P. G. Wodehouse

“ Ever since he had met her his life had changed from an orderly succession of uninteresting days to a strange carnival of the unexpected, and use was accustoming him to it. Life had taken on the quality of a dream, in which anything might happen and in which everything that did happen was to be accepted with the calmness natural in dreams. ”

“ Certainly I am! A girl has got to be, even nowadays, if she wants to play fair. Listen, Mr. Marson; I will not have the dead mouse. I do not like dead mice. If you attempt to work off your dead mouse on me this partnership ceases before it has begun. If we are to work together we are going to make alternate attempts to get the scarab. No other arrangement will satisfy me."
"Then I claim the right to make the first one."
"You don't do anything of the sort. We toss up for first chance, like little ladies and gentlemen. Have you a coin? I will spin, and you call."
Ashe made a last stand. ”

“ As we emerge from the twenties we grow into a habit of mind that looks askance at Fate bearing gifts. We miss, perhaps, the occasional prize, but we also avoid leaping light-heartedly into traps.
Ashe Marson had yet to reach the age of tranquil mistrust ”

“ Peters' five thousand dollars. So do I."
"I hate the thought of being the instrument to prevent you from getting the money."
"You won't be. I shall be the instrument to prevent you from getting it. I don't like that thought, either; but one has got to face it."
"It makes me feel mean."
"That's simply your old-fashioned masculine attitude toward the female, Mr. Marson. You look on woman as a weak creature, to be shielded and petted. We aren't anything of the sort. We're terrors! We're as hard as nails. We're awful creatures. You mustn't let my sex interfere with your trying to get this reward. ”

“ By the way, have you seen the scarab?"
"Yes; I got Mrs. Twemlow to take me to the museum while you were talking to the butler. It was dreadful to feel that it was lying there in the open waiting for somebody to take it, and not be able to do anything."
"I felt exactly the same. It isn't much to look at, is it? If it hadn't been for the label I wouldn't have believed it was the thing for which Peters was offering five thousand dollars' reward. But that's his affair. A thing is worth what somebody will give for it. Ours not to reason why; ours but to elude Baxter and gather it in." ”

“ Peters' connection with the attempt on the scarab was to be merely sympathetic, and that the actual theft was to be accomplished by Ashe. His only course, therefore, was to catch Ashe actually in the museum. Then Mr. Peters need not appear in the matter at all. Mr. Peters' position in those circumstances would be simply that of a man who had happened to employ, through no fault of his own, a valet who happened to be a thief.
He had made a mistake, he perceived, in locking the door of the museum. In future he must leave it open, as a trap is open; and he must stay up nights and keep watch. ”

“ Peters' valet."
"You have known all along!"
"I have."
Ashe regarded her admiringly.
"You're wonderful!"
"Because I saw through you?"
"Partly that; but chiefly because you had the pluck to undertake a thing like this."
"You undertook it."
"But I'm a man."
"And I'm a woman. And my theory, Mr. Marson, is that a woman can do nearly everything better than a man. What a splendid test case this would make to settle the Votes-for-Women question once and for all! Here we are—you and I—a man and a woman, each trying for the same thing and each starting with equal chances. Suppose I beat you? ”

“ It is the penalty of the suspicious type of mind that it suffers from its own activity. From the moment he detected Mr. Peters in the act of rifling the museum and marked down Ashe as an accomplice, Baxter's repose was doomed. ”