Desultory readers are seldom remarkable for the exactness of their learning.

You wish to put me in the dark. I tell you that I will never be put in the dark. You wish to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me.

Come, Watson, come!" he cried. The game is afoot.

I have heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart.

I am engaged in answering that Italian buffoon, Mazotti, whose views upon the larval development of the tropical termites have excited my derision and contempt . . .

Well, I'm a bacteriologist, you know. I live in a nine-hundred-diameter microscope. I can hardly claim to take serious notice of anything that I can see with my naked eye.

if i could be assured of your destruction, i would in the interest of the public, cheerfully accept my death.