There are only two possible choices; either Collins, under
Dickens's oral instructions, depicted Jasper finding Drood alive in
the vault, an incident which was to occur in the story; or Dickens
bade Collins do this for the purpose of misleading his readers in
an illegitimate manner; while the young man in the vault was really
to be some person "made up" to look like Drood, and so to frighten
Jasper with a pseudo-ghost of that hero. The latter device, the
misleading picture, would be childish, and the pseudo-ghost,
exactly like Drood, could not be acted by the gipsy-like, fierce
Helena, or by any other person in the romance.


MR. WALTERS'S THEORY CONTINUED


Mr. Cuming Walters guesses that Jasper was to aim a deadly blow
(with his left hand, to judge from the picture) at Helena, and that
Neville "was to give his life for hers." But, manifestly, Neville
was to lead the hunt of Jasper up the spiral stair, as in Collins's
design, and was to be dashed from the roof: his body beneath was
to be "THAT, I never saw before. THAT must be real. Look what a
poor mean miserable thing it is!" as Jasper says in his vision.

Mr. Cuming Walters, pursuing his idea of Helena as both Datchery
and also as the owner of "the YOUNG face" of the youth in the vault
(and also of the young hands, a young girl's hands could never pass
for those of "an elderly buffer"), exclaims: "Imagine the intense
power of the dramatic climax, when Datchery, the elderly man, is
re-transformed into Helena Landless, the young and handsome woman;
and when she reveals the seemingly impenetrable secret which had