It was on the tip of my tongue to scream out—"in his studio!" I was so surprised, but I restrained myself just in time and cried instead:—
"Good heavens! sir, how awful! Why did he do it, sir?"
Sir William shrugged his shoulders. "They say that it was in a fit of despair, because the great picture he was painting was accidentally destroyed by fire. But you may read for yourself, Brown, the morning papers are full of it!"
The papers! I had never even thought to look at one. I had been so preoccupied. My master went on speaking. "I'll go upstairs, Brown, and have a bath," he said, "after which I shall attend the inquest!"
"But your double, sir!" I cried. "Ought not we to tell the police at once about him, sir?"
He shook his head. "No, no, Brown. Better not, better not. He is probably some friend of mine who has been playing a practical joke at my expense. Keep what has happened to yourself, Brown. I do not wish to be laughed at!"
"Very good, sir," I muttered dubiously. "But all the same I don't think he was joking, sir. I'll be bound you'll find he has robbed you. The study is just upside down! I have not tried to put it in order, sir, so that you might see it as he left it!"
Sir William gave me a wan smile. "I keep no valuables in the house, Brown," he replied, "except my manuscripts, and they are worthless to anyone but myself."
Without another word he left the room, and I also hurried out in order to prepare his bath. I did not venture to converse with him again, for he had fallen into one of his impenetrable silent moods which inevitably stirred him to wrath against any interrupter. As soon as I had dressed him he left the house, still steeped in speechless thought. He looked ten years older than he had the previous day, and I felt really sorry to remember the additional cup of fear and horror he would be called upon to drink when he and the others had ascertained the full extent and import of my most recent impersonation.
After he had gone, I snatched open the first paper that came to my hand. It was the Morning Mail. I discovered the black scare headline in a second. Yes, sure enough it related how Mr. Cavanagh's valet had found his master lying on the studio floor a little after midnight, stone dead, with a revolver clutched in his right hand. The man had not heard the shot, but he had been awakened by some noise, and he had thought his master had called out to him. He admitted that he was a heavy sleeper, and he did not remember hearing Mr. Cavanagh enter the house. The artist's great picture upon which he had been working for a year, and which was almost finished, was half destroyed by fire, and it looked as though by accident, for a naked gas jet burned perilously close to the easel. The bullet which had killed Mr. Cavanagh had been found by the police embedded in the plaster of a distant wall, near the ceiling. The writer of the article had ingeniously concluded that the artist on entering his studio and observing the fruit of his ardent labours destroyed beyond repair, had, in the first sharp flush of his despair, committed suicide!