Like all other arts, the Science of Deduction and Analysis is one which can only be acquired by long and patient study nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it.
Tell us the truth, for there lies your only hope of safety.
All knowledge comes useful to the detective,” remarked Holmes.
Thank God!” I ejaculated from my very heart.
Let me indicate a possible line of thought. It is, I admit, mere imagination; but how often is imagination the mother of truth?
His very person and appearance were such as to strike the attention of the most casual observer.
Surely the game is hardly worth the candle.
There are strange red depths in the soul of the most commonplace man. I am tenderhearted by nature, and have found my eyes moist many a time over the scream of a wounded hare. Yet the blood lust was on me now. I found myself on my feet emptying one magazine, then the other, clicking open the breech to re-load, snapping it to again, while cheering and yelling with pure ferocity and joy of slaughter as I did so.
It is my business to know things. That is my trade.
Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just.
I’m like an old golf-ball – I’ve had all the white paint knocked off me long ago. Life can whack me about now, and it can’t leave a mark. But a sportin’ risk, young fellah, that’s the salt of existence.
What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence,” returned my companion, bitterly. “The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done. Never mind,” he continued, more brightly, after a pause.
But is it coincidence? Are there not subtle forces at work of which we know little?
Someone in a novel, was he not? I don’t take much stock of detectives in novels – chaps that do things and never let you see how they do them.
I don’t know what to do and my whole life seems to have gone to pieces.
Desultory readers are seldom remarkable for the exactness of their learning. No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.
His eyes sparkled, and he sent up a great blue triumphant cloud from his cigarette.
Leaning back in the cab, this amateur bloodhound carolled away like a lark while I mediated upon the many-sidedness of the human mind.
A fortune for one man that was more than he needed should not be built on ten thousand ruined men who were left without the means of life.
With the unreasonable petulance of mankind I rang the bell and gave a curt intimation that I was ready.