His eyes don't match his tongue

 "You wangled that viscid old sport rather cleverly, don't y' know," remarked Vance, when Cleaver had gone. "But there's something deuced queer about him. The transition from his gambler's glassy stare to his garrulous confidences was too sudden - suspiciously sudden, in fact. I may be evil-minded, but he didn't impress me as a luminous pillar of truth. Maybe it's because I don't like those odd, boiled eyes of his - somehow they didn't harmonize with his gushing imitation of openhearted frankness."

(from The "Canary" Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine)

When lawyers tangle

"I'm afraid I can't accommodate you," he said at length.

"Your attitude is not quite what might be expected in one whose conscience is entirely clear," returned Markham, with a show of resentment. The man turned a mildly inquisitive gaze upon the district attorney.

"What has my knowing the girl to do with her being murdered? She didn't confide in me who her murderer was to be. She didn't even tell me that she knew anyone who intended to strangle her. If she'd known, she most likely could have avoided being murdered."

Vance was sitting close to me, a little removed from the others, and, leaning over, murmured in my ear sotto voce: "Markham's up against another lawyer - poor dear! A crumplin' situation."

But however inauspiciously this interlocutory skirmish may have begun, it soon developed into a grim combat which ended in Cleaver's complete surrender. Markham, despite his suavity and graciousness, was an unrelenting and resourceful antagonist: and it was not long before he had forced from Cleaver some highly significant information.

(from The "Canary" Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine)

How to convict a spirit

 "It's uncanny," pronounced Markham gloomily.

"It's positively spiritualistic," amended Vance. "It has the caressin' odor of a seance. Really, y' know, I'm beginning to suspect that some medium was hovering in the vicinage last night doing some rather tip-top materializations. I say, Markham, could you get an indictment against an ectoplasmic emanation?"

"That wasn't no spook that made those fingerprints," growled Heath, with surly truculence.

(from The "Canary" Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine)

I think he really did!

 Heath paused and finally lighted the cigar on which he had been chewing at intervals during the past hour. "Now, tell me about that side door," he went on, with undiminished aggressiveness. "You told me you lock it every night before you leave - is that right?"

"Ja - that's right." The man nodded his head affirmatively several times. "Only I don't lock it - I bolt it."

"All right, you bolt it, then." As Heath talked his cigar bobbed up and down between his lips; smoke and words came simultaneously from his mouth. "And last night you bolted it as usual about six o'clock?"

"Maybe a quarter past," the janitor amended, with Germanic precision.

"You're sure you bolted it last night?" The question was almost ferocious.

"Ja, ja. Sure, I am. I do it every night. I never miss."

The man's earnestness left no doubt that the door in question had indeed been bolted on the inside at about six o'clock of the previous evening. Heath, however, belabored the point for several minutes, only to be reassured doggedly that the door had been bolted. At last the janitor was dismissed.

"Really, y' know, Sergeant," remarked Vance with an amused smile, "that honest Rheinlander bolted the door."

(from The "Canary" Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine)

Say a lot to say nothing

     "What is it you suspect?" demanded Markham sharply.

    "Not a thing, old dear," blandly declared Vance. "I'm wandering about in a mental murk as empty of signposts as interplanetary space. The jaws of darkness do devour me up; I'm in the dead vast and middle of night. My mental darkness is Egyptian, Stygian, Cimmerian - I'm in a perfect Erebus of tenebrosity."

    Markham's jaw tightened in exasperation; he was familiar with this evasive loquacity of Vance's.

(from The "Canary" Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine)

A specialist

 Deputy Inspector Conrad Brenner was one of that small army of obscure, but highly capable, experts who are connected with the New York Police Department, and who are constantly being consulted on abstruse technical problems, but whose names and achievements rarely get into the public prints. His specialty was locks and burglars' tools; and I doubt if, even among those exhaustively painstaking criminologists of the University of Lausanne, there was a more accurate reader of the evidential signs left by the implements of housebreakers. In appearance and bearing he was like a withered little college professor. (It is an interesting fact that for the nineteen years he had been connected with the New York Police Department, he had been referred to, by his superiors and subordinates alike, as "the Professor.") His black, unpressed suit was old-fashioned in cut; and he wore a very high stiff collar, lie a fin-de-siecle clergyman, with a narrow black string tie. His gold-rimmed spectacles were so thick-lensed that the pupils of his eyes gave the impression of acute belladonna poisoning.

(from The "Canary" Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine)

A professional job

     Heath had been eyeing Vance with narrowed lids as the latter bent over the dressing table. "What's in your mind, Mr. Vance?" he, in turn, asked.

    "Oh, more than you could ever guess," Vance answered lightly. "But just at the moment I was toying with the idea that this steel case was never torn open by that wholly inadequate iron poker, what?"

    Heath nodded his head approvingly. "So you, too, noticed that, did you? And you're dead right. That poker might've twisted the box a little, but it never snapped that lock."

      He turned to Inspector Moran. "That's the puzzler I've sent for 'Prof' Brenner to clean up - if he can. The jimmying of that jewel case looks to me like a high-class professional job. No Sunday school superintendent did it."

(from The "Canary" Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine)

Smart doctor

 "Where's the medical examiner?" asked Markham.

"He's coming," Heath told him. "You can't get Doc Doremus to go anywheres without his breakfast."

(from The "Canary" Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine)

Off with their heads!

 "A court of law listens solemnly to the testimony, and renders a decision not on the facts but according to a complicated set of rules. The result d' ye see, is that a court often acquits a prisoner, realizing full well that he is guilty. Many a judge has said, in effect, to a culprit, 'I know, and the jury knows, that you committed the crime, but in view of the legally admissible evidence, I declare you innocent. Go and sin again.'"

Markham grunted. "I'd hardly endear myself to the people of this country if I answered the current strictures against me by recommending law courses for the police department."

"Permit me, then, to suggest the alternative of Shakespeare's butcher: "'Let's kill all the lawyers.'"

(from The "Canary" Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine)

Don't bother us with evidence

 Vance looked up with a slow smile and regarded him quizzically.

"The difficulty would seem to be," he returned, with an indolent drawl, "that the police, being unversed in the exquisite abracadabra of legal procedure, labor under the notion that evidence which would convince a man of ordin'ry intelligence, would also convince a court of law. A silly notion, don't y' know. Lawyers don't really want evidence; they want erudite technicalities. And the average policeman's brain is too forthright to cope with the pedantic demands of jurisprudence."

(from The "Canary" Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine)

Ah, the corruption of accumulated wealth

     An hour after dusk that night a native sought out one of the caballeros with the intelligence that a gentleman wished to speak to him immediately, and that this gentleman was evidently wealthy since he had given the native a coin for carrying the message, when he might just as well have given nothing more than a cuff alongside the head; also that the mysterious gentleman would be waiting along the path that ran toward the San Gabriel trail, and to be sure that the caballero would come he had bade the native say that there was a fox in the neighborhood.

    "A fox, Zorro - fox!" the caballero thought, and then ruined the native forever by giving him another coin.

(from The Mark of Zorro, by Johnston McCulley)

Get with it!

     "She is yours, if you play the game!" Don Alejandro said. "You are a Vega, and therefore the best catch in the country. Be but half a lover and the senorita is yours. What sort of blood is in your veins? I have half a mind to slit one of them and see."

    "Cannot we allow this marriage business to drop for the time being?" Don Diego asked.

    "You are twenty-five. I was quite old when you were born. Soon I shall go the way of my fathers. You are the only son, the heir, and you must have a wife and offspring. Is the Vega family to die out because your blood is water? Win you a wife within the quarter year, young sir, and a wife I can accept into the family, or I leave my wealth to the Franciscans when I pass away!"

(from The Mark of Zorro, by Johnston McCulley)

A strange way of cursing

 The Johnston McCulley's novel, The Mark of Zorro, one of the main characters is Sergeant Gonzalez (one of the bad guys). One of the Sergeant's favorite expressions is, "Meal mush and goat's milk!" Why that particular phrase should be the essence of a curse I do not understand, but there it is. Evidently McCulley thought that military men of the period said that when they became frustrated.

And kicked him out!

     Captain Ramon said it. And then Senor Zorro grasped him by the nek and lifted him, and propelled him to the door, and hurled him into the darkness. And had his boots not been soft, Captain Ramon would have been injured more deeply, both in feelings and anatomy.

(from The Mark of Zorro, by Johnston McCulley)

Lazy Latin lover

"I am weary, and the hacienda is an excellent place to rest," he said. "I knew it to be the siesta hour, also, and thought everyone would be asleep. It were a shame to awaken you, senorita, but I felt that I must speak. Your beauty would hinge a man's tongue in its middle so that both ends might be free to sing your praises."

Senorita Lolita had the grace to blush. "I would that my beauty affected other men so," she said.

"And does it not? Is it possible that the Senorita Lolita lacks suitors? But that cannot be possible?"

"It is, nevertheless, senor. There are few bold enough to seek to ally themselves with the family of Pulido, since it is out of favor with the powers. There is one - suitor," she went on. "But he does not seem to put much life into his wooing."

"Ha! A laggard at love - and in your presence? What ails the man? Is he ill?"

"He is so wealthy that I suppose h thinks he has but to request it and a maiden will agree to wed him."

"What an imbecile! 'Tis the wooing gives the spice to romance!"

(from The Mark of Zorro, by Johnston McCalley)

Cocking snooks

"Bertie had been very pressing, and Frank had been cocking snooks when he's had one over the odds, and hinting at what he could say if Bertie pushed him too far." (from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)

British slang is sometimes difficult for us Americans to understand. Bertie had been pressing Frank to pay the money he owed him, and Frank had been "thumbing his nose" at him, and when he would have too much to drink, he would hint at what he would do if Bertie didn't back off.

Odd names

 "Yes," she said, "I put a small advertisement in the paper. It is so fortunate that Mrs. Mercer should have had an uncommon name like Anketell. One could feel practically sure that there would not be more than one Louisa Kezia Anketell, or at least not more than one in the same generation. These peculiar names generally run in a family. My own second name is Hephzibah - most unsuitable with Maud, but there has been a Hephzibah in our family for at least two hundred years."

(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)

And stay away!

     "And the other nephew, Francis Everton - what about him?"

    "Bad hat," said Henry. Remittance man. Old Everton paid him to keep away. Glasgow was a safe distance - he could soak quietly in the cheaper brands of alcohol without any danger of getting into the London papers."

(This is from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth. Wikipedia says, "In Victorian British culture, a remittance man was usually the black sheep of an upper- or middle-class family who was sent away (from the United Kingdom to the rest of the British Empire), and paid to stay away. He was generally of dissolute or drunken character and may have been sent overseas after disgraces at home. Harry Grey, 8th Earl of Stamford, is an example; he was sent to South Africa before he inherited the titles and fortune of his third cousin.")

Just trust Miss Silver

     "Will you tell me what Mrs. Grey is afraid of?"

    "I don't see how I can."

    Miss Silver looked at her in a different way. She had the air of a kind aunt - of Aunt Emmeline when she was about to give you five pounds at Christmas. She said in a voice that was nice as well as prim, "I am a great admirer of Lord Tennyson. The mot juste - how often one comes across it in his writings. 'Oh, trust me all in all, or not at all.' I find that I often have to quite that to my clients. The most complete frankness is necessary."

(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)

    

Do it right

 By this time Hilary was hungry, and today she wasn't lunching on a bun and a glass of milk. You didn't pawn Aunt Arabella's ruby ring every day of the week, and when you did you didn't lunch on buns - you splashed out, had a two-course lunch, and cream in your coffee.

(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)

On the nail

 In her novel The Case is Closed in the "Miss Silver" series, authoress Patricia Wentworth uses this sentence: "The Mercers would have to eat, and unless they went out and shopped for everything themselves, and paid for it on the nail and carried it home, one or other of these food shops would have their address."

The phrase "on the nail" is not one that is used commonly in American English. It means "immediately or without delay," similar to our common expression "cash on the barrelhead."

Not fresh

 Hilary found her creamery and ate her bun - a peculiarly arid specimen. There were little black things in it which might once have been currants but were now quite definitely fossils. Not a good bun. Hilary's imp chanted mournfully:

   How bitter when your only bun

   Is not at all a recent one.

(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)

Blame it on Henry

If Henry hadn't been determined to quarrel he would have taken her out to lunch first, and now she would have to go and have a glass of milk and a bun in a creamery with a lot of other women who were having buns and milk, or Bovril, or milk with a dash of coffee, or a nice cup of tea. It was a most frightfully depressing thought, because one bun was going to make very little impression on her hunger, and she certainly couldn't afford any more. Extraordinarily stupid of Henry not to have given her lunch first. They could have quarrelled comfortably over their coffee if he was absolutely set on quarrelling, instead of uncomfortably in the Den with nothing inside you and no prospect of anything except a bun. It was a bad, bleak, bitter and unbearable business. And it was all Henry's fault.

(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)

Misery

 What she wanted was someone to talk the whole thing over with. How could you think a thing like that out all by yourself? What you wanted was someone to say "Nonsense" in a loud commanding voice and having said it, to take up his stand on the hearth rug and lay down the law with that passionate indifference to argument or contradiction which was one of Henry's most marked characteristics.

But she probably wasn't ever going to see Henry again. She blinked hard and stared out of the window of the bus. There really did seem to be an unnecessary amount of misery in the world. She would never have believed that she could have thought with yearning of Henry laying down the law. What was the good of thinking about Henry when she wasn't going ever to see him again and couldn't possibly ask his advice?

(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)

Peter Grievous

 "A poorer spirited, more Peter-grievous kind of a creature I never come across nor never want to!" (from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)

According to the website "Word Histories, "The humorous name Peter Grievous designates a person who whines or complains. This name is also used as an adjective meaning fretful, miserable, whining."

Tough sell

 She didn't go in - it wasn't any use going in. The house was shut up, and three boards in a row proclaimed Bertie Everton's desire to sell it. Houses which have figured in a murder case do not sell very easily, but it is of course permissible to hope.

(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)

A terrifying moment

Marion was standing still. At Hilary's question she seemed to become something more than still. Where there is life there is breath, and where there is breath there is always some movement. Marion seemed to have stopped breathing. There was a long, frightening minute when it seemed to Hilary that she had stopped breathing. She stared at her with round, terrified eyes, and it came to her that Marion wasn't sure - wasn't sure about Geoff. She loved Geoff terribly, but she wasn't sure that he hadn't killed James Everton. That seemed so shocking to Hilary that she couldn't think of anything to say or anything to do. She learned back upon her hands and felt them go numb.

(from The Cased is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)

Give it a name

 Hilary was clearing the plates, coming and going between the living-room and the little kitchen of the flat. The bright chintz curtains were drawn across the windows. There was a row of china birds on the shelf above the glowing fire - blue, green, yellow, and brown, and the rose-coloured one with the darting beak which Geoff had christened Sophy. They all had names. Geoff always had to find a name for a thing as soon as he bought it. His last car was Samuel, and the birds were Octavius, Leonora, Ermengarde, sophy, and Erasmus.

(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)

Still beautiful in spite of everything

 She was still in her outdoor things - the brown tweed coat which she had had in her trousseau, and the brown wool beret which Aunt Emmaline had crocheted for her. The coat was getting very shabby now, but anything that Marion wore took the lines of her long, graceful body. She was much, much too thin, but if she walked about in her bones she would still be graceful. With her dark hair damp from the fog, the beret pushed back, the grey eyes fixed in a daze of grief and fatigue, she had still the distinction which heightens beauty and survives it.

(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)

I can't bear it

 Geoff, who had been so terribly full of life, and Marion, who loved him and had to go on living in a world which believed he was a murderer and had shut him up out of harm's way . . . . What was the good of saying, "I can't bear it," when it was going on, and must go on, and you had to bear it, whether you wanted to or not."

(from The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth)

A small man

 Aaron McDonald just sat there, because he had no place to run to. Had he been any man but the man he was, I'd have been sorry for him, for he had to stand alone before you realized how small he was.

Money and arrogance had brought him, for a time, a certain measure of power and authority. He still had the money, but there wasn't any store, anywhere, that would take it in exchange for what McDonald needed now, nor was there any store that could supply it.

(from Kowa Trail, by Louis L'Amour)

Slaughterhouse tally

 For a man riding a mule who was so well known by chuck-wagon yarns, the Dutchman managed to drop out of sight whenever he wanted. But he was known as a fast and deadly accurate shot with any kind of weapon. Handy with a pistol, though he relied more on a rifle or shotgun, both of which he habitually carried.

Nobody knew how many men he had killed; probably he didn't know himself. Does a butcher keep track of the beeves he slaughters?

(from Kiowa Trail, by Louis L'Amour)

Fight smart

     My attack was too sudden for them, too unexpected. My first shot took an Indian between the shoulders; the second splattered sand; the third caught a leaping, running Indian in full stride, and he fell, throwing his rifle out before him.

    An Indian is not under any compulsion to fight to the last man. When the odds are against him, he simply slips away, if it is possible to do so, and waits to fight another day.

(from Kiowa Trail, by Louis L'Amour)

When you don't want a cop

 Mrs. Waddington considered that in this instance her ally was carrying caution too far. She turned on him with a snort of annoyance: and, having turned, remained staring frozenly at something that had suddenly manifested itself in his lordship's rear.

This something was a long, stringy policeman: and though Mrs. Waddington had met this policeman only once in her life, the circumstances of that meeting had been such that the memory of him had lingered. She recognized him immediately: and, strong woman though she was, wilted like a snail that has just received a handful of salt between the eyes.

(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

You don't scare me!

     "If I might excuse myself, madam, I am engaged on the concluding passages of the article to which you alluded just now, and I am anxious to complete it before Mr. Biffen's return."

    Mrs. Waddington caused the eye before which Sigsbee H. had so often curled up and crackled like a burnt feather to blaze imperiously upon the butler. He met it with the easy aplomb of one who in his time has looked at dukes and made them feel that their trousers were bagging at the knees.

(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Of cops and coffee-pots

     In supposing that the person or persons whom he had heard climbing up the fire-escape were in pursuit of himself, George Finch had made a pardonable error. Various circumstances had combined to render his departure from the Purple Chicken unobserved.

    In the first place, just as Officer Garroway was on the point of releasing his head from the folds of the table-cloth, Giuseppe, with a loyalty to his employers which it would be difficult to over-praise, hit him in the eye with a coffee-pot. This had once more confused the policeman's outlook, and by the time he was able to think clearly again the lights went out.

(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Time would fail me

     "Mother still insists that you had known her before and that the story she told was true and that she only took the necklace as an afterthought. Isn't she funny!"

    "Funny," said George heavily, "is not the word. She is one long scream from the rise of the curtain, and ought to be beaten over the head with a blackjack. If you want my candid and considered opinion of that zymotic scourge who has contrived to hook herself on to your family in the capacity of step-mother to you and general mischief-maker to the rest of the world, let me begin by saying . . . However, there is no time to go into that now."

(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

[I like that term "zymotic scourge." That describes a lot of females I know.]

Concerning fire escapes

     Fire-escapes, she knew, led, if followed long enough, to the ground: and she decided to climb to safety down this one. It was only when she had descended as far as the ninth floor that, glancing below her, she discovered that this particular fire-escape terminated not, as she had supposed, in some back-alley, but in the gaily-lighted out-door premises of a restaurant, half the tables of which were already filled.

    This sight gave her pause. In fact, to be accurate, it froze her stiff. Nor was her agitation without reason. Those of the readers of this chronicle who have ever thrown pepper in a policeman's face, and skimmed away down a fire-escape, are aware that fire-escapes, considered as a refuge, have the defect of being uncomfortably exposed to view. At any moment, felt Mrs. Waddington, the policeman might come to the edge of the roof and look down; and to deceive him into supposing that she was merely a dust-bin or a milk-bottle was, she knew, beyond her histrionic powers.

(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The wife is always right

 "All right, then. Wait for me at the Astor. Though it's kind of a swell place, isn't it?"

"Well, don't you want a swell place to dine at on your wedding night?"

"You're right."

"I'm always right," said Fanny, giving her husband's check a loving pinch. "That's the first thing you've got to get into your head, now you're a married man."

(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Just get rid of him!

If George had been more in the frame of mind to analyse the looks of his future father-in-law, he might have seen in this one a sort of shuddering loathing. But he was not in the frame of mind. Besides, Sigsbee H. Waddington was not the kind of man whose looks one analysed. He was one of those negligible men one pushes out of sight and forgets about. George proceeded to forget about him almost immediately.

(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

It should be noted that the "analyse" spelling - with an "s" - used above is as printed in the book. That is the British spelling of the word.

The pessimistic perspective

     "Well, weren't you happy when you got married?"

    "No, sir."

    "Was Mrs. Ferris?"

    "She appeared to take a certain girlish pleasure in the ceremony, sir, but it soon blew over."

    "How do you account for that?"

    "I could not say, sir."

    "I'm sorry weddings depress you, Ferris. Surely when two people love each other and mean to go on loving each other . . . ."

    "Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse."

(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Difficulty communicating

     "Nice day, Ferris."

    "Yes, sir."

    "Nice weather."

    "Yes, sir."

    "Nice country around here."

    "No, sir."

    George was somewhat taken aback. "Did y say, No, sir?"

    "Yes, sir."

    "Oh, Yes, Sir? I thought you said No, sir."

    "Yes, sir. No, sir."

    "You mean you don't like the country around here."

    "No, sir."

    "Why, not?"

    "I disapprove of it, sir."

    "Why?"

    "It is not the sort of country to which I have been accustomed, sir. It is not like the country round Little-Seeping-in-the-Wold."

    "Where's that?"

    "In England, sir."

    "I suppose the English country's nice?"

    "I believe it gives uniform satisfaction, sir."

(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

See?

 "Listen to me, you," said Hamilton Beamish, "and get me right! See? That'll be about all from you about this girl loving you, unless you want me to step across and bust you on the beezer. I love her, see? and she's going to marry me, see? And nobody else, see? And anyone who says different had better notify his friends where he wants his body sent, see? Love you, indeed? A swell chance! I'm the little guy she's going to marry, see? Me!"

And, folding his arms, the thinker paused for a reply. It did not come immediately. George Finch, unused to primitive emotions from this particular quarter, remained completely dumb. It was left for Madame Eulalie to supply comment.

"Jimmy!" she said faintly.

Hamilton Beamish caught her masterfully about the waist. He kissed her eleven times.

(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

All by himself

 "Well, the whole difficulty is that at present George is in the position of having broken the engagement. So, when this May Stubbs arrives, I am going to get her to throw him over of her own free-will."

 "And how do you propose to do that?"

"Quite simply. You see, we may take it for granted that she is a prude. I have, therefore, constructed a little drama, by means of which George will appear an abandoned libertine."

"George!"

"She will be shocked and revolted and will at once break off all relations with him."

"I see. Did you think all this out by yourself?"

"Entirely by myself."

"You're too clever for one man. You ought to incorporate."

(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Fast track alimony

 "Did you and this girl quarrel before you separated?"

"No. We sort of drifted apart. I took it for granted that the thing was over and done with. And when I saw Molly . . ."

Hamilton Beamish laid a hand upon his arm. "George," he said, "I want you to give me your full attention: for we have arrived now at the very core of the matter. Were there any letters?"

"Dozens. And of course she has kept them. She used to sleep with them under her pillow."

"Bad!" said Hamilton Beamish, shaking his head. "Very bad!"

"And I remember her saying once that she believed in breach of promise suits."

Hamilton Beamish frowned. He seemed to be deploring the get-rich-quick spirit of the modern girl, who is not content to sit down and wait for her alimony.

(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Did you get my emotion?

 Hamilton Beamish straightened himself. He was now in a position to see George steadily and see him whole: and the spectacle convinced him at once that something in the message he had just delivered must have got right in among his friend's ganglions. George Finch's agreeable features seemed to be picked out in a delicate Nile-green. His eyes were staring. His lower jaw had fallen. Nobody who had ever seen a motion-picture could have had the least doubt as to what he was registering. It was dismay.

(From The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse. This book was published in 1927, which was the year that the first sound movie was produced. Therefore, Wodehouse no doubt would have been referring to the over-stated facial expressions that were necessary in silent films to convey the emotions.)

One tough chick

     "A tough baby?" inquired George anxiously

    "I dislike the expression. It is the sort of expression Mullett would use: and I know few things more calculated to make a thinking man shudder than Mullett's vocabulary. Nevertheless, in a certain crude, horrible way it does describe Mrs. Waddington.

    "There is an ancient belief in Tibet that mankind is descended from a demoness named Drasrinmo and a monkey. Both Sigsbee H. and Mrs. Waddington do much to bear out this theory. I am loath to speak ill of a woman, but it is no use trying to conceal the fact that Mrs. Waddington is a bounder and a snob and has a soul like the under-side of a flat stone."

(From The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse) 

Synthetic Westerner

     "Sigsbee H. Waddington," he said, "is one of those men who must, I think, during the formative years of their boyhood have been kicked on the head by a mule. It has been well said of Sigsbee H. Waddington that, if men were dominoes, he would be the double-blank. One of the numerous things about him that rule him out of serious consideration by intelligent persons is the fact that he is a synthetic westerner."

    "A synthetic Westerner?"

    "It is a little known, but growing sub-species akin to the synthetic Southerner - with which you are doubtless familiar."

(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Amazing coincidence

    "Why shouldn't I goggle?"

     "Why should you?

    "Because," said George Finch, looking like a stuffed frog, "I love her."

    "Nonsense!"

    "It isn't nonsense"

    "Have you ever read my booklet on 'The Marriage Sane'?"

    "No, I haven't."

    "I show there that love is a reasoned emotion that springs from mutual knowledge, increasing over an extended period of time, and a community of tastes. How can you love a girl when you have never spoken to her and don't even know her name?"

    "I do know her name."

    "How?"

    "I looked through the telephone directory till I found out who lived at Number 16 East Seventy-ninth Street. It took me about a week because . . . "

    "Sixteen East Seventy-ninth Street? You don't mean that this girl you've been staring at is little Molly Waddington?"

(from The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

All that work for nothing

 I suppose authors generally have a special affection for those of their books which come out easily. It is not that we mind work - we are always ready to give our all for our Art - but it is nice when we are occasionally spared the blood, sweat, and tears, and there are few things more agonizing than the realization, afer one has written 50,000 words of a novel, that as a theatrical manager I knew used to say of a play which seemed to him to fall short of perfection, "It don't add up right."

(from the Preface to The Small Bachelor, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

One tough hombre

     He was silent for several minutes. "I don't like it, Kim - that Neerland going after that man."

    "You leave 'em alone," Kim replied calmly. "That Key-Lock man is an old lobo. He's from away back at the forks of the crick. Anybody who gets that man in a corner has bit off a chunk, believe me, and he's better have the jaws to chew it!"

(from The Key-Lock Man, by Louis L'Amour)

A race against time

     Nine men rode out of Freedom, nine men with just one idea, to reach the scene before their community could be branded for murder. They left in the cool of the evening and they rode fast. changing horses twice before they reached Tuba City.

    Neill, hoping and expecting that the men of Freedom would be with him, had arranged for horses to be waiting for them at Tuba. Yet swiftly as they rode, he knew there was hardly once chance in a thousand that they would arrive in time.

    But he was banking on the courage of the man Keelock, and of a woman whom he had never met.

(from The Key-Lock Man, by Louis L'Amour)

Have to have direction

 A man needed a plan, he needed direction. If he did not have that, he had nothing. A man, like a ship at sea, might change course many times in getting to an eventual destination, but he must always be going somewhere, not simply drifting.

(from The Key-Lock Man, by Louis L'Amour)

To make his own way

He wanted a ranch with good grass and water, and he wanted cattle to make money, and horses simply because he loved them. He wsa not waiting around to fall heir to a fortune, nor to marry a rich wife, nor to steal enough to get by. He knew there was no easy way, and he was not looking for one. It was his pride that he walked his own trail, saddled his own broncs, and fought his own battles. And he earned his own money.

(from The Key-Lock Man, by Louis L'Amour)

Accidental death

 But I was worried. Noble Bishop would be wanting that gold, and how much of my story he believed I didn't know. Only thing I was sure of was that he hadn't wanted a shoot-out down there by the creek. There were too many people and too many guns, and it would be a matter of luck, not skill, if a man survived. There were too many chances of a wild bullet doing what you didn't mean an aimed bullet to do.

(from Mustang Man, by Louis L'Amour)

Pacifier

     "They had a rope for you, all right, and I never did see such an outfit," Mims chuckled. "Mad? They were really scratching dirt and butting heads. Fact is, they talked some about lynching me on general principles."

    "What stopped 'em?"

    "I had me an old ten-gauge shotgun in the cabin. After you taken off I just went back and loaded her up. Time or two I've noticed that a ten-gauge shotgun is quite a pacifier. Folks who get riled up and want to twist someone's tail sort of calm down when they see one."

(from Mustang Man, by Louis L'Amour)

Old age

 We all needed rest, Mims most of all. When I looked at the old man it gave me a twist of pain inside. I was young and strong and tough now, this was the way a man could be when he grew old. It was old age I could see in the face of Harry Mims now.

(from Mustang Man, by Louis L'Amour)

Lead indigestion

 My foolishness for the eyes of Penelope did not lead me to foolishness with Loomis. There was no nonsense in me where men were concerned, and if he wanted my kind of trouble I'd serve it up hot and well done for him, and he'd get indigestion from it, too, or I'd know the reason why.

(from Mustang Man, by Louis L'Amour)

Ugly goes all the way to the bone

 But she was a fair lady, a girl's bright eyes have won the day more than once, and I was the fool ever to look into them. For I am an unhandsome man, and the romance in my heart does not show past the bend in my nose, or at least the girls don't seem to look beyond that.

(from Mustang Man, by Louis L'Amour)

The buzzard of the western world

 When I rode in Penelope gave me an odd look, but nothing was said. I had an idea Flinch knew what was going on, for that breed missed very little. He was the sort that remains on the side lines and then picks up the pieces after the fighting is over.

(from Mustang Man, by Louis L'Amour)

Reading the future

 It was in my mind to try to foresee what might happen, and so be prepared for it. There's no way I know of that a body can foresee the future, but sometimes he can read it pretty well if he knows the way folks think.

(from Mustang Man, by Louis L'Amour)

A friend in need

 But that was a good horse I rode now. Maybe the best I'd ever had, and I owed that old man a debt. There was something about him I cottoned to, anyway. He was a hard old man, and he would have torn my guts out with the buffalo gun if I'd made a move for my gun; but when the chips were down and I'd been holding no more than a couple of deuces, he had come through.

(from Mustang Man, by Louis L'Amour)

Really his

       When I came in the door of the cabin, Ange stood with her back to it. I could see her shoulders hunch a mite as if she expected to be hit, and I said, "This fool ain't married."

    She turned around and looked at me. "He will be," she said, and dropped her spoon on the floor and came across the room and right into my arms.

    So I taken her in my arms and for the first time in my life I had something that was really mine. Seems like even a long, tall man who ain't much for looks can find him a woman, too.

(from Sackett, by Louis L'Amour)

Pogonip

 In his novel, Sackett, Louis L'Amour makes this statement: "It was the worst sleet storm I'd ever seen, worse even than the pogonips in Nevada."

A pogonip is "a dense winter fog containing frozen particles that is formed in deep mountain valleys of the western U.S." According to a reporter with the Reno Gazette Journal, "the freezing fog so adversely affected the native peoples’ lives that they called it 'pogonip,' which translates to 'white death.' They stayed inside their shelters until the weather warmed."

Keep an eye on the cook

     After a few minutes the bartender came in with the grub and we started to eat. Cap was right. This man could sure put the groceries together.

    "He can cook, all right," I said to Cap. How'd he kill that man?"

    "Poisoned him," cap said, and grinned at me.

(from Sackett, by Louis L'Amour)

Ask permission first

     Thinking of Orrin's mellow Welsh voice a-singing, I came fresh to hear my own voice, so I took a swallow from my canteen and tipping my head back, I gave out with a song. It was "Brennan on the Moor," about an Irish highwayman, a song I dearly loved to hear Orrin sing.

    I didn't get far. A man who plans to sing while he's riding had better reach an understanding with his horse. He should have him a good voice, or a horse with no ear for music.

(from Sackett, by Louis L'Amour)

Just wouldn't be satisfied

     "Mister," I said, "if you ain't any slicker with that pistol than you were with that bottom deal, you'd better not have at it."

    Trouble was, he wouldn't be content with one mistake, he had to make it two; so he had at it, and they buried him out west of town where men were buried who die by the gun.

(from Sackett, by Louis L'Amour)

A nervous woman with a gun

     In his room on the second floor of the hotel Jackson Huddy held his rifle easily in his hands and looked down into the square. He could see Duvarney's shoulder . . . just a little more now, and . . .

    "Mr. Huddy?"

    He turned sharply. Jessica Trescott was standing within ten feet of him and she was holding a very steady Colt House Pistol aimed at his stomach. Mr. Huddy, I would take it kindly if you would just put that rifle down, then unbuckle your gun belt, very carefully."

    "I never shot a woman," Huddy said. "I never would."

    "The reverse is not true, Mr. Huddy. This woman has never shot a man, but believe me, she certainly would. Also, I am somewhat nervous, and if I start shooting it is likely I will empty this gun into you.

    "You see, Mr. Huddy, I came west to marry Mr. Duvarney. I came out here because I love him and I want to bear children for him and to live out my life with him, so if you think I am going to let a man like you come between us with a bullet, you're wrong. I will kill you, Mr. Huddy, if you do not come away from that window, get on your horse, and ride right out of our lives.

    "Mady Coppinger told me you came from Alabama, Mr. Huddy. The only city in Alabama that I know is Mobile. It is very lovely at this time of year. Would you go now . . . please?"

(from Matagorda, by Louis L'Amour)

Fear

     She searched his face. "You aren't afraid?"

    "He shrugged. I expect I am, a little. Fear sets a man up sometimes for what he has to face. A little fear does no harm, just so it doesn't put a man on the run."

(from Matagorda, by Louis L'Amour)

Not one shot

 He decided that he could take it for granted that Huddy was a good shot with a rifle, but he would also remember that Huddy, now at least, was not a gambler. Huddy would study his victim, stay with him until he got within easy range, then shoot him down. From all he had heard, Huddy was a one-shot killer - it was even a matter of pride with him. That meant Duvarney must not give him that one shot until he was ready to do so.

(from Matagorda, by Louis L'Amour)

Out of the storm

 With Bean supporting Kittery, and Spicer walking alongside, they got back to the shelter of the overhang. Once they were out of the immediate roar and rush of the storm, it was like a reprieve from some ghastly hell, or from a wind-tortured world where one gasped for every breath, struggled to make every step.

(from Matagorda, by Louis L'Amour)

Alone in a storm

 The others were gathered about her, together yet alone; for in a terrible storm each person is alone within their minds, cowering with their own private fears, their uncertainties. There is no isolation like that brought on by storm, for the voice cannot rise above the wind, nor can it reach that private place within the head where man hovers in the midst of all that he is and has been.

(from Matagorda, by Louis L'Amour)

Strange suicide

     The old man was tipped back in his chair, and he let the chair legs down hard when Duvarney came in. Welt Spicer merely gave Tap a satisfied look, and Lawton Bean stretched.

    "Two of them are walking to Refugio," Duvarney said. "It will cool them off a bit."

    "Pinto?" the old man asked quickly.

    "Pinto's out there. Will you take care of him, amigo? We'll take those horses, too," he added. "I think we're going to need them, the way the weather is."

    "You killed Pinto Hart?" The old man could not find it in himself to believe it could happen that way.

    "He killed himself," Duvarney said. "He made an error in judgment."

(from Matagorda, by Louis L'Amour)

Tough, but not tough enough

 They turned with great care and, stiff-backed, walked away as Duvarney followed them. He glanced once at the body of Pinto Hart. A tough, reckless man, and a game one. It was a pity, but he had thought of himself as a good man with a gun, and that kind of belief can get a man killed. A reputation for being tough can give a man some standing with his fellows, but there always comes a time when a man has to back it up, and the same men who praised your skill will sneer at it by comparison with the man who shoots you.

(from Matagorda, by Louis L'Amour)

Don't shoot until chow is finished

 He was a talkative man, as men who live alone are inclined to be when company shows up. He moved about, dishing up beans from a big crock, getting out some homemade bread, and putting on the frying pan. "You boys just set still an' don't go to pullin' leather. I'll roust you up some grub."

(from Matagorda, by Louis L'Amour)

Her man

     "Hold that man, Welt. I want to talk to him." He walked his horse slowly through the water, keeping to the side where it was not more than stirrup-deep, and rode to where Jessica stood. Her face was very pale, her eyes unnaturally large.

    "You came to a rough country, Jessica," he said.

    She looked up at him, holding up her skirt in one hand. "My man was here," she said simply.

(from Matagorda, by Louis L'Amour)

Not fighters

 He saw the tallest Munson drop, heard the whiff of a bullet by his face, and saw the second weaving in his saddle. Even as he shot, he saw that these men were not fighters; they were killers, and altogether different thing. It is one thing to shoot a man from ambush, or when outnumbering the enemy; it is quite another thing to stand up face to face with a man who also holds a gun, and will shoot.

(from Matagorda, by Louis L'Amour)

Too easy

 There had been no trouble. It was all too easy; and to Tap Duvarney, to whom few things had come easy, it only served to worry him still more. Something had to be wrong, or to go wrong. Things simply didn't happen this say.

(from Matagorda, by Louis L'Amour)

Ode to a Cow

 There is no creature on the face of the earth more contrary than the common cow. Not so difficult as a mule, not so mean or vicious as a camel, the cow beast can nevertheless exhaust the patience of a Job.

(from Matagorda, by Louis L'Amour)

A hard trip

     Long after Helena went below, Jean remained on deck. He walked forward to where Boyar stood lookout on the bow. "You have crossed Siberia, Boyar? How long would it require?

    "Who can say? Three months? Or three years? It is a long trip, nearly six thousand miles, and the roads are bad, the troikas miserable, the people indifferent or criminal."

(from Sitka, by Louis L'Amour)

Fiction is fiction, of course, and it does not have to be true, and indeed cannot be true, and that is the fun of it. However, sometimes L'Amour stretches the limits of credibility, and this is one of those cases. Even the trips from Independence, Missouri to Oregon in a wagon (less than 2000 miles) would seem like a cakewalk compared to the one described by L'Amour in this book. Six thousand miles in a contrivance similar to a sled or a sleigh or a cart. A troika was a vehicle drawn by three horses abreast.

    

Not enough a tyrant

     He, Rotcheff, thought too much of the other man's point of view; he could always see both sides of an argument. That would not do in a world where there were Zinnovys.

    Yet Zinnovy was a Russin and they talked loudest when they faced weakness. We are basically, he thought, a race of tyrants and poets, and his own fault was in being too much the poet, too little the tyrant.

(from Sitka, by Louis L'Amour)

Hopeless

 Far behind him there was a girl with green eyes and dark hair, a tall and regal girl who had walked beside him briefly, a girl who was not his and could never be his, yet a girl who held his heart now and would hold it always.

(from Sitka, by Louis L'Amour)

Hard-nosed negotiator

 He was a stocky man in a store-bought suit and a cigar clamped in his hard mouth. His face was wide, his hair sparse and rumpled. He rolled his dead cigar in his jaws and spat into a brass spittoon. "I'll sell," he said flatly, "for cash."

(from Sitka, by Louis L'Amour)

Wait your turn

     The man in the dark suit turned on them. "You two stay in town until we decide what to do about this, you hear?"    

    LaBarge got to his feet. "Listen to me, mister. You said before this wasn't your fight, so don't make it yours. Those men were trailing us to rob us, and if any of you want to keep us here, you just stand out in the street. In ten minutes we'll be riding out with our rifles across our saddlebows."

    He paused, letting it sink in. "And mister, if you feel lucky, you just try stopping us."

(from Sitka, by Louis L'Amour)

Hunting coyotes

     After a moment he saw that two men stood in the shadows near a darkened warehouse about a block away. "He's not wasting his time looking at sunsets. He's got something else on his mind."

    "They's left us alone so far."

    Jean walked back to the center of the room and drew his pistol, checking the loads. "If they start trouble, Cap, I'm taking it to them. We've been lucky so far, but if they start it - "

    "That's quite an order, son."

    "Coyotes run yellow in the pack. I've hunted them before."

(from Sitka, by Louis L'Amour)

Wandering in the swamp at night

 The forest grew darker and darker. Twice Rob fell, and once off to their right, something fell into a stagnant pool with a dull plop and both boys jumped. It was cooler now; the trees began to take on weird shapes and landmarks lost their identity as night made all things anonymous.

(from Sitka, by Louis L'Amour)

"All things anonymous." At night things tend to lose their identity, which is one reason that we are afraid at night.

Tickle

 In Edmund Gilligan's novel, The Gaunt Woman, we find the term "tickle" used several times, obviously referring to some sort of geographical feature. We find that "in Newfoundland English it means a short, narrow strait," such as the Baccalieu Tickle pictured below.

"Patrick shut his eyes and listened to the sea, loud in the narrow tickle, louder off-shore."

The captain's role

 He kept his own mouth shut when he was ashore, simply trusting in those men whose bounden duty it was to wage the war. At sea, it was a different matter. Here, on this vessel, he was President, law-giver, and, if the chance came, he was war-wager, too. He hated the invader of these fruitful pastures of the sea, hated him not only for ships shot down and dories gunned, but also - perhaps even more - for the cruel wastefulness of good men's work.

(from The Gaunt Woman, by Edmund Gilligan)

Verbal jousting

     "That's right - laugh! Listen. You think you can play the fool with a man as much as you please - hold him off with a raised eyebrow when he becomes too pressing - keep him under control with a laugh - "

    "Why, this is eloquence! The boy orator!"

    "Oh, you may sneer, but you know in your heart you're afraid."

    Sally stiffened. The smile faded from her lips. She froze. "Afraid? You flatter yourself."

    "I may not be your match at fencing," said Bill, "but the bludgeon is quite as handy a weapon as the rapier."

    "From the insight you have given me into your character, I should have thought your favorite weapon would have been the blackjack."

(from Doctor Sally, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A ghastly golfing outfit

    Bill's first emotion was one of excusable wrath at the spectacle. Here was the only girl he had ever really loved, and he had no sooner left her than she started holding hands with a man of advanced years in a suit of plus-fours of the kind that makes horses shy.

(from Doctor Sally, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Difficulty expressing himself

 Bill became animated again. "You mean there's nobody else?"

"Nobody."

Bill's animation approached the fever point. "Then do you think - do you suppose - might it happen - would it be - er - putting it another way, it is possible - "

"Crisper, crisper, and simpler. What you're trying to suggest now is that perhaps I might one day love you? Am I right?"

"You take the words out of my mouth."

"I had to, or they would never have emerged at all."

(from Doctor Sally, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not Higginbotham

     "Tell me all," he said.

    "All what?"

    "All about yourself. who was the recent Higginbotham?"

    "Oh, a man. Very rich. From up North. I met him when I was in 'Follow the Girl.' I went back to the stage after you and I parted brass-rags. He passed on last July."

    "Marry again?"

    "Ass! If I had, would my name still be Higginbotham?"

    "Something in that," agreed his lordship.

    "I mean, a girl doesn't call herself Higginbotham unless she has to."

(from Doctor Sally, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Gamboge

 I learn things when I read. In the Wodehouse novel, Doctor Sally, he makes reference to "that curious faint gamboge light which passes for sunshine in England." Never having been in England and not being either an artist nor an interior decorator, I did not know what that was. So, in the spirit of curiosity and self-improvement, I looked it up. Gamboge is a deep-yellow pigment derived from a species of tree that primarily grows in Cambodia. (That sounds like a good crossword puzzle entry, doesn't it?) Pictured below is a garcinia tree, which is the source of gamboge. (Honestly, folks, I am not making this up.)

A large trap

 He had been at Bingley only two days, and so had played this hole only six times, but he knew that if he played it for the rest of his life he would never get a two on it, as this unseen expert was so obviously able to do. Four was Sir Hugo Drake's best - his worst twenty-seven, on the occasion when he overran the green and got imbedded in a sort of Sahara which lay beyond it.

(from Doctor Sally, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

You can run, but you can't hide

Any hunter from one of the rancherias might have come upon those tracks, or any squaw out gathering herbs or firewood could have seen them. In a country where a white man could scarcely turn over in bed without an Apache knowing it, it was absurd to believe they would not be aware of all that had happened.

(from The Burning Hills, by Louis L'Amour) 

Figuratively or literally

     Jack Sutton waited while a man might have counted a slow twenty, then he walked by Hindeman and out the door. Something about Ben was too much for him. He had looked Jack right in the eye and never missed chewing his tobacco. He looked just the same when he watched a branding or bought a barrel of flour.

    "Forget it, Ben, Only she gets under my skin."

    Hindeman looked at the knife Maria Cristina gripped. "Yeah," he said dryly, "I can see where she might."

(from The Burning Hills, by Louis L'Amour)

The brutal effects of youth

 Sullenly he returned to his eating and when he had finished his meal he got to his feet and went outside. He paused by the window and Maris Cristina looked at him, a tall young man, too thin, in worn and shabby clothes. She felt a sharp pang; it was not right, Vicente had no youth. No bright time of riding, no colorful clothes and the courting of girls. He had grown up a frightened and lonely boy in a land of strangers. It was no wonder he had become a frightened young man.

(from The Burning Hills, by Louis L'Amour)

Toltecs

 In Louis L'Amour's novel, The Burning Hills, the hero speculates as to the bloodline of the heroine, who is of Indian/Mexican derivation of some sort.

"What could her blood line be? The Conquistadores? Or that even older lineage, of the Toltec kings?"

The Toltec civilization reached its apex from 950 to 1150 A.D. There are lists of their rulers, but they do not appear to be reliable and are therefore considered largely legendary. The Aztecs reportedly claimed descent from them. Pictured below are Toltec warrior columns.

He is in bad shape!

 His head throbbed heavily. His mouth was dry, his lips parched and broken. He had a fever - he could feel it. His wound would be dirty and he could feel the gnawing agony of it constantly. His hands felt unnaturally large and his head was heavy and awkward.

(from The Burning Hills, by Louis L'Amour)

Corncrake

     In his novel, A Damsel in Distress, P. G. Wodehouse makes mention of "the cry of a corncrake, its harsh note softened by distance." Not being familiar with this animal, we thought we would do some research on the subject.

    Corncrakes are sometimes called landrails. They breed in Europe and Asia and migrate to Africa for the winter. They locate in grasslands, with hayfields being a favorite habitat.