Let's work together

     Miss Minerva faced Chan. "The person who did this must be apprehended," she said firmly.

    "He looked at her sleepily. "What is to be, will be," he replied in a high, sing-song voice.

    "I know - that's your Confucius," she snapped. "But it's a do-nothing doctrine, and I don't approve of it."

    A faint smile flickered over Chan's face. "Do not fear, he said. "The fates are busy, and man may do much to assist. I promise you there will be no do-nothing here." He came closer. "Humbly asking pardon to mention it. I detect in your eyes slight flame of hostility. Quench it, if you will be so kind. Friendly cooperation are essential between us." Despite his girth, he managed a deep bow. "Wishing you good morning," he added, and followed Hallet.

(from The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers)

The tell-tale watch

     Suddenly Miss Minerva realized the situation. The wearer of the watch had forgotten the tell-tale numerals on his wrist, he thought himself hidden in the dark. He was waiting for her to go on through the room. If she made no sound, gave no sign of alarm, she might be safe. Once beyond that bamboo curtain leading into the hall, she could rouse the household.

    She was a woman of great will power, but it took all she had to move serenely on her way. She shut her lips tightly and accomplished it, veering a bit from that circle of light that menaced her, looking back at it over her shoulder as she went. After what seemed an eternity the bamboo curtain received her, she was through it, she was on the stairs. But it seemed to her that never again would she be able to look at a watch or a clock and find that the hour was anything save twenty minutes past one!

(from The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers)

Adept

 We hardly ever think of it as such, but "adept" can be a noun. Its meaning is "a highly-trained individual," and is synonymous with "expert." I found it used in this sense in the Earl Derr Biggers novel, The House Without a Key."

"Roger proved an adept at making the most of one's time in San Francisco."

He's a rock!

     "I - I'm wondering, Minerva," he began slowly. "Tell me again about that nephew of yours."

    She was surprised, but hid it. "John Quincy?" she said. "He's just the usual thing, for Boston. Conventional. His whole life has been planned for him, from the cradle to the grave. So far he's walked the line. The inevitable preparatory school, Harvard, the proper clubs, the family banking house - even gone and got himself engaged to the very girl his mother would have picked for him. There have been times when I hoped he might kick over - the war - but no, he came back and got meekly into the old rut."

    "Then he's reliable - steady?"

    Miss Minerva smiled. "Dan, compared with that boy, Gibraltar wobbles occasionally."

(from The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers)

Pure bred Boston

 Miss Minerva nodded. "You never met him, did you, Dan? Well, you will, shortly. And he certainly won't approve of you."

"Why not?" Dan Winterslip bristled.

"Because he's proper. He's a dear boy, but oh, so proper. This journey is going to be a great cross for him. He'll start disapproving as soon as he passes Albany, and think of the long weary miles of disapproval he'll have to endure after that."

"Oh, I don't know. He's a Winterslip, isn't he?"

"He is. But the gypsy strain missed him completely. He's all Puritan."

(from The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers)

Not looking for trouble

 Matt turned, gave a quick glance around the room and went out, looking neither to right nor left. Only a fool goes looking for trouble, and his life had brought him more than enough, and knowing how to recognize possible trouble meant knowing how to avoid it. Even to meet the glance of some men was an invitation to trouble, for to them it was a challenge to which they must respond.

(from The Empty Land, by Louis L'Amour)

Not a good place for a young woman

    He studied her for a moment. "How old are you, Madge?"

    "Nineteen - going on forty. Nobody looks out for a girl alone, Matt. She looks out for herself, and you know what kind of a world it is."

(from The Empty Land, by Louis L'Amour)

   

Not an Absoluter

 Matt Coburn did not believe that it was when his time came that he would die. With the harsh realism that was typical of him, he believed he would cash in his chips whenever he became careless.

(from The Empty Land, by Louis L'Amour)

Sydney Ducks

 In his novel, The Empty Land, Louis L'Amour makes reference to the Sydney Ducks. According to Wikipedia:

The Sydney Ducks was the name given to a gang of criminal immigrants from Australia in San Francisco, during the mid-19th century. Because many of these criminals came from the well-known British penal colonies in Australia, and were known to commit arson, they were blamed for an 1849 fire that devastated the heart of San Francisco, as well as the rampant crime in the city at the time.

The Sydney Ducks were criminals who operated as a gang, in a community that also included sailors, longshoremen, teamsters, wheelwrights, shipwrights, bartenders, saloon keepers, washerwomen, domestic servants, and dressmakers. The largest proportion (44%) were born in Ireland and migrated during the Great Irish Famine, first to Australia as laborers and then to California as part of the Gold Rush.

The criminality of the Sydney Ducks was the catalyst for the formation of the first Committee of Vigilance of 1851. The vigilantes usurped political power from the corrupt or incompetent officials in the city, conducted secret trials, lynchings, and deportations, which effectively decimated the Sydney Ducks. The area where the Sydney Ducks clustered at the base of Telegraph Hill was originally known as "Sydney-Town," but by the 1860s was called exclusively by its better-known name, the Barbary Coast.

Give us men who can think!

     "Fife, I want a city council of responsible men," Felton said. "Will you join us?"

    "It ain't fitten, son. I want to stand clear to call names and tell you when you're wrong. But if you're right, I will say that, too."

    He studied the type through his steel-rimmed glasses, then looked at Felton over them. There's a mighty lot about grammar that I don't know, and a lot of book learnin' I'll never have, but I know what I figure to be honest, and I'll say it."

(from The Empty Land, by Louis L'Amour)

A man to trust

 "You'll get no marshal. Not when they hear that Big Thompson and Peggoty Gorman are in town. They eat marshals for breakfast," Cohan said.

"They should be ordered out of town."

"Don't try it, Dick. I know you're game, but you're not that good and you're not that fast."

"And Coburn is?"

"If any man is."

"He'd be another Thompson, then."

"Not Matt Coburn," Buckwalter said. "I'd stake my life on him. In fact," he said wryly, "I already have. Several times."

(from The Empty Land, by Louis L'amour)

Velocipede

 The years rob us of our boyish accomplishments. There had been a time, back in the distant past, when Sebastian Beach had yielded to none as a performer on the velocipede - once, indeed, actually emerging victorious in the choir boys' handicap at a village sports meeting, open to all whose voices had not broken before the second Sunday in Epiphany. But those days were gone forever. (from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A velocipede is a "human-powered land vehicle with one or more wheels." In Beach's youth it probably would have been the variety with a large front wheel.

Least favorite surprise

 It is not easy to state offhand what is the last thing a young man starting out in life would wish to find on the premises of the furnished villa ready for immediate occupancy which he had just begun to occupy. Bugs? Perhaps. Cockroaches? Possibly. Maybe defective drains. One cannot say. But a large black pig in the kitchen would unquestionably come quite high up on the list.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Enough is enough

     At nine o'clock on the following night Beach, seated in his pantry, was endeavouring with the aid of a glass of port to still the turmoil which recent events at Blandings Castle had engendered in his soul, and not making much of a go of it. Port, usually an unfailing specific, seemed for once to have lost its magic.

    Beach was no weakling, but he had begun to feel that too much was being asked of one who, though always desiring of giving satisfaction, liked to draw the line somewhere. A butler who has been compelled to introduce his niece into his employer's home under a false name and on top of that to remove a stolen pig from a gamekeeper's cottage in a west wood and convey it cross country to the detached villa Sunnybrae on the Shrewsnbury Road is a butler who feels that enough is sufficient. There were dark circles under Beach's eyes and he found himself starting at sudden noises.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Why bother?

 "There you have Clarence in a nutshell," he said. "There is a school of thought that holds that he got that way from being dropped on his head when a baby. I maintain that when you have a baby like Clarence, you don't need to drop it on its head. You just let Nature take its course and it develops automatically into the sort of man who says 'right' when he means 'left.'"

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A good deal too much Baronet

 Strolling through the jungles of Brazil, the traveller sometimes sees a barefoot native halt with a look of horror, his body rigid except for a faint vibration of the toes. He has seen a scorpion in his path. It was with such a look of horror that Gloria gazed at the photograph of Sir Gregory Parsloe. Very imprudently, he had had himself taken side face and, eyeing those chins, she winced and caught her breath sharply. She took another look, and her mind was made up. She had thought it could be done, but she saw now that it could not be done. There are shots which are on the board, and shots which are not. It might be that some day some girl, veiled in white, would stand at the altar rails beside this vast expanse of Baronet while the organ played "The Voice That Breathed o'er Eden" but that girl would not be G. Salt.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A unique sympathy card

     "Did I ever tell you the story of Clarence and the Arkwright wedding?"

    "I don't think so."

    "Odd It happened about the time I was a regular client of yours at the Criterion and I told it to everybody else. I wonder why I discriminated against you. The Arkwrights lived out Bridgnorth way, and their daughter Amelia was getting married, so Clarence tied a knot in his handkerchief to remind him to send the bride's mother a telegram on the happy day."

    "And he forgot?"

    "Oh, no, he sent it. 'My heartfelt congratulations to you on this joyous occasion,' he said."

    "Well, wasn't that all right?"

    "It was fine. Couldn't have been improved upon. Only the trouble was that in one of his distrait moments he sent it, not to Mrs. Arkwright but to another friend of his, a Mrs. Cartwright, and her husband had happened to die that morning. Diabetes. Very sad. We were all very sorry about it, but no doubt the telegram cheered her up."

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

But a baa-lamb?

 Seeing the object of Penny's affections at closed range, he found himself favourably impressed. For an author, Jerry Vail was rather nice-looking, most authors, as is widely known, resembling in appearance the more degraded types of fish, unless they look like birds, when they could pass as vultures and no questions asked. His face, while never likely to launch a thousand ships, was not at all a bad sort of face, and Gally could readily picture it casting a spell in a dim light on a boat deck. Looking at him, he found it easy to understand why Penny should have described him as a baa-lamb. From a cursory inspection he seemed well entitled to membership in that limited class.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A life well misspent

     "Thank you, dear," she said. "I call that very nice of you. You don't look so bad yourself," she added, with that touch of surprise which always came into the voices of those who, meeting Gally after a lapse of years, found him so bright and rosy.

    This man's fitness was one of the eternal mysteries. Speaking of him, a historian of Blandings Castle had once written: "A thoroughly misspent life had left the Hon. Galahad Threepwood in what appeared to be perfect, even exuberantly perfect physical condition. How a man who ought to have had the liver of the century could look as he did was a constant source of perplexity to his associates. It seemed incredible that anyone who had had such an extraordinarily good time all his life should, in the evening of that life, be so superbly robust."

    Striking words, but well justified. Instead of the blot on a proud family which his sister Constance, his sister Julia, his siter Dora and all his other sisters considered him, he might have been a youngish teetotaller who had subsisted from boyhood on yogurt yeast, wheat germ, and blackstrap molasses. He himself attributed his health to steady smoking, plenty of alcohol, and his lifelong belief that it was bad form to go to bed before three in the morning.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

She made quite an impression

     "Well, well, well!" he said, gazing at her with undisguised admiration. "Do you know you positively don't look a dashed day older, Maudie? It's amazing."

    And indeed the years had dealt lightly with the erstwhile Maudie Montrose. A little more matronly, perhaps, than the girl with the hourglass figure who had played the Saint Bernard dog to the thirsty wayfarers at the old  Criterion, she still made a distinct impression on the eye, and the landlord of the Emsworth Arms, his growing son Percy, and the half dozen Shropshire lads who were popping up the establishment's outer wall had stamped her with the seal of their popeyed approval. Her entrance had been in the nature of a social triumph.

    "It's astounding," said Gally. "One gasps. Put you in a bathing suit, add you to the line of contestants at any seaside beauty competition, and you would still have the judges whooping and blowing kisses and asking you if you were doing anything next Saturday night."

    It was the sort of tribute a thousand mellowed clients had paid her across the bar in the old days, and Maudie, who had simpered indulgently then, simpered indulgently now.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Reason enough to love her

 For Gloria Salt he felt that gentle affection which men feel for women who could have married them and didn't.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

When your partner gets out of line

 "We were playing in the mixed doubles, and I admit that I may have been slightly off my game, but that was no reason why, after we had dropped the first set, he should have started barging into my half of the court, taking my shots for me as if I were some elderly aunt with arthritis in both legs who had learned tennis in the previous week at a correspondence school."

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

That's the end of THAT engagement!

     "If Orlo Vosper in his formative years had been thoroughly kicked twice a day, Sundays included, he might not have grown up the overbearing louse he has become."

    "Would you call him an overbearing louse?"

    "I did. To his face."

    "When was this?"

    "On the tennis court at Eastbourne, and again when entering the club house. I'd have done it in the dressing-room, too, only he wasn't there. They separate the sexes. Of all the overbearing lice that ever overbore, I told him, you are the undisputed champion, and I gave him back his ring."

    "Oh, you were engaged?"

    "Don't rub it in. We all make mistakes."

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)