"Exactly, if the dead man were a well-known person, which probably he was not."
I sat silent, revolving in my mind the whole history of the strange picture, as I was by no means disposed to accept the Baronet's theory that Angelo was an actual assassin. I remembered the date assigned by the artist for the completion of his work. It was Christmas Day—the day of my brother's departure for the Continent. I recalled the red stain on his vest. Could it be that both George and Angelo were concerned in a murder? But why should one remain and the other become a fugitive? Was it the more guilty of the two that had fled? and had Angelo for his own purpose simply taken advantage of a deed that George alone had committed? Was the officer who had caused the fracas in the Vasari Gallery at Paris none other than George, who, angry with the artist for having painted a picture that might lead to the detection of the crime, had attempted to destroy it. Was the silver-haired old man—Matteo Caritio—an accessory to the deed? Touched with remorse, had he confessed his part in the plot to the priest of Rivoli, only to meet with death a day later at the hand of the man whose secret he had betrayed?
I turned to listen to the Baronet, who was holding forth to my uncle.
"You see now, Leslie," said he, "why he exercised such secrecy over the production of this picture, and why he kept his studio-door locked while painting it. It was because the model that he painted from, the model for his fallen Cæsar, was, in point of fact, a dead man."
My uncle's reply was startling in its suggestiveness:
"That may have been the reason why he kept his studio-door locked then; but why does he keep it locked now?"
"Yes—over this new picture of the girl-martyr?" said I.
The Baronet had not considered this point.
"Why—does—he—keep—his—door—locked—now?" he repeated, pausing in a curiously deliberative manner between each word. "Ah, why?" He made a long pause. "Not for a similar reason, surely? And yet—" he made another long pause. "He said at breakfast, you know, that he might finish his picture to-day. He was playing with his knife, very curiously at the time. What could he mean? Good God! what could he mean? Not that——"
He paused, afraid to give utterance to his suspicions. For a few moments we durst not speak, for a dim presentiment of some awful tragedy to come had stolen over us.