“Besides this red hair, there is another unifying thread that runs through these scattered incidents.  There is something very peculiar and suggestive about the names of these women.  Mr. Trip, you will remember, said he thought the typewriter’s name was Blake, but could not remember exactly.  I suggest that it might have been Black, and in that case we have a curious series:  Miss Green in Lady Bullingdon’s village; Miss Brown at the Hendon School; Miss Black at the publishers.  A chord of colours, as it were, which ends up with Miss Gray at Beacon House, West Hampstead.”

Amid a dead silence Moon continued his exposition.  “What is the meaning of this queer coincidence about colours?  Personally I cannot doubt for a moment that these names are purely arbitrary names, assumed as part of some general scheme or joke.  I think it very probable that they were taken from a series of costumes—­ that Polly Green only meant Polly (or Mary) when in green, and that Mary Gray only means Mary (or Polly) when in gray.  This would explain—­”

Cyrus Pym was standing up rigid and almost pallid.  “Do you actually mean to suggest—­” he cried.

“Yes,” said Michael; “I do mean to suggest that.  Innocent Smith has had many wooings, and many weddings for all I know; but he has had only one wife.  She was sitting on that chair an hour ago, and is now talking to Miss Duke in the garden.

“Yes, Innocent Smith has behaved here, as he has on hundreds of other occasions, upon a plain and perfectly blameless principle.  It is odd and extravagant in the modern world, but not more than any other principle plainly applied in the modern world would be.  His principle can be quite simply stated:  he refuses to die while he is still alive.  He seeks to remind himself, by every electric shock to the intellect, that he is still a man alive, walking on two legs about the world.  For this reason he fires bullets at his best friends; for this reason he arranges ladders and collapsible chimneys to steal his own property; for this reason he goes plodding around a whole planet to get back to his own home; and for this reason he has been in the habit of taking the woman whom he loved with a permanent loyalty, and leaving her about (so to speak) at schools, boarding-houses, and places of business, so that he might recover her again and again with a raid and a romantic elopement.  He seriously sought by a perpetual recapture of his bride to keep alive the sense of her perpetual value, and the perils that should be run for her sake.

“So far his motives are clear enough; but perhaps his convictions are not quite so clear.  I think Innocent Smith has an idea at the bottom of all this.  I am by no means sure that I believe it myself, but I am quite sure that it is worth a man’s uttering and defending.