PodCastle

* Author : Greye La Spina
* Narrator : Wilson Fowlie
* Host : Summer Fletcher
* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh
*
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September 1927 issue of Weird Tales. This story is in the public domain.


CW: illness and plague; references to violence and sexual assault


Rated R.
The Dead-Wagon
Greye La Spina
I
“Someone’s been chalking up the front door.” The speaker stepped off the terrace into the library through the open French window.
From his padded armchair Lord Melverson rose with an involuntary exclamation of startled dismay.
“Chalking the great door?” he echoed, an unmistakable tremor in his restrained voice. His aristocratic, clean-shaven old face showed pallid in the soft light of the shaded candles.
“Oh, nothing that can do any harm to the carving. Perhaps I am mistaken — it’s coming on dusk — but it seemed to be a great cross in red, chalked high up on the top panel of the door. You know — the Great Plague panel.”
“Good God!” ejaculated the older man weakly.
Young Dinsmore met his prospective father-in-law’s anxious eyes with a face that betrayed his astonishment. He could not avoid marveling at the reception of what certainly seemed, on the surface, a trifling matter.
To be sure, the wonderfully carved door that, with reinforcement of hand-wrought iron, guarded the entrance to Melverson Abbey was well worth any amount of care. Lord Melverson’s ill-concealed agitation would have been excusable had a tourist cut vandal initials on that admirable example of early carving. But to make such a fuss over a bit of red chalk that a servant could wipe off in a moment without injury to the panel — Kenneth felt slightly superior to such anxiety on the part of Arline’s father.
Lord Melverson steadied himself with one hand against the library table.
“Was there — did you notice — anything else — besides the cross?”
“Why, I don’t think there was anything else. Of course, I didn’t look particularly. I had no idea you’d be so — interested,” returned the young American.
“I think I’ll go out and take a look at it myself. You may have imagined you saw some things, in the dusk,” murmured Lord Melverson, half to himself.
“May I come?” inquired Dinsmore, vaguely disturbed at the very apparent discomposure of his usually imperturbable host.
Lord Melverson nodded. “I suppose you’ll have to hear the whole story sooner or later, anyway,” he acquiesced as he led the way.
His words set Kenneth’s heart to beating madly. They meant but one thing: Arline’s father was not averse to his suit. As for Arline, no one could be sure of such a little coquette. And yet — the young American could have sworn there was more than ordinary kindness in her eyes the day she smiled a confirmation of her father’s invitation to Melverson Abbey. It was that vague promise that had brought Kenneth Dinsmore from New York to England.
A moment later, the American was staring, with straining eyes that registered utter astonishment, at the famous carved door that formed the principal entrance to the abbey. He would have been willing to swear that no one could have approached that door without having been seen from the library windows; yet in the few seconds of time that had elapsed between his first and second observation of the panel, an addition had been made to the chalk marks.