But there was one article about Edwin Drood’s person of which Jasper knew nothing—the ring, which Drood was to return if his betrothal was broken off, but which we say Grewgious never received. That ring would hold the murderer, and bring him to his doom. It would not be destroyed by the quicklime, and would be there intact and the means of bringing him to the scene of his desperate crime. Remember, he courted inquiry immediately after Drood’s disappearance—a sign of his supreme confidence and his colossal audacity. The man who has the slightest doubt that the murder may not have been completed does not at once set the law into motion, go to the magistrate and bring a charge. But if he knows it is completed and the body has gone, he can afford to do so. Everything he had designed to do, he did. It was only something that he did not know of which caused him to bungle. He was not by nature a bungler. He was one of the completest types of criminals that you can imagine, a man who for months and months had been meditating on the closest details of the crime—been to the crypt, talked with Durdles, spoke to Mr. Crisparkle, started his theory that Neville Landless was the person to be charged—and a man who does all those things cannot be accurately described as a bungler. Canon Crisparkle told you the part Jasper played in fomenting quarrels between Drood and Landless. It is exactly the course that a calculating murderer would pursue. And you have heard the evidence of Durdles, a man who probably scarcely understood the purport of his own remarks. How valuable his testimony was! Jasper had spoken to him of quicklime and of tombs, and Jasper had gone with him on a midnight expedition. Was all this vain and useless? Was the expedition at midnight merely a pleasant little picnic for no particular purpose, or merely for fun? Not for fun, when we find that it all fits the composite scheme of murder which was carried out.