"Detective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arranged that with Flaxman. It was my seeing him enter the room alone where the coins were, the night of the party, that first led to the idea that he might have taken them. Then, as you see, certain dealers' shops were watched by a private detective. Maurice appeared—sold the Hermes coin—was traced to his lodgings and identified. So far the thing has not gone beyond private inquiry; for the dealer will do what Flaxman wants him to do. But Maurice ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The black-mustached man, she decided, must be a detective. She recalled that he had said to her it was because she lived at the address she did that she was available for the mission for which he wanted her. Did he, she wondered, know about the mysterious death in the street outside their apartment ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... I do. I like working and getting paid for it. When I'm tired of working, I like a comfortable chair, a cigar, a little whisky, and a novel with a good detective story in it. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... given some address, in order to insure the receipt of Lady Carbery's answer; and in that case, so sternly conscientious was she, that, under the notion of saving me from ruin, my address would have been immediately communicated to my guardians, and by them would have been confided to the unrivalled detective talents, in those days, of Townsend, or ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... The detective agency to which she finally applied, after weeks of soul-racking suspense, was one of those disturbingly human implements which many are not opposed to using on occasion, when it is the only means of solving a troublous problem ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... yes! But he couldn't; he had no key. The police keys were not there; they were kept in the Detective Department. ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... called on her since,' continued she, looking at the culprit with the stern look of a detective policeman in the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... to extort or wheedle it from his consort's keeping, but he had implicit faith in his own detective talents. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... woman had so many diamonds on that she had a detective follerin' her all round wherever she went. She wuz a blaze of splendor and so wuz lots of 'em, though like the stars, they differed from each other ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... thought, it had its compensations. In the three days that the Detective Inspector had been on Earth, Forrester had had time to think and to find out some things. Gerda, for instance, was getting married to Alvin Sherdlap. Forrester wondered what kind of love would let a woman choose ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... thinks you know something that he doesn't know. As he's a detective, that, in his mind, is quite enough for arresting any man. I may as well give him my assurance, ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... street: they walk and talk like men and women, and live among our friends a rattling, lively life; yes, live, and will live till the names of their calling shall be forgotten in their own, and Buckett and Mrs Gamp will be the only words left to us to signify a detective police officer ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... organised by the late Colonel Barker. So striking was the success attending his effort that, before many months had passed by, magistrates in the city of Melbourne were actually giving delinquents the option of being sent to prison or to our Prison-Gate Home, and the Government placed the former Detective Police Building at our disposal, ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... scavenger. Americans don't talk scandal, but I fail to see how they will keep their homes clean without it. The scandal-mongers may be inspired by no lofty motives, but they make a wonderful unpaid detective force. Sheridan was not a philosopher. Ubiquitous and omniscient, Mrs. Grundy is always with you. Once you might have escaped her by making the grand tour, but now she has a Cook's circular ticket and watches you from the Pyramids or the temples of Japan,—especially if, like myself, you ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... satire. Mr. Hall Caine, it is true, aims at the grandiose, but then he writes at the top of his voice. He is so loud that one cannot bear what he says. Mr. James Payn is an adept in the art of concealing what is not worth finding. He hunts down the obvious with the enthusiasm of a short-sighted detective. As one turns over the pages, the suspense of the author becomes almost unbearable. The horses of Mr. William Black's phaeton do not soar towards the sun. They merely frighten the sky at evening into violent chromolithographic effects. ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... instance of this propensity occurred a few years ago at a very wealthy nobleman's house in the north of England. During a visit there a lady's diamonds disappeared. There was great and general consternation, and the detective police were summoned from London. The jewels were subsequently discovered in a closet attached ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... me, and I done it for another man;' I said, 'I haven't told it to anyone;' He said, 'You did tell it to Kitty' (his wife); I said, 'She knew as much about it as I did; she saw the papers burning;' on next Friday of that same week I saw Mark Haggerty, Mr. Haggerty's brother, who is a detective in the Mayor's office, I think; I called him up stairs and asked him to come in; he said, 'No, I am afraid to come in; I am afraid of Ed.,' that is, Mr. Haggerty; they have not been on speaking terms in a year; I then told him the occurrences ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... a bungler," said Mr. Montgomery, complacently, to himself. "He can't hold a candle to me. I flatter myself that I know how to manage a little affair, like this, for instance, as well as the next man. It'll take a sharp detective to lay hold ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... to tell you, that we are required to search all persons arrested under similar charges, and in the next room a female detective will receive and retain every thing in your possession, except your clothing. You are suspected of having secreted money, jewelry and some ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... myrmidons, who flattered themselves that they were spying on Raffles. The imbeciles were at it still! The one hanging about Burlington Gardens looked unutterably bored, but with his blots of whisker and his grimy jowl, as flagrant a detective officer as ever I saw, even if he had not so considerately dressed the part. The other bruiser was an equally distinctive type, with a formidable fighting face and a chest like a barrel; but in Piccadilly he seemed to me ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... a white man, Pat Hanifan, who outraged a little Afro-American girl, and, from the physical injuries received, she has been ruined for life. He was jailed for six months, discharged, and is now a detective in that city. In the same city, last May, a white man outraged an Afro-American girl in a drug store. He was arrested, and released on bail at the trial. It was rumored that five hundred Afro-Americans had organized to lynch him. Two hundred and fifty white citizens ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... equal to feeling well, little girl," he said, genially, patting her hand where it rested on the railing, "and I really believe I am in as fine fettle now as I ever have been. Do you know, I believe I 'm perfectly fit to undertake that little detective operation casually mentioned to you a few days ago. It 's got to be done, and the sooner I get at it the easier I'll feel. Fact is, I put in a large portion of the ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... any of those forms of work which we both agree in despising, and which are quite unworthy of your traditions, as for instance stealing pictures on commission out of the houses of dealers and then turning detective to recover them again. It is much too easy work for a man of your talents, much too ill-paid, and much too dangerous. It is all very well for the picture dealer to leave the door open, but what if the policeman is not in the know? No, you will always find me on your side in your steady refusal ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... was like the touch of a spark; soon after came a mystery of general wretchedness, followed by pains in the loins, a rise of temperature and extreme, in Dion's case even intense, weakness. He lay in his bunk trying to play the detective on himself, to stand outside of his body, saying to himself, "This is I, and I am quite unaffected by my bodily condition." For what seemed to him a long time he was fairly successful in his effort; then the body began to show ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the detective at this allusion to his crippled state and made an attempt at using his ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... at last, after much talking and shifting about, and not before a young German hairdresser had been stationed with one eye glued to a hole in the outer wall of the shed, in order to make sure that no detective was listening ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... out of work; Whyte described himself as a hatter, living on the means brought with him from America. The magistrate was about disposing summarily of the case, by sentencing the men to a few days' imprisonment, when a detective officer applied for a remand, on the ground that he had reason to believe the prisoners were connected with the Fenian conspiracy. The application was granted, and before many hours had elapsed it was ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... risk of shocking the reader, it has been decided that the real permanent detective stories of the world were ill represented without Dostoyevsky's terrible tale of what might be called "self- detection." If to sensitive readers the story seems so real as to be hideous, it is well to recall that Dostoyevsky in 1849 underwent ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... have been recovered without the skilled assistance of the historical offices of the various services and Office of the Secretary of Defense. At times their search for lost documents assumed the dimensions of a detective story. In partnership with Marine Corps historian Ralph Donnelly, for example, the author finally traced the bulk of the World War II racial records of the Marine Corps to an obscure and unmarked ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... accident, as he had at first supposed, but had been communicated to it intentionally, for some purpose unknown. These conclusions naturally stimulated his curiosity more than ever, but nothing came of it. The boy was a clever boy, but he was not a detective trained in this species of research, and the problem was beyond his ingenuity. He made every application of the figures 3 and 5 that imagination could suggest; he took them in feet, in inches, in yards; he added them together, and he subtracted ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... a frock-coat and gaiters, with trim little side-whiskers and an eye-glass. The latter was Colonel Ross, the well-known sportsman; the other, Inspector Gregory, a man who was rapidly making his name in the English detective service. ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... very clearly," she observed dryly. "You have mistaken your vocation, Mr. Hope, and should have been a criminal lawyer. I should turn detective were ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... Russian engagement. It was his sister who told me this—perhaps to prove that there was no use my having Designs, with a capital D. He followed the girl to St. Petersburg; she disappeared. He put the matter into the hands of a detective—an American one, brought over on purpose—money no object. Then Mr. Falconer couldn't stay any longer himself, on account of important interests on this side—but I believe he flashed across once in a while, during ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... jealous freak? Women have confessed to me that they watch their husbands habitually. One said she did it for love of excitement: there was always a risk of being caught, and nothing else ever amused her half so much. Another declared she did it because she could not afford to employ a private detective, and she wanted to have evidence always ready in case it should suit her to part from her husband at any time. Another said she loved her husband, and it hurt her less to know than to suspect. But I could not really believe that Evadne ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... been ugly. She endued it with grace and beauty. She invented a mystery of crime surrounded by everyday circumstances, yet avoiding the "detective novel" mechanism. A new story, 'Aurora Floyd,' repeated the immense success of 'Lady Audley.' Novel after novel followed, full of momentous incidents, of surprises leading to new surprises. All the time Miss ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... big cattlemen have been itching for another chance since their last bill was defeated in Congress. They remind me of the detective concern that never sleeps, only they might better get in a few honest, healthy snores than waste their time the ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... Old Trinity appeared against him, and Magistrate Pilate sentenced him to six months on Blackwell's Island, remarking that from this time on he proposed to make an example of those soap-box orators who persist in using threatening and abusive language. Just as the prisoner was being led away, a detective appeared with a requisition from the Governor, ordering that Jesus be taken to San Francisco, where he is under indictment for murder in the first degree, it being charged that his teachings helped to incite the ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... like the best detective in the world could help you to find a girl when you don't know her name." He added gently: "But maybe she don't want you to ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... Mr Wopples, 'we act "Called Back", but it is billed as "The Blind Detective"; thus,' said the actor, with virtuous scorn, 'do we evade the grasping avarice of the Melbourne managers, who would make us ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... perfectly rip-roaring time you must have had," commented Dozia, eyeing the fudge. "And I suppose you were taken in by Sour Sandy because you seemed easiest to convey to the Town Hall. Just like the old detective stories, arrest someone, anyone, and depend upon the ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... and present myself. If Sir Nigel meets me at the park gates and orders his gamekeepers to drive me off the premises, we shall at least know that he has some reason for not wishing to regard the usual social and domestic amenities. I feel rather like a detective. It entertains me and excites ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a detective with them—not a tin badge detective, but a real one. Don't try to go out today. Get your dinner and rest up for the afternoon performance. I think you had better go to the train in my carriage tonight. I'm not going to take any more such ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... exclaimed Snubby, "but I guess I was an awful fool to take such a chance in breaking into Campbell's room. It was Campbell and Bassett that I was after. Old Jerry put me wise to something he had overheard them say, and, like a chump, I was trying to do a little private detective work because I wanted to get back my watch and all those other things. Now this is all I know about it and I am terribly sorry that I went butting into things and was responsible for ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... the man. "Well, I ain't a-goin' to fool with you no longer, Mrs. Gratz. I'm a-goin' to tell you right out what I am and who I am. I'm a detective of the police, and I'm looking up a mighty ...
— The Thin Santa Claus - The Chicken Yard That Was a Christmas Stocking • Ellis Parker Butler
... through the latter half of the last century and into this, with such well-known names as Parrish, Gifford, Hunt, Wylie, Martin, the Morans, Eakins, and even the more recent Frederic Remington. Such pictures as F. E. Church's "Niagara Falls" (wall A), J. G. Brown's "The Detective Story" (wall B), and Thomas Hovenden's "Breaking Home Ties" (wall D), are typical of what was accepted as the best work a generation or ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... with such inflexible rigidity of form, such harrowing cork-screw curls, and chronic expression as of smelling something disagreeable, is Mrs. LADLE, the hostess. A widow. Her husband, the late TIMOTHY, was a New York detective. Amassing a competency, he emigrated to Indiana, became a Bank Director and Sunday-School Superintendent, and died ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... have employed the best of detective skill, and that you will succeed in recovering a portion, at least, of the sequestrated ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... but he 's hardly of the chauffeur type. Now as a detective—can't you imagine him in ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... up and down the room, melodramatically clutching at her hair and staring at Nan with her blue eyes. "It is a deep-laid plot, but it shall be foiled by Patricia Sherlock,—the only lady detective in captivity!" ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... Tavern was a haunt of low sporting men, being kept by Harry Lee, father of the first and original "tiger," invented and made fashionable by the notorious Lord Barrymore. During the Chartist times violent meetings were held at a club in Shire Lane. A good story is told of one of these. A detective in disguise attended an illegal meeting, leaving his comrades ready below. All at once a frantic hatter rose, denounced the detective as a spy, and proposed off-hand to pitch him out of window. Permitted by the more peaceable to depart, the policeman scuttled downstairs as fast as ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... in excitedly: "See here, Jake Marpole, don't you go trying to add murder to suicide. We're deep enough in trouble. Otto reads you too many of them detective stories." ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... husband's duplicity. He thought also of going to Cowperwood personally and threatening him, but that would be a severe measure, and again, as in the other case, he lacked proof. He hesitated to appeal to a detective agency, and he did not care to take the other members of the family into his confidence. He did go out and scan the neighborhood of 931 North Tenth Street once, looking at the house; but that helped him little. The place ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... to bring you news," he continued. "Our detective returned this morning and presented a full report of his investigation and its result. You will be ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... reflected that Fate had not served him so hardly after all: if Roddy had really been watching for him at the Gare du Nord, with a mind to follow and wait for his prey to make some incriminating move, this chance-contrived change of vehicles and destination would throw the detective off the scent and gain the adventurer, ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... whom I employed in Hampshire—they were recommended to me by the Scotland-yard authorities, certainly—may not have been up to the mark. In any case, I shall try some one else. Do you know anything of the detective force?" ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... more than a week, he went to bed directly after supper and slept like a log until breakfast. Rising, refreshed and fit, he decided that the time had come to abandon his former haphazard methods of getting information, and to launch a campaign of active detective work without further delay. ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... who had done the murder. Unfortunately, when I had read a few pages more, I found that I had picked the wrong person. Then I accused another character on perfectly good circumstantial evidence, and he was not the man. After that I decided to withdraw from the detective business and let Miss SILBERRAD unravel her mystery for herself. If you are of the opinion that a woman cannot keep a secret read The Mystery of Barnard Hanson and become convinced that Miss SILBERRAD at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... what I do think, Ad; but I'm going to do a little detective work and I want to give the impression that we are all out. When you fellows go out, don't say anything that would cause any one in hiding to think we are not all going out ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... their custom in all matters of public concern, i. e., to outrival the most noted expert in the line of that particular phase of public endeavor uppermost at the time. Theories were advanced in the daily papers that made Sherlock Holmes seem like a novice in detective work and Lucretia Borgia a mere infant in the skillful administration of poisons. The regular detectives, both public and private, were aroused by the mystery that shrouded the case. It remained, however, for the ubiquitous reporter, to whom society really owes a debt ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... when Sarah came to say Master Oswald was to go in to master's study at once. So he went, wondering what on earth he could have been up to now. But he could not think of anything in particular. But when his father said, 'Oswald, this gentleman is a detective from Scotland Yard,' he was glad he had told about the fives ball and the ladder, because he knew his father would now stand by him. But he did wonder whether you could be sent to prison for leaving a ladder in a slippery place, and how long ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... an expert here, naturally, if mere inquiry does not suffice. Those chaps are wonderfully clever, you know. They seem to be able to find out anything they want to know. The letters I am showing you came through Carcajou, there's your stamp on the envelopes. The detective will compare this handwriting with that of every man, woman and child in Carcajou and the neighborhood, and while it is certainly disguised, there's so much of it that they will certainly find out who sent them. It—it's going to ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... The detective was at that period of his story where the emperor parted from old Conrad and his daughters. He now paused to see the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... know to this day, you blamed fool, who shot that government detective that was snooping into that clearing you and me made—five years back? Gaston'll pay or you'll take one of them never-failing shots ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... Soto's, and the child too. He told me he had only lately sent a detective here to ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... himself appears as a little man in a rumpled khaki uniform, tieless and wearing an informal garrison cap. Under his arm is a book, and in the photograph the title can be read as "Send Another Coffin." Mitscher liked detective stories; he didn't ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... the subject with the purpose of making capital out of the credulity of the public. There are no better detectives in the world than newspaper men. They work for the love of it. An expose is dearer to the detective-instinct in them than a laudatory article, and they leave no stone unturned to get at the facts. When, therefore, after the lapse of months, the newspapers of the United States repeat and confirm their first stories about ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... fellow to Berlin to-night. The message was here all the time—that numskull Heinrich forgot it. And we've got to keep the fellow here till then! An outrage, having the house used as a barrack for a rascally detective!" Thus much I heard, as the door had been left open. Then it closed and I heard ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... to try any detective work; to find out if she is a woman with a past, with a husband living? You are not going to put a live adder among the eels? I daresay drysalters eat eels. It is the reading of sensational novels that ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... too, became nervous. He telephoned the central police station to inquire if a young girl of Alora's description had met with an accident. There was no record of such an accident, but in half an hour a detective came to the hotel ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... Some probability is lent to the theory by the fact that one of these students came from the north of Ireland, and, to the best of Miss Cushing's belief, from Belfast. In the meantime, the matter is being actively investigated, Mr. Lestrade, one of the very smartest of our detective officers, being in ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... me in a great hurry to the terminus, and caught me as I was opening the carriage door. 'We have just made a discovery,' he said; 'you and Mrs. Linley are to be reckoned up.' Reckoned up is, if you please, detective English for being watched. My clerk might have repeated a false report, of course. And my fellow-traveler might have come all the way from London to look out of the window of an inn, in a Cumberland village. What do ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... father love, or any kind of love which isn't self-centered and decidedly material. They also have little use for high-flown sentiment, poetry, old-fashioned prejudices and pretences of romance; and if they do have time to read a book, they want it to be something up-to-date and exciting—a detective story, for instance, with a master thief and vampires. In addition to this, they have a number of other precocious and undigested notions about a variety of things, which they are ready to pass out ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... before a chance acquaintance of the family, but rather a play, of its own kind, at mysteriousness and disguise—a play tracing its beginning from those times when the young people were borne away by Gustave Aimard, Mayne Reid, and the detective Lecocq. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... "keep house;" and in the same high-sounding but miniature way the grown folk here, with the poor little material of slender territory and meagre population, play "empire." There is his royal Majesty the King, with a New York detective's income of thirty or thirty-five thousand dollars a year from the "royal civil list" and the "royal domain." He lives in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... tales, the theme is the ceaseless life of the will, the potency of the spirit of the beloved and departed woman. The unity of effect is absolute, the workmanship consummate. So with the theme of revenge in "The Cask of Amontillado," the theme of mysterious intrigue in "The Assignation." In Poe's detective stories, or tales of ratiocination as he preferred to call them, he takes to pieces for our amusement a puzzle which he has cunningly put together. "The Gold Bug" is the best known of these, "The Purloined Letter" the most perfect, "The Murders ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... reward for his late services, was made head of the detective department and Chief of Police. His first official act was to promote two bare-footed policemen who on his last visit to the Capital ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... got me the breakfast which I needed as badly as any meal I ever ate, she questioned me as to relatives, friends, habits, and everything which a good detective would want to know in forming a theory as to how a clue might be obtained. She suggested that I find every man in the village who had a team and did hauling, and ask each one if he had moved Mr. ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... D'Albert had given this money to Cecile. You know your own sister's writing. Here it is. That paper was folded under the lining of the purse; you can read it. The purse is gone, and the children are in London before now. You can send a detective after ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... for you to talk. You see the newspapers are beginning to grumble. They reproach us, they say we are slack. My dear child, you don't realize—there 's a question of sending a detective down from Paris! It would be such a disgrace! And everything promised so well! You can't imagine how excited your father was when they waked him up to tell him that an old man of eighty-seven had been murdered ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... Rachel?" her husband asked quietly, indeed gently, yet with little promise of acquiescence in his tone. "I am not a detective, after all." ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... he skips gayly from one past generation to another, waving his phantoms off the stage of memory with a sweep of his cane, and poking others on to make their bow to the man with the crowbar, who thus, piecing the narrative out with his own detective work in wood, rebuilds the story. It was but a little house which began with two rooms on the ground floor and two attic chambers, built for Stoddard who married the daughter of the pioneer landowner of the vicinity, and it nestled up within a stone's throw of the big house, sharing its prosperity ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... down the path, and turned to meet a man who had "detective" written largely all over him. Jack turned and looked down again at the body ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... in stocks and shares after he had ruined himself by heavy speculation. Sometimes it was held that he was one of those petty gamblers who nightly play for small stakes until they win a few francs. A theory that he was a detective in the employ of the Home Office found favor at one time, but Vautrin urged that "Goriot was not sharp enough for one of that sort." There were yet other solutions; Father Goriot was a skinflint, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... How men have to work, to talk, to smile, to go to bed, and try and sleep, with this dread of being found out on their consciences! Bardolph, who has robbed a church, and Nym, who has taken a purse, go to their usual haunts, and smoke their pipes with their companions. Mr. Detective Bullseye appears, and says, "Oh, Bardolph! I want you about that there pyx business!" Mr. Bardolph knocks the ashes out of his pipe, puts out his hands to the little steel cuffs, and walks away quite meekly. He is found ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Story; Hunted Down; The Detective Police, and other Nouvellettes. By Charles Dickens. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... who was terribly jealous and suspicious; one of those Othellos who have always a flea in their ear, and come back unexpectedly from shooting or the club, who pick up pieces of torn paper, listen at doors, smell out meetings with the nose of a detective, and seem to have been sent into the world only to be cuckolds, but who know better than most how to lay a snare, and to play a nasty trick—that when I went to Venice, I consented to let ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... once to Scotland Yard and asked for a detective. He showed him the portrait of his wife, told him she had left home under a false impression, and that he would give him fifty pounds if ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... goods trains, covered with palls, and gliding on like vast weird funerals, conveying themselves guiltily away, as if their freight had come to a secret and unlawful end." Now, again—"Half miles of coal pursuing in a Detective manner, following when they led, stopping when they stopped, backing when they backed." One while the spectacle, conjured up by a word or two was that of—"Unknown languages in the air, conspiring in red, green, and white characters." Another, with startling ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... undertaking. I cannot consent to such a thing. It is only your generosity and kindness which make you look at the matter so lightly. You would regret your decision later on, and then——No, mother and I will see the matter through. We have already secured the services of the smartest detective in Winnipeg, and he is working upon the only ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... you'd like other books better—detective stories and that kind," she ventured. "Didn't you ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... we can't start acting suspicious or they're going to start investigating. Holy Smokes, don't you ever read any detective stories? When you're trying to work a big deal without being caught, it's practically the main thing to keep on acting just like always. Then they don't suspect anything. That's ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... the murder of Fraser is told very differently in Bosworth-Smith's Life of Lord Lawrence, where all the detective credit is given to Lord L., apparently on his own authority. See also an article in the Quarterly Review for April 1883, by Sir H. Yule, and another in Blackwoods Magazine for ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... which that vote occurred, Tweed jeered Tilden as the latter passed through the hotel corridor, while Tilden, trembling with suppressed emotion, expressed the belief that the Boss would close his career in jail or in exile.[1327] One wonders that Tilden, being a natural detective, should have delayed strenuous action until the Times' exposure, but when, at last, a knowledge of the colossal frauds suddenly opened the way to successful battle, he seized the advantage with the skill and persistency ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... answered all our questions—not very far from tears, I think, but saved by native stolidity, and perhaps a little by the fear that purifiers of Society might not be the proper audience for emotion. When she had left us we recalled the detective, and still, as it were, touching the delicate matter with the tips of our tongues, so as not, being men of the world, to seem biassed against anything, we definitely elicited from him her profession and these words: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... were well assured, many a brain was busy, and many an eye set to discover our retreat. By the side of the public thoroughfares, on great bridges, and frequented cross-roads, detective vigilance kept sleepless watch, and fancied in every approaching form, the doomed victims, who were at once to satisfy the angry gallows and its own excited avarice. Equally well assured were we that the most inventive and hazardous scrutiny ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... story, which is as ingenious as it is genuinely droll. It belongs to the same genus as the Danvers Jewels, though, in this latter, the idea of the character of the narrator is more humorously conceived than is Mr. SIMS's Baronet who acts as an amateur detective. The Baron highly recommends this story, as he also does a short tale in Blackwood, for this month, entitled, A Physiologist's Wife, by ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... held it in their hands. We marched on through the woods, with no sound but the peeping of the frogs in a neighboring marsh, and the occasional yelping of a dog, as we passed the hut of some "cracker." This yelping always made Corporal Sutton uneasy: dogs are the detective officers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... thought, grannie. But I have made inquiries—through a detective agency—and I have discovered that he is one person; in fact, a man, just like ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... is Inspector Childs, chief of the detective department of Cairo. Who may I have the pleasure of thanking for ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... "I know what the clodhopper is after; and even if I must suffer in consequence, I shall take good care that he cannot shake off his bonds. Wait a bit! I can play the detective too, and be down on him without letting him see the hand that deals the blows. It'll be a wonder if I can't find a naked sword to suspend ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... word of appreciation once in a while. She chills under the surveillance and parsimony of an eagle-eyed, detective, lawyer-like husband. ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... anxiously. He did not, of course, know who the detective really was, but he remembered him as one who had assisted the police in a case in which that house had been ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... scholars, the scraps of evidence found in books and archives, the amazingly accurate hypotheses of bibliographers who have sifted the material so painstakingly gathered together, combine to make its history a bookish detective story ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... time this afternoon. I never wanted to be a detective person, but I can understand the fascination of the profession. Luck was with me, and in less than thirty minutes after meeting her I was pretty sure Madeleine Swink was not in love with Harrie and was in love with some one else. A few minutes later I ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... name is Samuel Chillip, of course you will know who I am. Yes, I am the author—it has been said the famous author—of "The Poisoned Waterbottle," "Steeped in Gore," "The Demon Detective," and other highly sensational and blood-curdling stories. But though these tales of mine have brought me some fame and a fair amount of profit, I am not particularly proud of them. I really don't know how I, so to speak, drifted into crime. I never liked ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... searching for a live man in the cemetery of Montmartre? The prefet of police would set a hundred intelligences at work to find him; the Seine might be dragged, les miserables turned over at the Morgue; a minute description of him would be in every detective's pocket; and ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... teach abundance of wholesome lessons, if he comes to his task with some hope and love. King is, of course, a verbose bully; he delights in petty triumphs; he rejoices in making himself felt; he is a cynic as well, a greedy and low-minded man; he takes a disgusting pleasure in detective work; he begins by believing the worst of boys; he is vain, shy, irritable; he is cruel, and likes to see his victim writhe. I have known many schoolmasters and I have never known a Mr. King, except ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... he replied. "We're waiting for Detective-Inspector Gatton, who has been put in charge of ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... Speaker, or of the First Minister of the Crown, when he will see that they substantiate much more than I have stated. (Cheers.) I do not wish to occupy the House longer; but I must say this, that to talk of freedom in a land like the Northern States of America is an absurdity. Almost every detective that can be got hold of in this country is employed. (Hear, hear.) I believe there are spies in my son's works in Birkenhead, and in all the great establishments in the country. A friend of mine had detectives regularly on his track in consequence of some circumstances connected ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... pathological exhibit, Mrs. Corrine B. Eckley. Class 788: Seguin School for Backward Children, Mrs. Seguin; Compton School for Nervous Children, Fanny A. Compton; Chicago Hospital School, Mary R. Campbell. Class 789: Police supplies and detective exhibit, Mrs. M.E. Holland. Class 790: Missouri State board of charities, Miss Mary E. Perry; New Hampshire State board of charities, Mrs. Lilian Streator; Massachusetts charity and correctional exhibit; Jewish Charitable and Educational Union, ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... one gentleman left it, and he had scarcely been half a minute gone when a person, very much in the garb and bearing of a modern detective, put in his head, and instantly withdrew ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Donald: "Perhaps your detective employes effected the arrests upon insufficient evidence, and seeing that there was no possibility of convicting the Laniers, had them released. This possibly might account for their part in the farce, but does not throw any ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... enduring many hardships arrived in Canada, where they were clothed and fed and supplied with money. Taking shipping at Halifax, they ran the blockade and landed in Wilmington, North Carolina. One of the six men was recaptured by a detective on a train in New York. My friend Stakes was overtaken the next morning and brought back so badly frostbitten that it became necessary to amputate parts ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... description, and stirring adventure. This type of story is clearly enough the original of those of Jules Verne and similar writers. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter" are the pioneer detective stories, Dupin the original Sherlock Holmes, and they remain the best of their kind, unsurpassed in originality, ingenuity, and plausibility. Another type of the story of analytical reasoning is "The Gold-Bug," built around the solution of a cryptogram, but also introducing ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... not think, either, nor did he understand Hawthwaite's reserve. But he wasted no time in speculation: he had already made up his mind that unless something definite arose at the resumed inquiry he would employ professional detective assistance and get to work on lines of his own. He had already seen enough of Hathelsborough ways and Hathelsborough folk to feel convinced that if this affair of his cousin's murder could be hushed up it would be hushed up—the Simon Crood gang, he was persuaded, would move heaven and earth ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... be ashamed of yourself, lying perdu in the curtains and listening to what wasn't meant for you." Maliciously. "You ought also to have been a detective. You have wasted your talents frightfully. Did Teddy kiss my hands?" Examining the little white members with careful admiration. "Poor Ted! he might be tired of doing so by this. ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton |
