Mr. Chesterton: You then went to the cupboard door, and what did you do?
Witness: I made a great score.
Mr. Chesterton: What was its meaning?
Witness: That my interview with, and observations of the opium woman had settled the three main questions as to which I had gone down to Cloisterham to decide.
Mr. Chesterton: Let us take them seriatim. First, how was it Drood——
Witness: From my conversation with her I gathered that Jasper took opium, and having opium, I had no doubt at all that he drugged Drood’s wine, and that Drood was so affected as not to be able to give any clear account as to the event.
Mr. Chesterton: The second question—How was it that, if the prisoner was the author of the assault, he had not achieved his purpose?
Witness: My views as to that also were clear. He had been at the opium den on the night before the Christmas Eve, when she last visited Cloisterham, and I have no doubt at all that he failed because he had an opium seizure—such a seizure as Mr. Grewgious saw him in, and as his nephew Drood saw him in.
Mr. Chesterton: The third question—How came it, that having failed to kill Drood, he obviously thought he had done so?
Witness: That, I thought, was obvious, because he would have completed the murder in an opium trance, such a trance as, later, the “Princess Puffer” described to me, as Jasper having experienced inside the opium den.