immured my lamented wife; facing the opening which their fall left, and
at a distance of four feet, was the brickwork which my own hands had
made for that unfortunate gentlewoman's restraint. At this significant
revelation I began a search of the wine cellar. Behind a row of casks I
found four historically interesting but intrinsically valueless objects:

First, the mildewed remains of a ducal robe of state (Florentine) of the
eleventh century; second, an illuminated vellum breviary with the name
of Sir Aldebaran Turmore de Peters-Turmore inscribed in colors on the
title page; third, a human skull fashioned into a drinking cup and
deeply stained with wine; fourth, the iron cross of a Knight Commander
of the Imperial Austrian Order of Assassins by Poison.

That was all--not an object having commercial value, no papers--nothing.
But this was enough to clear up the mystery of the strong-room. My wife
had early divined the existence and purpose of that apartment, and with
the skill amounting to genius had effected an entrance by loosening the
two stones in the wall.

Through that opening she had at several times abstracted the entire
collection, which doubtless she had succeeded in converting into coin of
the realm. When with an unconscious justice which deprives me of all
satisfaction in the memory I decided to build her into the wall, by some
malign fatality I selected that part of it in which were these movable
stones, and doubtless before I had fairly finished my bricklaying she
had removed them and, slipping through into the wine cellar, replaced
them as they were originally laid. From the cellar she had easily
escaped unobserved, to enjoy her infamous gains in distant parts. I have
endeavored to procure a warrant, but the Lord High Baron of the Court of
Indictment and Conviction reminds me that she is legally dead, and says