How to use "smallest" in a sentence

The search ended on the 18th, and the police admitted they had not found the smallest clue

Gradually Michael's displeasure over her desire to succeed was complicated by a darker emotion: He grew jealous of her smallest achievements

And all around it, some in their overturned war-machines and some in building-machines, and ten of them lying in a row, were the Martians - dead! They had been killed by germs against which their systems could not fight; killed, after all man's machines had failed, by the smallest things that God has put on this Earth.