funny sort of coat and a funny hat, and as the boy picturesquely put it, ''E spoke queer-like, as if 'e wor a Frenchman.' To a lift-boy presumably every foreigner is a Frenchman if he be not a German, and though the lad's description of the coat and hat only amounted to his calling them 'funny,' there seemed little doubt but that the man who visited the shop in Sackville Street and the one who accosted the lift-boy in George Street were one and the same. There was also little doubt but that he poured the drug into the mug of beer while the boy's head was turned away. And finally all doubts were set at rest when the 'funny coat and hat' were discovered tied up in a bundle in the area of an empty house, two doors higher up the street. "Unfortunately, although these few facts were definitely established, all traces of the man himself vanished after that. How he got into the block of flats could not be ascertained. He might have slipped in after the lift-boy, while the latter went upstairs with the beer, and concealed himself somewhere in the basement. It was impossible to say. The street-door was kept open as usual until eleven o'clock, and until that hour the boy was in attendance at the lift; he had been up and down several times, taking up residents or their visitors, and while he ran to fetch the beer one of the maids saw to the lift, if the bell rang. At eleven o'clock every evening the street-door was closed, but not bolted; it was provided with a Yale lock and every resident had one key, in case they came in late; the lift was not worked after that hour, but there was a light kept on every landing. These lights the housemaid switched off the first thing every morning when she did the stairs, and as a matter of fact she remembered that on that memorable morning the light on the top floor landing--which is the landing outside Sir James Narford's flat--was already switched off when she went to do it.