Things that go bump in the night

    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)

 

Very descriptive

 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.

Mansard roof

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.

Burglar ethics

    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)

Escape into darkness

    With a word of caution, flash-lamp in his left hand, pistol in right, Lanyard stepped out into the darkness. In two minutes he was back, with a look of relief.

    "All clear," he reported; "I felt pretty sure Popinot knew nothing of this way out - else we'd have entertained uninvited guests long since. Now, half a minute - "

    The electric meter occupied a place on the wall of the scullery not far from the door. Prying open its cover, he unscrewed and removed the fuse plug, plunging the entire house into darkness.

    "That'll keep 'em guessing a while!" he explained with a chuckle. "They'll hesitate a long time before rushing a dark house infested by a desperate armed man - if I know anything about that mongrel lot! Besides, when they do get their courage up, the lack of light will stave off discovery of this way of escape."

(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)