Nothing wrong with being a teapot

    It was not so long ago, she reflected with pride, that she had induced Ruth to refuse to marry Basil Milbank - a considerable feat, he being a young man of remarkable personal attractions and a great match in every way. Mrs. Porter's objection to him was that his father had died believing to the last that he was a teapot.

    There is nothing evil or degrading in believing oneself a teapot, but it argues a certain inaccuracy of the thought processes, and Mrs. Porter had used all her influence with Ruth to make her reject Basil. It was her success that first showed her how great that influence was. She had come now to look on Ruth's destiny as something for which she was personally responsible - a fact which was noted and resented by others, in particular Ruth's brother Bailey, who regarded his aunt with a dislike and suspicion akin to that which a stray dog feels towards the boy who saunters towards him with a tin can in his hand.

(from The Coming of Bill, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The truth is a rare thing

     "Been waiting long?"

    "Long enough to have eaten if I'd thought of it. As it was, all I got was the coffee."

    That made the second lie. She had not been here for some time, and she had not come right here from home. He tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the visit to the Upshaw Building was so much a habit that she did not consider it. Still, it was out of her way in coming here.

    He wanted to believe her. Maybe that's why cops get cynical - they are lied to so often.

(from "I Hate To Tell His Widow," by Louis L'Amour)

Thought he was too smart

 Pete Merrano was like all of his kind who live by fear and terror. When that failed, they're backed into a corner. He had been sure he would win. He had still been sure when things started going against him because he simply believed he was too smart. He had forgotten the old adage that cops can make many mistakes, a crook need only make one.

(from "Stay Out of My Nightmare," by Louis L'Amour)

A weird situation

     "Are you Mr. Ramsey?" He neither spoke nor blinked, and I stepped pat the old woman and stopped abruptly. I was staring into the eyes of a dead man.

    Turning, overcome with horror, I looked at the old woman who was puttering among some dirty dishes. "Don't mind him," she said. "Earl was never one for talking. Only when he takes the notion."

    My skin crawled. She turned her head and stared at me with expressionless eyes. Gray hair straggled about a face that looked old enough to have worn out two bodies, and her clothing was drab, misshapen, and soiled. She fumbled at her pocket, staring at me.

    It gave me the creeps. The hot, stuffy room and that aged and obviously imbecilic woman and her dead son.

    Stepping past the table, I saw the knife. It had been driven into the left side of his back, driven up from below as he sat at the table, and driven to the hilt. I touched the hand of Earl Ramsey. It was cold.

    The old woman as puttering among the dishes, unaware and unconcerned.

(from "Stay Out of My Nightmare," by Louis L'Amour)

A resolute lady

     "Who are you?" she repeated.

    "Let's say that I am an old army friend of Sam Bradley's."

    Her eyes hardened. "Oh? So you admit you're one of them?" Before I could reply, she said, "I'll just call the police."

    "It might be the best idea. But why don't you pout that gun down and let' talk this over. Sam left word he wanted to see me, and if you're a friend of his, we should compare notes. When he said he was in trouble, I hurried right over."

    "I'll bet you did! Now back against the wall. I am going to use the telephone, and if you have any doubts whatever I'll use this gun, just start something."

    I had no doubts.

(from "Stay Out of my Nightmare," by Louis L'Amour)

    

Quite a scrap

     He had been coming in, and I used his impetus. He went over flying and hit the table in front of me with a crash; the table collapsed like a sick accordion and with about the same sound. Being on my knees, I grabbed the legs of the nearest man with Milly and jerked hard. His head hit the table when he fell, and I was up fast to see Milly break away and the other man clawing at his hip.

    It was a bad move, leaving him as open as a Memphis crap game, and I threw my right down the groove with everything on it but my shoelaces. When a man grabs suddenly at his hip, his face automatically comes forward. His did, and brother, it was beautiful!

    His face came forward as if it had a date with my fist, and it was a date they kept. You could have heard the smack of that fist clear into the street, and his feet went from under him as if they'd been jerked from behind. He went down to all fours. Naturally, I didn't kick him. In police reports that might not look good, so when I sort of bent over him, my knee sort of banged into his temple. It was what might have been termed a fortuitous accident.

(from "With Death in his Corner," by Louis L'Amour)

She grew up!

     "If you can help me," I said, "it would mean a lot. Garzo was my pal."

    "Sure, I know. I'm Mildred Casey, remember? I lived down the block from Rock's old man. You two used to fix my bike."

    That made me look again. Blue eyes, the ghosts of freckles over the bridge of her nose, and shabby clothes. An effort to be lively with nothing much to be lively or happy about, but great courage. She still had that, with a fine sort of pride. There was hurt in her eyes where her heart showed, eyes that had kept looking at men wondering if this was the right one.

(from "With Death in His Corner," by Louis L'Amour)

Boot Hill

     "You won't see the town until we get close."

    "Near that mesa?"

    "Right up against it. Small town, about four hundred people when they're all home. Being off the state highway, no tourists ever go there. Nothin' to see, anyway."

    "No boot hill?" Nearly all of the little mining towns in this section have a boot hill, and from the look of them, shooting up your neighbors must have been the outstanding recreation in the old days.

    "Oh, sure. Not many in this one, though. About fifteen or twenty with markers, but they buried most of them without any kind of a slab. This boot hill couldn't hold a candle to Pioche. Over there they buried seventy-five before the first one died of natural causes.

(from "The Hills of Homicide," by Louis L'Amour)

Not an excuse, but closer than some

    From the beginning he had been inclined to sympathize with the financier who was writhing in the net cast about him by an unscrupulous blackmailer. Of all the crimes in the book he detested blackmail most, and it had been difficult to work up any real feeling about Sara Morton's death since learning of her attempted extortion scheme.

    True, blackmail didn't excuse murder in the eyes of the law, but in Harsh's case, considering his enormous loss if she exposed him, it was a pretty fair excuse.    

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne, by Brett Halliday)

Elaborate preparations

     "I want to handle this so you'll know I haven't double-crossed you no matter what happens. The Golden Cock bar will be crowded, and I'll mingle in the thickest of the crowds. The police may tail me and be watching. Don't speak to me or give yourself away in any way. Have a brief note wadded up to slip into my right hand, telling me where to meet you. I'll stay in plain sight after you give it to me, and won't communicate with anyone until I go out to my car and read the note. You can follow me to make sure I'm not being tailed. Then you'll know I'm on the level." 

    Shayne paused, feeling uncertain, yet hopeful. He knew it wasn't very good, but it was the best he could think of on the spur of the moment.

    "That sounds like a lot of melodramatic hocus-pocus," his caller complained.

    "That's the way it has to be if you want to see me tonight," he said flatly. "At the Golden Cock in half an hour." He cradled the receiver before the man could make further protests.

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne," by Brett Halliday)

Bluffing his way

     "I think I know your name," Shayne lied tranquilly.

    "I assure you that I did not kill her, Shayne," His voice broke on a falsetto key like the changing voice of a teenaged boy.

    "But you have no alibi for before seven?" Shayne said.

    "Precisely. And even though that alibi is sufficient, you can readily understand that a police investigation would bring the whole story to light . . . and ruin me."

    "Naturally," Shayne scowled heavily, wondering how long he could keep the man talking without giving away the fact that he hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about.

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne," by Brett Halliday)

It wasn't suicide

     "Sara Morton is dead. She was evidently dead when you and Beatrice and I tried to rouse her around nine o'clock in her hotel room."

    "Suicide?"

    "I said murder, Mike," Gentry reminded him.

    "But you didn't say Sara Morton."

    "Gentry glanced up at Shayne with eyes like streaked granite. "Suicides don't jab a pair of long-bladed shears into the jugular and then go in the bathroom to wash the blood off the weapon, carry it back in the room and then lie down to die. Not without dropping a little blood along the way they don't."

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne, by Brett Halliday)

How to stop the tears?

 Her head rested against the reporter's bony shoulder and his arm was around her. Tears streamed down her face, and Rourke's slaty eyes held the bewildered look of a man who had failed to stop a woman from crying.

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne, by Brett Halliday)

I could do with less of those kinds of compliments

     "It was like you to say that, Bertie. I respect you for it."

    "Oh, no."

    "Yes. You have a splendid, chivalrous soul."

    "Not a bit."

    "Yes, you have. You remind me of Cyrano."

    "Who?"

    "Cyrano de Bergerac."

    "The chap with the nose?"

    "Yes."

    I can't say I was any too pleased. I felt the old beak furtively. It was a big on the prominent side, perhaps, but, dash it, not in the Cyrano class. It began to look as if the next thing this girl would do would be to compare me to Schnozzle Durante.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Risky business

 It was a dashed tricky thing, of course, to have to decide on the spur of the moment. I was reading in the paper the other day about hose birds who are trying to split the atom, the nub being that they haven't the foggiest as to what will happen if they do. It may be all right. On the other hand, it may not be all right. And pretty silly a chap would feel, no doubt, if, having split the atom, he suddenly found the house going up in smoke and himself torn limb from limb.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Chandler

 In fact, I and the corn chandler, who was looking a bit flagged, I thought, as if he had had a hard morning chandling the corn, were beginning to doze lightly when things suddenly brisked up, bringing Gussie into the picture for the first time.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A corn chandler was a corn merchant. The earliest use dates back to the late 1600s.

Seventh grade boys on a warm day

     The grammar school at Market Snodsbury had, I understand, been built somewhere in the year 1416, and, as with so many of these ancient foundations, there still seemed to brood over its Great Hall, where the afternoon's festivities were to take place, not a little of the fug of the centuries. It was the hottest day of the summer, and though somebody had opened a tenative window or two, the atmosphere remained distinctive and individual.

    In this hall the youth of Market Snodsbury had been eating its daily lunch for a matter of five hundred years, and the flavour lingered. The air was sort of heavy and langourous, if you know what I mean, with the scent of Young England and boiled beef and carrots.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

[This passage brings to mind so vividly many scenes of yesteryear. There is no sensory experience quite like that of being trapped in close quarters with a group of seventh grade boys who have been playing outside on a warm day. Ah, the "scent of Young England," or any other place, for that matter.]

Looking at Uncle Tom

 Once more he became silent, staring before him with sombre eyes. Following his gaze, I saw that he was looking at an enlarged photograph of my Uncle Tom in some sort of Masonic uniform which stood on the mantelpiece. I've tried to reason with Aung Dehlia about this photograph for years, placing before her two alternative suggestions: (a) to burn the beastly thing; or (b) if she must preserve it, to shove me in another room when I come to stay. But she declines to accede. She says it's good for me. A useful discipline, she maintains, teaching me that there is a darker side to life and that we were not put into this world for pleasure only.

"Turn it to the wall, if it hurts you, Tuppy," I said gently.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Moth-eaten bulldog

     He came listlessly into the room, and I was pained to observe that a night's rest had effected no improvement in the unhappy wreck's appearance. Indeed, I should have said, if anything, that he was looking rather more moth-eaten than when I had seen him last. If you can visualize a bulldog which has just been kicked in the ribs and had its dinner sneaked by the cat, you will have Hildebrand Glossop as he now stood before me.

    "Stap my vitals, Tuppy, old corpse," I said, concerned, "you're looking pretty blue around the rims."

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)