by Otto Penzler
His admiration was whetted by her coldness and his intense dislike of me.
We came to scenes in which he derided me as no gentleman, but a beggarly tradesman, and I scorned him as an idle voluptuary designing a woman’s ruin for the crude pleasure of the gratification of fleeting passions.
For the fellow made not even any pretence of being able to support a wife, and was of that rake-helly temperament that made an open mock of matrimony.
Although he was but a medical student, he was of what they call noble birth, and his family, though decayed, possessed considerable social power, so that his bold pursuit of Ann Leete and his insolent flaunting of me had some licence, the more so that he did not lack tact and address in his manner and conduct.
Our marriage could have stopped this persecution, or given the right to publicly resent it, but my darling would not leave her father, who was of a melancholy and querulous disposition.
It was shortly before her twenty-first birthday, for which I had made her the jewel I now wear (the device being the crest of her mother’s family and one for which she had a great affection), that her father died suddenly. His last thoughts were of her, for he had this very picture painted for her birthday gift. Finding herself thus unprotected and her affairs in some confusion, she declared her intention of retiring to some distant relative in the Highlands until decorum permitted of our marriage.
And upon my opposing myself to this scheme of separation and delay she was pleased to fall out with me, declaring that I was as importunate as Dr. Patterson, and that I, as well as he, should be kept in ignorance of her retreat.
I had, however, great hopes of inducing her to change this resolution, and, it being then fair spring weather, engaged her to walk with me on the Green, beyond the city, to discuss our future.
I was an orphan like herself, and we had now no common meeting-place suitable to her reputation and my respect.
By reason of a pressure of work, to which by temperament and training I was ever attentive, I was a few moments late at the tryst on the Green, which I found, as usual, empty; but it was a lovely afternoon of May, very still and serene, like the smile of satisfied love.
I paced about, looking for my darling.
Although she was in mourning, she had promised me to wear the dark-green silk I so admired under her black cloak, and I looked for this colour among the brighter greens of the trees and bushes.
She did not appear, and my heart was chilled with the fear that she was offended with me and therefore would not come, and an even deeper dread that she might, in vexation, have fled to her unknown retreat.
This thought was sending me hot-foot to seek her at her house, when I saw Rob Patterson coming across the close-shaven grass of the Green.
I remembered that the cheerful sun seemed to me to be at this moment darkened, not by any natural clouds or mists, but as it is during an eclipse, and that the fresh trees and innocent flowers took on a ghastly and withered look.
It may appear a trivial detail, but I recall so clearly—his habit, which was of a luxury beyond his means, fine grey broadcloth with a deep edging of embroidery in gold thread, little suited to his profession.
As he saw me he cocked his hat over his eyes, but took no notice of my appearance, and I turned away, not being wishful of any encounter with this gentleman while my spirit was in a tumult.
I went at once to my darling’s house, and learnt from her maid that she had left home two hours previously.
I do not wish to dwell on this part of my tale—indeed, I could not, it becomes very confused to me.
The salient facts are these—that no one saw Ann Leete in bodily form again.
And no one could account for her disappearance; yet no great comment was aroused by this, because there was no one to take much interest in her, and it was commonly believed that she had disappeared from the importunity of her lovers, the more so as Rob Patterson swore that the day of her disappearance he had had an interview with her in which she had avowed her intention of going where no one could discover her. This, in a fashion, was confirmed by what she had told me, and I was the more inclined to believe it, as my inner senses told me that she was not dead.
Six months of bitter search, of sad uneasiness, that remain in my memory blurred to one pain, and then, one autumn evening, as I came home late and dispirited, I saw her before me in the gloaming, tripping up the street, wearing her dark-green silk dress and tartan or Roman scarf.
I did not see her face as she disappeared before I could gain on her, but she held to her side one hand, and between the long fingers I saw the haft of a surgeon’s knife.
I knew then that she was dead.
And I knew that Rob Patterson had killed her.
Although it was well known that my family were all ghost-seers, to speak in this case was to be laughed at and reprimanded.
I had no single shred of evidence against Dr. Patterson.
But I resolved that I would use what powers I possessed to make him disclose his crime.
And this is how it befell.
In those days, in Glasgow, it was compulsory to attend some place of worship on the Sabbath, the observation of the holy day being enforced with peculiar strictness, and none being allowed to show themselves in any public place during the hours of the church services, and to this end inspectors and overseers were employed to patrol the streets on a Sabbath and take down the names of those who might be found loitering there.
But few were the defaulters, Glasgow on a Sunday being as bare as the Arabian desert.
Rob Patterson and I both attended the church in Rutherglen Road, towards the Green and the river.
And the Sunday after I had seen the phantom of Ann Leete, I changed my usual place and seated myself behind this young man.
My intention was to so work on his spirit as to cause him to make public confession of his crime. And I crouched there behind him with a concentration of hate and fury, forcing my will on his during the whole of the long service.
I noticed he was pale, and that he glanced several times behind him, but he did not change his place or open his lips; but presently his head fell forward on his arms as if he was praying, and I took him to be in a kind of swoon brought on by the resistance of his spirit against mine.
I did not for this cease to pursue him. I was, indeed, as if in an exaltation, and I thought my soul had his soul by the throat, somewhere above our heads, and was shouting out: “Confess! Confess!”
One o’clock struck and he rose with the rest of the congregation, but in a dazed kind of fashion. It was almost side by side that we issued from the church door.
As the stream of people came into the street they were stopped by a little procession that came down the road.
All immediately recognized two of the inspectors employed to search the Sunday streets for defaulters from church attendance, followed by several citizens who appeared to have left their homes in haste and confusion.
These people carried between them a rude bundle which some compassionate hand had covered with a white linen cloth. Below this fell a swathe of dark-green silk and the end of a Roman scarf.
I stepped up to the rough bier.
“You have found Ann Leete,” I said.
“It is a dead woman,” one answered me. “We know not her name.”
I did not need to raise the cloth. The congregation was gathering round us, and amongst them was Rob Patterson.
“Tell me, who was her promised husband, how you found her,” I said.
And one of the inspectors answered:
“Near here, on the Green, where the wall bounds the grass, we saw, just now, the young surgeon, Rob Patterson, lying on the sward, and put his name in our books, besides approaching him to inquire the reason of his absence from church. But he, without excuse for his offence, rose from the ground, exclaiming: ‘I am a miserable man! Look in the water!’
“With that he crossed a stile that leads to the river and disappeared, and we,
going down to the water, found the dead woman, deep tangled between the willows and the weeds——”
“And,” added the other inspector gravely, “tangled in her clothes is a surgeon’s knife.”
“Which,” said the former speaker, “perhaps Dr. Patterson can explain, since I perceive he is among this congregation—he must have found some quick way round to have got here before us.”
Upon this all eyes turned on the surgeon, but more with amaze than reproach.
And he, with a confident air, said:
“It is known to all these good people that I have been in the church the whole of the morning, especially to Eneas Bretton, who sat behind me, and, I dare swear, never took his eyes from me during the whole of the service.”
“Ay, your body was there,” I said.
With that he laughed angrily, and mingling with the crowd passed on his way.
You may believe there was a great stir; the theory put abroad was that Ann Leete had been kept a prisoner in a solitary, ruined hut there was by the river, and then, in fury or fear, slain by her jailer and cast into the river.
To me all this is black. I only know that she was murdered by Rob Patterson.
He was arrested and tried on the circuit.
He there proved, beyond all cavil, that he had been in the church from the beginning of the service to the end of it; his alibi was perfect. But the two inspectors never wavered in their tale of seeing him on the Green, of his self-accusation in his exclamation; he was very well known to them; and they showed his name written in their books.
He was acquitted by the tribunal of man, but a higher power condemned him.
Shortly after he died by his own hand, which God armed and turned against him.
This mystery, as it was called, was never solved to the public satisfaction, but I know that I sent Rob Patterson’s soul out of his body to betray his guilt, and to procure my darling Christian burial.
This was the tale Eneas Bretton, that ancient man, told me, on the old terrace, as he sat opposite the picture of Ann Leete.
“You must think what you will,” he concluded. “They will tell you that the shock unsettled my wits, or even that I was always crazed. As they would tell you that I dream when I say that I see Ann Leete now, and babble when I talk of my happiness with her for fifty years.”
He smiled faintly; a deeper glory than that of the autumn sunshine seemed to rest on him.
“Explain it yourself, sir. What was it those inspectors saw on the Green?”
He slightly raised himself in his chair and peered over my shoulder.
“And what is this,” he asked triumphantly, in the voice of a young man, “coming towards us now?”
I rose; I looked over my shoulder.
Through the gloom I saw a dark-green silk gown, a woman’s form, a pale hand beckoning.
My impulse was to fly from the spot, but a happy sigh from my companion reproved my cowardice. I looked at the ancient man whose whole figure appeared lapped in warm light, and as the apparition of the woman moved into this glow, which seemed too glorious for the fading sunshine, I heard his last breath flow from his body with a glad cry. I had not answered his questions; I never can.
THE DEAD-WAGON
Greye La Spina
LARGELY UNREMEMBERED TODAY, (FANNY) Greye La Spina (1880–1969), née Bragg, was one of the most popular writers in the 1920s and early 1930s for Weird Tales, for which she wrote very creepy short stories and serialized four novels: Invaders from the Dark (1925), The Gargoyle (1925), Fettered (1926), and The Portal to Power (1930–1931).
Born to a Methodist minister in Wakefield, Massachusetts, she married in 1898 and had a daughter two years later; her husband died the following year. She remarried in 1910 to Robert La Spina, Barone di Savuto, who was descended from Russian aristocracy. She became a news photographer (one of the first women in the profession), was a typist for other writers, and became a master weaver, winning prizes for her tapestries and rugs.
Her writing career began early when she produced her own newspaper at the age of ten, publishing her poems and local gossip and selling copies to her neighbors. While still a teenager, she won a literary contest and saw her story published in Connecticut Magazine. Her first story in the supernatural area was a werewolf tale, “Wolf of the Steppes,” which she sent to Popular Magazine, a general interest pulp. When Street & Smith started a new pulp devoted to weird and supernatural fiction, her story was selected as the lead story of the first issue of Thrill Book (March 1, 1919). She wrote several more stories for the short-lived magazine, both under her own name and a pseudonym; her work appeared in the last issue as well. She wrote for many other magazines after that, both as Greye La Spina and Isra Putnam, including the prestigious Black Mask, All-Story, Action Stories, Ten-Story Book, and Weird Tales, where her career flourished. Her only book did not appear until 1960, when Arkham House published a hardcover edition of her werewolf novel, Invaders from the Dark.
“The Dead-Wagon” was originally published in the September 1927 issue of Weird Tales.
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.
The Melverson panels are well known in the annals of historic carvings. There is a large lower panel showing the Great Fire of London. Above this are six half-panels portraying important scenes in London’s history. And running across the very top is a large panel which shows a London street during the Great Plague of 1664.
This panel shows houses on either side of a narrow street yawning vacantly, great crosses upon their doors. Before one in the foreground is a rude wooden cart drawn by a lean nag and driven by a saturnine individual with leering face. This cart carries a gruesome load; it is piled high with bodies. Accounts vary oddly as to the number of bodies in the cart; earlier descriptions of the panel give a smaller number than the later ones, an item much speculated upon by connoisseurs of old carvings. The tout ensemble of the bas-relief greatly resembles the famous Hogarth picture of a similar scene.
Before this great door Kenneth stood, staring at a red-chalked legend traced across the rough surface of the carved figures on the upper panel. “God have mercy upon us!” it read. What did it mean? Who had managed to trace, unseen, those words of despairing supplication upon the old door?
And suddenly the young man’s wonderment was rudely disturbed. Lord Melverson lurched away from the great door like a drunken man, a groan forcing its way from between his parched lips. The old man’s hands had flown to his face, covering his eyes as though to shut out some horrid and unwelcome sight.
“Kenneth, you have heard the story! This is some thoughtless jest of yours! Tell me it is, boy! Tell me that your hand traced these fatal words!”
Dinsmore’s sympathy was keenly aroused by the old nobleman’s intense gravity and anxiety, but he was forced to deny the pitifully pleading accusation.
“Sorry, sir, but I found the red cross just as I told you. As for the writing below, I must admit—”
