"It seems that two ladies who were visiting the exhibition at the same time noticed this same young man with the sallow complexion and the jet-black hair. They heard him questioning Ruggles and remarked upon his foreign accent, which was neither Italian nor Spanish; they thought he might be Portuguese. His clothes were certainly very outlandish. The ladies had noticed the caped coat, a kind of black Inverness, and the hat à la Montmartre. The presence of this foreigner in the shop in Sackville Street became still more significant later on, when another fact came to light—a fact in connection with the half-pint of beer which the lift-boy from the flats in George Street had fetched as usual on the evening preceding the robbery, from the Crown and Sceptre public house. A few drops of the beer had remained in the mug beside the remnants of Ruggles's supper. On examination the beer was found to contain chloral. The lift-boy at first was probably too scared to throw any light on this circumstance. He had, he declared, fetched the beer as usual from the Crown and Sceptre, taken it up to No. 4, Sir James Narford's flat, and put it upon the table in the sitting-room, where Mr. Ruggles's supper was already laid for him. After repeated questions from the police inspector, however, he recollected that on his way from the public house to the flats, a gentleman accosted him and asked him the way to Regent Street. The boy, holding the mug of beer in one hand, pointed out the way with the other and probably turned his head in the same direction as he did so. He couldn't say for certain. The gentleman seemed stupid and didn't understand the directions all at once; the boy had to repeat them again and again, and altogether was in conversation with the gentleman quite a while. It was dark at the time, but he did see that the gentleman wore a 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.
"And those are all the facts," the Old Man in the Corner went on slowly, while he paused in his work of fashioning intricate knots in his beloved bit of string, "all the facts that were ever known in connection with the theft of Sir James Narford's gems. Of course, as you may well suppose, not only the official but also the public mind at once flew to the mysterious personage, originally found wounded in an empty house in Wicklow Lane. There could be no shadow of doubt that this man and the one who visited the shop in Sackville Street, who accosted the lift-boy, drugged Ruggles's beer and robbed him of his keys, were one and the same. There was the black caped coat, the Montmartre hat, the jet-black hair and foreign look. True, the wounded man of Wicklow Lane spoke English without any foreign accent, but the latter could easily be assumed. Indeed, it all seemed plain sailing, and as soon as the word went round about the robbery in Sackville Street and the description was given of the foreign-looking individual with the jet-black hair, the police thought they had a perfectly clear case.
"A clear case, yes!" the funny creature went on, with a grin, "but not an easy one, because when the police called at the hotel in Mexborough Gate they learned that the mysterious Mr. Allen Lloyd had been gone three days. Having paid his bill, he had walked out of the house one dark afternoon and not been seen or heard of since. He went off carrying a paper parcel, which no doubt contained the few belongings he had bought of late.
"Of course he was the thief and a marvellous cunning one. Just think what it meant. It meant, first of all, immense presence of mind and daring to accost the lift-boy and engage him in conversation whilst pouring a drug into a mug of beer; then it meant sneaking into the block of flats in George Street, breaking the glass panel of a door, entering the flat, stealing the keys, sneaking out of the building again, going round to Sackville Street, watching until the police on duty had passed by, entering the house, opening the safe, collecting the gems—all in full view of the street, mind you, or else in absolute darkness—then relocking the safe and again watching for the opportunity to sneak out of the house until the man on duty was out of sight. Clever? I should think it would have been clever, if it had ever been done!"
"How do you mean, if it had ever been done?" I ejaculated, with some impatience. "Whoever the thief was—and I suppose that you have your theory—he must have done all those things."
"Oh no, he did not!" the funny creature asserted emphatically, "he merely put all the gems away in his own pocket after the exhibition was closed for the night, instead of locking them up in the safe."
"Then you think it was Ruggles?" I exclaimed.
"In conjunction with his master."
"Sir James Narford? But why?"