against any act which could betray the assassin whom he had once reckoned amongst his friends.
It was certain that the painter would remember his friend's face; it was probable that he had some likeness of the missing man in his sketch-book. He was out-at-elbows, idle, a man content to live luxuriously on the labour of others. Such a man would be especially open to pecuniary temptation. He had begun with brilliant successes, had ended in failure and obscurity. Such a man must have suffered all the acutest agonies of wounded vanity, and he would be therefore easily moved by praise.
Arguing thus with himself during his walk to the Rue du Bac, Heathcote arranged his course of action. He would approach M. Tillet as an amateur, a collector of modern art, and would offer to purchase some of his sketches. This would lead naturally to an inspection of old sketch-books, and to confidences of various kinds from the painter. As a lawyer and a man of the world, Edward Heathcote considered himself quite equal to the occasion.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon when he rang the bell on the second floor of the house over the glover's. The neat-looking maid-servant who answered his summons informed him that M. Tillet père was at home. Everybody else was out. The ci-devant portrait-painter was smoking the pipe of peace by the family hearth, a human monument of departed ambitions, bright hopes that had melted into darkness, softly and slowly, like the red light of a fusee.
He yawned as he rose to receive his visitor. He stood in front of the hearth, tall, long-limbed, slouching, slovenly, but with a countenance that still showed traces of intellectual power, despite the evident decadence, physical and mental, of the man. His complexion had the unhealthy pallor which indicates a life spent within four walls; and already that pallor was assuming the sickly greenish hue of the absinthe-drinker.
"I have to apologise for intruding upon you without any introduction, M. Tillet," began Heathcote, taking the seat to which the painter motioned him; "but although I have neither card nor letter, I do not come to you entirely as a stranger. I was yesterday with the Baronne de Maucroix, a lady whom you must remember, as her son was once your friend."
"Mdme. de Maucroix, poor soul!" muttered the painter. "I am not likely to forget her. I believe that portrait of mine has been of more comfort to her than anything else in the world since her son's unhappy death."
"It is a remarkable portrait," said Heathcote, with enthusiasm.
He was careful to show neither interest nor curiosity about the circumstances of Maucroix's death. He was there in the character of an amateur, interested solely in art.
