J. S. Fletcher

“ How do you know that one or other of the various men who sat round the table you're talking of hasn't some such mania and appropriated the tobacco-box as a memento of the Ravensdene Court mania?"
"I don't know," he replied. "But I don't think it likely: I know the lot of them, more or less, and I think they've all too much sense."
"All the same, the thing's gone," I remarked. "And you'll excuse me for saying it—you're a bit concerned by its disappearance."
"I am!" he said, frankly. "And I'll tell you why. It's just because no particular attention was drawn to it at the inquest. ”

“ Cazalette is approachable," replied Miss Raven. "There are others at which I should as soon think of asking a question of the Sphinx."
"Wait!" said I. "Mr. Cazalette, I firmly believe, knows something. And now—you know more than you did. One mystery has gone by the board."
"It leaves the main one all the blacker," answered the inspector. "Who, of all the folk in these parts, is one to suspect? Yet—it would seem that Salter Quick found somebody here to whom his presence was so decidedly unwelcome that there was nothing for it but—swift and certain death! Why? Well—death ensures silence." ”

“ She made no reply for a moment, and I waited, wondering.
"I don't think it's a very comfortable thing to know that one's had a particularly brutal murder at one's very door and that, for all one knows, the murderer may still be close at hand," she said at last. "There's such a disagreeable feeling of uneasiness about this affair. I know that Uncle Francis is most awfully upset by it." ”