nhoe_ dressing up as Isaac
of York.

Of course such a question can never really be settled precisely, because
it is the question not merely of a mystery but of a puzzle. For here the
detective novel differs from every other kind of novel. The ordinary
novelist desires to keep his readers to the point; the detective
novelist actually desires to keep his readers off the point. In the
first case, every touch must help to tell the reader what he means; in
the second case, most of the touches must conceal or even contradict
what he means. You are supposed to see and appreciate the smallest
gestures of a good actor; but you do not see all the gestures of a
conjuror, if he is a good conjuror. Hence, into the critical estimate of
such works as this, there is introduced a problem, an extra perplexity,
which does not exist in other cases. I mean the problem of the things
commonly called blinds. Some of the points which we pick out as
suggestive may have been put in as deceptive. Thus the whole conflict
between a critic with one theory, like Mr. Lang, and a critic with
another theory, like Mr. Cumming Walters, becomes eternal and a trifle
farcical. Mr. Walters says that all Mr. Lang's clues were blinds; Mr.
Lang says that all Mr. Walters's clues were blinds. Mr. Walters can say
that some passages seemed to show that Helena was Datchery; Mr. Lang can
reply that those passages were only meant to deceive simple people like
Mr. Walters into supposing that she was Datchery. Similarly Mr. Lang can
say that the return of Drood is foreshadowed; and Mr. Walters can reply
that it was foreshadowed because it was never meant to come off. There
seems no end to this insane process; anything that Dickens wrote may or
may not mean the opposite of what it says. Upon this principle I should
be very ready for one to declare that all the suggested Datcherys were
really blinds; merely because they can naturally be suggested. I would
undertake to maintain that Mr. Datchery is really Miss Twinkleton, who
has a mercenary interest in keeping Rosa Budd at her school. This
suggestion does not seem to me to be really much more humorous than Mr.
Cumming Walters's theory. Yet either may certainly be true. Dickens is
dead, and a number of splendid scenes and startling adventures have died
with him. Even if we get the right solution we shall not know that it is
right. The tale might have been, and yet it has not been.

And I think there is no thought so much ca