“I am an ordinary sort of fellow, not braver than other people, but I hate to see a good man downed, and that long knife would not be the end of Scudder if I could play the game in his place.”

“It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.”

“I began to get really keen, for every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.”

“Jock put his shoulder to the framework and the whole thing crumbled inward with a crash of glass. "Rotten as touch-wood," he said. "This place would never stand a siege.”

“I'm an economical soul, and if I'm going to be hanged I want a good stake for my neck.”

“My thoughts hovered over all varieties of mortal edible, and finally settled on a porterhouse steak and a quart of bitter with a welsh rabbit to follow. In longing hopelessly for these dainties I fell asleep.”

“He felt singularly light-hearted, and the immediate cause was his safety razor. A week ago he had bought the thing in a sudden fit of enterprise, and now he shaved in five minutes, where before he had taken twenty, and no longer confronted his fellows, at least one day in three, with a countenance ludicrously mottled by sticking-plaster.”