"Detective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... married to a waiter chez Bouquin. Ver' beautiful fella, he was, and had invited her to a chop suey dinner that evening, with the dance at the Lantern to wind up with. Most ver' beautiful fella, single, and a detective. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... satisfied. Besides these one may mention Joe, the outcast; and Mr. Turveydrop, the beau of the school of the Regency—how horrified he would have been at the juxtaposition—and George, the keeper of the rifle gallery, a fine soldierly figure; and Mr. Bucket, the detective—though Dickens had a tendency to idealize the abilities of the police force. As to Sir Leicester Dedlock, I think he is, on the whole, "mine author's" best study of the aristocracy, a direction in which Dickens' forte did not lie, for Sir Leicester is a gentleman, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... arose and pored over the city directory. Then he put on his shoes, took a cab, and departed into the night. Twice he changed cabs, and finally fetched up at the night office of a detective agency. He superintended the thing himself, laid down money in advance in profuse quantities, selected the six men he needed, and gave them their instructions. Never, for so simple a task, had they been so well paid; for, to each, in addition to ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... easy. Of course if Sir Charles was to die, you could claim the estate, and give them a great deal of pain and annoyance; but the burden of proof would always rest on you. My advice is not to breathe a syllable of this; but get a good detective, and push your inquiries a little further among house agents, and the women they put into houses; find that charwoman, and see if you can pick up ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... 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, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... at your clothes, with hay sticking all over them, tells me that, as a detective would say. Also, your garments are as wrinkled as though you'd been put through ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... got in jail. It was that old coal-stealing ruse of his practised once too often. He got up on a car one evening while Jennie and the children waited for him, and a railroad detective arrested him. There had been a good deal of coal stealing during the past two years, but so long as it was confined to moderate quantities the railroad took no notice. When, however, customers of shippers ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... less naturally than when he had been seized with an unwonted spasm of jealousy. "You will always get the best of me in an argument," she said with her exquisite politeness. "Really, I think I love being wholly dependent upon you. Here comes your detective. What a bore. But at least we lunch together if we do have company. And thank you, thank you a thousand times for promising I shall ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... night than with how he works in the course of the day. The private citizen must have much less to say about his bath or his bedroom window than about his vote or his banking account. The policeman must be in a new sense a private detective; and shadow him in private affairs rather than in public affairs. A policeman must shut doors behind him for fear he should sneeze, or shove pillows under him for fear he should snore. All this and things far more fantastic follow from the simple formula that the State must make itself ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... detective's own suggestion she had put on her hat when arrested, and she had worn it during the time she had been searched, during the examination by the magistrate, and ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... Scathlock and Little John. With a little more rummaging of old account-books we shall be enabled to "comprehend all vagrom men." It is a pity that the Sheriff of Nottingham could not have availed himself of the services of our "detective."] ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... ruefully. "As a detective I appear to be about as much of a success as a farmer at the helm ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... a paltry device, perhaps, this trick of giving one direction in the hearing of the hotel servants, and then another when the hotel was out of sight. But, as the reader must know, this kind of thing is always done in novels—particularly in detective stories. ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... so cleverly executed that more than one believed that an older hand was concerned in it; but in the midst of the consternation and confusion, while the manager stood rubbing his hands nervously together, and Mr. Huntingdon, in his cold, hard voice, was giving instructions to the detective, Maurice Trafford quietly asked to speak to him a moment, and offered to ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the other so he can't read. There. Right. Idea prize titbit. Something detective read off blottingpad. Payment at the rate of guinea per col. Matcham often thinks the laughing witch. Poor Mrs ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... explained how they had followed him to Boston and from that city to New York, and how in the latter place, after no end of trouble and detective work, they learned that he was off for Lake Placid, in the Adirondacks. Arriving at Newman late that afternoon, they had driven over to the cottage of Mr. Hatch, which they reached while Frank and his host ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... you what," cried Dutton, recovering himself, "if you begin supposing improbabilities about me, I'll turn detective on ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... An experienced detective officer was sent upon the track of the mysterious, vailed woman, with the heavy black bag, who on the night of the murder had taken the midnight train from ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... little more time," remarked Ned. "But I think we can at least bluff them into playing into our hands. I have a report to hear from a private detective I ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... behaved sensibly, instead of bursting like a rain-cloud without warning? She made mysteries out of everything, out of himself, Terry and even her sister's portrait. She never gave him a complete answer to any question. She surrounded herself with the atmosphere of a detective novel. He was half-minded to rush into the hall and make good his escape before she involved him further. Sir Tobias could come and conduct his own unpleasantness. How on earth was he going to tackle her concerning Adair now that she had ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... 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 Braddon was observing much, correcting much in her methods and ideas. She studied manners ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... 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." ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... knows that Everard is a regular sleuth-hound," said Tommy. "He is more native than the natives when there is anything of this kind in the wind. He is a born detective, and he and that old chap in the bazaar are such a strong combination that they ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... told all about the illustrated book on quilts that he had in the van. He discussed cookery and the Bible with Mrs. Mason; and she being a leading light in the Greenbriar Sunday School, was pleasantly scandalized by his account of the best detective stories in the Old Testament. With Mr. Mason he was all scientific farming, chemical manures, macadam roads, and crop rotation; and to little Billy (who sat next him) he told extraordinary yarns about Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, Buffalo ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... The detective, in a voice and manner as mechanical as that of the judge, would mumble his oft repeated story, giving the exact minute of his observations, the actions of the woman in accosting different pedestrians and in her ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... who for housebreaking was executed in 1725, and the hero of Fielding's novel of the name; he had been a detective; was hanged amid execration on the part of the mob ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... are sons of a celebrated American detective, and during vacations and their off time from school they help their father ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... neither a triumphant politician nor a successful detective, but I recognize both when they are pointed out to me," she said. "Mr. Kent, will you serve these gentlemen up hot for dinner, or cold ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... Detective Eddie Conroy, of the D.A.'s office, standing behind an adjacent pillar, ostentatiously lighting a cigar; nor see him smile as he ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... human or divine. This terror incarnates itself sometimes and leaps horribly out upon us; as when the crouching mendicant looks up, and Jean Valjean, in the light of the street lamp, recognises the face of the detective; as when the lantern of the patrol flashes suddenly through the darkness of the sewer; or as when the fugitive comes forth at last at evening, by the quiet riverside, and finds the police there also, waiting stolidly for vice and stolidly satisfied to take virtue instead. ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the detective in his most ironical tone, "what do you think of your friend now? What do you say to this honest and worthy young man, who, on the very night of the crime, leaves a wedding where he would have had a good time, to go and buy a hammer, a chisel, and a dirk—everything, in ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... mental indecision after which the quarter came reluctantly to the detective. Tootsie went thoughtfully down to the beach. The new method did redound to the stability of the phonograph, but was Skippy really working as ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... latch-key lock. Mrs. Drabdump felt a whit uneasy, though, to give her her due, she never suffered as much as most good housewives do from criminals who never come. Not quite opposite, but still only a few doors off, on the other side of the street, lived the celebrated ex-detective Grodman, and, illogically enough, his presence in the street gave Mrs. Drabdump a curious sense of security, as of a believer living under the shadow of the fane. That any human being of ill odour should consciously ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Joseph Muller, Secret Service detective of the Imperial Austrian police, is one of the great experts in his profession. In personality he differs greatly from other famous detectives. He has neither the impressive authority of Sherlock Holmes, ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... that the train from Wichita Falls was behind time, one morning shortly after Buddy's arrival, he was still abed when Calvin Gray arrived at the hotel. Instead of disturbing the slumbers of youth, Gray went directly to the detective who had telegraphed him, and for half an hour or ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... I am not a detective"—said the doctor carelessly, looking at Faith, who kept as quiet as a dormouse. "If it had been my business I suppose ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... before that piercing gaze, so I decided to floor the aspiring detective working so zealously for the Fatherland and to point out the danger of jumping at conclusions. I ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... He fetched uncle a key about the time we got up from table—same key, I bet. Watermelon shows man, lock shows prisoner; and it ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a little plantation, and where the people's all so kind and good. Jim's the prisoner. All right—I'm glad we found it out detective fashion; I wouldn't give shucks for any other way. Now you work your mind, and study out a plan to steal Jim, and I will study out one, too; and we'll take the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... resolved on the spot to thwart Corentin in every way that did not conflict essentially with the success of the government, and to give the Gars a fair chance of dying honorably, sword in hand, before he could fall a prey to the executioner, for whom this agent of the detective ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... allegiance by the promise of large rewards to be distributed by Rajah Kharrak Singh at Agpur. Strict orders were issued against further plundering, and every man who had obtained nothing, or less than he expected, became a detective ready to hunt down his more fortunate comrade and secure the return of the spoils. Partab Singh's councillors and courtiers began to appear out of various hiding-places, and all expressed a most touching anxiety to ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... that he stamped heavily upon the pet corn of a retired rear admiral, rudely bumped a Roumanian duchess, kicked the pink poodle of a famous prima donna and brought up with a thud against the heroic brawn and muscle of the house detective, who stood as solidly in the middle of the lobby as if he had taken root ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... very much, 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 they would keep ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... "it was mailed downtown late this afternoon. The hotel got it at seven o'clock. Marshall wanted to get a detective, but I thought of you. I knew—you knew the boat, and then—you ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... interrupts George, poking his head in at the door, 'what it is to be on the eve of a wedding; I suppose you'll want a detective, and, oh, by the bye where are we ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton
... corner of the Congressional Cemetery at Washington, a small group of people with uncovered heads were ranged around a newly-opened grave. They included Detective and Mrs. George O. Miller and family and friends, who had gathered to witness the burial of the former's bright little son Harry. As the casket rested upon the trestles there was a painful pause, broken only by the mother's sobs, until the undertaker advanced ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... name, and the owner of it is a Frenchman who has been a detective in Paris. He has accomplished more in this matter than all the others put together, and he will go with you, for you will find in the commander's instructions that you have more than one thing to do on your way to the Gulf. I gave ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... city. He shrunk in horror from the base proposal, but at last fear of the flames prevailed, and he consented to become the betrayer of his brethren. Preceded by the host, and surrounded by a train of priests, incense-bearers, monks, and soldiers, Morin, the royal detective, with the traitor, slowly and silently passed through the streets of the city. The demonstration was ostensibly in honor of the "holy sacrament," an act of expiation for the insult put upon the mass by the protesters. But beneath this pageant a deadly purpose ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... 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
... of the World's Greatest Detectives. The most famous cases of the great Sleuths of England, America, France, Russia, realistically told, with biographical sketches of each detective. Fully illustrated. 12mo. Cloth ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... that of Romulus be used to prevent.... The one, as I believe, supplies noble courage and intrepid counsels against an enemy invading the territory. The other takes to himself the task of extirpating and defeating, by means of a learned detective police of ears, and a light band of good authors, that barbarism which makes large inroads upon the minds of men, and is a destructive intestine enemy of genius. Nor is it to be considered of small consequence what language, pure or corrupt, a people has, or what is their customary degree of propriety ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... detective," she smiled back, taking a sudden keen delight in the knowledge that she had taken the right tack, and that she was puzzling Pollard. "But it is quite obvious that you've got your money back! Why didn't ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... and Mr. Watson, with a detective, went to the appointed meeting place. The manager went in alone, but the others were hiding, in readiness to enter ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... thing up," I said confidently. "My friend, Craig Kennedy, the scientific detective ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... stop it, of course," said a lean, blond man whose name was Stout. He could be relied on to say the obvious and keep a discussion driving to the point. "I understand we have a good detective agency. If we put them on this with payment ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... I soon jumped to a second conclusion, namely, that this was no brother of mine at all. He instantly appeared in the light of a sinister double, acting as a detective. After that I refused absolutely to speak to him again, and this repudiation I extended to all other relatives, friends and acquaintances. If the man I had accepted as my brother was spurious, so was everybody—that was my deduction. For more than two years I was without ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... didn't wait for him to say any more. I just went right up to that detective and I said, "Mister, those men are worse than tramps; they're not tramps at all; they're thieves; they stole an automobile; hurry ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... 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 ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... of an automatic echoed through the shack. The detective known as Jim had come back to consciousness, and now, from behind an overturned table where he had fallen, he started to fire shot after shot into ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... but she was excited. As a matter of fact, she was saying to herself, "He's found out." It was what she had been expecting. She had long ago begun to see that his almost daily visits were not on her mother's account. He had been coming less as a doctor than as a detective. Very well! If his detecting had been successful, so much the better. Since the battle had to be fought some time, it couldn't begin ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... dismissal of the policeman, pushed his writing things away from him. "If you ask my opinion, you know, I must tell you what I think. I should get rid of Bozzle as a beginning. If you will only think of it, how can your wife come back to you if she learns that you have set a detective to watch her?" ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... detective, who had finished telephoning, into the library, set out drinks and cigars for him and returned. Nothing further was said until Ellis arrived. The associate editor's face, as he looked from the dead girl to Hal, was both sorrowful and stern. But he was there to act; not ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... yarn from circulation. Kennedy's interest in detective work waned after his interview with Walton. He was quite sure that Walton had been one of the band, but it was not his business to find out; even had he found out, he would have done nothing. It was more ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... scene of execution the Hungarian elite, together with their wives and daughters, were assembled. And after the bodies had been thrown on to a cart they were flogged, for some unknown reason, by one Blajek, a detective, while the audience cried "Eljen!" ["Hurrah!"]. But the War brought to an end the bad old days of a tyrannous minority. It will be shown, in a year or two, when a proper census is taken, that the Magyars were always much more in a minority than they ever admitted. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... records of the rocks the footsteps of this god of change. And rarely if ever does he find a continuous and complete record—only a footprint here and there, but he sees the direction in which they are going and many of the places where the traveler tarried. The palaeontologist, that detective of the rocks, works up his case with the same thoroughness and caution and the same power of observation as does the detective in human affairs and with a greater sweep ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... that, but he was suspicious. It was barely possible that the officiating clergyman had connived at the theft of the license from his desk, so the pawnbroker, who doubtless possesses the instincts of an amateur detective, resolved to get the license into the hands of Nan Brent direct. Before doing so, however, he wrote to the man named in the license and sent his letter to the address therein given. In the course of time that letter was returned by the post-office ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... The detective at the boarding house table having satisfied himself that nobody had observed him, folded up his magnifying glass and put ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... Laws fellow is," he said gravely. "He's rotten! And I shouldn't wonder if I could locate his friend. I get around quite a bit on my motor-cycle. May I use your 'phone a minute? I have a friend who is a detective. They ought to be rounded up. Miss Leslie, would you tell me carefully just what roads you took, as nearly ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... A FOUCHE FOR WASHINGTON.—It is high time that a good, sharp detective police officer was set to work to discover the source of the continued leakage of our government's plans. Of our late naval flotilla for Beaufort, we are told that 'The positive destination of our fleet was known even in New Orleans on the 17th ult.,—weeks before it was known in the North! ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... suggestive, and that it suggests mystery to me makes me feel as if I myself, instead of a serious practitioner, am a professional detective." ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... A detective, equipped with a certain amount of motor knowledge, might have been able to discern that the mud-encrusted monster was a Ford car. A tailor, whose technical training would help him to penetrate ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... seen sixty summers. They visited Shoolbred's, apparently wanting to buy some Prayer-books and Bibles. They looked at many, but none suited them. They left without purchasing anything, no suspicions being aroused on the part of the attendants. But Detective Butler and Constable 173 D, who had taken great interest in the old ladies' movements, saw Grace hand a Book of Common Prayer, a hymn-book, and ladies' companion to her sister. Shoolbred's manager identified the articles as the property of the firm, but declined ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... a sober, industrious young man, just out of the high school, and bore a first-class reputation for honesty. He had never been in Virginia, where the scene of his story was laid, and they had no library in Dillville, and our detective assured us that the young man was in every way fitted to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... Book Company, Denver, 1904. Who wrote the book has been somewhat in debate. John C. Coble's name is signed to the preface attributing full authorship to Horn. Of Pennsylvania background, wealthy and educated, he had employed Horn as a stock detective on his Wyoming ranch. He had the means and ability to see the book through the press. A letter from his wife to me, from Cheyenne, June 21,1926, says that Horn wrote the book. Charles H. Coe, who succeeded Horn as stock detective in Wyoming, says in Juggling a Rope (Pendleton, Oregon, ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... same hour on the same day in which the Englishman held the conference with the Parisian detective just related, the Marquis de Rochebriant found himself by appointment in the cabinet d'affaires of his avoue M. Gandrin that gentleman had hitherto not found time to give him a definite opinion as to the case submitted to his judgment. The avoue received Alain with ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Young ferret, detective, said: "I'll show you where To track the bold rabbit right into his lair." Then he never saw bunny right under his eyes, But went swaggering off ...
— Animal Children - The Friends of the Forest and the Plain • Edith Brown Kirkwood
... irritated him. He liked meals such as the one he had ordered, the plebeian joy of taking off tight shoes and putting on disreputable slippers, sitting in an easy-chair with his feet on another, while he read detective stories or adventurous romances with neither sense nor moral. He liked to relive in dream fashion the years of early endeavour—of his married life with Hannah. After he finished the reverie he would tell himself with ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... his white shirt front spattered with blood, the cringing, frightened boy crouching in the chair, the towering figure of the police captain sitting sternly eyeing his hapless prisoner, and at the far end of the room Detective Sergeant Maloney busy sending ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... that Mr. Gryce, the detective, was not the thin, wiry individual with the piercing eye you are doubtless expecting to see. On the contrary, Mr. Gryce was a portly, comfortable personage with an eye that never pierced, that did not even rest on you. If it rested anywhere, it was always on some ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... 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 some ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Austrian and Italian frontiers without difficulty; but at the station at Modena a too-zealous detective of the French police, struck with the Alsatian accent of the orderly, immediately decided that they were two Prussian spies, and refused to allow them to proceed, since they could show ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... Your sister Mrs. 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 them if ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... Falconer for a detective, and did not seem inclined to interfere, all except the carman before mentioned. He came up, pushing ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... of the politician, is such material as he never saw before. For Pietro's loyalty is great. As a police detective, one of his own people, once put it to me, "He got a kind of an idea, or an old rule: an eye for an eye; do to another as you'd be done by; if he don't squeal on you, you stick by him, no matter what the consequences." This "kind of an idea" is all he has to draw ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... ain't the money he's thinkin' of; it's this split in the gang—the loss of his power ez boss, ye see—and ef he could get hold o' them chaps he'd let the money slide ez long ez they didn't get it. So you've got a detective on your side that's worth the whole police force of Californy! Ye never heard anything about Snapshot Harry, did ye?" asked Bill carelessly, raising his ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... practical jokes exploded of themselves, and left vacancy; all the other fictions returned upon themselves, and were finished like a song. But the string of solid and startling events— which were to include a hansom cab, a detective, a pistol, and a marriage licence—were all made primarily possible by the joke about the High ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... day of his departure came, as he shrank from so much publicity. He remarked afterwards that he felt as a hunted criminal might who saw in every casual passer-by a possible detective. ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... rising, as if weary of the discussion, "have it your own way, then. You know best. The private detective game is hard work. I, myself, have gone on a wild-goose chase before now. There's a mystery about a certain ship-builder's son which took me four months to unravel, and ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... followed, the man of the cheery voice seemed to the youth to possess a wand of a magic kind. He threaded the mazes of the tangled forest with a strange fortune. In encounters with guards and patrols he displayed the keenness of a detective and the valor of a gamin. Obstacles fell before him and became of assistance. The youth, with his chin still on his breast, stood woodenly by while his companion beat ways and ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... on Ida May, flashing a look at the Balls. Their pitiful appearance made no impression upon her. "But that don't matter. I guess they've got your record at Hoskin & Marl's. You worked there all right; sure you worked there, in the jewelry section. You stole something. I saw the store detective, Miss Hopwell, take you up to the manager's office. I never heard what they did to you, but they did a ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... successful than a recruit from distant Australia, by name Richard Hodgson. Hodgson, unlike Sidgwick and Myers and many others of his associates, had not engaged in psychical research from the hope that the truths of the Bible might thereby be demonstrated. His motive was that of the detective eager to unravel mysteries. From his boyhood he had had a singular fondness for solving tricks and puzzles of all sorts; and when, in 1878, he came to England to complete his education at Cambridge, he naturally gravitated into the company of Sidgwick, Myers, and Gurney, as men busied ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... thought out by Natives fleeing from the king's wrath or the witch doctor's doom, of which I have heard from the Natives themselves, have seemed to me to be in subtilty of design and in daring of execution as admirable as any that may be found in contemporary detective fiction, while the fortitude with which defeat and death has been accepted by some of the unfortunate fugitives would evoke admiration in the least impressionable of men. I say therefore that those who deny ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... There is one attitude in which we think that all existence is summed up in the word 'ghosts'; another, and somewhat better one, in which we think it is summed up in the words 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' Even the vulgarest melodrama or detective story can be good if it expresses something of the delight in sinister possibilities—the healthy lust for darkness and terror which may come on us any night in walking down a dark lane. If, therefore, nonsense is really to be the literature of the future, it must have its own ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... Of course he's found out somehow, perhaps through employing a detective, that Chris Trevenna and Casa Triana are one man. He can't make much use of the knowledge to bother me on this ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the great detective after a moment. "Either guess may be true, although I am almost positive that Dr. DuQuesne had nothing to do with it, either way. It was no ordinary burglary, that is certain from Shiro's story. It was done by someone who had exact information of your movements and habits. He chose a time when you ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... the detective element was abnormally developed. He had shown this on several occasions, and ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... said. "I'm really sorry I had to interrupt you as I did; but I most awfully wanted you to know that you owe me a Homburg hat." He went closer to the detective. "You see, I have won that wager. I have found the man who murdered ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... were moving about, more or less aimlessly, and the chilly hand of King Fear had touched one and all, for, as they came and went, they glanced ever over their shoulders, as if each shadow cloaked a menace, and listened, as it seemed, for some sound which they dreaded to hear. Smith strode up to the detective and showed him a card, upon glancing at which the Scotland Yard man said something in a low voice, and, nodding, touched his hat to Smith in a ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... went upstairs, unlocking the door of a room at the rear. Everything was just as he had left it. There on the floor was still Ben Price's collar-button that had been torn from that eminent detective's shirt-band when they had overpowered Jimmy ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... I knew of it, I heard the hall-men laughing about the string they had given him. Next he held a serious conference with me, in which he told me of his millions and the plot to deprive him of them, and in which he appointed me his detective. I did my best to let him down gently, speaking vaguely of a mistake, and that it was another man with a similar name who was the rightful heir. I left him quite cooled down; but I couldn't keep ...
— The Road • Jack London
... detective,' says the squar'-built gent, 'an' this yere,' p'intin' to Old Gentry, 'is Jim Yates, the biggest hold- up an' stage-robber between hell an' 'Frisco. That old tarrapin'll stop a stage like a young-one would a clock, merely to see what's into it. He's the party I'm pastin' up the ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... certainly enough, with school studies. Within the last month one boy has asked us for Jack Harkaway's stories, another for bound volumes of the Police News, and a third for 'The murderer and the fortune teller,' 'The two sisters and the avenger' and 'The model town and the detective.' These are not in the library and will not be. The demand for girls for the New York Weekly novels is not small. We shall gladly cooperate with fathers and mothers in ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... 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 effect of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... on reflectively, "here's a letter from a Constant Reader who asks, 'Is this Professor Craig Kennedy really all that you say he is, and, if so, how can I find out about his new scientific detective method?'" ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... particular 'star' round which the lesser lights will all revolve. Such being the case, I do not consider that I am rating my services too highly when I name two hundred guineas as the lowest sum for which I am willing to play the part of James Jasmin, footman, spy and amateur detective." ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... to make it our business to find out who played this trick on us," cried Margaret, "if it takes detective work to do it. Our dignity as seniors has been attacked and ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... in The Death of Maurice (SKEFFINGTON) the revolutionary experiment of a murder mystery tale that does not contain (a) a love interest, (b) a wrongly suspected hero, (c) a baffled inspector, (d) an amateur, but inspired, detective. It would be a grateful task to add that the result proves the superfluity of these time-worn accessories. But the cold fact is that, to me at least, the proof went the other way. From the first I was painfully aware of a lack of snap about the whole business, and I am more than suspicious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... provisions of the tariff. He felt that the more he saw of girls the less he liked them, and that the more he saw of Kitty, particularly, the less he fancied her, but if he was going to do this amateur detective business he wanted to begin it as soon as possible, and he watched the door closely. He wanted to see whether Kitty would still wear the pink shirt-waist she had worn at breakfast, or the white one she had worn the evening before, or whether she would dare ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... from Euston," said Lord Torrington, "under another name. I had a detective on the job, and he worried that out. Women are all going mad nowadays; though I had no notion Isabel went in for—well, the kind of thing your sister talks, Lentaigne. I thought she was religious. She used to be perpetually ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... by science are won by ... no mental processes, other than those which are practiced by everyone of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones.... Nor does that process of induction ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... in "The Rover Boys on the Plains," this trip was full of mystery and peril. Dan Baxter turned up most unexpectedly, and our friends visited a mysterious ranch only to learn that it was a rendezvous for a band of counterfeiters. Through a government detective the counterfeiters were rounded up, only one man, Sack Todd, escaping. Dan Baxter also got away, but later on he was traced to a big swamp, where his horse was found, stuck fast in the slimy ooze. It was thought by some that Baxter had lost his ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... indictments against persons in cases where no formal complaint had been laid, and he utterly repudiated the idea that his office imposed upon him the role of a thief-catcher. "It is not my business," said he, "to play the part of a detective, or to hunt about the country for evidence in support of voluntary prosecutions. I have now discharged the duties of a Crown officer for nearly thirteen years, and this is the first time that a failure in my duty has been imputed to me. I have always conceived it to ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... 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 ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... done more? Colwyn asked himself this question again and again. But that query always led to another one—Could he have done more? In his mental probings the detective could rarely get away from the point—and when he did get away from it he always returned to it—that Penreath, by his dogged silence, had been largely responsible for his own conviction. If a man, charged with murder, refused to account for actions ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... understand that, in his eagerness to be away, Mr. Newcombe was making a great mistake in thus pleading with those over whom he could have no control until after their work was done, and Dick's face lightened wonderfully as he began to hope the "torpedo detective," as Newcombe was called, might tire of his ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... take the 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 ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... if a like visit from the same personage had not been made at the same hour next morning in our own rooms, to which we were that day transferred. The two successive intrusions were to us inexplicable, unless, in the light of succeeding events, we were to regard the priest as a detective officer or spy. Our apartments communicated, both being reached through an entry, while my room, lying beyond Kate's, was only reached by passing also from the entry ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Penhallow was disgusted. A guest entertained in his own house to become a detective of an escaped slave in Westways, at his very gate! "My charity, Ann, hardly covers this kind of sin against the decencies of life. But I wish to hear all of it. Now, who betrayed the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... straight as a soldier on guard. The light from the lantern illumined her gray hair and threw into strong relief her upraised hand—the first of millions raised in protest against the invasion of the homes of the South. The detective saw the movement and a grim smile came into ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... In the detective headquarters in the Courthouse they have mistakenly built up a very high notion of my sleuth qualities. Personally I have always felt that such help as I have been able to render them in two or three different cases was most largely due to luck, ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... evidently the new tenant. Sometimes she comes alone; sometimes with a dark-eyed, handsome lad, probably her son. Who can she be? what is she? what is her name? her history? has she a right to settle in Gloucester Place, Portman Square? The detective police of London is not peculiarly vigilant; but its defects are supplied by the voluntary efforts of unmarried ladies. The new comer was a widow; her husband had been in the army; of good family; ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... piece of astounding ingenuity, in which the manner is taken from Robinson Crusoe, and the plot belongs to the era of the detective story. The Treasure of Franchard is a French farce or light comedy of bourgeois life, of a type already a little old-fashioned, but perfectly authentic. The tone, the mise-en-scene, the wit, the character-drawing, the very language, are all so marvellously reproduced from the French, ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... church registers, and interviewing family physicians. Well, let them. Since I learned to write, some figures have been changed in the old Family Bible, and, thank goodness! old Doctor Perry is dead. The keenest detective won't find much difference between 1830 and 1850. It only requires that the curve of the three should be rubbed out, and a dash sharpened to a point added. If they look for eighteen hundred and thirty there, I can tell them it isn't to be ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... out of His Majesty's jail at Quebec.' He was '25 years of age, about 5 feet high.' We are not told whether or not he was captured as the advertisement is continued to the end of the year, but if he did not change his dress he could not have succeeded in baffling very long the keen eye of a detective, for "he had on, when he made his escape, a brown coat, red plush waistcoat, white stockings and cock'd hat.' If such a gentleman made his appearance in the streets of any Canadian city to-day, he would certainly be requested to 'move on,' or asked to ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... The detective paused before replying, and looked the young man over with care. The clean-cut features showed not a sign of dissipation, and the expression was honesty itself. Certainly the young man had not gotten into trouble ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... 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: "If she's speaking the truth, gentlemen; but, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... legs. Their action was at once silent, stealthy and purposeful. Our young clergyman's shortness of sight rendered their appearance the more peculiar. His normal attitude was not so completely restored, moreover, but that they caused him another nervous tremor. Then he grasped the truth; while the detective, latent in every moralist, sprang to attention. Here were criminals to be brought to justice, criminals caught red-handed. Reginald Sawyer, having been rather badly scared himself, lusted—though honestly ignorant of any personal touch in the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Todd is a shrimp. Shrimp I have said and shrimp I always will say. He talks real brightly in his way—he will speak words like an actor or something—but for brains! Say, he always reminds me of the dumb friend of the great detective in the magazine stories, the one that goes along to the scene of the crime to ask silly questions and make fool guesses about the guilty one, and never even suspects who done the murder, till the detective tells on the last page when they're ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson |
