The obsequious servant hurried forward.
“Send out and buy me a copy of this week’s Sketch, will you?” and Tempest handed a coin to the man.
Shortly afterwards the latter reappeared with the paper for which the barrister had asked. He rapidly turned the pages. “Now this,” he said, “is what I mean. Here is a portrait of the young Lady Madeley—Consuelo, Baroness Madeley in her own right, the daughter of Eulalie Alvarez.”
Folding the paper he indicated the portrait to which he referred. “You see,” he added, “that’s awfully like Dolores. There’s the same type again, submerging any likelihood of a likeness to the other parent, for old Lord Madeley was fair and fat and podgy—blue eyes, as a matter of fact. Sir John was fair, and his features were very indefinite. Evangeline’s mother and Lady Madeley, even if there were no relationship, were of the same physiological type, and that an aggressive one, and you see the type reproduces itself. I’m almost beginning to think it must be merely type and domination of type, and that alone, with no question of consanguinity. Besides, when all’s said and done, it’s a foreign type.”
“But what does that matter?”
“What I mean is this: Just as all niggers look alike to an Englishman, and just as we find it hard to distinguish one Chinaman from another, so a strange type to us overrides in our observations the little differences by which in our own type we distinguish one another and recognise each other. Therefore, may not this type—Spanish, I suppose it must be, from the name Alvarez—override, in our observation (from the fact that it is foreign and unusual), the little niceties of difference by which those who belonged to the type would themselves differentiate?”
“Then, do you mean that these people may not really be so alike as we think they are?”
“That’s precisely what I do mean. Here we have apparently Eulalie Lady Madeley, and Dolores Alvarez, and Consuelo Lady Madeley, whom we know to be related, all very much alike. We have Lady Rellingham and another girl, Evangeline Stableford, and yet another, Sir John’s daughter, if they are not one and the same, though I am sure they are. We are trying to presume an Alvarez relationship for Evangeline, solely on account of her remarkable likeness and the presumed likeness of Lady Rellingham. There is not one other single solitary reason from which relationship can be presumed; and after all, to a person familiar with the type, the likeness might not be so pronounced as to us it appears to be. To a Spaniard, for instance, it might not be sufficient to even suggest relationship. You’ve always got to bear that in mind. So long as the identity of Evangeline was a mystery, we had to clutch at any straw that might prove who she was, and perhaps I attached too great an importance to the likeness. It is nothing like so important now we are practically certain Evangeline was Sir John’s daughter and that we know who her mother was. Besides, Lady Rellingham’s name was Manuel. That name is Spanish or Portuguese, and very likely Jewish as well, which accounts for the occurrence of the type, and, as I said, the likeness may be no more than identity of type.”
“Tempest,” said Marston, “I’m beginning to understand your wonderful success with juries. We argued this likeness point once before, when you were putting forward a very different theory. I thoroughly accepted what you said then, but you have convinced me just as thoroughly of your new proposition.”
The barrister laughed. “I’ll tell you the secret of that. There are weak points in both propositions, because there is in each an unknown quantity, and one argues on the ‘may’ and the ‘might’ and the ‘probable.’ One can always persuade a reasonable man that a thing ‘may’ be so, if the proposition you offer is plausible and not self-negatived. But when you lay down a proposition as not only possible but unquestionably correct, and one goes on to the words ‘is’ and ‘must be’ and ‘therefore,’ one needs to prove things. However, what are we going to do to-night? What do you say, Baxter? How about the Palace?”