Mr. Gladstone’s speech was an expansion of his postcard, punctuated by cheers.  The only new thing in it was the graceful and touching way in which he revealed what had been a secret up till then—­that the portrait had been painted and presented to the Bow Break o’ Day Club, by Lucy Brent, who in the fulness of time would have been Arthur Constant’s wife.  It was a painting for which he had sat to her while alive, and she had stifled yet pampered her grief by working hard at it since his death.  The fact added the last touch of pathos to the occasion.  Crowl’s face was hidden behind his red handkerchief; even the fire of excitement in Wimp’s eye was quenched for a moment by a teardrop, as he thought of Mrs. Wimp and Wilfred.  As for Grodman, there was almost a lump in his throat.  Denzil Cantercot was the only unmoved man in the room.  He thought the episode quite too Beautiful, and was already weaving it into rhyme.

At the conclusion of his speech Mr. Gladstone called upon Tom Mortlake to unveil the portrait.  Tom rose, pale and excited.  He faltered as he touched the cord.  He seemed overcome with emotion.  Was it the mention of Lucy Brent that had moved him to his depths?

The brown holland fell away—­the dead stood revealed as he had been in life.  Every feature, painted by the hand of Love, was instinct with vitality:  the fine, earnest face, the sad kindly eyes, the noble brow, seeming still a-throb with the thought of Humanity.  A thrill ran through the room—­there was a low, undefinable murmur.  Oh, the pathos and the tragedy of it!  Every eye was fixed, misty with emotion, upon the dead man in the picture, and the living man who stood, pale and agitated, and visibly unable to commence his speech, at the side of the canvas.  Suddenly a hand was laid upon the labour leader’s shoulder, and there rang through the hall in Wimp’s clear, decisive tones the words—­“Tom Mortlake, I arrest you for the murder of Arthur Constant!”

IX

For a moment there was an acute, terrible silence.  Mortlake’s face was that of a corpse; the face of the dead man at his side was flushed with the hues of life.  To the overstrung nerves of the onlookers, the brooding eyes of the picture seemed sad and stern with menace, and charged with the lightnings of doom.

It was a horrible contrast.  For Wimp, alone, the painted face had fuller, more tragical meanings.  The audience seemed turned to stone.  They sat or stood—­in every variety of attitude—­frozen, rigid.  Arthur Constant’s picture dominated the scene, the only living thing in a hall of the dead.

But only for a moment.  Mortlake shook off the detective’s hand.

“Boys!” he cried, in accents of infinite indignation, “this is a police conspiracy.”

His words relaxed the tension.  The stony figures were agitated.  A dull excited hubbub answered him.  The little cobbler darted from behind his pillar, and leapt upon a bench.  The cords of his brow were swollen with excitement.  He seemed a giant overshadowing the hall.