“The old Montgomery who brought them doors from Italy, pretty much built the house behind ’em,” Stebbins volunteered, “and them colyums, of course, come with the doors. They’re some valu’ble, I’m told. You see, the doors is the same outside and in, and the colyums is, too. Well, then, he had the vestibule of murhoggany, to sort o’ set off the bronze, I s’pose, and the rest of the walls is marble,—solid old Vermont marble, which Lord knows was to be had for the pickin’, up here.”
“Get along to the story, Steb,” urged Landon.
“Yes, sir. Well, the Montgomery that built this house,—though, it was part built before, he added on to his father’s house,—well, he was a daredevil, and a tyrant. Little mite of a man, but full of the old Nick. And, as those little men will do, he married a reg’lar Hessian of a woman. Big, sort o’ long and gaunt, they say she was, and a termagant for sure! She led him a life, and also, he led her one. For he was a terror and so was she. What he lacked in size he made up in temper, and she had both. Well, here’s the story.
“He took sick, and she nursed him. They didn’t have trained nurses and specialists in them days. Now some says, he was jest naturally took sick and some says, that she give him slow poison. But, be that as it may, one night, she give him prussic acid, and he died. She threw a shawl over her head, and ran screamin’ to the village for the doctor. I s’pose remorse got her, for she confessed, and said ‘I killed him! I killed him! At four o’clock I killed him!’
“She went crazy, they say, then and there. Well, the doctor he said he’d come right away, but she ran home first. And he followed’s fast’s he could, and—when he come, here was the woman,—and she was a washin’ the dead man’s lips,—she said, to get the smell of the bitter ammonds off,—you know, prussic acid is for all the world the smell of bitter almonds. The doctor, he found the man was really dead, and he was for havin’ her arrested, but she was so plumb crazy, he decided to take her to an asylum instead.
“He had to go off to get help, and he left her,—here alone in this house with the body. They was in that room,” Stebbins pointed to the room with the locked door, at the right hand of the hall as one entered, “the room with the tassels, it’s called.”
“Why is it called that?” broke in Eve, whose piercing eyes were fairly glittering with excitement, “what sort of tassels?”
“Great heavy tassels on the curtains and lambaquins, ma’am,—want to see it?”
“Not now,” ordained Landon, “the story first.”
“Well,” resumed Stebbins, “they was in that room, the dead husband and the live wife, when the doctor went away, and because he knew she was out of her head, he locked ’em in. And when he came back—she was setting there, just where he’d left her, still in a dazed sort o’ stupor, and—the corpse was gone.”