was very well known to me.  He was a quiet, pleasant-mannered gentleman, and it was his habit to drop in occasionally at the lodge and have a chat with me.  I went into his chambers with him once or twice on some small matters of business and I noticed that there were always a number of books and papers on the table.  I understood from him that he spent most of his time indoors engaged in study and writing.  I know very little about his way of living.  He had no laundress to look after his rooms, so I suppose he did his own house-work and cooking; but he told me that he took most of his meals outside, at restaurants or his club.

“’Deceased impressed me as a rather melancholy, low-spirited gentleman.  He was very much troubled about his eyesight and mentioned the matter to me on several occasions.  He told me that he was practically blind in one eye and that the sight of the other was failing rapidly.  He said that this afflicted him greatly, because his only pleasure in life was in the reading of books, and that if he could not read he should not wish to live.  On another occasion he said that “to a blind man life was not worth living.”

“’On the twelfth of last November he came to the lodge with a paper in his hand which he said was his will’—­But I needn’t read that,” said Marchmont, turning over the leaf, “I’ve told you how the will was signed and witnessed.  We will pass on to the day of poor Jeffrey’s death.

“‘On the fourteenth of March,’ the porter says, ’at about half-past six in the evening, the deceased came to the Inn in a four-wheeled cab.  That was the day of the great fog.  I do not know if there was anyone in the cab with the deceased, but I think not, because he came to the lodge just before eight o’clock and had a little talk with me.  He said that he had been overtaken by the fog and could not see at all.  He was quite blind and had been obliged to ask a stranger to call a cab for him as he could not find his way through the streets.  He then gave me a cheque for the rent.  I reminded him that the rent was not due until the twenty-fifth, but he said he wished to pay it now.  He also gave me some money to pay one or two small bills that were owing to some of the tradespeople—­a milk-man, a baker and a stationer.

“’This struck me as very strange, because he had always managed his business and paid the tradespeople himself.  He told me that the fog had irritated his eye so that he could hardly read, and he was afraid he should soon be quite blind.  He was very depressed; so much so that I felt quite uneasy about him.  When he left the lodge, he went back across the square as if returning to his chambers.  There was then no gate open excepting the main gate where the lodge is situated.  That was the last time that I saw the deceased alive.’”

Mr. Marchmont laid the paper on the table.  “That is the porter’s evidence.  The remaining depositions are those of Noble, the night porter, John Blackmore and our friend here, Mr. Stephen.  The night porter had not much to tell.  This is the substance of his evidence: