f I wasn't in
earnest about what I was at?"

"But you don't. You can't think that this lady--Miss King or whatever
her name is--will really murder Simpkins?"

"She'll try to if she marries him. I can't be absolutely certain that
she'll succeed, but I think it's very likely that she will. She's had
a lot of practice, and by her own account she's been unusually
successful."

"That's all rot, of course," said the Major. "Murder isn't committed
in that sort of way. No woman would deliberately with her eyes open--"

"Did Mrs. Lorimer murder her husband by accident, or did she intend to
do it and plan the whole thing out beforehand?"

"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 b