Excellent!" I cried. "Elementary," said he.

An absence of antecedents and of relatives is sometimes an aid rather than an impediment to social advancement . . .

Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.

I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.

A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.