explanation," retorted Goldberger hotly, "than it is to find an
unnatural and far-fetched one--such as how one man could kill another
by scratching him on the hand. I suppose you think this fellow was
murdered? That's what you said a minute ago."

"Perhaps I was a little hasty," Godfrey admitted, and I suspected
that, whatever his thoughts, he had made up his mind to keep them to
himself. "I'm not going to theorise until I've got something to start
with. The facts seem to point to suicide; but if he swallowed prussic
acid, where's the bottle? He didn't swallow that too, did he?"

"Maybe we'll find it in his clothes," suggested Simmonds.

Thus reminded, Goldberger fell to work looking through the dead man's
pockets. The clothes were of a cheap material and not very new, so
that, in life, he must have presented an appearance somewhat shabby.
There was a purse in the inside coat pocket containing two bills, one
for ten dollars and one for five, and there were two or three dollars
in silver and four five-centime pieces in a small coin purse which he
carried in his trousers' pocket. The larger purse had four or five
calling cards in one of its compartments, each bearing a different
name, none of them his. On the back of one of them, Vantine's address
was written in pencil.

There were no letters, no papers, no written documents of any kind in
the pockets, the remainder of whose contents consisted of such odds
and ends as any man might carry about with him--a cheap watch, a
pen-knife, a half-empty packet of French tobacco, a sheaf of
cigarette paper, four or five keys on a ring, a silk handkerchief,
and perhaps some other articles which I have forgotten--but not a