"Red-handed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... after him, I felt like a murderer of the deepest dye. It is one thing to hand over to the police their natural prey, a thief taken red-handed, but quite another, and a much more harrowing one, to have him slip through your fingers, precipitate himself into mid-air, and drop four stories to the pavement, scattering his brains far and wide. There was not a vestige of ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... are men and women who are vaguely known as gossips; but they are seldom caught red-handed. For one thing, they do not often speak at first hand. They profess only to repeat something that they have heard—something, they are careful to add, which is probably quite untrue, and which they themselves do ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... said, almost violently. He clutched the arm of his chair with a nervous grip, and for one instant looked like a hunted creature caught red-handed in some act of crime. Recovering himself ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... table slowly with his fingers. "Now look here, Captain," he said, "there's a chance here of our putting a stop to a murderous game that's been going on too long, by catching a rogue red-handed. It's to our interest to get a conviction and make an example. It's to your interest to keep your ship free from ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... not yet realized. The rest of the West came up to specifications, but this one essential failed. In Spanish Gulch he had, to be sure, encountered a number of girls. But they were red-handed, big-boned, freckled-faced, rough-skinned, and there wasn't a Tam o' Shanter in the lot. Plainly servants, Bennington thought. The Mountain Flower must have gone on a visit. Come to think of it, there never was more than one Mountain Flower to ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... forms of sin, but there is one thing you cannot do, you cannot prevent His loving you. If I might venture without seeming irreverent, I would point to that pathetic page in the Old Testament history where the king hears of the death, red-handed in treason, of his darling son, and careless of victory and forgetful of everything else, and oblivious that Absalom was a rebel, and only remembering that he was his boy, burst into that monotonous wail that has come down over all the centuries as the deepest expression of undying fatherly love. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the matter. I could swear to you. But I would not, lad—not if I caught you red-handed. You must know, Clarke, since there is none to overhear us, that in the old days I was a Justice of the Peace in Surrey, and that our friend here was brought up before me on a charge of riding somewhat late o' night, and of being ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... serving-men gave witness, telling how they had trapped us in the act, red-handed: and as for this jewel, they had seen their master handle it any time in ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... of the week, I, strolling along the dunes, came upon Frisby. He was bill-posting. I caught him red-handed. ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... notorious character, and cruel in the extreme. Finally a game warden caught him red-handed, arrested him, and took him to Cody for trial. It happened that the judge on the bench had once trapped with him, and therefore "he set the game-killer free, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... and all that hurrying about in the dark had shocked and excited me! The whole theater of life had changed. Its audience had suddenly enlarged and was rushing over the stage and a kind of terror was in every face and voice. There was a red-handed villain behind the scenes, now, and how many others, I wondered. Men were no longer as they had been. Even the God to whom I prayed was different. As I write the sounds and shadows of that night are in my soul again. I see its gathering ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... "That may seem a strange thing to say," he went on, "but it is the truth. Of course we don't want the dam blown up, or even slightly damaged, but it will be better to let them make the attempt, and catch them red-handed, than just to scare them off before they make a try. Because, if we do that they may only come back again, later, when we're not ready for them. But if we let them see we are prepared and can catch some of them at work, it will ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... aeons pass them by, They rise at last to day. The spirits of our fathers rise Triumphant through the starry skies; And we may hear their choral song,— The firm in faith, the noble throng,— It bids us crush a deadly wrong, Wrought by red-handed Cain. AND WE SHALL CONQUER! for the Right Goes onward with resistless might: His hand shall win for us the fight. WE, too, shall ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of officers and citizens allowed the trade to some extent.[147] Finally, it must be noted that during all this time scarcely a man suffered for participating in the trade, beyond the loss of the Africans and, more rarely, of his ship. Red-handed slavers, caught in the act and convicted, were too often, like La Coste of South Carolina, the subjects of executive clemency.[148] In certain cases there were those who even had the effrontery to ask Congress to cancel their own laws. For instance, in 1819 a Venezuelan privateer, ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... glances from those liquid eyes, of smiles from those blanched-almond teeth, she found it hard to dismiss them from her mind. How the other girls would have boasted of it, had they been chosen by such a one as Bob!—they who, for the most part, were satisfied with blotchy-faced, red-handed youths, whose lean wrists dangled from their retreating sleeves. But then, too, they would have known how to keep him. Oh, those ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... around Tyee Beach. She was quite certain he had indulged in a moonlight stroll on the seashore with a younger and prettier woman, so she resolved to follow him when next he fared forth and catch the traitor red-handed. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... I'm not locoed!" he burst out. "I went out to conciliate a red-handed little murderer, and damn me if I didn't meet a—a—well, I've not suitable name handy. I started my bluff and got along pretty well, but I forgot to mention that Mercedes was Thorne's wife. And what do ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... revolvers and resolved to waylay him this morning and force him to give me satisfaction, or if he refused—well, no matter! I tell you, there was danger in me! But, before retiring to bed at night, it is my habit to say my prayers; now the practice of prayer and the purpose of 'red-handed violence' cannot exist in the same person at the same time! I wouldn't sleep without praying, and I couldn't pray without giving up my thoughts of fatal vengeance upon Craven Le Noir. So at last I made up my mind to spare his life, ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... in the act of writing. The heavy tread of their coming feet always gave me ample warning so that I could get my notes into safe hiding. But one night they burst open the door suddenly and I was caught red-handed. On my knees was my pad at which I was writing feverishly. But the pad was inscribed with notes which I regarded as of an emergency character. Realising the object of their unexpected entry I clapped the pad on the table, thus covering up the prepared and detailed ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... alarm anybody? We know the plans as well as these scoundrels themselves. Why not follow them right into the castle, capture them red-handed, and then do the alarming? I'm in for saving the Princess of Graustark with our own hands and right under the noses of her vaunted guardsmen, as Michael says." Lorry was thrilled by the spirit of adventure. His hand gripped his friend's arm ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... common agreement on some plane. These iconoclasts, vociferous in condemnation, are often most empty handed, giving us nothing wiser or more advantageous wherewith to replace the conventions they discard. So it is difficult to say whether humanity is more in danger from the red-handed radicalism which destroys the precious fruit of long experience, or from the obstinate obstructionists who by the dead weight of their apathy or the positive pull-back of their antagonism delay the remedying of existing ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... this instance was his informant could not at that moment say—the facts were being carefully compiled, but the evidence was beyond dispute. This autocrat, who talked of principle and honor, had been caught red-handed in the very act against which he pretended to stand; and, of course, this instance was but one of many. Doctor Jekyll could take it upon himself to deliver platitudes upon moral rectitude, while Mr. Hyde gathered in the shekels on ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... it. The old man's sudden breaking out in this way turned every face towards him, and each kept his posture as if changed to stone. Our Celtic Bridget, or Biddy, is not a foolish fat scullion to burst out crying for a sentiment. She is of the serviceable, red-handed, broad-and-high- shouldered type; one of those imported female servants who are known in public by their amorphous style of person, their stoop forwards, and a headlong and as it were precipitous walk,—the waist plunging downwards into the rocking pelvis at every heavy footfall. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in a jungle, springs upon a man and overpowers him by the suddenness of the assault. The word so rendered may perhaps be represented by some such phrase as 'discovered'; or, if I may use a 'colloquialism,' if a man be caught 'red-handed.' That is the idea. And Paul does not use the weak word 'fault,' but a very much stronger one, which means stark staring sin. He is supposing a bad case of inconsistency, and is not palliating it at all. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... doubt about this last affair, anyhow," said he, as he took us into his office. "You might say the man was caught red-handed! All the same, Mr. Lindsey, he's in his rights to ask for a lawyer, and you can see ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... commands. Outside the city is a mound, where, dear To Ceres once, but now deserted, stands A temple, and an aged cypress near, For ages hallowed with religious fear, There meet we. Father, in thy charge remain Troy's gods; for me, red-handed with the smear Of blood, and fresh from slaughter, 'twere profane To touch them, ere the stream hath cleansed me ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... virtue and vice may be. She had never considered how narrow a space it is that very often divides the hero from the criminal, the patriot from the assassin, the gentleman from the ruffian, the Christian saint from the red-handed savage. Her heart was hot with wrath and her tongue ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... righteous and advantageous to you; that nevertheless, when you have come into court as the sworn representatives of the State, to sit in judgement upon the report of these proceedings, you should acquit the author of all the evil, when you have taken him red-handed in actions like these. {133} Who is there of all your fellow citizens—nay, who of all the Hellenes—that would not have good cause for complaint against you, when he saw that though you were enraged against Philip, who in making peace after war was merely purchasing the means ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... purpose. He thought his position one uncommonly difficult. As Maitland, he had on his hands a female thief, a hardened character, a common malefactor (strange that he got so little relish of the terms!), caught red-handed; as Maitland, his duty was to hand her over to the law, to be dealt with as—what she was. Yet, even while these considerations were urging themselves upon him, he knew his eyes appraised her with open admiration and interest. She ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... she might consider it to be, and she was not yet sure what she should think of it finally. So she had tried her best to dodge her companions until she had had time to simulate her usual appearance. But she had been caught by "Pussy" red-handed. To the mentor's repeated "Well?" she said nothing, a foolish little smile starting without her will around the corners of ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... red-handed at your horrid trade You wrought, to reason deaf, and to compassion. But now with gods and men your peace is made I beg you to be good and in ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... mistake—a great scouting mistake: he did too much; and the scout who does too much blunders just as surely as he who does too little. Had Chippy sculled quietly away with the ample information he had already gained, the thieves might have been taken red-handed. But he burned to put, as he thought, a finishing touch to his night's work. He wanted to see what was going on in the forepeak of the Three Spires, and he wanted to see the faces of the men; it was ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... all know you well enough, you old fox, and we'll catch you red-handed yet, and hang you. But we're not hunting after your kind to-day. Did you see anything of a fellow in scarlet jacket along here last ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... quality of the delayed dinner down to the things that the guests were likely to be saying in her absence. Then, young as she was, she took her resolution. After that, she would catch her father suddenly, and bring him back, red-handed. A man like Doctor Keltridge ought not to be reduced to the conventional dead level of his fellow townsmen; it would be a waste of rare material. Rather, as the phrase is, he should be featured. And Olive proceeded to feature him accordingly, to the solid ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... He's up against the dry laws and the game laws. Government enforcement agents, game protectors, State Constabulary, all keep an eye on Clinch. Harrod's trespass signs fence him in. He's like a rat in a trap. Yet Clinch makes money at law breaking and nobody can catch him red-handed. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... certain Americans do when they go to Paris—that the moral restraints of his native place no longer applied. With all his ability, he was not shrewd enough to realize that the Police Department was having him as well as the rest of us carefully shadowed. He was caught red-handed by a plain-clothes man doing what he had no business to do; and from that time on he dared not act save as those who held his secret permitted him to act. Thenceforth those officials who stood behind the Police Department had one man on the committee on whom they could count. I never ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... whom the nation really wanted. He had headed some one of the many small riots against Rome which were perpetually sputtering up and being trampled out by an armed heel. There had been bloodshed, in which he had himself taken part ('a murderer,' Acts iii. 14). And this coarse, red-handed desperado is the people's favourite, because he embodied their notions and aspirations, and had been bold enough to do what every man of them would have done if he had dared. He thought and felt, as they did, that freedom was to be won by the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... angered Gay far more than the original poaching had done. To be flouted in his own pasture on the subject of his own game by a handsome barbarian, whom he had caught red-handed in the act of stealing, would have appealed irresistibly to his sense of humour, if ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... far from pleasing to young Geoffrey. But Elaine showed him how no other way was to be found by which Sir Francis could be trapped red-handed and distant from help. While the knight was bending his brows down with trying to set his thoughts into some order that should work out a better device, a glare shone over the next ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... Market sits in judgment only on the small fry caught in the dragnet of the police. Tramps, vagrants, drunkards, brawlers, disturbers of the peace, speeding chauffeurs, licenseless peddlers, youths caught red-handed shooting craps or playing ball in the streets,—these are the men with whom the Night Court deals. But it is not the men ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... dislike for boys, caused by her unhappy experiences in Manchester, made her suspicious of all that species of humanity, seemed aware of what was going on, but she could not catch them red-handed. And knowing that she suspected them, the brothers made life miserable for her in a hundred ways. They hid her crutch in the most out-of-way places, adroitly misplaced her cooking utensils, or whatever article she was about to use, causing her many a ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... thoroughness, they will go over their final plans in detail to make sure that everything is understood. The darkness will let us slip up closer to the house, and we may be able to overhear what they say. Don't forget, too, that our main job is to catch the Hoffs red-handed." ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... nation, which is the source of its own organic institutions, should be charged with the perpetual custody of their integrity, and with the duty of bringing the form into harmony with the spirit, was made, by the singular co-operation of the purest Conservative intellect with red-handed revolution, of Niebuhr with Mazzini, to yield the idea of nationality, which, far more than the idea of liberty, has governed the movement of ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... says to stop? He's the chicken-killer. I got him red-handed." He held up one of the boy's ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... the distribution was just begun. It would be some time before his turn would come. Holmes knew perfectly well that, only for the fun of the thing, some of those teamsters and scouts would form a "queue," and, with unimpeachable gravity, march up to the window and inquire if there was anything for Red-Handed Bill, or Rip-Roaring Mike, or the Hon. G. Bullwhacker, of Laramie Plains. He wanted time to think a bit before he returned to the doctor's house, anyhow. He had drawn from Corporal Zook a detailed account of McLean's spirited and soldierly conduct in the fight; learned that it ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... and the arrogance of pride was very great as I pulled up by the tall cart. I had Cynthia red-handed, and wanted to gloat over the stammer and the crimson flush of the traitor. I assumed the attitude of the very terrible. Sharp and jarring and without premonition are the surprises of youth. This straight young woman turned, for a moment her grey eyes rested on the False Prophet and me, then a ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... indignation, and we are more than ever impressed with the belief that measures, the most rigorous, should be instituted, and that the government should put to one side any feelings of mawkish sentimentality, and mete out to these red-handed savages the ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... participator in; bear a hand, lend a hand; pull an oar, run in a race; mix oneself up with &c (meddle) 682. be in action; come into operation &c (power at work) 170. Adj. doing &c v.; acting; in action; in harness; on duty; in operation &c 170. Adv. in the act, in the midst of, in the thick of; red-handed, in flagrante delicto [Lat.]; while one's hand is in. Phr. action is eloquence [Coriolanus]; actions speak louder than words; actum aiunt ne agas [Terence]; awake, arise, or be forever fall'n [Paradise Lost]; dii pia facta vident [Lat.] [Ovid]; faire sans dire [Fr.]; fare fac [It]; fronte capillata ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... watched its reception at the hands of the press, and I think the shallow, flippant criticisms were almost as nauseous to me as they must have been to you. Your book has had a fierce struggle with these self- consecrated, red-handed, high-priests of the literary Yama; but its success is now established, and I bring you news of its advent in England, where it has been republished. You can well afford ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... mock care. "That ain't sayin' so much for him," he observed. But at once he began to evince real interest. "I maintain you can't tell anything from their faces," he answered seriously. "There's nothin' in it. The man's a crook, isn't he? Wasn't he caught red-handed?" ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... responsible by her diseases for one-fourth or more of the surgical operations upon innocent wives—operations made necessary by disease which their husbands bought of the prostitute, perhaps years before marriage—we cannot regard her and her criminal male partners as anything less than the red-handed slayers of good women. While the eye doctors attribute one-fourth of blindness, particularly of helpless babies, to the same source, we cannot quote except to condemn, this sophistry that makes the worse appear the better cause and garlands the woman whose pursuit ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... persons sick of the plague in the house of Medea, and that she, nevertheless, continued to receive visitors. It had long been decided that she must be taken in the act of sorcery, and warning had that day been given that she expected illustrious company in the evening. The watch were to find her red-handed, so to speak; the leech was to prove whether her house was indeed plague-stricken; and in either case the senate wished to have the sorceress safe in prison and at their mercy, though even Philippus had not been taken into ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... still moved, and leaped up the garden walk. The front rooms of the house were empty, but from his bedroom he heard, raised in excited tones, the voice of Griswold. The audacity of the man was so surprising, and his own delight at catching him red-handed so satisfying, that no longer was Cochran angry. The Lord had delivered his enemy into his hands! And, as he advanced toward his bedroom, not only was he calm, but, at the thought of his revenge, distinctly jubilant. In the passageway a frightened maid servant, who, at his unexpected arrival, ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... that you have chosen the wrong person. And it's no excuse for you her being a little—a little—not so bright as some girls, and not so good-looking. Oh, it's enough to make any girl loathe her own looks! You mustn't suppose you can come here red-handed—yes, it's the same as a murder, and any true girl would say so—and tell me you care for me. No, Walter Ashley, I haven't fallen so low as that, though I have the disgrace of your acquaintance. And I hope—I ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... "Richard, called the red-handed Wardour, married Sybil Knockwinnock, the heiress of the Saxon family, and by that alliance," said Sir Arthur, "brought the castle and estate into the name of Wardour, in the year of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the little office where Mary Carstairs waited, fresh from more cheap plotting in which she was the innocent central figure; and faced her, uncomfortable, ill at ease, disquieted inwardly as a conspirator taken red-handed. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to stand on guard against Aegisthus while vengeance is being done on Clytaemnestra.—Cries from within; Electra and Chorus perceive that the deed is done.—Enter Orestes and Pylades from the Palace red-handed; they are about to triumph when Electra thrusts them back, for Aegisthus is at hand.—Enter Aegisthus enquiring for the strangers ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... say this? but that was long ago - Months. Now I know not—yet I think I know - Whether I fear or fear not it. Hard by Men fight even now—they strike and kill and die Red-handed; nay, we hear the roar and see The lightning of the battle: can it be That what no soul of all these brave men fears Should sound so fearful save in foolish ears? But all this while I know not where it lay, ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... signals exchanged, and then the suspected craft disappeared for weeks. The men who guarded the coast knew these buccaneers had emissaries, and could have laid hands on them, but preferred to catch them red-handed. ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... we rested. Troops having been sniped at by natives, a party from the Squadron was detailed to make an example of two offenders who had been caught "red-handed". They were taken back to their village, and after their crime had been publicly announced by an interpreter to the chief of the tribe and the inhabitants, they were shot by the firing party. At 18.00 the Brigade moved off through the village along the main Damascus Road. About nine miles ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... make room for a white is not a heroic figure. It had been done before, but it would not hand down well in the traditions of the settling of this great country. Trespass of law and order, with their swift, red-handed reckoning, were but moves of the great game of colonization. But to shove out a brown woman for a white was a mean move. Few stopped at the Rodneys' ranch, though it marked the first break in the journey from town to the gold-mining country. Rodney had fallen from his estate as a pioneer; ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... be found, a fine of 46 marks (L30 13s. 4d.) was to be paid into the Treasury by the township and hundred. The Pipe Rolls contain many instances of payments for murders of which the doers were not taken red-handed, the fines varying in amount. In 14 Henry II. the Sheriff of Devon accounted for 100s. for one murder in Wonford Hundred, 10 marks for several murders in Axminster Hundred, and 20s. for a murder in North Tawton Hundred. Another sum of 20s. was remitted ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... Laird on the Lord: "So, red-handed I catch thee? Death-doomed by our Law of the Border! We've a gallows outside and a chiel to dispatch thee: Who ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... rapidly down the pier how this ship of pirates had been captured, red-handed, her own captain still on board,—the good ship Alarm having seen a redness in the sky, and heard some firing in the night before; and how Captain How had put it to his crew, Would they fight or not? And they ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... read of four of our young labourers accused of "card-playing." The game was "Banker," the policeman told the magistrates—as if gentlemen were likely to know what that meant!—and he had caught the fellows red-handed, in some as yet unfenced nook of the heath. That was how they were in fault. They should not have been playing where they could be seen, in the open air; they should have taken their objectionable game out of sight, into some private house, as the middle-classes do—and as, I suppose, ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... whose easy complaisance caught a monarch's smile and earned an infamous title. Rapine, murder, lust, oppression, high-handed bullying, servile slavishness in every vile abandonment, have bred up delicate, dreamy aristocrats. Their ancestors, by the two strains, were either red-handed marauders, or easy Delilahs." ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... agents made merry. Some of these droll fellows jested. At Mazas the under-jailors jeered at Thiers, Nadaud reprimanded them severely. The Sieur Hubaut (the younger) awoke General Bedeau. "General, you are a prisoner."—"My person is inviolable."—"Unless you are caught red-handed, in the very act."—"Well," said Bedeau, "I am caught in the act, the heinous act of being asleep." They took him by the collar and ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... I was caught red-handed. Now the right and the wrong of this affair with Professor Haskell I shall not discuss. It was purely a private matter. The point is, that in a surge of anger, obsessed by that catastrophic red wrath that has ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... something was in the wind!" murmured Nat to himself. "I must find out just where they are going, and what they are going to do,—and then I'll let Doctor Clay know all about it. Maybe if Porter and his crowd are caught red-handed they'll be put in disgrace, and then they won't be able to play that ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... Then we'll get along. We'll proceed until we get close to the old mansion, and then some of us will go down to the lake shore, and the rest of us will surround the house. We'll catch the villains red-handed, and I hope we bag ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... there at once!" cried Benassis, and he made straight for the little wood, urging his horse at a furious speed across the ditches and fields, as if he were riding a steeplechase, in his anxiety to catch the sportsman red-handed. ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... fashion possible. A big room had been turned into a projection chamber, and films were being run off over and over. The films, taken by hidden cameras watching the computer-secretaries, had caught two technicians red-handed punching errors into the machines. Boyd had leaped on this evidence, and he and his crew were showing the movies to the technicians and questioning them under bright lights in an effort ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the description of the ritual murder ceremony in a "secret" Hebrew work. When the book was produced and the incriminated passage translated, it was found that it referred to the Jewish rite of slaughtering animals. The apostate, thus caught red-handed, confessed that he had turned informer in the hope of making money, and was by imperial command sent into the army. The confidence of St. Petersburg in the activity of the Velizh Commission of Inquiry ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... red-handed. Whatever excuses might be put forward, on behalf of his unfortunate dupes, that the Government had refused to heed their just demands, it is certain that Riel himself could plead no such excuses, ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... uplifted time and again. It was the year of a great Indian war. The blood of hundreds of our soldiery had been shed, without protest from these of Puritan stock, but they shuddered at thought of reprisals. Aunt Agnes coming to Cushing! Aunt Agnes to meet the colonel and his "red-handed horde ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... said grimly, "are outlaws, red-handed robbers. They have broken the law of God and man. They deserve ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... to go on deck, I stole cautiously up the companion-stairs, expecting to catch Van Luck red-handed in the act of playing the spy upon us, but when I reached the skylight I could see no sign of him. From where I stood, however, I was able to observe the captain counting the pearls, and I determined to ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... before a member of Presbytery—who had reduced his congregation to an irreducible minimum by the woodenness of his preaching—inquires whether the speech of "our esteemed brother is not ultra vires" or something else as awful. MacWheep at once sits down with the air of one taken red-handed in arson, and the court debates the point till every authority has taken his fill, when the clerk submits to the Moderator, with a fine blend of deference and infallibility, that Mr. MacWheep is perfectly within his rights; and then, as that estimable ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... two forces at war. The German machine was working quietly along, now and then blowing up a factory and now and then being caught red-handed. It had already suffered a severe loss, for Captain von Papen, the military attache, had been discovered in his work by the British and had been deported. When he reached Germany, by the way, he was given the Order of the Red Eagle by the ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... no surprise that they were traversing the river trail. He even thought he knew how he could head his man off by a short cut. But this would not serve his purpose. He wanted to get him red-handed, and to leave him now would be to give him a chance that he was confident would be taken advantage of at once. The river trail led to the ranch. And the only branches anywhere along its route were those running north and south at ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... crime which had been committed; for murdered she had been, of that there was no doubt. Branded as a murderess I was borne off to prison. Many thought me guilty. It was cruelly said that I was found red-handed by the side of my victim. But even in prison I sought support, and obtained it whence alone it was to be afforded. As King David, I could say, 'I have washed my hands in innocency. I cried unto the Lord and He heard me.' Oh, my young friends, keep innocency. Do what is right in the sight of ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... money and a steamship ticket made out in a fictitious name, it was prima-facie evidence that he had done the job and had the balance somewhere. What would his denials, his protestations of innocence count for? He was an ex-convict, a hardened criminal caught red-handed with a portion of the proceeds of robbery—he had succeeded in hiding the remainder of it too ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... being killed just as Estada was. He has no heart in this job, and would accept any chance to square himself with those cut-throats below. I'll have trouble with him before we are done, but prefer to catch the man red-handed." ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... to deal with extremes. He who, sinning and laden with the burden of human guilt, has once fallen a victim to the Eumenides, cannot, as a figure in a drama, go off on pleasure trips, nor can he go about the usual business of daily life. Fate seizes him red-handed, causes him to see blood in every glass of champagne and to read his warrant of arrest on every chance scrap of paper. And the Comic Muse is even less indulgent. When Aristophanes would mock the creations of Euripides, which are meant to move the public ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... like, so I watched them until I was about sure of their next dirty trick. It happened to be a thieving one on the Zavala ranche, so I let Zavala know, and then rode on to tell Granger he'd better send a few boys to keep them red-handed Comanche from ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... outweighs with God all his former good deeds. It is a defiance of the Deity, a greater insult than all his previous life was a service and homage. It is as though a loyal regiment had mutinied, or a hitherto decent and orderly citizen were taken red-handed in murder. If however God deigns to draw the offender to repentance, and to pardon him, the balance is restored. Thus everything finally depends on man being free from guilt of grievous transgression at the instant of death, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... smugglers soon collected, and breaking into the castle, rescued the imprisoned outlaws, and at the same time carried off some of the wounded who were lodged in the town. One man was too much hurt to be moved, so he was left behind, and eventually sent to London, tried, and—having been captured red-handed—was hanged. This happened only at the end ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... into the city," Trent informed his ensigns. "Twenty more 'Long Island' men will reach us within three minutes. We are to silence snipers, and kill them if we catch them red-handed in firing on our forces. Above all, we are directed to be on the alert for any Americans or other foreigners who may be in need of help. We are likely to have a ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... what she had done. Chauvelin had told her nothing, it was true; but she remembered how sarcastic and evil he looked when she took final leave of him after the ball. Had he discovered something then? Had he already laid his plans for catching the daring plotter, red-handed, in France, and sending him to the ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Ganymede for refining. Wallace happened to be dead-heading on the freighter. When they got to Ganymede, and Coxine saw all the money lying around at the Credit Exchange to pay off the prospectors, he convinced Wallace to go in with him and they robbed the Exchange. Coxine was caught red-handed, but Wallace got away. In fact, the Solar Guard didn't know Wallace had anything to do with it. So Coxine was taken back to the prison asteroid, and Wallace has been driftin' ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... muttered Dick. "At all events, I'll look into this game for all it's worth. What if we are about to catch the thief red-handed?" ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... told the truth; and the reports of examination and cross-examination, if interminable, even if intolerable are at least reliable. The true reason, of course, was the coincidence of persons. The victim was a popular actress; the accused was a popular actor; and the accused had been caught red-handed, as it were, by the most popular soldier of the patriotic season. In those extraordinary circumstances the Press was paralysed into probity and accuracy; and the rest of this somewhat singular business can practically be recorded from ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... I was a red-handed outlaw, sleeping on the straw of a dungeon. To-day I wake in a royal bed and my varlets call me monseigneur. There are but three ways of explaining this singular situation. Either I am drunk or I am mad or I am dreaming. If I am drunk, I shall never distinguish Bordeaux Wine from Burgundy—a melancholy ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... man is presumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty. In England, if a murderer is caught red-handed over his victim, he is held guiltless until the judge sentences him. In France we make no such foolish assumption, and although I admit that innocent men have sometimes been punished, my experience enables me to state very emphatically that this happens not ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... inevitable disaster; and it was no less a personage than Oliver Cromwell who overcame the hitherto invincible Allen. A handful of the gang attacked Oliver on his way from Huntingdon, but the marauders were outmatched, and the most of them were forced to surrender. Allen, taken red-handed, swung at Tyburn; Hind, with his better mount and defter horsemanship, rode ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... please God, there will be new histories written, and they will tell the story of the years from the standpoint of the people, and the hero will not be any red-handed assassin who goes through peaceful country places leaving behind him dead men looking sightlessly up to the sky. The hero will be the man or woman who knows and loves and serves. In the new histories ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... building. After the fighting was over, the Americans felt such regret for even this necessary bit of destruction that they rebuilt what their shells had damaged. Their only retaliatory action was to shoot snipers when they were caught red-handed. ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... precocious sagacity for keeping out of trouble. Quiet in manner, he was fertile in devising mischief, and easily persuaded his older brother, who was always looking for something to do, to execute his plans. It was usually Claude who was caught red-handed. Sitting mild and contemplative on his quilt on the floor, Ralph would whisper to Claude that it might be amusing to climb up and take the clock from the shelf, or to operate the sewing-machine. When they ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... the red-handed murderer!" broke out the woman, fiercely. "He is probably a thief; he killed my poor husband, and then sat down like a cold-blooded villain that he is, ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... being caught red-handed with the pendant in her possession, and she won't give in and acknowledge her wrongdoing," said ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... I had another queer bout with some thieves. They were not after the land this time, but they planned to get at the ore and carry off as much of the gold as they could lay hands on. Our old friend, Rattlesnake Mike, caught them red-handed, and now they are serving a term ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... talking about. I was there, you see, and caught the little limb of Satan red-handed, so to speak—though, of course, she doesn't know it." Then, as Eliot remained stonily silent, he proceeded loquaciously: "It was last June or thereabouts. I was stopping a night or two at the Hotel de Loup, up in ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... pause, then Alfred drew in his breath and bore down upon Jimmy with fresh vehemence. "The only time I get even a semblance of truth out of Zoie," he cried, "is when I catch her red-handed." Again he pounded the table and again Jimmy winced. "And even then," he continued, "she colours it so with her affected innocence and her plea about just wishing to be a 'good fellow,' that she almost makes me doubt ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... night betakes himself to Rome. He and his accomplices enter the house of Pietro Comparini and his wife, and, not content with slaying them, also murders Pompilia. But they are discovered, and Guido is caught red-handed. Pompilia's evidence alone is damnatory, for she was not slain outright, and lingers long enough to tell her story. Franceschini is not foiled yet, however. His plea is that he simply avenged the wrong done to him by ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... crushing or drowning them like rats. At another point, when baffled in their efforts to overturn a sleeping-car in front of a patrol engine, and dispersed by a dozen well-aimed shots, the rioters impanelled their coroner's jury, and declared the red-handed participants innocent spectators and the officer and his men murderers. At a third, when a great railway centre was found in the hands of the strikers and the troops were ordered to clear the platform, one surly specimen not only refused ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... tried to get up as high as his brothers, but the thin boughs broke beneath him, so he had to be content with staying in the lower part of the tree on the thicker boughs; so there he sat, hugging the millstone in his arms. Presently some robbers came along that way, red-handed from their work, and they too prepared to pass the night under the tree. So they cut them down firewood, and made them a roaring fire beneath a huge cauldron, and in this cauldron they began to boil their supper. They boiled and boiled till their mess of pottage was ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... night passed rapidly. I was anxious about the ascent, for gusts of ominous sound swept through the pines at intervals. Then wild animals howled, and "Ring" was perturbed in spirit about them. Then it was strange to see the notorious desperado, a red-handed man, sleeping as quietly as innocence sleeps. But, above all, it was exciting to lie there, with no better shelter than a bower of pines, on a mountain 11,000 feet high, in the very heart of the ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... shoot him red-handed if they catch him," I answered confidently. "A white man who sides with the blacks in ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... poor girl, to leave a happy home with her heart full of innocent mirth, only to encounter murder lurking red-handed at the very threshold! ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... seeing how the wind lay, swore before heaven that he saw me shoot the deer, and took me red-handed, with my bow in my hand. And when one sheep leads the way, the others follow. They all swore it was I; while some added that my comrade lay asleep under a tree, and knew nothing of the matter ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... him!" gasped an astonished voice. "Well, of all effrontery! Got him, you miserable thief? The police are coming and they'll get you, and I can identify you, if they don't succeed in nabbing you red-handed." ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... in and around New Orleans. In no other civilized country in the world, nay, more, in no land of barbarians would it be possible to duplicate the scenes of brutality that are reported from New Orleans. In the heat of blind fury one might conceive how a mad mob might beat and kill a man taken red-handed in a brutal murder. But it is almost past belief to read that civilized white people, men who boast of their chivalry and blue blood, actually had fun in beating, chasing and shooting men who had no possible connection with ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... Cherub's, only two came within my personal knowledge. Of these two cases, one I and nearly the whole division considered savage and unjustifiable, which was also the official view. It was the act of a very young subaltern, mistakenly interpreting an order. In the other case an Arab was caught red-handed, lurking in a ditch on our line of march, with one of their loaded knobkerries for any straggler. I do not know what happened, but have no ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... just deserts. Even now this rule holds effect in the cattle lands. Only two years ago a prominent rancher in this country—the Sonoita Range—shot and killed a Mexican who with a partner had been caught red-handed in the act ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... by which fugitive slaves were stealthily passed on to Canada, became famous. Methodist professors riotously attempted to rescue an arrested fugitive at Oberlin. A Southern grand jury threw out the bill of indictment against a slave-trading crew caught red-handed. In California Democrats belonging to what was nicknamed "the chivalry" forced upon Senator Broderick, a literally democratic Irishman and the bravest of the Democrats who stood out for fair treatment to Kansas, a duel in which he might fairly be said to have been murdered. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... carried by the police. "Wide open" gambling and debauchery made the city pleasing to "trade," but burglaries and holdups did not. One night it chanced that while Jack Duane was drilling a safe in a clothing store he was caught red-handed by the night watchman, and turned over to a policeman, who chanced to know him well, and who took the responsibility of letting him make his escape. Such a howl from the newspapers followed this that Duane was slated for sacrifice, and barely got out of town in time. And just at ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... did come to the surface it was with the certain feeling that the fatal searchlight had been played upon the scene two minutes too early, and just in time to prevent the capture red-handed of a very questionable character, undoubtedly carrying out some plot for ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... called Tom to his chum, as the latter gave him this information. "The Firefly is tuned up for a hundred miles an hour! We'll be there in ten minutes! We must catch him red-handed, if possible!" ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... led, in the hope of finding the rendezvous of the gang. Then he would ride with whip and spur to the ranch, Melton would gather his men together, and they would swoop down on the outlaws' camp and catch them red-handed ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... still further, paralyzed at the sight, at the words, at the awful thought that a murderer, red-handed, stood before them. ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... number of touches as telling and as striking as this one is practically numberless. They also show a far stronger and keener faculty of poetic if not of dramatic imagination. The casual encounter of little Sanders with the yet red-handed murderer of his father is not comparable for depth and subtlety of effect with the scene in which Arden's friend Franklin, riding with him to Raynham Down, breaks off his "pretty tale" of a perjured wife, overpowered by a "fighting at his heart," at the moment when they come close upon the ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... capacity," said Mr. Quilty, looking him sternly in the eye, "I hope th' dirty blagyards is caught red-handed and soaked hard for th' shameless and di'bolical atrocity they have perpetuated. For such abandoned miscreants hangin' is too dom ladylike a punishment. I want yez to understand me official sintimints in me official capacity clearly. Yez may quote me exact ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... Scribe, and look at the Pharisee—religious men in their way, wise men in their way, decent and respectable men in their way; and look at that poor thief that had been caught in the wilderness amongst the caves and dens, and had been brought red-handed with blood upon his sword, and guilt in his heart, and nailed up there in the short and summary process of a Roman jurisprudence;—and think that Scribe, and Pharisee, and Priest, saw nothing in Christ; and that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... too well populated about here to suit me," replied Banborough. "But the police haven't been idle since we started, and our flight has probably been telegraphed all over the countryside. Perhaps we'd better run the risk, for if we're caught red-handed with the Black Maria we'll find some difficulty in ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... His business had been done for him, and he had escaped the guilt of it. His second, that here lay a chance of fair profit. Godfrey was a great man, and Bedloe and Carstairs were the seediest of rogues. He might make favor for himself with the Government if he had them caught red-handed. It would help his status in Aldersgate Street.... But he must act at once or the murderers would be gone. He tiptoed back along the passage, tumbled down the crazy steps, and ran up the steep entry to where he saw a glimmer of light from ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... a master begs men to own up, it means that he's up the spout. It's much more fun catching a fellow red-handed. And, after all, you two are the last people ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... caught me red-handed in my careless, sauntering pursuit of her, and then, whether by intent or from indifference, she apparently deigned me no more notice. But, quick to feel a difference in her, I marked that from that moment her gaiety gradually merged into ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... that deed, and his blood may have been cold enough as he watched the great robber coursing the poets as a wild dog rages in a flock. And when his turn came, when they were all dead, and the grim, red-handed man trod at him, Fionn may have shivered, but he would have shown his teeth and laid roundly on the monster with his hands. Perhaps he did that, and perhaps for that ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... something under that sacking to look like the dynamite," said Jack. "If they get to it at all they will be in a terrible hurry, certainly, and they won't stop to look to see if it's the right stuff. Then, if we are watching them we can catch them red-handed, and it will be just the ones that are making all the trouble that will be caught. Big Ed Willis and his gang are perfectly willing to sneak up in the night and set some dynamite to blow up innocent people, but they'll leave others to ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... manufactures. His Fontainebleau decree of October 18th, 1810, ordered that all such goods should be seized and publicly burnt; and five weeks later special tribunals were instituted for enforcing these ukases and for trying all persons, whether smugglers caught red-handed or shopkeepers who inadvertently offered for sale the cottons of Lancashire or the silks ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... factories. I met men incoherent with indignation at the brutality of prize-fighting, and who, at the same time, were parties to the adulteration of food that killed each year more babies than even red-handed Herod had killed. ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... even when you were dying. That was what they did with your father, wasn't it, Carl? Brave Peter Golden, who had fought Rinehart so hard, who had begged and pleaded for universal rejuvenation, waited and watched and finally caught Rinehart red-handed, to prove that he was corrupting the law and expose him. Simple, honest Peter Golden, applying so naively for his rightful place on the list, when his cancer was diagnosed. Peter Golden had been all but dead when he had finally ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... "We'd have caught him red-handed," said Crosby, "if we'd been five minutes sooner. Lord!" he gasped. "It makes me cold to think of it. The men would have shot him off his horse. But what a story for those women! I hope I'll be there when they tell it. If Ranson can keep his face ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... remaining four conveyed Pierre to the little wood, while the robbers, hearing no signal, did not venture to stir. According to agreement, Pierre Buttel was tried by the archers, who promptly transformed themselves into a court of justice, and as he had been taken red-handed, and did not condescend to defend himself, the trial was not a long affair. He was unanimously sentenced to be hung, and the execution was then and there carried out, at the request of the criminal himself, who wanted the game to be properly ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that my Lord the Governor had gone to Fifanti's house. The boy had never waited to see the Legate come forth again; but had obeyed his instructions to the letter, and it was Gambara whom Fifanti came to take red-handed and to kill as he had the right ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... woman you are tryin' to marry," said the clerk, quite firmly. "Sech a thing might be done to an army of soldiers or a red-handed mob at a lynchin'-bee, but not to a gal that makes you feel like you are sinking down in a mire whenever she looks you in the eyes. No, Alf, not to a gal as purty and sweet as a bunch of roses, and that knows it, and is in the habit o' being told of it as ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... I ordered you to come with me; because if you hadn't I would have killed you back there in the shack, you red-handed murderer. Now listen, Hughes. I know what you are—a cattle thief. You and Le Fevre belong to the same outfit, only he was the smarter of the two. I have spared your life for a purpose, and if you fail me now I 'll shoot you down as I would a dog. Don't try to threaten me, ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... this kind without incurring suspicion is sufficiently clever to answer any direct questioning satisfactorily. No. If Tochatti is the culprit—mind you I only say if—she must be caught with guile, made to commit herself somehow, or be taken red-handed in the act——" He broke off suddenly; and the other two ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes |
