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.