Explore "A Crime on Canvas" by Fred M. White on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
LAWRENCE HATTON had by no means exaggerated the effect which the studio mystery was having upon popular imagination. For the moment there was a dearth of general news. The alarmists of the cheap press could devise no new scares on the subject of German invasions and the like. Political questions were in abeyance and stagnation prevailed. It was just one of those still, peaceful times, when the average editor is at his wits' end to present his readers with a really exciting paper. Hence the studio mystery was being worked with an intensity and feverishness which, at any other time, might not have been bestowed upon it. Every detail, however trivial, was magnified. Paragraphs were expanded into columns and, much to her surprise, the woman Marsh found herself suddenly in the role of a public character.
Half a dozen times a day the evening papers came out with rumours to the effect that the mysterious visitor to the studio had been arrested, or that the body of the Anglo-French artist had been found. Nobody was talking about anything else. The affair was the one theme of conversation. In these circumstances, it did not seem to Watney to be prudent for Hatton to return to London.