Talk:Plot It Yourself
Murder in Style, The Crime Club (Collins, 1959), Chapter 3, page 30
[...] and though Lily Rowan told me once that I am about as subtle as a sledgehammer – at a moment when her diction was not determined and controlled by rational processes in full consciousness [...]
Chapter 3, page 30
My status and function are whatever a given situation calls for, and the question who decides what it calls for is what occasionally creates an atmosphere in which Wolfe and I are not speaking.
Archie and Fritz, Chapter 4, page 35
I grinned at him. He regards every woman who enters the house as a potential threat to his kitchen, not to mention the rest of his precinct, and he was particularly suspicious of Dol Bonner, Dol being short for Theodolinda, the only female owner and operator of a detective agency in New York. ‘No,’ I said, ‘she came yesterday on a personal matter. Mr Wolfe keeps phoning to ask her to dinner, and she wants me to get him to stop annoying her.’
He pointed the spoon at me. ‘Archie, if I could lie with your aplomb I would be an ambassador.’
Chapter 5, page 41
So [Wolfe] pulled a mutiny, the first one in three years. His mutinies are not like other people’s. Other people mutiny against the Army or Navy, or some other authority, but he mutinies against himself.
Chapter 5, page 42
That building was a tenement not only as defined in the New York Tenement House Act, but also as what people usually mean when they say ‘tenement’. It was a dump.
Chapter 5, pp. 46-7
‘I said beat it.’ [Kenneth Rennert] took a step. ‘Do you want help?’
I arose and took two steps, and was facing him at arm’s length. ‘Would you like to try?’
I was hoping he would. Wolfe’s mutiny had put me in a humour that would have made it a pleasure to take a swing at somebody, and this character was the right size and build to make it not only a pleasure but good exercise. He didn’t oblige me. He eyes stayed with mine, but he backed up a foot.
‘I don’t want to get blood on the rug,’ he said.
A romantic gesture, chapter 5, page 49
I agreed with [Jane Ogilvy] absolutely. There was nothing I could say that would be worthy of the occasion. Besides, my name wasn’t Porphyro. But I didn’t want to turn and go with no response at all, so I reached to the trellis beside me and picked a red rose, pressed it to my lips, and tossed it to her. Then I went.
Chapter 7, page 73
However, by going to the kitchen I merely transferred from one genius to another. When I offered to spread the paste on the cheesecloth which was to be wrapped around the ducklings, Fritz gave me exactly the kind of look Wolfe has given me on various and numerous occasions. I was perched on a stool, making pointed comments to Fritz about the superiority of teamwork, when there was a bellow from the office.
Archie and Stebbins, chapter 8, page 77
Three flights up I turned to the front, and there, at the open door where Mrs Jacobs and the boy had awaited me on my previous visit, I was awaited again, but not by them. In the dim light I took two steps before I recognised him, then stopped. We spoke simultaneously, and spoke the same words.
‘Not you,’ we said.
