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More "Detective" Quotes from Famous Books



... seemed to forget him, and he was for months left unnoticed to the chance kindness of the menials until some case similar to his own happening to evoke discussion in the press, there would be a general inquiry for him. The porter, Mr. Smirke, had succeeded, by means of a detective, in discovering the boy's name, but his parents were ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... weight in our mind which they have not in reality. For this reason a man, who by his profession is concerned with any particular aspect of life, is apt to magnify its proportions; in laying undue stress upon facts he loses his hold upon truth. A detective may have the opportunity of studying crimes in detail, but he loses his sense of their relative places in the whole social economy. When science collects facts to illustrate the struggle for existence that is going on in the kingdom of life, it raises ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore

... 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

... figured in these narratives, the Wicked Witch, the Cruel King, the Handsome Prince; there were other characters, too, such as the Wise Guy, the Farmer's Son, the Boob Detective, the Tough Mary Ann and ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... I answered, "especially as regards the dry bread; but that of itself suggests a theory, which, as the detective says in the story, 'I will not divulge just yet;' only don't worry, Lisbeth, ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... bungalow in the outskirts of Sweetwater beach, which lay uphill from the old house in which McAllen and Fredericks lived, and provided a good view of the residence and its street entry. He didn't go near the place himself. Operatives of a Los Angeles detective agency went on constant watch in the bungalow, with orders to photograph the two old men in the other house and any visitors at every appearance, and to record the exact times the pictures were taken. At the end of each day the photographs ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz

... nothing about the excellent training, he could only hint at James Holden's mental proficiency which was backed up by the boy's school record. As it was, Paul Brennan's most frightful nightmare was one where young James was spotted by some eagle-eyed detective and then in desperation—anything being better than an enforced return to Paul Brennan—James Holden pulled out all the stops and showed everybody precisely how well educated ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... of detective tales Mr. Fletcher is entitled to a seat among the elect. His numerous followers will find his latest book fully as absorbing as anything from his pen that has previously ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher

... much require a detective police force nor medical men as we do. If thefts were committed, or persons became sick, cunning men or uncanny women were sent for. As rule, the offences or diseases were traced to witches or other missionaries of Satan. A suspected person received neither justice nor mercy at the ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... her head and neck out of the car window, and looked sharply at the bystanders. While engaged in this detective service, the signal was given, and the cars started, when Miss Hobbs, thinking it was needless to keep up a longer lookout, reentered, and was surprised to find a nice-looking young man by her side. He wore a heavy yellow watchguard, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... how to find those fellows," he replied. "I listened-in to the best line of detective work on that subject you ever heard of. Sherlock Holmes isn't ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield

... as in The House of Usher, while The Gold Beetle or Golden Bug is one of the first examples of the cryptogram story; and in The Purloined Letters, The Mystery of Marie Roget, and The Murders in the Rue Morgue he is the pioneer of the modern detective story. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... visiting-cards. He would never remember to have his umbrella re-covered, or to ask the price of anything before he bought it. Why, he wouldn't even know what novels to read. I always had to choose the kind he liked, with a murder or a forgery and a successful detective." ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... let me say 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

... 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 ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... him—dead sweetheart, passed out thirty years ago up-state. Fine job with good little details—whoever got 'em must 'a' talked with somebody that was right close to her—an old aunt, I'm thinking. But no medium made them notes. Looks like a private detective's work. Not a bit of professional talk. The notes on ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin

... ruby at a particular masque. All this happened (you may not be astonished to hear) in San Francisco, amongst that luxurious, idle, over-moneyed society whose manners Mrs. ATHERTON knows and describes so well. Price had already found out, with the assistance of a not too brilliant detective, that his wife's mother derived her income from a gambling saloon; the remaining problem was how to link up this knowledge with the odd behaviour of Mrs. Price. Perhaps you see it already. She had been—No, I said I wouldn't, and I won't. Of course the discovery ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various

... short, was a detective, well soaked in the plenteous literature of his craft and living in the dream that criminals would one day shudder at the bare mention of ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... dim light of the car, he felt pretty sure they were a couple of "birds" he had been looking for for quite a while. If that was so he must reward Billy somehow. That boy was a little wonder. He would make a detective some day. It wouldn't be a bad idea to take him on in a quiet sort of way and train him. He might be a great help. He mustn't forget this night's work. And what was that the kid had said about a secret ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... fifteen pounds in gold. 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 ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade

... them poor Indians, an' if there's any fightin' we'll sho' help to rid this country of them ornary, low-down, murderin', cut-throats. It's a great head you've got for young shoulders, Charley. You've reasoned it out like a detective and made your ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... far from the truth as at the beginning; he might have formed schemes, perfect in every detail, only to find, on investigation, that they were wrong in every particular. The elaborate structures which the detective rears are often builded on sand, and tumble to fragments ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... all right," his companion assured him encouragingly. "For a week or ten days you've nothing more to do than a little ordinary detective business. If I decide to carry out a scheme which is forming in my mind, it will be a more serious affair. Time enough for that, though. I should just like to ask you this. Can you find a few bullies of the Tom Grogan class, ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... who insist on hurrying up the millennium, and others of this class, with here and there a clergyman, less frequently a lawyer, very rarely a physician, and almost never a horse-jockey or a member of the detective police.—I do not say that Phrenology was ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... detective story of the season and, therefore, one which no lover of detective fiction should ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher

... Luck managed to accomplish a good deal, which was one of the reasons why he was manager and director of the Flying U Feature Films. Just for example, he went to a friend who was also something of a detective, and put him on the job of find Annie-Many-Ponies—a bigger task than it looked to Luck, as we have occasion to know. He sent some of the boys back to the ranch in a machine, and told them just what to bring back with them in ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower

... a priest and a bit of sailor, Bit of a doctor and bit of a tailor, Bit of a lawyer, and bit of detective, Bit of a judge, for his work is corrective; Cheering the living and soothing the dying, Risking all things, even dare-devil flying; True to his paper and true to his clan— Just look him over, the ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest

... suspicion-arouser compared with anybody willingly coughing up a bunch of money once they've got their claws on it—and a yellow journal, let alone an army corps of them, on the scent of a possible sensation has all the detective bureaus in the country pinned to the ropes—they'd have us uncovered quicker than I like to think ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... not help thinking what an excellent detective the young teacher would have made; but she was not convinced by her arguments, all the same. 'I think you are mistaken; I sincerely hope so, and I shall be obliged if you will not mention the matter to any one,' was all she said, and she ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin

... That's as he was when I first saw him again. Just making first attempts in the stick and limp stage, poor beggar. That was back in February. Early in February. Mark the date, as they say in the detective stories. I can't remember what the date was, but never you mind. You just mark it. Early in February, two months ago. There was good old me down in Tidborough on business—good old me doing the heavy London solicitor in a provincial town—they always ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... staggered ashore. Having that sword was as much as proclaiming that I had infernal machines about me somewhere, and even my pockets were not sacred. Having turned out all my insides at sea, I had to turn out my exterior pockets and portmanteau now. It was monstrous. That was not all. I am sure a detective followed me to town. When I got into a hansom at Charing Cross, the sword would go nowhere except between my knees, with the blade shooting up between the reins of the driver, high above the top of the conveyance. I caused great ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... to her that he suspected something; she was not sure; but his conversation was a little peculiar, though not in the least sinister. Indeed she was able to make out that he had more the air of an accomplice than of a prosecutor or a detective. Nevertheless, she was convinced that far, far the best course for her to pursue, during the next few days, would be one of steadfast reserve. And such a course was congenial to her mood, which was subdued, not to say apprehensive; though she was sure her recent ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... we were well assured, many a brain was busy, and many an eye set to discover our retreat. By the side of the public thoroughfares, on great bridges, and frequented cross-roads, detective vigilance kept sleepless watch, and fancied in every approaching form, the doomed victims, who were at once to satisfy the angry gallows and its own excited avarice. Equally well assured were we that the most inventive and hazardous scrutiny would ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... preferring 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 be my ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... risk of shocking the reader, it has been decided that the real permanent detective stories of the world were ill represented without Dostoyevsky's terrible tale of what might be called "self- detection." If to sensitive readers the story seems so real as to be hideous, it is well to recall ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... she did it for love of excitement: there was always a risk of being caught, and nothing else ever amused her half so much. Another declared she did it because she could not afford to employ a private detective, and she wanted to have evidence always ready in case it should suit her to part from her husband at any time. Another said she loved her husband, and it hurt her less to know than to suspect. But I could not really believe that Evadne would do such a ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... how a valuable solid silver service was stolen from the Misses Perkinpine, two very old and simple minded ladies. Fred Sheldon, the hero of this story, undertakes to discover the thieves and have them arrested. After much time spent in detective work, he succeeds in discovering the silver plate and winning the reward. The story is told in Mr. Ellis' most fascinating style. Every boy will be glad to read ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... after hearing this report from his private detective, and then got into his chaise, and turned Caustic's head in the direction of the Dudley mansion. He had been suspicious of Dick from the first. He did not like his mixed blood, not his looks, nor his ways. He had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... said Schrotter in his turn, "to ask the witness Patke if for the last few weeks he has not been a candidate for a post as detective on the political police staff?" Schrotter too had made a variety of inquiries since last Sunday, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... discomfort from the foundation to the chimney-tops; everywhere a pinching, narrow habit, scanty meals, and an air of sluttishness and dirt. In the first room there is a birth, in another a death, in a third a sordid drinking-bout, and the detective and the Bible-reader cross upon the stairs. High words are audible from dwelling to dwelling, and children have a strange experience from the first; only a robust soul, you would think, could grow ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... foolish myrmidons, who flattered themselves that they were spying on Raffles. The imbeciles were at it still! The one hanging about Burlington Gardens looked unutterably bored, but with his blots of whisker and his grimy jowl, as flagrant a detective officer as ever I saw, even if he had not so considerately dressed the part. The other bruiser was an equally distinctive type, with a formidable fighting face and a chest like a barrel; but in Piccadilly he seemed to me less occupied in taking ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... striking was the success attending his effort that, before many months had passed by, magistrates in the city of Melbourne were actually giving delinquents the option of being sent to prison or to our Prison-Gate Home, and the Government placed the former Detective Police Building at our ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... Flaxman. It was my seeing him enter the room alone where the coins were, the night of the party, that first led to the idea that he might have taken them. Then, as you see, certain dealers' shops were watched by a private detective. Maurice appeared—sold the Hermes coin—was traced to his lodgings and identified. So far the thing has not gone beyond private inquiry; for the dealer will do what Flaxman wants him to do. But Maurice still has the more famous of the two coins; and if he attempts ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... that he would be terribly late in getting home, but there was no help for it. If he refused this undertaking, or failed to carry it out successfully, Polly would cast him off. The gloom of a desperate mood fell upon him. He had the feeling of a detective or of a criminal, he knew not which; the mystery of the affair ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing

... the Swedish masseur, however, brought him around to the mood for another adventure. Sending for the racing car he began the round-up of details. There was, first of all, Captain Cronin to be visited in Bellevue. Here he was agreeably surprised to find the detective chief recuperating with the abettance of his rugged Celtic physique. The nurse told Shirley that another day's treatment would allow the Captain to return to his own home: Shirley knew this meant the executive office of the Holland ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... seaman, who was glad enough to escape without detention. During the next fortnight several letters were stopped in this way, carried by different sailors, and the whole correspondence went straight to the Cardinal. It was not often that he troubled himself to play the detective in person, but when he did so, he was not easily baffled. And now he observed that about a week after the interception of the first letter the small drafts which used to come so frequently to Del Ferice's address from Florence suddenly ceased, proving beyond a doubt that each letter ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... vow, so help me Heaven!—I have got to clear my girl; yes, when all is said and done, she is my girl. I'll set this thing right before a week is out. Now let me put on my considering cap—let me try to think of this matter as if I were a detective. By the way, there's that friend of mine, Sampson, who is in the detective force; I've a good mind to run round to him and ask his advice. There's treachery somewhere, and he might give ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... squinting so as to leave everything in doubt about his sentiments except that they were not of a forcible character. When Mary Garth entered the kitchen and Mr. Jonah Featherstone began to follow her with his cold detective eyes, young Cranch turning his head in the same direction seemed to insist on it that she should remark how he was squinting, as if he did it with design, like the gypsies when Borrow read the New Testament ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... strangely erect; they were pale, and seemed to wait for something. All at once the door opened noiselessly. Many men entered, making a loud noise with their boots—first a police official, then another, then a detective in gold-rimmed spectacles, a house-porter, another house-porter, a muzhik, a policeman, another muzhik, another house-porter. More and more came; they filled the room, and still they came—huge, moody, silent fellows. Elisaveta felt ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub

... the tale until the episodes were known almost by heart, but still The Sign of the Four held powerful sway over his imagination. Thaddeus Sholto lived again to tell his nervous, halting tale to the astute Baker Street detective. Tobey took the two eager sleuths through the episode of the trail which led to the creosote barrels. Holmes appeared and reappeared on his fruitless expeditions as the boy's eyes narrowed with excitement, and his figure straightened and his breathing quickened as he ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... myself. If Sir Nigel meets me at the park gates and orders his gamekeepers to drive me off the premises, we shall at least know that he has some reason for not wishing to regard the usual social and domestic amenities. I feel rather like a detective. It entertains me and excites me ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... flight of the terrified man, of how he was found dead two days later three miles from the village, in a lonely spot where he had perished from hunger and exposure.... The body was discovered by James Dodge, with the aid of his dog. With him on that occasion was a detective from Boston, employed by Miss Bolton, and myself. There was a sum of money found on the body amounting to something over five thousand dollars. It had been secreted beneath the floor of Andrew Bolton's chamber, ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... catholicity of taste, the chosen stories reveal predilection for no one type. They like detective stories, and particularly those of Melville Davisson Post. A follower of the founder of this school of fiction, he has none the less advanced beyond his master and has discovered other ways than those of the Rue ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... description, and stirring adventure. This type of story is clearly enough the original of those of Jules Verne and similar writers. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter" are the pioneer detective stories, Dupin the original Sherlock Holmes, and they remain the best of their kind, unsurpassed in originality, ingenuity, and plausibility. Another type of the story of analytical reasoning is "The Gold-Bug," built around the solution of a cryptogram, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... sceptical concerning the truth of Mrs. Orme's fragmentary story, for it was the merest disjecta membra which she entrusted to me, and my credulity declined to honour her heavy drafts. To satisfy myself, I employed a shrewd female detective to 'shadow' the pretty actress for nearly a year, and her reports convinced me that my client, whilst struggling with Napoleonic ambition and pertinacity to attain the zenith of success in her profession, was as little addicted ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... off with these togs, and then vamos! Now, ole Jeff Dobbs!—Sheriff, Scout, and Detective! You're so derned 'cute! Kinder sick, ain't ye, bluffing ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... come to an m; or should it be A m? who can tell; little peculiuliarities like making indifferent m's are very important & wLen one is bying a typewiter one sLould make careful enquiries about themc; because it is things of that sort wich so often give criminals away. there is notHing a detective likes so much as a type riter with an idiosxz an idioynq damit an idiotyncrasy . for instance if i commit a murder i sLould not thinq of writing a litter about it with this of all typewriters becusa because that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various

... suppose there's a child in America,' she said, 'who has had to be so carefully guarded. Why, the kidnappers had a special name for him—they called him "The Little Nugget". For years we never allowed him out of our sight without a detective to watch him.' ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... was grit clear through. He disbursed at the rate of one hundred thousand per week for secret service. The aid of the Pinkertons and of countless private detective agencies was called in, and in addition to this thousands were upon our payroll. Our agents swarmed everywhere, in all guises, penetrating all classes of society. They grasped at a myriad clues; hundreds of suspects were jailed, and at various times thousands of suspicious persons were under surveillance, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... members of the regular force so much as the special service. It is to the latter that we go when a confidential clerk has robbed us or we become suspicious that our wives are unfaithful. Nine times out of ten the chief of the private detective office knows in advance all we wish him to ferret out. When he has told us that we will set investigations on foot, and that he hopes to learn something of the matter within a few days, he bows us out of ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... shot in the Badlands, an' Canada, too, fer that matter—least that's so, now Dutchy's gone, an' it was nip 'n' tuck between us—'magine me, cow-puncher from my born days, sometime rustler, sometime Mounted P'lice detective, sometime—oh, sometime pretty near everythin' with a horse in it, an' a rifle, an' a rope—'magine me workin' 'longside a gang o' Dagoes 'n' Poles that think a knife's fer stickin' people, an' a rifle fer the P'lice . . . me shovin' rocks 'n' logs into a hole in the groun' ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... tiger. The unexpectant passer-by would have been rather surprised at this, but we who are acquainted with the parties must all begin to have our suspicions. The fact that when they reached the threshold Jim picked Jennie up in his arms and carried her in, will enable any good detective to put one and one together and make a pair—which comes pretty near telling the ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick

... if you feel so inclined, by all means," replied the detective, watching with a puzzled twinkle in his eye the fair, boyish face of his visitor. "No, thank you," he said, as Rex tendered him an Havana; "I never smoke during ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey

... and he and his wife went thither, where they told a shabby and sentimental landlady all their troubles. She reassured them as best she could, and made a cup of tea for Mrs. Thropp and told Mr. Thropp there was a young fellow lived in the house who was working for a private detective bureau. He'd find the kid sure, for it was a ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... "Thae detective police are gran' necromancers an' canny in their way: an' I just took the liberty, a week agone, to ha' a crack wi' ane o' 'em. An noo, gin ye're inclined, we'll leave the whusky awhile, an' gang up to that cave o' Trophawnius, ca'd by the vulgar Bow-street, an' speir ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... Detective-Inspector Fay was an able and successful officer, of international reputation, whose achievements had placed a substantial price on his head in most countries sufficiently civilized to possess their criminal organizations. His bag had included many famous law-breakers, and, though now employed ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming

... 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 him ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa

... skirt-dancing girl, and the last female society-detective, with the blushing honours of the witness-box thick upon her," ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... her chosen swain, Beppo the gardener, and one morning the padrona's ducks were found dead. Peppina, her eyes dewy with crocodile tears, told the padrona that although the suspicion almost rent her faithful heart in twain, she must needs think Beppo the culprit. The local detective, or police officer, came and searched the unfortunate Beppo's humble room, and found no incriminating poison, but did discover a pound or two of contraband tobacco, whereupon he was marched off to court, fined eighty francs, and jilted by his perfidious lady-love, who speedily transferred her affections. ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... adroit use of the detective faculty of the modern reporter, he extracted from Webb the tale of his years—even the extent of his fortune. The young aspirant's ingenuousness made him gasp more than once; but he had too kindly a nature to state to Webb the hopelessness of his case. ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton

... "There is an inspector, Monsieur, from Headquarters detective department who asks to see you on urgent business—he declares you have sent ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... be extended to Will 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

... The black-mustached man, she decided, must be a detective. She recalled that he had said to her it was because she lived at the address she did that she was available for the mission for which he wanted her. Did he, she wondered, know about the mysterious death in the street outside their apartment house? ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston

... all traveling jewelry salesmen belong to a league, and if thieves get away with anything belonging to any member, we have the services of a good detective agency to run the criminals down. The professional thieves know this, and, as capture is almost certain in the end, we have little fear of being robbed. These swindlers took my personal property, and nothing belonging to the firm, ...
— The Boy from the Ranch - Or Roy Bradner's City Experiences • Frank V. Webster

... just what I do think, Ad; but I'm going to do a little detective work and I want to give the impression that we are all out. When you fellows go out, don't say anything that would cause any one in hiding to think we are not all going out together. Do ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler

... to the owners of large industries, and ever since his firm has carried on a profitable business in that field. Envious of his prosperity, other individuals have formed rival agencies, and to-day there exist in the United States thousands of so-called detective bureaus where armed men can be employed to do the bidding of any wealthy individual. While, no doubt, there are agencies that conduct a thoroughly legitimate business, there are unquestionably numerous agencies in this country where one may employ thugs, thieves, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... my son; yes, I am very much worried. I wish William was not away from home. I think, perhaps, the best thing I can do is to see Roberts." Roberts was a detective, and Carl began to feel ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard

... last. The English secretly introduced into Russia a pamphlet charging that the peace of Tilsit had separated the Czar from both his people and his troops. Savary, mindful of his old detective arts, discovered its origin and adroitly laid the facts before Alexander, who burst into angry abuse of the "libel," and bemoaned the lack of able men to support him both in a wise foreign policy and in such ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... 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 other ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... that he guessed "the bottom had fallen out." Moreover, McClellan had reason to believe that the Confederate army at Manassas was more than double its actual strength. His intelligence department, controlled, not by a trained staff officer, but by a well-known detective, estimated Johnston's force at 115,000 men. In reality, including the detachment on the Shenandoah, it at no time exceeded 50,000. But for all this there was no reason whatever for absolute inactivity. The capture of the batteries which barred ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... went to her room, and Thaddeus, for an hour, was closeted with the detective, to which he detailed ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs

... around with the care of a detective looking for clues. He did find evidences of some one having been in the cave; he found the handle of a dirk, a small bit of a deerskin hunting jacket, and finally a little bit of pure gold. He examined the latter under his ...
— A Desperate Chance - The Wizard Tramp's Revelation, A Thrilling Narrative • Old Sleuth (Harlan P. Halsey)

... arose as to the reward. Major Cullen insisted on giving it to me. I knew very well that, had it not been for the superior detective sagacity of the deputy, the thieves would never have been caught, so I refused it, as I would have done under any circumstances. Then the sheriff claimed it, and finally the major left its disposition to me, and I divided it between the sheriff and the deputy, partly because I ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... 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 Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... left Vienna for London; but before he left he wrote a letter to Peter Wohenhoffen. In the course of it he said: "There was an Englishwoman at your ball last night with the reasoning powers of a detective in a novel. By divers processes of elimination and induction, she had formed all sorts of theories about no end of things. Among others, for instance, she was willing to bet her halidome that a certain Prince Louis Leczinski, who seems to have gone on the spree some years ago, and never ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... favourably reviewed. One critic said that "the author, who was obviously a woman, had treated with singular delicacy and feeling the ever-urgent problem of female employment in our great industrial centres." Another said that the book was "a brilliant burlesque of the fashionable type of detective fiction." Another wrote that "it was a conscientious analysis of a perplexing phase of agricultural life." John thought that must refer to the page where he had described the allotments at Shepherd's Bush. But he was pleased and surprised ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various

... neighborhood, and owing to the rapid growth of the business soon became disadvantageous for other reasons. Edison tells of his frequent visits to the shops at night, with the escort of "Jim" Russell, a well-known detective, who knew all the denizens of the place: "We used to go out at night to a little, low place, an all-night house—eight feet wide and twenty-two feet long—where we got a lunch at two or three o'clock in the morning. It was the toughest kind ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... delightedly, and he strode back to the town late in the afternoon, laughing at himself in scorn of his wretched susceptibility to bilious impressions, and really all but hating Tinman as the cause of his weakness—in the manner of the criminal hating the detective, perhaps. He cast it altogether on Tinman that Annette's complexion of character had become discoloured to his mind; for, in spite of the physical freshness with which he returned to her society, he was incapable of throwing off the idea of her being commonplace; and it was with regret that he acknowledged ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... think of searching for a live man in the cemetery of Montmartre? The Prefect of Police would set a hundred intelligences at work to find him; the Seine might be dragged, les miserables turned over at the dead-house; a minute description of him would be in every detective's pocket; and he—in M. Dorine's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... fat, freckled boy with chubby cheeks, who took half a dozen boys' story-papers and was always being kept in for reading detective stories behind his desk. There was Tip Smith, destined by his freckles and red hair to be the buffoon in all our games, though he walked like a timid little old man and had a funny, cracked laugh. Tip worked hard in his father's grocery store every ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... interest to Iowa just now. The returns revealed some suspicious facts. Nearly 30,000 more votes were cast on the suffrage proposition than in the primary. Where did they come from? The president of the W.C.T.U., Mrs. Ida B. Wise Smith, employed a detective after the election. His investigation covered forty-four counties and was not confined to those wherein woman suffrage was lost. The findings have not been given to the public in their entirety, but they were conclusive enough to cause an injunction suit to ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various

... padre. I've got a whole history for you. It will make your eyes open. I want you to talk to the detective." ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... Nan's impertinent curiosity concerning what was in her basket. "I've a great mind to find out. Foolishness! I'll do nothing of the sort." The young man tried to lose himself in the intricate plot of a detective story but he had to confess he was not half so much interested in the outcome of the tale as he was in what Judith was to ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... glancing at his watch, "we have an excellent prospect of finding them there. I was not supposed to come home until to-morrow night. I found Mrs. Carter's message at five, twenty-four hours earlier than she expected me to. Williams may be mistaken, of course," he finished, with a glance at the detective. ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... Australia, by Southampton. The Peninsular and Oriental steamer was searched, but no person answering to his description was discovered. Some time passed, when one of the Bank of England notes which he had carried away with him, was returned to the Bank from Dublin. A detective was put upon his track; he was found in the lowest company, brought back to London, tried, and sentenced to twelve ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... highly placed would dare risk his future by kidnapping a European girl, and Jeanne Soubise advised Stephen to turn his suspicions in another direction. Still he would not be satisfied, until he had found and engaged a private detective, said to be clever, who had lately seceded from a Paris agency and set up for himself in Algiers. Through him, Stephen hoped to learn how Sidi Maieddine ben el Hadj Messaoud had occupied himself after landing from ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... reliable information as to Borrow's movements after his arrival in London is contained in the note to Haydon. In all probability he went to Paris, where possibly he met Vidocq, the master-rogue turned detective. {77a} It has been suggested by Dr Knapp that he went to Paris, and thence on foot to Bayonne and Madrid, after which he tramped to Pamplona, where he gets into trouble, is imprisoned, and is released on condition ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... loafers upon the pavements, all staring up at a particular window, directed me to the house which I had come to see. A tall, thin man with coloured glasses, whom I strongly suspected of being a plain-clothes detective, was pointing out some theory of his own, while the others crowded round to listen to what he said. I got as near him as I could, but his observations seemed to me to be absurd, so I withdrew again in some disgust. As I ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... said, after a few moments. 'There are some things I can tell you that may be useful to you. I know your record. You are a smart man, and I like dealing with smart men. I don't know if I have that detective sized up right, but he strikes me as a mutt. I would answer any questions he had the gumption to ask me—I have done so, in fact—but I don't feel encouraged to give him any notions of mine without ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... Even the best detective, Malone told himself irritably, needed clues of some kind. And this thing, whatever it was, was not playing fair. It didn't go around leaving bloody fingerprints or lipsticked cigarette butts or packets of ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... herself to the former, since she has an exciting tale to tell of Mrs. Vanderstein's Jewels (Lane) and shows herself well able to curdle the blood in the telling of it. But, lacking that gift of logic which is essential to the stating and the solving of detective problems, she endeavours to achieve her ends by keeping back what are admitted, and not discovered, facts. She is reduced to telling the same story twice, and I cannot say that I was nearly as excited the second time as I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various

... in some way with that strange affair. She may be the woman who called upon Doctor Wesselhoff to arrange for my imprisonment," he said to himself, after he had left her. "At all events," he added, resolutely, "I am going to lay the matter before Detective Rider, and see what ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... to tell you, that we are required to search all persons arrested under similar charges, and in the next room a female detective will receive and retain every thing in your possession, except your clothing. You are suspected of having secreted money, jewelry and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... time of it, Clarice. He was a changed man when I got there—rough and morose and unmanageable; kept hinting at some mysterious crime he had committed. It was a day or two before I could bring him to book, by methods on which I need not dwell. Detective work is not a nice business; the means has to take its justification from the end. He made his confession as if it were another's; said how superior you were, and how basely he had repaid your condescension. He thought that ended the affair, except for his lifelong remorse; hoped he ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... acquaintance of the family, but rather a play, of its own kind, at mysteriousness and disguise—a play tracing its beginning from those times when the young people were borne away by Gustave Aimard, Mayne Reid, and the detective Lecocq. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... say, however, that there's nothing in the bag that YOU lost that need give you a moment's uneasiness. It's only your rascal or fool who carries with him that which makes him his own detective." ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... Cheyne, smiling, "is foolish of you. I would like to explain that I am not a detective ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... made him the first American dramatist of his day, were his human sympathy, his perception, his sense of proportion, and his construction. With his perception, his proportion, and his construction, respectively, he could have succeeded as a detective, as an artist, or as a general. It was his human sympathy, his wish and his ability to put himself in the other man's place, that made play-writing definitely attractive to him. As a soldier he would have shown the ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard

... the amount of crime which the detective police is apparently unable to trace to its authors, and the number of criminals who constantly elude arrest, Mr. PUNCHINELLO begs to submit an entirely new and original plan for the prevention and detection of crime, which he hopes will receive the favorable consideration ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various

... her, what caused me to suspect her, if I would not believe her if she told me she was not a smuggler, if I had orders to arrest her, and all that. I said, "Madame, my orders are to arrest all quinine smugglers, and you are one. I am Hawkshaw, the detective. For months I have shadowed you, and I know you have concealed about your person a whole drug store. In that innocent looking bustle I feel that there is quinine for the million. Your heaving bosom contains, ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck

... that he was the hotel's detective, and had been on the city's police force. In both places he had dealings with a confidence man, called Presidio—after the part of the city he came from. Presidio was an odd lot; had enough skill in several occupations to earn ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... that the youthful warrior had fixed in his own mind the course taken by the others, and he hastened to a point where he was hopeful of finding the trail. But the calculation which led him thither was drawn too fine. Like the detective who spins a theory, perfect in every part and bristling with proof, he found that a slight hitch at the beginning destroyed it all. Neither the pursuers nor pursued had crossed the spot where he was so certain he would ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... said, clutching his son's arm, "that is a very foolish saying about 'murder will out'? I remember Pilkington, the detective, who was a member of our church when I used to worship at Durham Street, speaking on this subject. He said that it was his opinion that people are being continually made away with, and that not more than one in ten are ever accounted for. Nine chances to one, Ezra, and then ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... arranged that with Flaxman. It was my seeing him enter the room alone where the coins were, the night of the party, that first led to the idea that he might have taken them. Then, as you see, certain dealers' shops were watched by a private detective. Maurice appeared—sold the Hermes coin—was traced to his lodgings and identified. So far the thing has not gone beyond private inquiry; for the dealer will do what Flaxman wants him to do. But Maurice ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... I do. I like working and getting paid for it. When I'm tired of working, I like a comfortable chair, a cigar, a little whisky, and a novel with a good detective story in it. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... given some address, in order to insure the receipt of Lady Carbery's answer; and in that case, so sternly conscientious was she, that, under the notion of saving me from ruin, my address would have been immediately communicated to my guardians, and by them would have been confided to the unrivalled detective talents, in those days, of Townsend, or ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... The detective agency to which she finally applied, after weeks of soul-racking suspense, was one of those disturbingly human implements which many are not opposed to using on occasion, when it is the only means of solving a troublous problem ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... yes! But he couldn't; he had no key. The police keys were not there; they were kept in the Detective Department. ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun

... called on her since,' continued she, looking at the culprit with the stern look of a detective policeman in the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... to extort or wheedle it from his consort's keeping, but he had implicit faith in his own detective talents. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... woman had so many diamonds on that she had a detective follerin' her all round wherever she went. She wuz a blaze of splendor and so wuz lots of 'em, though like the stars, they differed from each other ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley

... thought, it had its compensations. In the three days that the Detective Inspector had been on Earth, Forrester had had time to think and to find out some things. Gerda, for instance, was getting married to Alvin Sherdlap. Forrester wondered what kind of love would let a woman choose ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett

... thinks you know something that he doesn't know. As he's a detective, that, in his mind, is quite enough for arresting any man. I may as well give him my assurance, ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... street: they walk and talk like men and women, and live among our friends a rattling, lively life; yes, live, and will live till the names of their calling shall be forgotten in their own, and Buckett and Mrs Gamp will be the only words left to us to signify a detective police officer ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... organised by the late Colonel Barker. So striking was the success attending his effort that, before many months had passed by, magistrates in the city of Melbourne were actually giving delinquents the option of being sent to prison or to our Prison-Gate Home, and the Government placed the former Detective Police Building at our disposal, ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... scavenger. Americans don't talk scandal, but I fail to see how they will keep their homes clean without it. The scandal-mongers may be inspired by no lofty motives, but they make a wonderful unpaid detective force. Sheridan was not a philosopher. Ubiquitous and omniscient, Mrs. Grundy is always with you. Once you might have escaped her by making the grand tour, but now she has a Cook's circular ticket and watches you from the Pyramids or the temples of Japan,—especially if, like myself, you ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... satire. Mr. Hall Caine, it is true, aims at the grandiose, but then he writes at the top of his voice. He is so loud that one cannot bear what he says. Mr. James Payn is an adept in the art of concealing what is not worth finding. He hunts down the obvious with the enthusiasm of a short-sighted detective. As one turns over the pages, the suspense of the author becomes almost unbearable. The horses of Mr. William Black's phaeton do not soar towards the sun. They merely frighten the sky at evening into violent chromolithographic effects. ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... instance of this propensity occurred a few years ago at a very wealthy nobleman's house in the north of England. During a visit there a lady's diamonds disappeared. There was great and general consternation, and the detective police were summoned from London. The jewels were subsequently discovered in a closet attached ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... me, and I done it for another man;' I said, 'I haven't told it to anyone;' He said, 'You did tell it to Kitty' (his wife); I said, 'She knew as much about it as I did; she saw the papers burning;' on next Friday of that same week I saw Mark Haggerty, Mr. Haggerty's brother, who is a detective in the Mayor's office, I think; I called him up stairs and asked him to come in; he said, 'No, I am afraid to come in; I am afraid of Ed.,' that is, Mr. Haggerty; they have not been on speaking terms in a year; I then told him the occurrences ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... a bungler," said Mr. Montgomery, complacently, to himself. "He can't hold a candle to me. I flatter myself that I know how to manage a little affair, like this, for instance, as well as the next man. It'll take a sharp detective to lay hold ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... myrmidons, who flattered themselves that they were spying on Raffles. The imbeciles were at it still! The one hanging about Burlington Gardens looked unutterably bored, but with his blots of whisker and his grimy jowl, as flagrant a detective officer as ever I saw, even if he had not so considerately dressed the part. The other bruiser was an equally distinctive type, with a formidable fighting face and a chest like a barrel; but in Piccadilly he seemed to me ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... a white man, Pat Hanifan, who outraged a little Afro-American girl, and, from the physical injuries received, she has been ruined for life. He was jailed for six months, discharged, and is now a detective in that city. In the same city, last May, a white man outraged an Afro-American girl in a drug store. He was arrested, and released on bail at the trial. It was rumored that five hundred Afro-Americans had organized to lynch him. Two hundred and fifty white citizens ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett

... equal to feeling well, little girl," he said, genially, patting her hand where it rested on the railing, "and I really believe I am in as fine fettle now as I ever have been. Do you know, I believe I 'm perfectly fit to undertake that little detective operation casually mentioned to you a few days ago. It 's got to be done, and the sooner I get at it the easier I'll feel. Fact is, I put in a large portion of the ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele

... any of those forms of work which we both agree in despising, and which are quite unworthy of your traditions, as for instance stealing pictures on commission out of the houses of dealers and then turning detective to recover them again. It is much too easy work for a man of your talents, much too ill-paid, and much too dangerous. It is all very well for the picture dealer to leave the door open, but what if the policeman is not in the know? No, you will always find me on your side in your steady refusal ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... was like the touch of a spark; soon after came a mystery of general wretchedness, followed by pains in the loins, a rise of temperature and extreme, in Dion's case even intense, weakness. He lay in his bunk trying to play the detective on himself, to stand outside of his body, saying to himself, "This is I, and I am quite unaffected by my bodily condition." For what seemed to him a long time he was fairly successful in his effort; then the body began to show ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... the detective at this allusion to his crippled state and made an attempt at using his ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... at last, after much talking and shifting about, and not before a young German hairdresser had been stationed with one eye glued to a hole in the outer wall of the shed, in order to make sure that no detective was listening ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... out of work; Whyte described himself as a hatter, living on the means brought with him from America. The magistrate was about disposing summarily of the case, by sentencing the men to a few days' imprisonment, when a detective officer applied for a remand, on the ground that he had reason to believe the prisoners were connected with the Fenian conspiracy. The application was granted, and before many hours had elapsed it was ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown

... have been recovered without the skilled assistance of the historical offices of the various services and Office of the Secretary of Defense. At times their search for lost documents assumed the dimensions of a detective story. In partnership with Marine Corps historian Ralph Donnelly, for example, the author finally traced the bulk of the World War II racial records of the Marine Corps to an obscure and unmarked ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... accident, as he had at first supposed, but had been communicated to it intentionally, for some purpose unknown. These conclusions naturally stimulated his curiosity more than ever, but nothing came of it. The boy was a clever boy, but he was not a detective trained in this species of research, and the problem was beyond his ingenuity. He made every application of the figures 3 and 5 that imagination could suggest; he took them in feet, in inches, in yards; he added them together, and he subtracted ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne

... a frock-coat and gaiters, with trim little side-whiskers and an eye-glass. The latter was Colonel Ross, the well-known sportsman; the other, Inspector Gregory, a man who was rapidly making his name in the English detective service. ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... very clearly," she observed dryly. "You have mistaken your vocation, Mr. Hope, and should have been a criminal lawyer. I should turn detective were ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... Russian engagement. It was his sister who told me this—perhaps to prove that there was no use my having Designs, with a capital D. He followed the girl to St. Petersburg; she disappeared. He put the matter into the hands of a detective—an American one, brought over on purpose—money no object. Then Mr. Falconer couldn't stay any longer himself, on account of important interests on this side—but I believe he flashed across once in a while, during ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... jealous freak? Women have confessed to me that they watch their husbands habitually. One said she did it for love of excitement: there was always a risk of being caught, and nothing else ever amused her half so much. Another declared she did it because she could not afford to employ a private detective, and she wanted to have evidence always ready in case it should suit her to part from her husband at any time. Another said she loved her husband, and it hurt her less to know than to suspect. But I could not really believe that Evadne ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... been ugly. She endued it with grace and beauty. She invented a mystery of crime surrounded by everyday circumstances, yet avoiding the "detective novel" mechanism. A new story, 'Aurora Floyd,' repeated the immense success of 'Lady Audley.' Novel after novel followed, full of momentous incidents, of surprises leading to new surprises. All the time Miss ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... big cattlemen have been itching for another chance since their last bill was defeated in Congress. They remind me of the detective concern that never sleeps, only they might better get in a few honest, healthy snores than waste their time the ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman

... Old Trinity appeared against him, and Magistrate Pilate sentenced him to six months on Blackwell's Island, remarking that from this time on he proposed to make an example of those soap-box orators who persist in using threatening and abusive language. Just as the prisoner was being led away, a detective appeared with a requisition from the Governor, ordering that Jesus be taken to San Francisco, where he is under indictment for murder in the first degree, it being charged that his teachings helped to incite the ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... like the best detective in the world could help you to find a girl when you don't know her name." He added gently: "But maybe she don't want you to ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand

... Mr Wopples, 'we act "Called Back", but it is billed as "The Blind Detective"; thus,' said the actor, with virtuous scorn, 'do we evade the grasping avarice of the Melbourne managers, who would make us ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... perfectly rip-roaring time you must have had," commented Dozia, eyeing the fudge. "And I suppose you were taken in by Sour Sandy because you seemed easiest to convey to the Town Hall. Just like the old detective stories, arrest someone, anyone, and depend upon the ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... and present myself. If Sir Nigel meets me at the park gates and orders his gamekeepers to drive me off the premises, we shall at least know that he has some reason for not wishing to regard the usual social and domestic amenities. I feel rather like a detective. It entertains me and excites ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... a detective with them—not a tin badge detective, but a real one. Don't try to go out today. Get your dinner and rest up for the afternoon performance. I think you had better go to the train in my carriage tonight. I'm not going to take any more such ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... exclaimed Snubby, "but I guess I was an awful fool to take such a chance in breaking into Campbell's room. It was Campbell and Bassett that I was after. Old Jerry put me wise to something he had overheard them say, and, like a chump, I was trying to do a little private detective work because I wanted to get back my watch and all those other things. Now this is all I know about it and I am terribly sorry that I went butting into things and was responsible for ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst

... the man. "Well, I ain't a-goin' to fool with you no longer, Mrs. Gratz. I'm a-goin' to tell you right out what I am and who I am. I'm a detective of the police, and I'm looking up a mighty ...
— The Thin Santa Claus - The Chicken Yard That Was a Christmas Stocking • Ellis Parker Butler

... through the latter half of the last century and into this, with such well-known names as Parrish, Gifford, Hunt, Wylie, Martin, the Morans, Eakins, and even the more recent Frederic Remington. Such pictures as F. E. Church's "Niagara Falls" (wall A), J. G. Brown's "The Detective Story" (wall B), and Thomas Hovenden's "Breaking Home Ties" (wall D), are typical of what was accepted as the best work a generation or ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney

... with such inflexible rigidity of form, such harrowing cork-screw curls, and chronic expression as of smelling something disagreeable, is Mrs. LADLE, the hostess. A widow. Her husband, the late TIMOTHY, was a New York detective. Amassing a competency, he emigrated to Indiana, became a Bank Director and Sunday-School Superintendent, and died ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various

... have employed the best of detective skill, and that you will succeed in recovering a portion, at least, of the sequestrated ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... but he 's hardly of the chauffeur type. Now as a detective—can't you imagine him in ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry

... up and down the room, melodramatically clutching at her hair and staring at Nan with her blue eyes. "It is a deep-laid plot, but it shall be foiled by Patricia Sherlock,—the only lady detective in captivity!" ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells

... Tavern was a haunt of low sporting men, being kept by Harry Lee, father of the first and original "tiger," invented and made fashionable by the notorious Lord Barrymore. During the Chartist times violent meetings were held at a club in Shire Lane. A good story is told of one of these. A detective in disguise attended an illegal meeting, leaving his comrades ready below. All at once a frantic hatter rose, denounced the detective as a spy, and proposed off-hand to pitch him out of window. Permitted by the more peaceable to depart, the policeman scuttled downstairs as fast as ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... in excitedly: "See here, Jake Marpole, don't you go trying to add murder to suicide. We're deep enough in trouble. Otto reads you too many of them detective stories." ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... husband's duplicity. He thought also of going to Cowperwood personally and threatening him, but that would be a severe measure, and again, as in the other case, he lacked proof. He hesitated to appeal to a detective agency, and he did not care to take the other members of the family into his confidence. He did go out and scan the neighborhood of 931 North Tenth Street once, looking at the house; but that helped him little. The place ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... to bring you news," he continued. "Our detective returned this morning and presented a full report of his investigation and its result. You will be ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... reflected that Fate had not served him so hardly after all: if Roddy had really been watching for him at the Gare du Nord, with a mind to follow and wait for his prey to make some incriminating move, this chance-contrived change of vehicles and destination would throw the detective off the scent and gain the adventurer, ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... whom I employed in Hampshire—they were recommended to me by the Scotland-yard authorities, certainly—may not have been up to the mark. In any case, I shall try some one else. Do you know anything of the detective force?" ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... more than a week, he went to bed directly after supper and slept like a log until breakfast. Rising, refreshed and fit, he decided that the time had come to abandon his former haphazard methods of getting information, and to launch a campaign of active detective work without further delay. ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... who had done the murder. Unfortunately, when I had read a few pages more, I found that I had picked the wrong person. Then I accused another character on perfectly good circumstantial evidence, and he was not the man. After that I decided to withdraw from the detective business and let Miss SILBERRAD unravel her mystery for herself. If you are of the opinion that a woman cannot keep a secret read The Mystery of Barnard Hanson and become convinced that Miss SILBERRAD at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various

... what I do think, Ad; but I'm going to do a little detective work and I want to give the impression that we are all out. When you fellows go out, don't say anything that would cause any one in hiding to think we are not all going out ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler

... their custom in all matters of public concern, i. e., to outrival the most noted expert in the line of that particular phase of public endeavor uppermost at the time. Theories were advanced in the daily papers that made Sherlock Holmes seem like a novice in detective work and Lucretia Borgia a mere infant in the skillful administration of poisons. The regular detectives, both public and private, were aroused by the mystery that shrouded the case. It remained, however, for the ubiquitous reporter, to whom society really owes a debt ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... when Sarah came to say Master Oswald was to go in to master's study at once. So he went, wondering what on earth he could have been up to now. But he could not think of anything in particular. But when his father said, 'Oswald, this gentleman is a detective from Scotland Yard,' he was glad he had told about the fives ball and the ladder, because he knew his father would now stand by him. But he did wonder whether you could be sent to prison for leaving a ladder in a slippery place, and how long ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit

... an expert here, naturally, if mere inquiry does not suffice. Those chaps are wonderfully clever, you know. They seem to be able to find out anything they want to know. The letters I am showing you came through Carcajou, there's your stamp on the envelopes. The detective will compare this handwriting with that of every man, woman and child in Carcajou and the neighborhood, and while it is certainly disguised, there's so much of it that they will certainly find out who sent them. It—it's going to ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... know to this day, you blamed fool, who shot that government detective that was snooping into that clearing you and me made—five years back? Gaston'll pay or you'll take one of them never-failing shots ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... Soto's, and the child too. He told me he had only lately sent a detective here to ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... himself appears as a little man in a rumpled khaki uniform, tieless and wearing an informal garrison cap. Under his arm is a book, and in the photograph the title can be read as "Send Another Coffin." Mitscher liked detective stories; he didn't ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... the subject with the purpose of making capital out of the credulity of the public. There are no better detectives in the world than newspaper men. They work for the love of it. An expose is dearer to the detective-instinct in them than a laudatory article, and they leave no stone unturned to get at the facts. When, therefore, after the lapse of months, the newspapers of the United States repeat and confirm their first stories about ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower

... fellow to Berlin to-night. The message was here all the time—that numskull Heinrich forgot it. And we've got to keep the fellow here till then! An outrage, having the house used as a barrack for a rascally detective!" Thus much I heard, as the door had been left open. Then it closed and I heard ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... to try any detective work; to find out if she is a woman with a past, with a husband living? You are not going to put a live adder among the eels? I daresay drysalters eat eels. It is the reading of sensational novels that ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... too, became nervous. He telephoned the central police station to inquire if a young girl of Alora's description had met with an accident. There was no record of such an accident, but in half an hour a detective came to the hotel ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... Some probability is lent to the theory by the fact that one of these students came from the north of Ireland, and, to the best of Miss Cushing's belief, from Belfast. In the meantime, the matter is being actively investigated, Mr. Lestrade, one of the very smartest of our detective officers, being in ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle

... me in a great hurry to the terminus, and caught me as I was opening the carriage door. 'We have just made a discovery,' he said; 'you and Mrs. Linley are to be reckoned up.' Reckoned up is, if you please, detective English for being watched. My clerk might have repeated a false report, of course. And my fellow-traveler might have come all the way from London to look out of the window of an inn, in a Cumberland village. What do ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... father love, or any kind of love which isn't self-centered and decidedly material. They also have little use for high-flown sentiment, poetry, old-fashioned prejudices and pretences of romance; and if they do have time to read a book, they want it to be something up-to-date and exciting—a detective story, for instance, with a master thief and vampires. In addition to this, they have a number of other precocious and undigested notions about a variety of things, which they are ready to pass out ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... before a chance acquaintance of the family, but rather a play, of its own kind, at mysteriousness and disguise—a play tracing its beginning from those times when the young people were borne away by Gustave Aimard, Mayne Reid, and the detective Lecocq. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... "keep house;" and in the same high-sounding but miniature way the grown folk here, with the poor little material of slender territory and meagre population, play "empire." There is his royal Majesty the King, with a New York detective's income of thirty or thirty-five thousand dollars a year from the "royal civil list" and the "royal domain." He lives in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... tales, the theme is the ceaseless life of the will, the potency of the spirit of the beloved and departed woman. The unity of effect is absolute, the workmanship consummate. So with the theme of revenge in "The Cask of Amontillado," the theme of mysterious intrigue in "The Assignation." In Poe's detective stories, or tales of ratiocination as he preferred to call them, he takes to pieces for our amusement a puzzle which he has cunningly put together. "The Gold Bug" is the best known of these, "The Purloined Letter" the most perfect, "The Murders ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... reward for his late services, was made head of the detective department and Chief of Police. His first official act was to promote two bare-footed policemen who on his last visit to the Capital ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... got me the breakfast which I needed as badly as any meal I ever ate, she questioned me as to relatives, friends, habits, and everything which a good detective would want to know in forming a theory as to how a clue might be obtained. She suggested that I find every man in the village who had a team and did hauling, and ask each one if he had moved Mr. ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... D'Albert had given this money to Cecile. You know your own sister's writing. Here it is. That paper was folded under the lining of the purse; you can read it. The purse is gone, and the children are in London before now. You can send a detective after ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade

... for you to talk. You see the newspapers are beginning to grumble. They reproach us, they say we are slack. My dear child, you don't realize—there 's a question of sending a detective down from Paris! It would be such a disgrace! And everything promised so well! You can't imagine how excited your father was when they waked him up to tell him that an old man of eighty-seven had been murdered ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux

... Rachel?" her husband asked quietly, indeed gently, yet with little promise of acquiescence in his tone. "I am not a detective, after all." ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... he skips gayly from one past generation to another, waving his phantoms off the stage of memory with a sweep of his cane, and poking others on to make their bow to the man with the crowbar, who thus, piecing the narrative out with his own detective work in wood, rebuilds the story. It was but a little house which began with two rooms on the ground floor and two attic chambers, built for Stoddard who married the daughter of the pioneer landowner of the vicinity, and it nestled up within a stone's throw of the big house, sharing its prosperity ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... down the path, and turned to meet a man who had "detective" written largely all over him. Jack turned and looked down again at the body ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace

... in stocks and shares after he had ruined himself by heavy speculation. Sometimes it was held that he was one of those petty gamblers who nightly play for small stakes until they win a few francs. A theory that he was a detective in the employ of the Home Office found favor at one time, but Vautrin urged that "Goriot was not sharp enough for one of that sort." There were yet other solutions; Father Goriot was a skinflint, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... How men have to work, to talk, to smile, to go to bed, and try and sleep, with this dread of being found out on their consciences! Bardolph, who has robbed a church, and Nym, who has taken a purse, go to their usual haunts, and smoke their pipes with their companions. Mr. Detective Bullseye appears, and says, "Oh, Bardolph! I want you about that there pyx business!" Mr. Bardolph knocks the ashes out of his pipe, puts out his hands to the little steel cuffs, and walks away quite meekly. He is found ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... Story; Hunted Down; The Detective Police, and other Nouvellettes. By Charles Dickens. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... who was terribly jealous and suspicious; one of those Othellos who have always a flea in their ear, and come back unexpectedly from shooting or the club, who pick up pieces of torn paper, listen at doors, smell out meetings with the nose of a detective, and seem to have been sent into the world only to be cuckolds, but who know better than most how to lay a snare, and to play a nasty trick—that when I went to Venice, I consented to let ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... once to Scotland Yard and asked for a detective. He showed him the portrait of his wife, told him she had left home under a false impression, and that he would give him fifty pounds if ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme

... goods trains, covered with palls, and gliding on like vast weird funerals, conveying themselves guiltily away, as if their freight had come to a secret and unlawful end." Now, again—"Half miles of coal pursuing in a Detective manner, following when they led, stopping when they stopped, backing when they backed." One while the spectacle, conjured up by a word or two was that of—"Unknown languages in the air, conspiring in red, green, and white characters." Another, with startling ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... undertaking. I cannot consent to such a thing. It is only your generosity and kindness which make you look at the matter so lightly. You would regret your decision later on, and then——No, mother and I will see the matter through. We have already secured the services of the smartest detective in Winnipeg, and he is working upon the only ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... you'd like other books better—detective stories and that kind," she ventured. "Didn't you ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... we can't start acting suspicious or they're going to start investigating. Holy Smokes, don't you ever read any detective stories? When you're trying to work a big deal without being caught, it's practically the main thing to keep on acting just like always. Then they don't suspect anything. That's ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov

... the murder of Fraser is told very differently in Bosworth-Smith's Life of Lord Lawrence, where all the detective credit is given to Lord L., apparently on his own authority. See also an article in the Quarterly Review for April 1883, by Sir H. Yule, and another in Blackwoods Magazine for ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... which that vote occurred, Tweed jeered Tilden as the latter passed through the hotel corridor, while Tilden, trembling with suppressed emotion, expressed the belief that the Boss would close his career in jail or in exile.[1327] One wonders that Tilden, being a natural detective, should have delayed strenuous action until the Times' exposure, but when, at last, a knowledge of the colossal frauds suddenly opened the way to successful battle, he seized the advantage with the skill and persistency ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... answered all our questions—not very far from tears, I think, but saved by native stolidity, and perhaps a little by the fear that purifiers of Society might not be the proper audience for emotion. When she had left us we recalled the detective, and still, as it were, touching the delicate matter with the tips of our tongues, so as not, being men of the world, to seem biassed against anything, we definitely elicited from him her profession and these words: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... were well assured, many a brain was busy, and many an eye set to discover our retreat. By the side of the public thoroughfares, on great bridges, and frequented cross-roads, detective vigilance kept sleepless watch, and fancied in every approaching form, the doomed victims, who were at once to satisfy the angry gallows and its own excited avarice. Equally well assured were we that the most inventive and hazardous scrutiny ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... story, which is as ingenious as it is genuinely droll. It belongs to the same genus as the Danvers Jewels, though, in this latter, the idea of the character of the narrator is more humorously conceived than is Mr. SIMS's Baronet who acts as an amateur detective. The Baron highly recommends this story, as he also does a short tale in Blackwood, for this month, entitled, A Physiologist's Wife, by ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various

... held it in their hands. We marched on through the woods, with no sound but the peeping of the frogs in a neighboring marsh, and the occasional yelping of a dog, as we passed the hut of some "cracker." This yelping always made Corporal Sutton uneasy: dogs are the detective officers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... thought, grannie. But I have made inquiries—through a detective agency—and I have discovered that he is one person; in fact, a man, just like ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... is Inspector Childs, chief of the detective department of Cairo. Who may I have the pleasure of thanking for ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld

... "I know what the clodhopper is after; and even if I must suffer in consequence, I shall take good care that he cannot shake off his bonds. Wait a bit! I can play the detective too, and be down on him without letting him see the hand that deals the blows. It'll be a wonder if I can't find a naked sword to suspend ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... word of appreciation once in a while. She chills under the surveillance and parsimony of an eagle-eyed, detective, lawyer-like husband. ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... anxiously. He did not, of course, know who the detective really was, but he remembered him as one who had assisted the police in a case in which that house had been ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter

... scholars, the scraps of evidence found in books and archives, the amazingly accurate hypotheses of bibliographers who have sifted the material so painstakingly gathered together, combine to make its history a bookish detective story ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous

... time this afternoon. I never wanted to be a detective person, but I can understand the fascination of the profession. Luck was with me, and in less than thirty minutes after meeting her I was pretty sure Madeleine Swink was not in love with Harrie and was in love with some one else. A few minutes later I ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... name is Samuel Chillip, of course you will know who I am. Yes, I am the author—it has been said the famous author—of "The Poisoned Waterbottle," "Steeped in Gore," "The Demon Detective," and other highly sensational and blood-curdling stories. But though these tales of mine have brought me some fame and a fair amount of profit, I am not particularly proud of them. I really don't know how I, so to speak, drifted into crime. I never liked ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... searching for a live man in the cemetery of Montmartre? The prefet of police would set a hundred intelligences at work to find him; the Seine might be dragged, les miserables turned over at the Morgue; a minute description of him would be in every detective's pocket; and ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... teach abundance of wholesome lessons, if he comes to his task with some hope and love. King is, of course, a verbose bully; he delights in petty triumphs; he rejoices in making himself felt; he is a cynic as well, a greedy and low-minded man; he takes a disgusting pleasure in detective work; he begins by believing the worst of boys; he is vain, shy, irritable; he is cruel, and likes to see his victim writhe. I have known many schoolmasters and I have never known a Mr. King, except ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... he replied. "We're waiting for Detective-Inspector Gatton, who has been put in charge of ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... Speaker, or of the First Minister of the Crown, when he will see that they substantiate much more than I have stated. (Cheers.) I do not wish to occupy the House longer; but I must say this, that to talk of freedom in a land like the Northern States of America is an absurdity. Almost every detective that can be got hold of in this country is employed. (Hear, hear.) I believe there are spies in my son's works in Birkenhead, and in all the great establishments in the country. A friend of mine had detectives regularly on his track in consequence of some circumstances connected ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... pathological exhibit, Mrs. Corrine B. Eckley. Class 788: Seguin School for Backward Children, Mrs. Seguin; Compton School for Nervous Children, Fanny A. Compton; Chicago Hospital School, Mary R. Campbell. Class 789: Police supplies and detective exhibit, Mrs. M.E. Holland. Class 790: Missouri State board of charities, Miss Mary E. Perry; New Hampshire State board of charities, Mrs. Lilian Streator; Massachusetts charity and correctional exhibit; Jewish Charitable and Educational Union, ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... one gentleman left it, and he had scarcely been half a minute gone when a person, very much in the garb and bearing of a modern detective, put in his head, and instantly withdrew ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... Donald: "Perhaps your detective employes effected the arrests upon insufficient evidence, and seeing that there was no possibility of convicting the Laniers, had them released. This possibly might account for their part in the farce, but does not throw any ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... enduring many hardships arrived in Canada, where they were clothed and fed and supplied with money. Taking shipping at Halifax, they ran the blockade and landed in Wilmington, North Carolina. One of the six men was recaptured by a detective on a train in New York. My friend Stakes was overtaken the next morning and brought back so badly frostbitten that it became necessary to amputate parts ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway

... not think, either, nor did he understand Hawthwaite's reserve. But he wasted no time in speculation: he had already made up his mind that unless something definite arose at the resumed inquiry he would employ professional detective assistance and get to work on lines of his own. He had already seen enough of Hathelsborough ways and Hathelsborough folk to feel convinced that if this affair of his cousin's murder could be hushed up it would be hushed up—the Simon Crood gang, he was persuaded, would move heaven and earth ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... be ashamed of yourself, lying perdu in the curtains and listening to what wasn't meant for you." Maliciously. "You ought also to have been a detective. You have wasted your talents frightfully. Did Teddy kiss my hands?" Examining the little white members with careful admiration. "Poor Ted! he might be tired of doing so by this. ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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









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