"You aren't going to do a bolt?"
"Of course, I'm going to do a bolt. Immediately. You heard what Spode said."
"You aren't afraid of Spode?"
"Yes, I am."
"But you were saying yourself that he's a mere mass of beef and brawn, obviously slow on his feet."
"I know. I remember. But that was when I thought he was after you. One's views change."
(from The Code of the Woosters, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
I had watched Harold Pinker through the formative years of his life, and I knew him for what he was - a large, lumbering, Newfoundland puppy of a chap - full of zeal, yes - always doing his best, true; but never quite able to make the grade; a man, in short, who is there was a chance of bungling an enterprise and landing himself in the soup, would snatch at it. At the idea of him being turned on to perform the extraordinarily delicate task of swiping Constable Oates's helmet, the blood froze. He hadn't a chance of getting away with it.
I thought of Stinker, the youth. Built rather on the lines of Roderick Spode, he had played Rugby football not only for his university but also for England, and at the art of hurling an opponent into a mud puddle and jumping on his neck with cleated boots had had few, if any, superiors. If I had wanted someone to help me out with a mad bull, he would have been my first choice. If by some mischance I had found myself trapped in the underground den of the Secret Nine, there was nobody I would rather have seen coming down the chimney than the Rev. Harold Pinker.
But mere thews and sinews do not qualify a man to pinch policemen's helmets. You need finesse.
(from The Code of the Woosters, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The constable, I say, was riding without his hands; and but for this the disaster, when it occurred, might not have been so complete. I was a bit of a cyclist myself in my youth - I think I have mentioned that I once won a Choir Boys handicap at some village sports - and I can testify that when you are riding without your hands, privacy and a complete freedom from interruption are of the essence. The merest suggestion of an unexpected Scottie connecting with the ankle-bone at such a time, and you swoop into a sudden swerve. And, as everybody knows, if the hands are not firmly on the handle-bars, a sudden swerve spells a smeller.
And so it happened now. A smeller - and among the finest I have ever been privileged to witness - was what this officer of the law came. One moment he was with us, all merry and bright; the next, he was in the ditch, a sort of macedoine of arms and legs and wheels, with the terrier standing on the edge, looking down at him with that rather offensive expression of virtuous smugness which I have often noticed on the faces of Aberdeen terriers in their clashes with humanity.
(from The Code of the Woosters, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Even to an unobservant eye it would have been apparent that he was not one of Joe's admirers. In the look he gave him as he entered there was something of the open dislike which a resident of India exhibits when he comes to take his morning bath and finds a cobra in the bathtub.
(from Bachelors Anonymous, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Mr. Trout's voice was the voice of one who, putting his fate to the touch to win or lose it all, has found himself a winner. Its volume made that plain. No man, Joe felt, to whom the adored object had handed the pink cashier's slip could so nearly have fractured his eardrum, and forgetting his own troubles for the moment he rejoiced in the other's good fortune. Mr. Trout might be the sort of man whose morning post was never without its quota of attractive offers from lunatic asylums, but he wished him well.
(from Bachelors Anonymous, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Are we not forgetting something?" he said.
Joe started violently. He had had no notion that Mr. Trout was among those present. He had supposed that on seeing Sally he would have realized that his company was not desired. But, as has been shown, it would have come as a surprise to Mr. Trout to learn that his company was ever not desired. He was as difficult to dislodge as a family specter.
(from Bachelors Anonymous, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"So you think everything's all right?"
"Everything is perfect. True, she is engaged to be married to somebody else, but she is extremely fond of you. It showed clearly in her manner."
The effect of these words on Joe was somewhat similar to that which would have been produced by a blow on the bridge of the nose by a wet fish. His jaw fell. His eyes bulged. He tottered and might have fallen had he not clutched at the umbrella stand.
"Engaged to someone else?" he quavered.
"Yes. Owing, I gathered, to a regrettable misunderstanding. You asked her to lunch, and she was prevented by circumstances over which she had no control from putting in an appearance. When subsequently you asked her to dinner, and in your turn did not put in an appearance, she assumed that you had done it to punish her, and being a girl of spirit she resented it. So when this man asked her to marry him, she accepted him by way of evening the score. The whole affair had in it something of the inevitability of Greek tragedy."
(from Bachelors Anonymous, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"I wish I could ask you to have dinner with me, but unfortunately I've come out without my money and they don't know me here, so I can't sign the bill."
"I don't want any dinner. You can see me home if you like. Not Laburnham Road. Fountain Court, Park Lane."
"Yes, somebody told me you had moved."
"I'm living there with another girl."
"So whoever it was who told me said. Was it her you were waiting for?"
"No, she's gone to a dinner. Something to do with her old school."
Jaklyn was relieved. He would have found a meeting with Daphne Dolby embarrassing. It is never agreeable for a man who is engaged to one girl and has just proposed to another to find himself in the company of both of them.
(from Bachelors Anonymous, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
+++
There is, of course, a grammatical error in this passage. It should have been, "Was it she you were waiting for?" It is interesting that a writer of Sir Pelham's eminence, who grew up hearing the King's English and whose publisher no doubt had a small army of proofreaders available would have made that mistake. UNLESS, of course, it was not a mistake and that he was of the (correct) opinion that the distinction in the case of the pronouns is a purely arbitrary one that serves no useful purpose.
This reminds me of Churchill's famous barb at needless grammatical conventions: “From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.”
And he disappeared through the door like a diving duck, while Joe proceeded to follow his instructions with something of the emotions of a young lion tamer about to enter the lion's cage and nervously conscious that he has only got as far as lesson three of the correspondence course that has been teaching him lion taming.
(from Bachelors Anonymous, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"How long have you known Miss Dalrymple?" he inquired.
"A couple of weeks. Why?"
"Because you seem to have got an erroneous grasp of her personality. You appear to think she will accept your abrupt disappearance from her life as just one of those things, perhaps dropping a silent tear but taking no further steps. Have you considered the possibility of her calling on you and setting about you with her umbrella? She may not be my dream girl, but she is a fine upstanding woman, fully capable of beating the tar out of you before you could say, 'Hello there, good afternoon, lovely day, is it not?' It is a point to which I think you should give some attention."
(from Bachelors Anonymous, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
With those who had known them both it was a constant source of debate as to whether Jaklyn was or was not a more slippery character than his late father. Some said yes, some said no, but it was agreed that it was a close thing, and the opinion of those who had suffered at their hands that the crookedness of each was such as to enable him to hide at will behind a spiral staircase was universally held. The only difference between the two was that the sixth baronet had been bluff and hearty and had furthered his ends by slapping people on the back, while the seventh achieved his by looking wistful and pathetic.
(from Bachelors Anonymous, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"You may have asked yourself why I, though working in the heart of Hollywood for more than twenty years, have never married."
It had not occurred to Mr. Llewellyn to ask himself this. Had he done so, he would have replied to himself that the solution of the mystery was that his old friend, though highly skilled in the practice of law, was short on fascination. Mr. Trout, in addition to being thin, had that dried-up look which so often comes to middle-aged lawyers. There was nothing dashing about him. He might have appealed to the comfortable, motherly type of woman, but these are rare in Hollywood.
(from Bachelors Anonymous, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
And Cappy knew skippers. He could get more loyalty out of them with a mere pat on the back and a kindly word than could Mr. Skinner, with all his threats, nagging and driving, yet he was an employer who demanded a full measure of service and never permitted sentiment to plead for an incompetent.
(from Cappy Ricks, by Peter B. Ryne)
In a way he was beginning to detest John Gaspar as he had never detested any human being before or since. To him no sin was so great as the sin of weakness in a man, and certainly Gaspar was superlatively weak. He had something in place of courage, but just what that thing was, Sinclair could not tell. Curiosity drew him toward the fellow; and these weaknesses repulsed him.
(from The Rangeland Avenger, by Max Brand)
He registered and went in silence up to his room. If there had been the need, he could have kept on riding for a twenty-four hour stretch, but the moment he found his journey interrupted, he flung himself on the bed, his arms thrown out crosswise, crucified with weariness.
(from The Rangeland Avenger, by Max Brand) I thought that final phrase was aptly descriptive.
His voice was surprisingly pleasant. He spoke very deliberately, so that one felt occasionally that he was pausing to find the right words. And, in addition to the quality of that deep voice, he had an impersonal way of looking his interlocutor squarely in the eye, a habit that pleased the men of the desert. On this occasion his companion responded at once with a grin.
(from The Rangeland Avenger, by Max Brand)
It was bitter work walking through that sand. The heel crunched into it, throwing a strain heavily on the back of the thigh, and then the ball of the foot slipped back in the midst of a stride. Also the labor raised the temperature of the body incredibly. With no wind stirring it was suffocating. And the day was barely beginning!
(from The Rangeland Avenger, by Max Brand)
Still Hal Sinclair could sing softly to his horse and to himself; and, though his companions cursed his singing, they blessed him for it in their hearts. Otherwise the whole, listening silence of the desert would have crushed them; otherwise the lure of the mountains would have maddened them and made them push on until their horses would have died within five miles of the labor; otherwise the pain in their slowly swelling throats would have taken their reason. For thirst in the desert carried the pangs of several deaths - death from fire, suffocation, and insanity.
(from The Rangeland Avenger, by Max Brand)
Here the girl was left alone for a few minutes, while Lanyard darted above-stairs for a review of the state bedchambers and servants' quarters.
With a sensation of being crushed and suffocated by the encompassing dark mystery, she nerved herself against a protracted vigil. The obscurity on every hand seemed alive with stealthy footfalls, whisperings, murmurings, the passage of shrouded shapes of silence and of menace. Her eyes ached, her throat and temples throbbed, her skin crept, her scalp tingled. She seemed to hear a thousand different noises of alarm. The only sounds she did not hear were tehose - if any - that accompanied Lanyard's departure and return. Had he not been thoughtful enough, when a few feet distant, to give warning with the light, she might well have greeted with a cry of fright the consciousness of a presence near her: so silently he moved about. As it was, she was startled, apprehensive of some misadventure, to find him back so soon; for he hadn't been gone three minutes.
(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)
They stood upon a weed-grown gravel path, hedged about with thick masses of shrubbery; but the park was as black as a pocket; and the heavy effluvia of wet mould, decaying weeds and rotting leaves that choked the air, seemed only to render the murk still more opaque.
(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)
I cannot honestly say that I have ever seen "effluvia" used in a sentence - but it is indeed a word.
In The Lone Wolf, we find a reference to the "mansard roofs" that evidently were common in old Paris. We learn that this is a "multi-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterised by two slopes on each of its sides, with the lower slope at a steeper angle than the upper, and often punctured by dormer windows" (Wikipedia). It is sometimes known as a "French roof" or "curb roof."
We sometimes see this style today in barns in the midwestern region of the United States.
Though it had been nearly eight when they entered the restaurant, it was something after cleven before Lanyard called for his bill.
"We've plenty of time," he had explained. "It'll be midnight before we can move. The gentle art of house-breaking has its technique, you know, its professional ethics: we can't well violate the privacy of Madame Omber's strong-box before the caretakers on the premises are sound asleep. It isn't done, you know, it isn't class, to go burglarizing when decent, law-abiding folk are wide-awake. Meantime we're better off here than trapezing the streets.
(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)
