The Sealed Room

== THE SEALED ROOM ==
=== By Bernhard Severin Ingemann ===
Published in Ludus 1901
For many years there stood in a side street
in an
unpretentious old frame house which had a forbidding, almost sinister
appearance, with its old-fashioned balcony and its overhanging upper stories.
For the last twenty years the house had been occupied by a greatly respected
widow, Madame Wolff, to whom the dwelling had come by inheritance. She lived
there quietly with her one daughter, in somewhat straitened circumstances.
What gave the house a mysterious notoriety,
augmenting the sinister quality in its appearance, was the fact that one of its
rooms, a corner room on the main floor, had not been opened for generations.
The door was firmly fastened and sealed with plaster, as well as the window
looking out upon the street. Above the door was an old inscription, dated 1603,
which threatened sudden death and eternal damnation to any human being who
dared to open the door or efface the inscription. Neither door nor window had
been opened in the two hundred years that had passed since the inscription was
put up. But for a generation back or more, the partition wall and the sealed
door had been covered with wall paper, and the inscription had been almost
forgotten.
The room adjoining the sealed chamber was a
large hall, utilized only for rare important events. Such an occasion arose
with the wedding of the only daughter of the house. For that evening the great
hall, as it was called, was brilliantly decorated and illuminated for a ball.
The building had deep cellars and the old floors were elastic. Madame Wolff had
in vain endeavored to avoid using the great hall at all, for the foolish old
legend of the sealed chamber aroused a certain superstitious dread in her
heart, and she rarely if ever entered the hall herself. But merry Miss
Elizabeth, her pretty young daughter, was passionately fond of dancing, and her
mother had promised that she should have a ball on her wedding day. Her
betrothed, Secretary Winther, was also a good dancer, and the two young people
combated the mother's prejudice against the hall and laughed at her fear of the
sealed room. They thought it would be wiser to appear to ignore the stupid
legend altogether, and thus to force the world to forget it. In spite of secret
misgivings Madame Wolff yielded to their arguments. And for the first time in
many years the merry strains of dance music were heard in the great hall that
lay next the mysterious sealed chamber.
The bridal couple, as well as the wedding
guests, were in the gayest mood, and the ball was an undoubted success. The
dancing was interrupted for an hour while supper was served in an adjoining
room. After the repast the guests returned to the hall, and it was several
hours more before the last dance was called. The season was early autumn and
the weather still balmy. The windows had been opened to freshen the air. But
the walls retained their dampness and suddenly the dancers noticed that the old
wall paper which covered the partition wall between the hall and the sealed chamber
had been loosened through the jarring of the building, and had fallen away from
the sealed door with its mysterious inscription.
The story of the sealed chamber had been
almost forgotten by most of those present, forgotten with many other old
legends heard in childhood. The inscription thus suddenly revealed naturally
aroused great interest, and there was a general curiosity to know what the
mysterious closed room might hide. Conjectures flew from mouth to mouth. Some
insisted that the closed door must hide the traces of a hideous murder, or some
other equally terrible crime. Others suggested that perhaps the room had been
used as a hiding place for garments and other articles belonging to some person
who had died of a pestilence, and that the room had been sealed for fear of
spreading the disease. Still others thought that in the sealed chamber there
might be found a secret entrance from the cellars, which had made the room
available as a hiding place for robbers or smugglers. The guests had quite
forgotten their dancing in the interest awakened by the sight of the mysterious
door.
"For mercy's sake, don't let's go too
near it!" exclaimed some of the young ladies. But the majority thought it
would be great fun to see what was hidden there. Most of the men said that they
considered it foolish not to have opened the door long ago, and examined the
room. The young bridegroom did not join in this opinion, however. He upheld the
decision of his mother-in-law not to allow any attempt to effect an entrance
into the room. He knew that there was a clause in the title deeds to the house
which made the express stipulation that no owner should ever permit the corner
room to be opened. There was discussion among the guests as to whether such a
clause in a title deed could be binding for several hundred years, and many
doubted its validity at any time. But most of them understood why Madame Wolff
did not wish any investigation, even should any of those present have
sufficient courage to dare the curse and break open the door.
"Nonsense! What great courage is
necessary for that?" exclaimed Lieutenant Flemming Wolff, a cousin of the
bride of the evening. This gentleman had a reputation that was not of the best.
He was known to live mostly on debt and pawn tickets, and was of a most
quarrelsome disposition. As a duelist he was feared because of his specialty.
This was the ability, and the inclination, through a trick in the use of the
foils, to disfigure his opponent's face badly, without at all endangering his
life. In this manner he had already sadly mutilated several brave officers and
students, who had had the bad luck to stand up against him. He himself was
anything but pleasant to look upon, his natural plainness having been rendered
repellent by a life of low debauchery. He cherished a secret grudge against the
bridegroom and bitter feelings toward the bride, because the latter had so
plainly shown her aversion for him when he had ventured to pay suit to her.
The family had not desired any open break
with this disagreeable relative, and had therefore sent him an invitation to
the wedding. They had taken it for granted that, under the circumstances, he
would prefer to stay away. But he had appeared at the ball, and, perhaps to
conceal his resentment, he had been the most indefatigable dancer of the
evening. At supper he had partaken freely of the strongest wines, and was
plainly showing the effect of them by this time. His eyes rolled wildly, and
those who knew him took care not to contradict him, or to have anything to say
to him at all.
With a boastful laugh he repeated his
assertion that it didn't take much courage to open a sealed door, especially
when there might be a fortune concealed behind it. In his opinion it was
cowardly to let oneself be frightened by a century-old legend. HE wouldn't let
that bother him if HE had influence enough in the family to win the daughter
and induce the mother to give a ball in the haunted hall. With this last hit he
hoped to arouse the young husband's ire. But the latter merely shrugged his
shoulders and turned away with a smile of contempt.
Lieutenant Wolff fired up at this, and
demanded to know whether the other intended to call his, the lieutenant's,
courage into question by his behavior.
"Not in the slightest, when it is a
matter of obtaining a loan, or of mutilating an adversary with a trick at
fencing," answered the bridegroom angrily, taking care, however, that
neither the bride nor any of the other ladies should hear his words. Then he
continued in a whisper: "But I don't believe you'd have the courage to
remain here alone and in darkness, before this closed door, for a single hour.
If you wish to challenge me for this doubt, I am at your disposal as soon as
you have proven me in the wrong. But I choose the weapons."
"They must be chosen by lot, sir
cousin," replied the lieutenant, his cheek pale and his jaws set. "I
will expect you to breakfast to-morrow morning at ."
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 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 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.
The formal investigation of the closed room
was made in the presence of the police authorities. It contained nothing but a
small safe which was built into the wall. When the safe had been opened by
force, an inner chamber, which had to be broken open by itself, was found to
contain a number of rolls of gold pieces, many jewels and numerous notes and I.
O. U.'s. The treasure was covered by an old document. From this latter it was
learned that the owner of the house two hundred years ago had been a silk
weaver by the name of Flemming Ambrosius Wolff. He was said to have lent money
on security for many years, but had died apparently a poor man, because he had
so carefully hidden his riches that little of it was found after his death.
With a niggardliness that bordered on
madness, he had believed that he could hide his treasure forever by shutting it
up in the sealed room. The curse over the door was to frighten away any
venturesome mortal, and further security was given by the clause in the title
deed.
The universally disliked Lieutenant
Flemming Wolff must have had many characteristics in common with this
disagreeable old ancestor, to whose treasure he would have fallen heir had he
not lost his life in the discovering of it. The old miser had not hidden his
wealth for all eternity, as he had hoped, but had only brought about the
inheriting of it by Madame Wolff, the owner of the house, and the next of kin.
The first use to which this lady put the money was to tear down the uncanny old
building and to erect in its stead a beautiful new home for her daughter and
son-in-law.
==
Category:Ingemann
Category:Ludus