"He pressed a spring in the wall."
So saying Nikola stooped and drew back one of the rugs to which I have already referred. The square outline of a trap-door showed itself in the floor. He pressed a spring in the wall behind him, and the lid shot back, swung round, and disappeared, showing the black abyss below. A smell of damp vaults came up to us. Then, when he had closed the trap-door again, Nikola drew the carpet back to its old position.
"The wretched man died slowly of starvation in that hole, and the woman, living in this room above, was compelled to listen to his agony without being permitted the means of saving him. Can you imagine the scene? The dying wretch below, doing his best to die like a man in order not to distress the woman he loved, and the outraged husband calmly pursuing his studies, regardless of both."
He looked from one to the other of us and his eyes burnt like living coals.
"It was brutish, it was hellish," cried Glenbarth, upon whom either the story, or Nikola's manner of narrating it, had produced an extraordinary effect. "Why did the woman allow it to continue? Was she mad that she did not summon assistance? Surely the Authorities of a State which prided itself upon its enlightenment, even in those dark ages, would not have tolerated such a thing?"
"You must bear in mind the fact that the Republic had given the husband permission to avenge his wrongs," said Nikola very quietly. "Besides, the woman could not cry out for the reason that her tongue had been torn out at the roots. When both were dead their bodies were tied together and thrown into the canal, and the same day Revecce set sail again, to ultimately perish in a storm off the coast of Sicily. Now you know one of the many stories connected with this old room. There are others in which that trap-door has played an equally important part. I fear, however, none of them can boast so dramatic a setting as that I have just narrated to you."
"How, knowing all this, you can live in the house passes my comprehension," gasped Glenbarth. "I don't think I am a coward, but I tell you candidly that I would not spend a night here, after what you have told me, for anything the world could give me."
"But surely you don't suppose that what happened in this room upwards of three hundred years ago could have any effect upon a living being to-day?" said Nikola, with what I could not help thinking was a double meaning. "Let me tell you, that far from being unpleasant it has decided advantages. As a matter of fact it gives me the opportunity of being free to do what I like. That is my greatest safeguard. I can go away for five years, if I please, and leave the most valuable of my things lying about, and come back to the discovery that nothing is missing. I am not pestered by tourists who ask to see the frescoes, for the simple reason that the guides take very good care not to tell them the legend of the house, lest they may be called upon to take them over it. Many of the gondoliers will not stop here after nightfall, and the few who are brave enough to do so, invariably cross themselves before reaching, and after leaving it."
"I do not wonder at it," I said. "Taken altogether it is the most dismal dwelling I have ever set foot in. Do you mean to tell me that you live alone in it?"