on the floor, and rattling and clinking as of a factory machine.  Enlightened people, it is true, explained these sounds as echoes of the stamping and other natural noises from a large stable just behind the old house.  But in spite of these explanations and their eminent feasibility, the dread of the unoccupied portion of the house was so great that not even the most reckless man servant could be persuaded to enter it alone after nightfall.

Next morning at eight o’clock Winther appeared at his mother-in-law’s door, saying that he had forgotten something of importance in the great hall the night before.  Madame Wolff had not yet arisen, but the maid who let in the early visitor noticed with surprise that he had a large pistol sticking out of one of his pockets.

Winther had been to his cousin’s apartment and found it locked.  He now entered the great hall, and at first glance thought it empty.  To his alarm and astonishment, however, he saw that the sealed door had been broken open.  He approached it with anxiety, and found his wife’s cousin, the doughty duelist, lying pale and lifeless on the threshold.  Beside him lay a large stone which had struck his head in falling and must have killed him at once.  Over the door was a hole in the wall, just the size of the stone.  The latter had evidently rested on the upper edge of the door, and must certainly have fallen on its opening.  The unfortunate man lay half in the mysterious chamber and half in the hall, just as he must have fallen when the stone struck him.