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Page 17
"I must examine the dead man's personal effects, his baggage, his
papers; there may be something there. His queer letter to Graumann
--his desire that the latter's visit should be kept secret--a visit
which apparently had no cause at all, except to get Graumann to the
house, to get him to the house in a way that he should be seen
coming, but should not be seen going away. What does this mean?
"Graumann was the only person against whom Siders had an active
cause of quarrel for the moment. There was one other man whom he
hated, and this other man was the prosecuting attorney who would
conduct any case of murder that came up in the town of G--.
"Now John Siders is found murdered--is found killed, in his
lodgings, the morning after he has arranged things so that his
antagonist, his rival in love, Albert Graumann, shall come under
suspicion of having murdered him.
"What evidence have we that this man did not commit suicide? We
have the evidence of the disorder in the room, a disorder that
could have been made just as well by the man himself before he ended
his own life. We have the evidence of a letter to some unknown,
making plans for pleasure during the next days, and speaking of
further plans, presumably concerning business, for the future. In
a town the size of G--, where every one must have read of the murder,
no one has come forward claiming to be the friend for whom this
letter was written. Until this Unknown makes himself known, the
letter as an evidence points rather to premeditated suicide than to
the contrary. Oh, if I could only have seen the body! They tell
me the pistol was found some little distance from the body. Is it
at all likely that a murderer would go away leaving such evidence
behind him? If Graumaun had killed Siders in a hasty quarrel, he
might possibly, in his excitement, have left his revolver. But I
have already disposed of this possibility. A man of sufficient
brains to so carefully plan his suicide as to conceal every trace
of it and cast suspicion upon the man who had made him unhappy, such
a one would be quite clever enough to throw the pistol far away
from his body and to leave no traces of powder on his coat or any
such other evidence.
"If I were to say now what I think, I would say that John Siders
deliberately took his own life and planned it in such a way as to
cast suspicion upon Albert Graumann. But that would indeed be a
terrible revenge. And I must have some tangible proof of it before
any court will accept my belief. This proof must be hidden
somewhere. The thing for me to do is to find it."
The evidence gathered at the time of the death went to show that
Siders had been paid a considerable sum in cash for the sale of
his property at Grunau. And there was no trace of his having
deposited this sum in any bank in G-- or in Grunau, in both of
which places he had deposited other securities. Therefore the
money had presumably been in his room at the time of his death.
A search had been made for this money in every possible place of
concealment among the dead man's belongings, and it had not been
found. Muller asked the Police Commissioner to give him the key
to the rooms, which were still officially closed, and also the
keys to the dead man's pieces of baggage. Commissioner Lange
seemed to think all this extra search quite unnecessary, as it
did not occur to him that anything else was to be looked for
except the money.
It was quite late when Muller began his examination of the dead
man's effects. He was struck by the fact that there was scarcely
a bit of paper to be found anywhere, no letters, no business papers,
except bank books showing the amount of his securities in the bank
in G-- and in Grunau, and giving facts about some investments in
Chicago. There was nothing of more recent date and no personal
correspondence whatever. The same was true of the pockets of the
suit Siders had been wearing at the time of his death. A man of
any property or position at all in the world gathers about him so
much of this kind of material that its absence shows premeditation.
The suit Siders had been wearing when he was killed was lying on
the table in the room. It was a plain grey business suit of good
cut and material. The body had been prepared for burial in a
beseeming suit of black. Muller made a careful examination of the
clothes, and found only what the police reports showed him had
already been found by the examination made by the local authorities.
Upon a second careful examination, however, he found that in one of
the vest pockets there was a little extra pocket, like a change
pocket, and in it he found a crumpled piece of paper. He took it
out, smoothed and read it. It was a post office receipt for a
registered letter. The date was still clear, but the name of the
person to whom the letter had been addressed was illegible. The
creases of the paper and a certain dampness, as if it had been
inadvertently touched by a wet finger, had smeared the writing.
But the letter had been sent the day before the death of John
Siders, and it had been registered from the main post office in
G--. This was sufficient for Muller. Then he turned to the desk.
Here also there was nothing that could help him. But a sudden
thought, came to him, and he took up the blotting pad. This, to
his delight, was in the form of a book with a handsome embroidered
cover. It looked comparatively new and was, as Muller surmised, a
gift from Miss Roemer to her betrothed. But few of the pages had
been used, and on two of them a closely written letter had been
blotted several times, showing that there had been several sheets
of the letter. Muller held it up to the looking-glass, but the
repeated blotting had blurred the writing to such an extent that it
was impossible to decipher any but a few disconnected words, which
gave no clue. On a page further along on the blotter, however, he
saw what appeared to be the impression of an address. He held it
up to the glass and gave a whistle of delight. The words could be
plainly deciphered here:
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