"
"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.
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