WITNESS: Yes, she told me she had been to Cloisterham before on Christmas Eve, and that she had met a youth named Ned, I think it was, who had also given her money. I took it she had been down on the same business as that night—following the prisoner. MR. CHESTERTON: When you had done that, you went to your score? WITNESS: When I had done that, I met Deputy, and he told me that “’Er Royal Highness the Princess Puffer” was staying at the Travellers’ Tuppeny, and that she kept an opium den in the East End of London, and then I had very little doubt that that was the place from which she had followed the prisoner. MR. CHESTERTON: You told her where she could see the prisoner next morning? WITNESS: Yes. MR. CHESTERTON: She saw him, and shook her fist at him? WITNESS: She used dreadful language which is not even in the Official Records. MR. CHESTERTON: When she came out, did you say to her, “Have you seen him?”? WITNESS: I did. MR. CHESTERTON: And did she say that she had seen him, and knew him better than all the Reverend Parsons put together? WITNESS: Yes. 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. MR. CHESTERTON: We have already heard from the “Princess Puffer” about its being unreal for the first time. That would fit in with your theory? JUDGE: I am afraid the witness must have no theory. As soon as the examination has put its main point, we must go on. MR. CHESTERTON (_to witness_): Then, did you get any confirmation of that view from Mr. Grewgious? WITNESS: Yes, I wrote to Mr. Grewgious, and he told me of the seizure on Boxing Day—I think it was Boxing Day—when he had an interview with Jasper, the prisoner.