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.
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