The stupidity of criminals

 "I don't suppose you've ever stopped to consider what an essentially stupid animal a crook must be. Most of them are stupid because they practice clumsily one of the most difficult professions imaginable, and inevitably fail at it, yet persist. They wouldn't think of undertaking a job of civil engineering with no sort of preparation, but they'll tackle a dangerous proposition in burglary without a thought, and pay for failure with years of imprisonment, and once out try it again.

(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)

The face of a happy child

     Her brows contracted. "I don't understand. You want a fighting chance - to surrender - to give in to their demands?"

    "In a way - yes. I want a fighting chance to do what I'd never in the world get them to credit - give it all up and leave them a free field."

    And when still she searched his face with puzzled eyes, he insisted: "I mean it; I want to get away - clear out - chuck the game for good and all!"

    A little silence greeted this announcement. Lanyard, at pause near the table, resting a hand on it, bent to the girl's upturned face a grave but candid regard. And the deeps of her eyes that never swerved from his were troubled strangely in his vision. He could by no means account for the light he seemed to see therein, a light that kindled while he watched like a tiny flame, feeble, fearful, vacillant, then as the moments passed steadied and grew stronger but ever leaped and danced; so that he, lost in the wonder of it and forgetful of himself, thought of it as the ardent face of a happy child dancing in the depths of some brown autumnal woodland.

(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)

Again?

 Her voice fell: she was trembling with the recrudescent suffering of this year-long servitude. And for a little Lanyard felt too profoundly moved to trust himself to speak; he stood aghast, staring down at this woman, so intrinsically and gently feminine, so strangely strong and courageous, and vaguely envisaging what anguish must have been hers in enforced association with a creature of Bannon's ruthless stamp, he was rent with compassion and swore to himself he's stand by her and see her through and free and happy if he died for it - or ended in the Sante!

(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance. I must admit that I could not recall offhand having suffered "recrudescent" suffering, until I looked it up and found that it means "breaking out again" - so I suppose that I have.)

A shadow of premonition

 Yet he wasn't satisfied. He was as little susceptible to psychic admonition as any sane and normal human organism, but he was just then strongly oppressed by intuitive perception that there was something radically amiss in his neighborhood. Whether or not the result of the Count's open intimations and veiled hints working upon a nature sensitized by excitement and fatigue, he felt as though he had stepped from the cab into an atmosphere impregnated to saturation with nameless menace. And he even shivered a bit, perhaps because of the chill in that air of early morning, perhaps because a shadow of premonition had fallen athwart his soul.

(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)

Convoluted reasoning for self-justification

     Now the neophyte needs the introduction of a trusted sponsor before he can win admission to the clubhouse of the exclusive Circle of Friends of Humanity; but Lanyard's knock secured him prompt and unquestioned right of way. The unfortunate fact is, he was a member in the best of standing; for this society of pseudo-altruistic aims was nothing more nor less than one of those several private gambling clubs of Paris which the French Government tolerates more or less openly, despite adequate restrictive legislation; and gambling was Lanyard's ruling passion - a legacy from Bourke no less than the rest of his professional equipment.

    To every man his vice (the argument was Bourke's in defense of his failing). And perhaps the least mischievous vice a professional cracksman can indulge is that of gambling, since it can hardly drive him to lengths more desperate than those whereby he gains a livelihood.

(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)

REALLY dark

 Several seconds passed without the least sound disturbing the stillness. Lanyard himself grew a little impatient, finding that his sight failed to grow accustomed to the darkness because that last was too absolute, pressing against his staring eyeballs like a black fluid impenetrably opaque, as unbroken as the hush.

(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)

Just a common gambler

 For, logically considered, a break in the run of his luck was due. Thus far he had played, with a success almost too uniform, his dual role, by day the amiable amateur of art, by night the nameless mystery that prowled unseen and prayed unhindered. Could such success be reasonably expected to attend him always? Should he count De Morbihan's yarn a warning? Black must turn up every so often in a run of red: every gambler knows as much. And what was Michael Lanyard but a common gambler, who persistently staked life and liberty against the blindly impartial casts of Chance?

(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)

How does it feel to be filed away?

 Lanyard murmured some conventional expression of sympathy. Through it all he was conscious of the regard of the girl. Her soft brown eyes met his candidly, with a look cool in its composure, straightforward in its enquiry, neither bold nor mock-demure. And if they were the first to fall, it was with an effect of curiosity sated, without hint of discomfiture. . . . And somehow the adventurer felt himself measured, classified, filed away.

(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)

Not the best company

 But there were ugly whispers current with respect to the sources of his fabulous wealth. Lanyard, for one, wouldn't have thought him the properest company or the best Parisian cicerone for an ailing American gentleman blessed with independent means and an attractive daughter.

Paris, on the other hand - Paris who forgives everything to him who contributes to her amusement - adored Comte Remy de Morbihan.

(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)

[In case you do not use the word frequently (and I do not), a cicerone is a guide who gives information about places of interest to sightseers.]

He is following someone

     He was a square-set man with a square jaw, cold blue eyes, a fat nose, a thin-lipped trap of a mouth, a face as red as rare beefsteak. His dinner comprised a cut from the joint, boiled potatoes, brussels sprouts, a bit of cheese, a bottle of Bass. He ate slowly, chewing with the doggedness of a strong character hampered by a weak digestion, and all the while kept eyes fixed to an issue of the Paris edition of the London Daily Mail, with an effect of concentration quite too convincing.

    Now one doesn't read the Paris edition of the London Daily Mail with tense excitement. Humanly speaking, it can't be done.

    Where, then, was the object of this so sedulously dissembled interest?

(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)

Playing a lone hand

 In time you may become a first-chop operator, which I'm not and never will be; but if you do, 'twill be through fighting shy of two things. The first of them's Woman, and the second is Man. To make a friend of a man you mut lower your guard. Ordinarily 'tis fatal. As for Woman, remember this, m'lad: to let love into your life you must open a door no mortal hand can close.

(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)

A miserable existence

 A few days after his arrival the warm, bright bed-chamber was exchanged for a cold, dark closet opening off Madame's boudoir, a cupboard furnished with a rickety cot and a broken chair, lacking any provision for heat or light, and ventilated solely by a transom over the door; and inasmuch as Madame shared the French horror of draughts and so kept her boudoir hermetically sealed nine months of the year, the transom didn't mend matters much. But that closet formed the boy's sole refuge, if a precarious one, through several years; there alone was he ever safe from kicks and cuffs and scoldings for faults beyond his comprehension; but he was never permitted a candle, and the darkness and loneliness made the place one of haunted terror to the sensitive and imaginative nature of a growing child.

(from The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance)

Conversation with an airhead

     "How old are you, Archie? Are you frightfully old?"

    "Frightfully. Poor old Charles and I are just hangin' on."

    "How old are you?"

    "Twenty-seven," said Archie. "But Charles was twenty-eight a week ago, so I'm one up on him."

    "It must be simply frightful to be twenty-eight," said Greta with conviction. She snuggled up to Archie and whispered, "Is Margaret awfully old, too?"

    "Ssh! She's twenty-four. Pretty bad - isn't it?"

    Greta considered. "I shall be married years and years before I'm twenty-four. It's rather old, but I do love Margaret all the same."

(from Grey Mask, by Patricia Wentworth)

    

Getting old early

 Greta was looking alarmingly pretty. She glowed and shone in the little room. She made Margaret feel dingy and drab and old, with that dreadful sense of age which is only possible when one is under five-and-twenty.

(from Grey Mask, by Patricia Wentworth)

Another Napolean of Crime?

    "I have come across him before," said Miss Silver " - not as Grey Mask of course; but in the last five or six years I have constantly come across small bits of evidence which have led me to suspect that there is one man behind a number of coordinated criminal enterprises. He pulls a great many strings, and every now and then I have come across one of them."

(from Grey Mask, by Patricia Wentworth)

Better to be an only child

     "What relations have you got?"

    Margot giggled. "Everybody asks me that. I haven't any relations except Egbert."

    "What? None at all?"

    "Isn't it funny not to have any? Papa only had one brother, and he only had Egbert. Papa hated Egbert. And if my relations were going to be like him, I'm frightfully glad they never got born."

(from Grey Mask, by Patricia Wentworth)

She couldn't say

     "Tell me what you heard."

    "Tell me what you are doing here."

    "I can't."

    "Tell me whom you were meeting."

    "I can't."

    "Margaret, for heaven's sake! What sort of mess is this you've got into? Can't you tell me about it? Can't you trust me?"

    "I - can't!"

    His manner changed. He said lightly, "Then I'm afraid I can't tell you what I heard."

    There was silence. Margaret stood looking at him. Her expression changed rapidly. He thought she was going to speak; but instead she pressed her hand over her eyes. The gesture shut him out, and shut her in. He wondered what company she had in the darkness which she was making for herself.

(from Grey Mask, by Patricia Wentworth)

Nothing romantic about it

     She couldn't go home. Oh, it wasn't home anymore; it was only a house where people were planning horrible things. It was Egbert's house; it wasn't hers. She hadn't got anywhere to go - she hadn't got a home - she hadn't got anything.

    These things kept coming into her mind like a lot of aimless people struggling into a room and drifting out again; they didn't do anything, they just came in and drifted out, and went away.

    Margot went on walking, and the aimless thoughts kept on coming and going. The thick moisture that filled the air with fog began to condense and come down in rain. Soon she was very wet. The rain became heavier; it soaked through her blue serge coat and began to drip from the brim of her hat. The coat had a collar of grey fur. The rain collected on it and trickled down the back of her neck.

    Only that afternoon Margot had written to Stephanie that there was something frightfully romantic about being a penniless orphan. It didn't feel a bit romantic now; it felt cold, and frightening, and desperately miserable.

(from Grey Mask, by Patricia Wentworth)

Miss Silver

     "But how am I going to find out the things I want to know about Forty?"

    "Get a trained sleuth to do it," said Archie firmly. "That's what they're for. I can put you on one if you like."

    "A good man?"

    "A sleuthess," said Archie impressively. "A perfect wonder - has old Sherlock boiled." 

    Charles frowned. "A woman?"

    "Well, a sleuthess. She's not exactly what you'd call a little bit of fluff, you know."

    "What's her name?"

    "Maud Silver."

    "Mrs. or Miss?"

    "My dear old bean!"

    "Well - which is she?"

    "Single as a Michaelmas daisy," said Archie.

(from Grey Mask, by Patricia Wentworth)

    

No, I do not want to be married to you!

 Jerry was pacing to and fro near the gate. He was feeling shaken but happy to have his relations with Vera Upshaw on a satisfactory basis. It had not been easy to detach her from his person and explain to her without being abrupt that his affections were engaged elsewhere and that her suggestion that everything between them should be just as it was before, Gerald dear, was not to be considered for an instant, but he had managed it. The thought of Jane had lent him eloquence, and even without telling her that he would greatly prefer to be dead in a ditch than married to her had had been able to make himself clear.

(from The Girl in Blue, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)