t judge. "The disorder in the
room?" thought Muller. "It'll be too late for that now. I suppose they
have rearranged the place. I can only go by what the local detectives
have seen, by the police reports. But I do not understand this extreme
disorder. There is no reason why there should be a struggle when the
robber was armed with a pistol. If Siders was supposed to have been
interrupted when writing a letter, interrupted by a thief come with
intent to steal, a thief armed with a revolver, the sight of this weapon
alone would be sufficient to insure his not moving from his seat. I
can understand the open drawers and cupboard; that is explained by the
thief's hasty search for booty. But the torn window curtain and the
overturned chairs are peculiar.

"Of course there is always a possibility that the thief might have
entered one room while Siders was in the other; that the latter might
have surprised the robber in his search for money or valuables, and that
there might have been a hand-to-hand struggle before the intruder could
pull out his revolver. Oh, if I could only have seen the body! This
is working under terrific difficulties. The marks of a hand-to-hand
struggle would have been very plain on the clothes and on the person of
the murdered man. But this letter? I do not understand this letter at
all. It is the dead man's handwriting, that we know, but why did not the
friend to whom it was addressed come forward and make himself known? As
far as I can learn from the police reports in G--, there was no personal
interest shown, no personal inquiries made about the dead man. There was
only the natural excitement that a murder would create. Now a family,
expecting to make a pleasure excursion with a friend in a day or two
and suddenly hearing that this friend had been found murdered in his
lodgings, would be inclined to take some little personal interest in
the matter. These people must have been in town and at home, for the
excursion spoken of in the letter was to occur two days after the
murder. Miss Roemer's remark about the dread that some people have as to
any connection with the police, is true to a limited extent only. It is
true only of the ignorant mind, not of a man presumably well-to-do and
properly educated. I do not understand why the man to whom this letter
was addressed has not made himself known. The only explanation
is--that there was no such man!" A sudden sharp whistle broke from the
detective's lips.