That was what, ultimately, war did to you. It was not the physical dangers--the mines at sea, the bombs from the air, the crisp ping of a rifle bullet as you drove over a desert track. No, it was the spiritual danger of learning how much easier life was if you ceased to think.

Then there are some minor points that strike me as suggestive - for instance, the position of Mrs. Hubbard's sponge bag, the name of Mrs. Armstrong's mother, the detective methods of Mr. Hardman, the suggestion of Mr. MacQueen that Ratchett himself destroyed the charred note we found, Princess Dragomiroff's Christian name, and a grease spot on a Hungarian passport.

You have a tendency, Hastings, to prefer the least likely. That, no doubt, is from reading too many detective stories.

A woman who doesn't lie is a woman without imagination and without sympathy.

I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.

The amount of missing girls I've had to trace and their family and their friends always say the same thing. 'She was a bright and affectionate disposition and had no men friends'. That's never true. It's unnatural. Girls ought to have men friends. If not, then there's something wrong about them.

The whole thing was like a nine-month ocean voyage to which you never got acclimatized.