There was only one curious detail,
which I will tell you, as you say your inquiry is vital; but I should
desire you to consider it a little more confidential than the rest.
Miss Brown, who was an excellent girl in every way, did quite
suddenly and surreptitiously leave us only a day or two afterwards.
I should never have thought that her head would be the one
to be really turned by so absurd an excitement.--Believe me,
yours faithfully, Ada Gridley.
"I think," said Pym, with a really convincing simplicity and seriousness,
"that these letters speak for themselves."
Mr. Moon rose for the last time in a darkness that gave no hint
of whether his native gravity was mixed with his native irony.
"Throughout this inquiry," he said, "but especially in this its
closing phase, the prosecution has perpetually relied upon one argument;
I mean the fact that no one knows what has become of all the unhappy
women apparently seduced by Smith. There is no sort of proof
that they were murdered, but that implication is perpetually made
when the question is asked as to how they died. Now I am not
interested in how they died, or when they died, or whether they died.
But I am interested in another analogous question--that of how they
were born, and when they were born, and whether they were born.
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