The Avenger quotes

There’s too much leading man in it, anyway. People don’t pay real money to see men. You don’t treat me fair, Knebworth: I’m temperamental, I admit it. You can’t expect a woman of my kind to be a block of wood.”

“The only thing about you that’s a block of wood is your head, Stella,”

grunted the producer, and went on, oblivious to the rising fury expressed in the girl’s face.

Pushing it open, he found himself in a large field which evidently served as kitchen garden for the house. There was nobody in sight. The grey tower looked even more forbidding and ugly in the early morning light. No smoke came from the chimneys;

Griff was a house of the dead.

Nevertheless, he proceeded cautiously, and, instead of crossing the field, moved back into the shadow of the wall until he reached the high boxwood fence that ran at right angles and separated the kitchen garden from that beautiful pleasaunce which Jack Knebworth had used the …

He paused, but the other made no reply.

“The cave man method is fairly beastly, even when the cave man does his own kidnapping. When he sends an anthropoid ape to do his dirty work, it passes into another category.”

The man’s eyes were invisible now; his face had grown a deeper hue.

“When you talk about ‘my girl,’ ” said Michael carefully, “will you be good enough to remember that I have the merest and most casual interest in the lady?”

“If you’re not a liar,” said Jack Knebworth, “you’re a piece of cheese!”

“What chance has she as a film artiste?” asked Michael, anxious to turn the subject.

“Get Miss Leamington down here,” he said.

“I’d like contact with something that’s wholesome.”

“I suppose you think she’s awful,” he sneered.

“I am very sorry for her,” said the girl quietly, “and I am determined not to be sorry for myself!”

She opened the door to him in silence, and in silence he took his departure. After all, he thought, there was no need for any outside help. In his breast pocket was a sheet of manuscript, written on the Headhunter’s typewriter.

Not that I am an enemy of modernity. To me, this is the most delightful phase of my long life.”

“Sweet disposition!” almost howled Jack Knebworth when the old man had taken a dignified farewell. “Did you get that, Brixan? Say, if that woman’s disposition is sweet, the devil’s made of chocolate!”

“Yes. You don’t suspect Gregory of killing Foss?”

“I suspect everybody in general and nobody in particular,” said Michael.

“Did you see Bhag?”

“For the Lord’s sake!” breathed Knebworth, staring at the detective. “I’ve never seen a man made up so well that he deceived me.”

“I’ve deceived everybody, including myself,” said Michael savagely.

“I thought I’d caught him with a dummy letter, instead of which the devil caught me.”

“Don’t start thanking God too soon,” said Stella with ominous calm.

“Oh, you little fool, why did you come here?”

“He did not seem to enjoy the wine.”

“Very few people understand wine,” he said, dusting a speck from his coat.

Then, drawing a silk handkerchief from his pocket, he stooped and dusted his boots daintily.

The shriek of a man half crazy with fear is not nice to hear.

Michael’s nerves were tough, but he had need to drive the nails into the palms of his manacled hands to keep his self-control.