"I don't know."
"You do know. You read the evidence and you read the judge's charge, and you know as well as I do that she proceeded in the most deliberate way possible."
"It looked like it," said the Major. "I must say it looked like it."
"Very well. Is Miss King Mrs. Lorimer, or is she not?"
"I don't know."
"I proved to you yesterday evening that she is. I proved it in a way that left no possible room for doubt in your mind, if you are honest with yourself and look facts plainly in the face. I am not going into the proof again, because it's a very exhausting thing and I've had a hard day. Besides, if it didn't convince you the first time, it wouldn't the second. Trains of reasoning aren't like advertisements. You come to believe that a certain kind of pill will prevent your going bald because you've seen statements to that effect ten thousand times. It's the cumulative weight of repeated assertion which compels belief in that case. But the kind of belief which depends on reasoning is quite different. If you've the sort of intellect which cannot grasp the proof which Euclid gives of one of his propositions, no number of repetitions of it will help you in the least. That's a curious psychological law, but it is a law. Therefore it would be the merest waste of time for me to demonstrate to you again that Mrs. Lorimer and Miss King are the same person. I pass on to the next stage in our enquiry. Will Miss King murder her next husband?"
"If she's Mrs. Lorimer," said the Major, "and if Mrs. Lorimer murdered—"
"There are no 'ifs' about the matter," said Meldon; "she unquestionably will. She told me so herself, and whatever else she is she's a woman of her word. There remains now only one question, Who is her next husband to be? And the answer to that may be given in two syllables—Simpkins."
"If you really believe all that," said the Major, "and—"
"I do," said Meldon.