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

“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.”

“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.”

“I believe everything out of the common. The only thing to distrust is the normal.”

“I get into a tearing passion about something I know very little about, and when I learn more my passion ebbs away.”

“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.”

“An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.”