Residents in K and L entires of Eliot House shortly after lunch yesterday were started by volumes of smoke which seemed to be coming from nowhere, and which were rapidly filling rooms and hallways. An explanation came form a sleuth-like driver of a laundry truck, who had arrived at a masterful deduction.

Apparently a careless biddy, in the one o'clock exodus, had left one of the trap doors of the incinerator open. A few minutes later a passer-by flipped a cigaret into the opening, whence it dropped to the basement on a pile of refuse. It took the services of the whole House janitorial staff to extinguish the blaze, which threatened to asphyxiate the residents of the upper floors.