one of the younger teachers, was wearing a brown dress—­a reddish-brown dress that went quietly enough with the warmer colour of her hair, as well she knew.  She was a nice girl, and nice girls do know about those things.  But when our maniac discovered that we really had a Miss Brown who was brown, his idee fixe blew up like a powder magazine, and there, in the presence of all the mistresses and girls, he publicly proposed to the lady in the red-brown dress.  You can imagine the effect of such a scene at a girls’ school.  At least, if you fail to imagine it, I certainly fail to describe it.

“Of course, the anarchy died down in a week or two, and I can think of it now as a joke.  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.  Do not misunderstand me.  I do not dispute the existence of these women, or the veracity of those who have witnessed 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?”