"Upon my word," I called out, "Angelo takes precious good care that no one shall discover his art-secret--if secret he has. There is a piece of violet silk stretched across the casement!"
"You can't open the window and get in, I suppose?" said Sir Hugh.
Mounting still higher, I stepped upon the windowsill, and, holding on to a mullion by my left hand, shook the casement with my right; but the fastenings were too secure to permit my forcing an entrance, so I scrambled down again.
"He hasn't put up that curtain exactly as a screen of concealment," remarked the Baronet, stepping backwards to take a view of it. "In this new picture of his the amphitheatre, so he tells me, is represented as being partly screened from the glare of the sun by a purple velarium. The curtain that you see up there faces the south. Angelo has no doubt been trying an experiment: studying the effect of violet-coloured rays upon the sanded floor; for he has had it sanded," the Baronet explained, "to make it resemble the pavement of an arena."
If Sir Hugh really believed that this was the reason why Angelo had covered up the window, he had greater simplicity than I gave him credit for.
As we were turning to go away, my unsatisfied curiosity induced me to take a second peep through the keyhole. An ejaculation of surprise escaped my lips, and I rose to my feet in perplexity.
"When I looked through the keyhole just now, there was something dark within that prevented me from seeing anything. That dark something--whatever it was--has vanished. I can now see nothing but a white surface."
The Baronet and my uncle, stooping down to the keyhole, satisfied themselves of the truth of the last part of my statement, and then both looked at me with a half-doubting expression.
"There is something white in front of the door now," said Sir Hugh. "Are you certain it was dark before?"
"Quite certain. There's some one inside."
"Can Angelo have come back?" the Baronet whispered. "You remember he said at breakfast that he might finish his picture within a few hours. Is he at work now?"
This idea made us look rather mean. It is not nice to be caught playing the spy upon a man in his supposed absence. Only the oaken door separated us from the cell within, so that the artist, if he _were_ there, must have overheard our suspicions of him. We all three listened with our ears pressed close to the door, but could not detect the faintest sound within.