itnessed to them.
I merely remark on the notable fact that only one of these victims,
the Maidenhead girl, is described as having any home or parents.
All the rest are boarders or birds of passage--a guest, a solitary
dressmaker, a bachelor-girl doing typewriting. Lady Bullingdon,
looking from her turrets, which she bought from the Whartons with
the old soap-boiler's money when she jumped at marrying an unsuccessful
gentleman from Ulster--Lady Bullingdon, looking out from those turrets,
did really see an object which she describes as Green. Mr. Trip,
of Hanbury and Bootle, really did have a typewriter betrothed
to Smith. Miss Gridley, though idealistic, is absolutely honest.
She did house, feed, and teach a young woman whom Smith succeeded
in decoying away. We admit that all these women really lived.
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 albi