Life is too short for a long story. Why not sit down and enjoy a short tale? For many years there stood in a side street in Kiel 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, adame Wolff, to whom the dwelling had come by inheritance. She lived there quietly with her one daughter, in somewhat straitened circumstances...时间太少，小说太长，不如读一篇短故事。
为了一场盛大的婚礼舞会，人们开启了被诅咒了二百年的密室，自此死亡与财富相伴相随，接踵而至......