But we still ask whether they were ever born?"
"Oh, crikey!" said Moses Gould, stifled with amusement.
"There could hardly," interposed Pym with a quiet smile, "be a better instance of the neglect of true scientific process.
The scientist, when once convinced of the fact of vitality and consciousness, would infer from these the previous process of generation."
"If these gals," said Gould impatiently--"if these gals were all alive (all alive O!) I'd chance a fiver they were all born."
"You'd lose your fiver," said Michael, speaking gravely out of the gloom.
"All those admirable ladies were alive. They were more alive for having come into contact with Smith. They were all quite definitely alive, but only one of them was ever born."
"Are you asking us to believe--" began Dr. Pym.
"I am asking you a second question," said Moon sternly. "Can the court now sitting throw any light on a truly singular circumstance?
Dr. Pym, in his interesting lecture on what are called, I believe, the relations of the sexes, said that Smith was the slave of a lust for variety which would lead a man first to a negress and then to an albino, first to a Patagonian giantess and then to a tiny Eskimo. But is there any evidence of such variety here?
Is there any trace of a gigantic Patagonian in the story?
Was the typewriter an Eskimo? So picturesque a circumstance would not surely have escaped remark. Was Lady Bullingdon's dressmaker a negress?
A voice in my bosom answers, `No!' Lady Bullingdon, I am sure, would think a negress so conspicuous as to be almost Socialistic, and would feel something a little rakish even about an albino.
"But was there in Smith's taste any such variety as the learned doctor describes? So far as our slight materials go, the very opposite seems to be the case. We have only one actual description of any of the prisoner's wives-- the short but highly poetic account by the aesthetic curate.
`Her dress was the colour of spring, and her hair of autumn leaves.'
Autumn leaves, of course, are of various colours, some of which would be rather startling in hair (green, for instance); but I think such an expression would be most naturally used of the shades from red-brown to red, especially as ladies with their coppery-coloured hair do frequently wear light artistic greens.
Now when we come to the next wife, we find the eccentric lover, when told he is a donkey, answering that donkeys always go after carrots; a remark which Lady Bullingdon evidently regarded as pointless and part of the natural table-talk of a village idiot, but which has an obvious meaning if we suppose that Polly's hair was red. Passing to the next wife, the one he took from the girls' school, we find Miss Gridley noticing that the schoolgirl in question wore `a reddish-brown dress, that went quietly enough with the warmer colour of her hair.'
In other words, the colour of the girl's hair was something redder than red-brown. Lastly, the romantic organ-grinder declaimed in the office some poetry that only got as far as the words,--
`O vivid, inviolate head, Ringed --'
But I think that a wide study of the worst modern poets will enable us to guess that `ringed with a glory of red,' or `ringed with its passionate red,' was the line that rhymed to `head.' In this case once more, therefore, there is good reason to suppose that Smith fell in love with a girl with some sort of auburn or darkish-red hair--rather," he said, looking down at the table, "rather like Miss Gray's hair."
Cyrus Pym was leaning forward with lowered eyelids, ready with one of his more pedantic interpellations; but Moses Gould suddenly struck his forefinger on his nose, with an expression of extreme astonishment and intelligence in his brilliant eyes.
"Mr. Moon's contention at present," interposed Pym, "is not, even if veracious, inconsistent with the lunatico-criminal view of I. Smith, which we have nailed to the mast. Science has long anticipated such a complication. An incurable attraction to a particular type of physical woman is one of the commonest of criminal per-versities, and when not considered narrowly, but in the light of induction and evolution--"
"At this late stage," said Michael Moon very quietly, "I may perhaps relieve myself of a simple emotion that has been pressing me throughout the proceedings, by saying that induction and evolution may go and boil themselves. The Missing Link and all that is well enough for kids, but I'm talking about things we know here.
All we know of the Missing Link is that he is missing--and he won't be missed either. I know all about his human head and his horrid tail; they belong to a very old game called `Heads I win, tails you lose.'
If you do find a fellow's bones, it proves he lived a long while ago; if you don't find his bones, it proves how long ago he lived.
That is the game you've been playing with this Smith affair.
Because Smith's head is small for his shoulders you call him microcephalous; if it had been large, you'd have called it water-on-the-brain. As long as poor old Smith's seraglio seemed pretty various, variety was the sign of madness: now, because it's turning out to be a bit monochrome--now monotony is the sign of madness.
I suffer from all the disadvantages of being a grown-up person, and I'm jolly well going to get some of the advantages too; and with all politeness I propose not to be bullied with long words instead of short reasons, or consider your business a triumphant progress merely because you're always finding out that you were wrong.
Having relieved myself of these feelings, I have merely to add that I regard Dr. Pym as an ornament to the world far more beautiful than the Parthenon, or the monument on Bunker's Hill, and that I propose to resume and conclude my remarks on the many marriages of Mr. Innocent Smith.
"Besides this red hair, thee is another unifying thread that runs through these scattered incidents. There is something very peculiar and suggestive about the names of these women.
