"Burglar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mr. Bracken, Mrs. Bracken's husband?" she said. There was a tremble in her voice as she slipped from the davenport and bobbed a curtsy. There was a shake in her knees, also. Suppose this strange man should be a burglar? The thought was enough to make the voice and knees of any little girl tremble and shake. But the strange man nodded curtly and Mary Rose laughed tremulously. "I thought perhaps you were a burglar," she confessed at once. "I never knew a real burglar but I see now you ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... myself under the coping watching one lift the other so that he could reach in and unlock a window. Slowly and quietly he raised the sash and stepped in while the man below watched, ready to give the alarm if anybody should come along. I immediately followed the burglar into the house. ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe
... are so dense I can't see through them,' he added, landing upon his feet with a jump, a little breathless. He felt rather foolish. He was glad the stranger was not Minks or one of his fellow directors. 'The fact is I lived here as a boy. I'm not a burglar.' ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Alarm, Burglar. A system of circuits with alarm bell extending over a house or apartments designed to give notice of the opening of a window or door. As adjuncts to the system the treads of the stairs are sometimes arranged to ring the bell, by ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... their realisation. It was already with a certain pang of surprise that he beheld the mansion, standing in the eye of day, a solid among solids. The key, upon trial, readily opened the front door; he entered that great house, a privileged burglar; and, escorted by the echoes of desertion, rapidly reviewed the empty chambers. Cats, servant, old lady, the very marks of habitation, like writing on a slate, had been in these few hours obliterated. He wandered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... friend had sent him a big turtle as a souvenir of an ocean trip in the South Seas. There is a story that this big turtle got loose one night and alarmed the entire household by crawling through the hallway, looking for a pond or mud-hole in which to wallow. At first the turtle was mistaken for a burglar, but he soon revealed himself by his angry snapping, and it was hard work making him ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... hold, liberated in his consternation by the master at arms, burst up the hatchways. One of them, the captain of a letter of marque, captured by Paul, off the Scottish coast, crawled through a port, as a burglar through a window, from the one ship to the other, and reported ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... South Slavonian housebreaker sometimes begins operations by throwing a dead man's bone over the house, saying, with pungent sarcasm, "As this bone may waken, so may these people waken"; after that not a soul in the house can keep his or her eyes open. Similarly, in Java the burglar takes earth from a grave and sprinkles it round the house which he intends to rob; this throws the inmates into a deep sleep. With the same intention a Hindoo will strew ashes from a pyre at the door of the house; Indians of Peru scatter the dust of dead ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... a condensed moral code: "You shall seek that which you desire only by such means as are fair and lawful, and this will leave you without bitterness toward men or shame before God." No one could possibly dissent from this rule, unless it might be a burglar. I know the grocer makes a profit on the things I buy from him, and I am glad he does. Otherwise, he would have to close his grocery and that would inconvenience me greatly. He thanks me when I pay him, but I feel that I ought to thank him for supplying my needs, for having ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... obvious. Mr Darwin wanted to hedge. He saw that the design which his works had been mainly instrumental in pitchforking out of organisms no less manifestly designed than a burglar's jemmy is designed, had nevertheless found its way back again, and that though, as I insisted in "Evolution Old and New," and "Unconscious Memory," it must now be placed within the organism instead of outside it, as "was formerly the case," it was not on that account any the ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... man who built that, would have built Stonehenge? Do you think an old Roman would have liked such a piece of filigree work? or that Michael Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stems of roses in and out? Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think a burglar, or a brute, or a pickpocket could have carved it? Could Bill Sykes have done it? or the Dodger, dexterous with finger and tool? You will find in the end, that no man could have done it but exactly the man who ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... caretaker?" I asked. "Now, I wonder if you will do me a very great favour. You may think me a thief or a burglar," I laughed, "but the fact is I have a great desire to see Mr. De Gex's house. I've heard so much about its beauties. I wonder if you would show me the drawing-room ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... Georgie had him to sleep in his bedroom instead of making him cosy in the woodshed? He would have let Tipsipoozie sleep on his lovely blue quilt for the remainder of his days, if only Tipsipoozie could have been with him now, ready to have fun with the burglar below. As it was, the servants were in the attics at the top of the house, Dicky slept out, and Georgie was all alone, with the prospect of having to defend his property at risk of his life. Even at this moment, as he sat up in bed, blanched with terror, these miscreants might ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... nature of the war and of the enemy. To discuss the difference between us is so very reasonable in sound—so very reasonable in fact if there were a discussable difference. It is a programme that would always be in order except with a burglar or a robber. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... General Darrington's friends, and also notified the coroner; and he did not leave the room again until the inquest was held. The window on the front piazza was open, and witness had searched the piazza and the grounds for tracks, but discovered no traces of the burglar and murderer, who had escaped before the rain ceased, otherwise the tracks would have been found. Witness was positive that the prisoner was the same person whom he had seen coming out of the bed-room, and with ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Mr. BENTHAM, with inexplicable bitterness of tone. "Merely our fire-and-burglar-proof receptacle for the money constantly pouring in from first-class American Comic journalism."—Here Mr. BENTHAM slapped his forehead passionately, checked something like a sob in his throat, and abruptly returned to the ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... That meant that if she plunged into the fray she might be mistaken for a woman burglar, and arrested with the guilty. Even if she lurked where she was, a prowling policeman might suppose she sought concealment, and bag ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... showed that Harvey had crowded the fellow up against the vault door. The newcomer was a medium-sized man, rough-faced, and poorly clad. On the floor was a small leather grip, which evidently had been kicked over in the scuffle, for part of a burglar's kit ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... on German soldiers. What business had German soldiers there at all? ["Hear, hear!" and applause.] Belgium was acting in pursuance of the most sacred right, the right to defend its homes. But they were not in uniform when they fired! If a burglar broke into the Kaiser's Palace at Potsdam, destroyed his furniture, killed his servants, ruined his art treasures—especially those he had made himself, [laughter and applause], and burned the precious ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... disregard of their neutrality rights and the unwarranted invasion of their peaceful country. Even from Germans I have heard no excuses for the violation of Belgium which might not have been equally well put forward by a needy burglar who breaks into an unprotected house and plunders it after bludgeoning its helpless inmates. Is it remarkable that the liberty-loving Belgian peasant who saw his home destroyed or his family abused, knew no sufficient reason why he should stand supinely by and welcome the destroyer? More brave ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... insinuating and marvellous mind of his, was now, in the vernacular of the American, up against it. I had come to the United States, not because I had any liking for that country or its people, who, to tell the truth, are too sharp for an ordinary burglar like myself, but because with the war at an end I had to go somewhere, and English soil was not safely to be trod by one who was required for professional reasons to evade the eagle eye of Scotland Yard until the Statute of Limitations began to have ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... night, the wind, which had veered more to the eastwardly, rose considerably, drowning the clanging knell of the Spit buoy bell and rattling the windows and doors, like some desperate burglar on thoughts of plunder bent trying to effect ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... back room in the attic as his workshop, and from thence a net-work of wires soon ran throughout the house. Not only had every outside door its electric bell, but every window was fitted with a burglar alarm; moreover no one could cross the threshold of any interior room without registering the fact in Rob's workshop. The gas was lighted by an electric fob; a chime, connected with an erratic clock in the boy's room, woke the servants at all hours of the night and caused the cook to give warning; ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... don't mind crawling upon your hands and knees, you can see my lady's apartments, for that passage communicates with her dressing-room. She doesn't know of it herself, I believe. How astonished she'd be if some black-visored burglar, with a dark-lantern, were to rise through the floor some night as she sat before her looking-glass, having her hair ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... desperate scoundrel was in the house, raised the very old boy. Poor Jones, in his efforts to get out, run over pots, pans, and chairs, and through him and the servants, the police were alarmed! lights were raised, and Jones was arrested for a burglar! ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... visit from a fruit burglar, and Tom here and my gardener were watching, but he did not come. Then ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... not the hard-working people who paid ten pounds a week for the house; and, but for the one-night lodgers and the big gilt black-and-red bordered and "shaded" "6d." in the window—which made me glance guiltily up and down the street, like a burglar about to do a job, before I went in—I was pretty ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... have had the burglar alarm working, and this would never have happened," reasoned Tom. All the buildings were arranged so that if any one entered them after a certain hour, an alarm would ring in the house. But of late, the alarm had not been set, as Tom and his father were not working on any special inventions ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... if a burglar wished to steal the clothing, this spook would be his most effective accomplice, but such tortuous psychology has failed to satisfy the fishermen. To them we seem callous souls, to whom the spirit world is alien. This ghostly encroachment on our erstwhile quiet domain has ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... instead of a shovel in his hand. We worked side by side, Winter and Summer, storm and shine, for two years, and in spite of myself I began soon to like the man. His chief and only virtues were truthfulness and fair-mindedness toward his friends—rare and incongruous virtues for a professional burglar; nevertheless, he possessed them in a marked degree. This is a statement to make a cynic smile, and is one of those cases where the result is justifiable; yet, however the cynic may smile, there is plenty of all-around good faith in the world, and there is no nation, race ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... physical brain which may appear to be a reality. The falling of a book, picture or any article in the room may cause the sleeper to dream of firearms; a soldier may dream of a battlefield; a sensitive female may dream it is a burglar; a person who throws the bed clothes off him on a cold night may dream of snow and ice; the continual dropping of water from a faucet in the room of the sleeper has been the direct cause of a friend of mine dreaming of a passenger train; the steady tramping ...
— The Secret of Dreams • Yacki Raizizun
... burglar's tools, supposed to belong to some member of Black Donald's band! One of my negroes found them in the woods in the neighborhood of the Devil's Punch Bowl! I wrote to the sheriff concerning them, and he requested me to take care of them until he should have occasion to call for them. ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... freebooter, pirate, brigand, despoiler, highwayman, plunderer, buccaneer, footpad, marauder, raider, burglar, forager, pillager, thief. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... firm, SONS AND ANTONY GIBBS, of the City and the Universe) rather in dumps to-night. Been a burglar at family mansion in Regent's Park; the Firm at dinner; SONS standing a little meal for ANTONY; burglar took opportunity of entering by bedroom window, first observing precaution of screwing up doors, and other entrances and exits, so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... went and bought some exactly the same size that were not in a lethargy; he then, at the risk of breaking his neck or being taken for a burglar, scaled the balcony, and substituted them for the defunct. Next morning, when he called to inquire after his patients, he found the ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... "The burglar, sir. He was off like a shot and got clean away. He'd just broke in at the pantry window when William came on him and met his end ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... body. It might be done, of course; indeed, she had a dim remembrance of having read of such a case somewhere, but there could be no object attained in this affair. Frederick dead, apparently killed by a burglar in his own apartments, was quite understandable: but kidnapped and still alive, another body substituted for his, resembling him sufficiently to be unrecognised as a fraud, would be a perfectly senseless procedure. No doubt there had been a crime ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... burglar, supposing that he ever existed. The ring business and the card point to premeditated murder for some private reason. Very good. Here is a man who slips into a house with the deliberate intention of committing murder. He knows, if he knows anything, that he will have a deeficulty ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... boys are held in the Hull-House classes for weeks by their desire for the excitement of placing burglar alarms under the door mats. But to enable the possessor of even a little knowledge to thus play with it, is to decoy his feet at least through the first steps of the long, hard road of learning, although even in this, the teacher must proceed ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... generation of camels. We don't risk our necks any more to put things right—not we; we get in behind the skirts of law, and yap, yap, yap, about law like a rat terrier, when we should be bull dogs getting our teeth in the burglar's leg. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... conscientious excuse for appeasing my appetite. To buy silk pyjamas in cold blood has hitherto seemed to me to be sheer cynical extravagance; but now I feel that circumstances justify me in my action, for it would be a very sorry thing for me to encounter a burglar or cope with a fire clad in apparel that would not be up to the standard of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... times that there is danger, but she only laughs. There is an old man who sleeps in the house—quite a feeble old man who has only the use of one arm. Of course, if she cried out, I suppose he would come to her rescue, but then a real burglar wouldn't let her cry out, would ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... of course, but it seemed to me that there might be a nearer solution. This skylight happened to be the only window in the house which Uncle Tom had not festooned with his bally bars. I suppose he felt that if a burglar had the nerve to climb up as far as this, he deserved what was coming ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... relics. And his homecomings were apt to be late—oftener than not, after midnight; and sometimes, indeed, in the vague twilight of morning, at the hour when, as he once expressed it to Don Giorgio, "the tired burglar is just lying down to rest." And every Saturday evening the Cardinal Prefect of Archives and Inscriptions sat for three hours boxed up in his confessional, like any parish priest—in his confessional at St. Mary of ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... beautiful convenience of horse sense. Most women are always hearing burglars. Probably one in a thousand turns out to be a real, live housebreaker. Whenever the wise woman hears one fussing with the lock on the front door or trying to squeeze into the pantry window, she just says: "Same old burglar. He'll be gone in the morning," and he always is. That's a heap better plan than arousing the household and suffering the unmerciful torture that a family given to ridicule ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... and I was worse off than ever—two months in arrears of rent, and numerous other debts to cigar-shops and liquor-dealers. Now and then some good job, such as a burglar with a cut head, helped me for a while; but, on the whole, I was like Slider Downeyhylle in Neal's "Charcoal Sketches," and kept going "downer and downer" the more I tried not to. Something had to ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... Tom. "I must be on the look-out. I'll tell you what I'll do, Koku. I'll set my automatic camera to take the moving pictures of any one who tries to get in my shop, or in the chicken coop. I'll also set the burglar alarm. But you may also stay on the watch, and ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... her, horrifically grimacing. This was strange. Like the majority of his breed, Corker (for such was his name) had ever been wistful to be noticed by any one—effusively grateful for every word or pat, an ever-ready wagger and nuzzler, to none ineffable. No beggar, no burglar, had ever been rebuffed by this catholic beast. But he drew the line ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... table of Abigail reposed much silver and gold and ivory, wrought by clever artisans into articles of great beauty and some utility; but with scarce a glance the burglar passed them by, directing his course straight across the room to a small wall safe cleverly hidden by ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... "A man did enter that way a few minutes ago, but it was not a burglar. It was Master Edward, Mrs. Pettifer's eldest son. He'd lost his latch-key—he's always doing it—and that's how it happened. He went straight upstairs to bed, or he'd ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... burglar, and one of Fagin's associates. Bill Sikes was a hardened, irreclaimable villian,[TN-178] but had a conscience which almost drove him mad after the murder of Nancy, who really loved him (ch. xlviii.) Bill Sikes (1 syl.) had an ill-conditioned ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... had expected that the safe would have to be blown open in the most approved burglar fashion, and was wondering what bill ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... "'No mason, no burglar,' was my conclusion. 'This noise has nothing in common with either the one or the other. Did my old guide speak accurately when he called this "The House of Mystery?" Whether it be such or no, it is not the house for me. I can't sleep ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... who lived for golf, dances, and theatres is now caring for the wounded through the long nights in hospital. Everyone in every class of life has altered—the "slacker" has turned soldier, and the burglar has ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... liberty, return to the cottage. It was the rule of house-breakers, he recalled, to avoid babies. He had heard it said by burglars of wide experience and unquestioned wisdom that babies were the most dangerous of all burglar alarms. All things considered, kidnaping and automobile theft were not a happy combination with which to appear before a criminal court. The Hopper was vexed because the child did not cry; if he had shown ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... might possibly have been worse—mightn't it? The burglar—or burglars—knew precisely the location of the safe. They were coming to my room, and if they had found me awake ... I think it quite possible, my friend, that your appetite for cigarettes ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... "I'm going uptown to Billy Lee's house to get my suit case. His family are out of town, and he is at Seabright, so he let me camp there until the workmen finish papering my rooms upstairs. I'm to lock up the house and send the key to the Burglar Alarm Company to-night. Then I go to Boston on the 12.10. Want to come? There'll be ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... of a purse of gold has left it in his country-house, which is lonely and slightly barred, and he is a hundred miles away, in prison. The only person within twenty miles is a thoroughly equipped burglar at his front door, who has seen the purse through a window, and who intends forthwith to enter and take it. The finder's power to reproduce his former physical relation to the gold is rather limited, yet I believe that no one would say that his possession was at an end until ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... August, about two in the morning, Paul Coquenil found himself alone in the baron's spacious, silent library before a massive safe. The opening of this safe is another matter that need not be gone into—a desperate case justifies desperate risk, and an experienced burglar chaser naturally becomes a bit of a burglar himself; at any rate, the safe swung open in due course, without accident or interference, and the ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... fire at sea, or the cholera in your friend's house, or the burglar in your own, or what danger lies in the way of duty, knowing you are guarded by the ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... coppye of some part of his works subscribed in various places 'Examinatur Chaucer'!" Where is this invaluable MS. now? It is worth the tracing, if it be possible, even to its intermediate history. Was it one of those stolen from Francis Thynne's house at Poplar by that bibliomaniacal burglar? or was it one of those which in a fit of generosity, worthy of those heroic times, he gave to Stephen Batemann, that most fortunate parson of Newington? Is this commission to be regarded as some slight proof that the spoliation of the monasteries was not carried on with ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... had the class contempt of the high-grade confidence man—the same being the aristocrat of the underworld—for the crude and violent and therefore doubly dangerous codes of the stick-up, who is a highwayman; and the prowler, who is a burglar; and the yegg, who is a ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... midst! the irresponsible burglar whose exploits had been narrated in all the newspapers during the past few months! the mysterious individual with whom Ganimard, our shrewdest detective, had been engaged in an implacable conflict amidst interesting and picturesque surroundings. ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... too bad!" sputtered Billy. "I don't know now whether it was a burglar, a nightmare, or what it was. I think I'd better go back to bed. Being out in the air may have done me a lot of good, but I guess I've ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... arrest, people can hardly be got to bear witness against their unhappy prisoner. Povareto anca lu! There is no work and no money; people must do something; so they steal. Ci vuol pazienza! Bear witness against an ill-fated fellow- sufferer? God forbid! Stop a thief? I think a burglar might run from Rialto to San Marco, and not one compassionate soul in the Merceria would do aught to arrest him—povareto! Thieves came to the house of a friend of mine at noonday, when his servant was out. They tied their boat to ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... you're thinking it was a burglar; but, sonny, it wasn't no burglar—so you got another guess coming to you," he ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... desired object meets his eyes; or as when the mother, with the baby upstairs very much on her mind, imagines she hears him crying when the cat yowls or the next-door neighbors start their phonograph. The ghost-seeing and burglar-hearing illusions belong here as well. The mental set facilitates responses that ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... instilling right principles into the mind, from the first dawn of reason, cannot be too strongly enforced. Many a wretched midnight burglar commenced his career of vice and folly by stealing fruit, followed by thieving anything that he could HANDSOMELY. Pilfering, unless severely checked, is a hotbed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... abruptly, the laughter driven sternly out of every muscle except one little twitching dimple at the corner of her mouth. "It was Sara," she exclaimed, "and she is pale as a ghost. She has never been so strong since waking up on that boat and finding a burglar trying to steal the ring off her finger during the holidays. You know how she jumps at every sudden noise, and she's been getting thinner and thinner, and I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself clear down to the ground." Here the dimple vanished in earnest. "I know I'm ashamed of myself, and ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... said Welch. 'Wonder what a burglar wanted in the First room. Isn't even a hair-brush ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... bethought him of a flank attack, and, after sneaking round the house, this warrior adopted the burglar's manoeuvre of forcing open a window, on the ground floor. One by one the valiant members of Coke's little army climbed into the house by this means, and the august person of the ex-Lord Chief Justice himself was squeezed through the aperture. Nobody appeared ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... new and not expensive process for hardening and tempering steel, by which hardness and elasticity are carried forward in combination. A drill made of the new steel penetrated in forty minutes a steel safe-plate warranted to resist any burglar drill for twelve hours. A penknife tempered by the process cut the stem of a steel key readily, and with the same blade the inventor shaved the hairs on his arm. The inventor is a young blacksmith. He has also a new process ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... don't care," retorted Garvington. "An Englishman's house is his castle, you know, and he can jolly well shoot any one who tries to get into it. Besides, I shouldn't mind potting a burglar. Great sport." ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... not blush. This young fellow, although evidently not a tramp or a burglar, had caused her some moments of distinct uneasiness, and she ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... morning," Malcolm Sage passed into his room, and a minute later Gladys Norman was reading from her note-book the message that had come over the telephone to the effect that early that morning a burglar had entered Lady Glanedale's bedroom at the Home Park, Hyston, the country house of Sir Roger Glanedale, and, under threat from a pistol, had demanded her jewel-case, which she ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... window quickly, and then he took his time. A burglar who respects his art always takes his ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... it. He might hide in his heathen burrow, for a time; but there would be a limit to that exile. A power stronger than his own will would drive him back to his own land, back to civilization. And civilization, to Blake, was merely a rather large and rambling house equipped with a rather efficient burglar-alarm system, so that each time it was entered, early or late, the tell-tale summons would eventually go to the right quarter. And when the summons came Blake would be waiting ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... till there was no longer any danger of being discovered. Quickening his pace, he soon reached the pier, and with the skiff boarded the Greyhound. The night was certainly favorable for the execution of dark deeds. The midnight assassin, the incendiary, or the burglar would have rejoiced in its darkness, its dense black ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... to see the Head of the Office himself, to put further deals through. The door-keeper thought deeply, but could see no harm in this. The Little Man was thus introduced into the presence, and startled it by pointing to the safe and offering to do burglar on it any night of the week. The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... way, by turning our attention to the criminal classes. Consider for a moment the make-up of a typical crook—a thief, a burglar, a kidnapper, a hold-up man—a so-called "enemy of the law." What is the underlying difference between him and a worthy citizen? Is it simply that one breaks the law, while the other does not? That is only an apparent, superficial difference, based ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... the missionaries found their task all but too easy to suit militant Christians. As the converted drunkard and burglar at a slum pentecost pour out their stories of weakness and crime, so these Arioi, glorying in their being washed white as snow, recited to hymning congregations confessions that made the offenses of the Marquis de Sade or Jack the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God? Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered, self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen in .. those days, jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested ere he touched a deck. How plainly he's a fugitive! no baggage, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... house at once, from a sort of electric light system that could be instantly lighted and would act as a "burglar expeller." ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... At first nothing in the apartment seemed worthy of suspicion. The rooms were elegant but commonplace. The bureaus and wardrobes were locked, and gave out a hollow sound when rapped upon. As he did not have his burglar's equipment with him, Juve decided to come back later and investigate. He was on the point of leaving when his foot caught in a garment, which he found to be a waistcoat. He gave vent to an exclamation of surprise as he picked it up and folding it into a bundle hid it under his overcoat. ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... the man, laughing loudly. "Well, that's one on me! I must say you're a nervy young party. So you thought I was a burglar, did you?" ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... dog inside? This thought brought alarm to the burglar. In that case his visit would probably be a failure. He remembered, however, with a feeling of relief, that he had seen no dog about during his visit to ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... hand with which Smith repressed Rigdon from the date of their arrival in Ohio affords strong proof of Rigdon's complicity in the Bible plot, and of Smith's realization of the fact that he stood to his accomplice in the relation of a burglar to his mate, where the burglar has both the boodle and the secret in his possession. An illustration of this occurred during their first trip to Missouri. Rigdon and Smith did not agree about the desirability of western Missouri as a permanent abiding-place ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... I would prosecute a common thief or burglar," answered Mr. Clifford. "His crime is ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... this extravagant adventure seized him. He thought that it must be good to be a burglar. Then, as he heard the motor re-started and the car move off, a sudden qualm of disquiet came; for it was ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... as the most suitable place in which to experiment, for the reason that it had but one exit, a sliding double door, which led to the library, and its windows all opened upon the street, six stories below. A burglar could not have entered with ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Ruffian League, the Burglar League, the Pickpocket League, the Murder League—that's what I always called it. A hole-and-corner way of carrying on the fight, which had been begun by MEN, but which the latest fashion of Irishmen have not the courage to canduct as men. The Fenian conception was high-souled, and had some ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... don't know what it means now. Your word 'stout' means 'fleshy'; our word 'stout' usually means 'strong.' Your words 'gentleman' and 'lady' have a very restricted meaning; with us they include the barmaid, butcher, burglar, harlot, and horse-thief. You say, 'I haven't got any stockings on,' 'I haven't got any memory,' 'I haven't got any money in my purse; we usually say, 'I haven't any stockings on,' 'I haven't any ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Maturin Ballou has drawn of the Alaska Indian using the knowledge gained in missionary schools to raise a check. I know that education which does not rightly train the will may be giving tools to a burglar or weapons to a mad man. The anarchism in Chicago, but for the education it controls, would have been like Bunyan's giants—able only to gnaw its nails in malice and have fits in sunshiny weather. But the American Missionary Association ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... him, but he hadn't quite decided to tell McGuire of the housekeeper's share in the adventure. He had a desire to verify his belief that Mrs. Bergen was frightened by the visitor for a reason of her own which had nothing to do with Jonathan McGuire. Any woman alarmed by a possible burglar or other miscreant would have come running and crying for help. Mrs. Bergen had been doggedly silent, as though, rather than utter her thoughts, she would have bitten out her tongue. It was curious. She had seemed to be talking as though to ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... somewhere—rushed in then, and took Drew. He had nothing to say. What could he say? He couldn't say he was a blackguard who'd taken advantage of a poor unprotected girl because she loved him. They found the back door unlocked, by the way, which was put down to the burglar; of course Browne couldn't explain that he came home too muddled to ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... shadowy rear of the house, Jerry cautiously invaded the front porch. The shade which had been raised a little when Marjorie had come to the house was now drawn. Still she could see that the room on the right was lighted. With the stealth of a burglar she tried the door. It was locked. She listened at it, then stood up with a triumphant smile. From within she could hear the ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... discredited, and all along the line of its investigations the government has felt a powerful secret influence shielding the trust. As an evidence of his good faith in the disorganization, the head of the trust, while he was here, promised to send to the White House, what he called his 'political burglar's kit,' consisting of a card index, labelling and ticketing with elaborate cross references and cabinet data, every man in the United States who is in politics far enough to get to his state legislature, or to be a nominee of his party for county ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... to the farm beside, And look at Bijah a-settin' there, I've jest dropped down and cried. We lost the hull of our turnip crop while he was inventin' a gun But I counted it one of my marcies when it bu'st before 'twas done. So he turned it into a "burglar alarm." It ought to give thieves a fright— 'Twould scare an honest man out of his wits, ef he sot it off at night. Sometimes I wonder if 'Bijah's crazy, he does sech cur'ous things. Hev I told you about his bedstead yit?—'Twas full of wheels and ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... "'What fellow? Why, the burglar, of course. Didn't you read about it in the newspaper? There was a long piece published about it the day after it happened, with headings in big letters: "The house No. 35 Wells Avenue, residence of Thomas Tompkins, the well-known dealer in hardware, ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... "A burglar in the larder!" gasped Emma. "I seed 'im, I did! Out of the corner of my eye, like, and when I looked up 'e wasn't there no more. Flittin' up the 'all like a shadder, 'e was. Oh, lor! It's fairly turned me ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... vigorous pull. Indeed, the Japanese themselves are so far aware of the futility of their wooden panels against burglars that all who can afford it build kura—small heavy fire-proof and (for Japan) almost burglar-proof structures, with very thick earthen walls, a narrow ponderous door fastened with a gigantic padlock, and one very small iron-barred window, high up, near the roof. The kura are whitewashed, and look very neat. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... the old lawyer, with his words whispering about the stone walls, "had a double intention in having the place constructed. It was for his mausoleum after death, for his strong room during life. Within this iron room or chamber, which would defy any burglar's tools, is a chest of steel, constructed from the Colonel's own designs, to contain his enormous fortune, and when that has been taken out at twelve o'clock to-morrow, it is to be replaced by the coffin that lies in the next room, by us who are present now; to be closed up and locked; the iron ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... Fred, that a desperate burglar would take all the chances of breaking into a house where he might get shot, just to steal a hat!" Colon demanded, as though suspecting they were being made the victims of a joke, although as a rule Fred seldom allowed himself to attempt anything of ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... name is Thomas Lester, and that instead of being a tramp or burglar molesting a lonely woman, I am now respectfully soliciting admission into my own house? Yes, madam, I assure you on the honour of a gentleman that ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... The coffer itself is an inch thick, and the lock will stand anything but dynamite. However, I hear that they've engaged a professional burglar, so we ought to get some amusement out ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... careful, ain't we, mamma? Did I even holler the other night when I thought I heard a burglar in the dining-room?" ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... you hear anything in the night?" went on the detective. "Any queer noise? It's mighty funny if there was murder done and no robbery. But of course she might have heard a noise if you didn't, and she might have come down to find out what it was about. She might have caught a burglar at work, and he may have killed her to get away. But if it was a burglar it's funny you didn't hear any noise—like a fall, or something. How about ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... assuming that you are a man of ordinary common sense, and that you have established this hypothesis to your own satisfaction, will very likely be to go off for the police, and set them on the track of the burglar, with the view to the recovery of your property. But just as you are starting with this object, some person comes in, and on learning what you are about, says, "My good friend, you are going on a ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Some day I shall write an article on the use an' abuse of tiaras—poor things! It isn't fair to overwork the family tiara. I suggest that you get a good-sized trunk an' lock it up with the other jewels for a vacation. If necessary your house could be visited by a burglar—that is, if you wanted to save the feelin's of ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... duel with a Yankee at Dieppe and winged him for saying through his confounded nose that Old England was played out; been a controlling voice already in his shipping firm; drunk five other of the best men in London under the table; broken his neck steeple-chasing; shot a burglar in the legs; been nearly drowned, for a bet; killed snipe in Chelsea; been to Court for his sins; stared a ghost out of countenance; and travelled with a lady of Spain. If this young pup had done the last, it would be all he had; and yet, no doubt, he would call ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... might have been satisfied with merely breaking down the door, and seizing the railroad, knowing that it would be the beginning of dissolution to the Rebel army; but Grant's plan went farther,—the routing of the burglar from his house, and dispatching him on the spot. Perhaps Lee saw what the end would be, and did the best he could with his troops; but inasmuch as he did not issue the order for the transfer of a division from Richmond to the south side till Saturday ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... welsher [Slang]; defaulter; Autolycus^, Jeremy Diddler^, Robert Macaire, artful dodger, trickster; swell mob [Slang], chevalier d'industrie [Fr.]; shoplifter. swindler, peculator; forger, coiner; fence, receiver of stolen goods, duffer; smasher. burglar, housebreaker; cracksman^, magsman [Slang]; Bill Sikes, Jack Sheppard, Jonathan Wild. gang [group of thieves], gang of thieves, theft ring; organized crime, mafia, the Sicilian Mafia, the mob, la cosa nostra [It]. [famous thieves], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... here in the church itself, and the parishioners come and get some for themselves according to their need for it. Some come every day, some only once a year, some perhaps never between their baptism and their funeral. But they all have a right here, the professional burglar every whit as much as the speckless saint. The only stipulation is that they oughtn't to come under false pretences: the burglar is in honor bound not to pass himself off to his priest as the saint. But that is merely a moral obligation, established in the ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... all, the cleverest of them all, before he had been caught and sent to Sing Sing for a five-years' term, was Birdie Lee—the one man of them all that he, Jimmie Dale, might regard as a rival, so to speak, where the mastery of the intricate mechanism of a vaunted and much advertised "guaranteed burglar-proof safe" was concerned! And Birdie Lee ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... in, as cheerfully as I could, "if you are through with this jolly little affair, and can get down my ladder without having my housekeeper ring the burglar alarm, I have some ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... this rubber stamp is conferred upon a man. Did the Imperial and Royal authorities regard him as a non-combatant? The "Sammlungs-Offizier" might resent such a classification if in private life he had been a courageous burglar. And the Imperial and Royal army, according to certain "Instructions for the conduct of troops" which were found on a wounded officer of the 9th Army Corps, had resolved—irrespective of success or ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... in fact, guiding it, was a noiseless, crouching figure peering under the open steps, groping around the front door, creeping beneath the windows; moving uneasily with a burglar-like tread. ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... out at last," he said. "Well, I have been waiting for you long, and listening: yet not one movement have I heard, nor one sob: five minutes more of that death-like hush, and I should have forced the lock like a burglar. So you shun me?—you shut yourself up and grieve alone! I would rather you had come and upbraided me with vehemence. You are passionate. I expected a scene of some kind. I was prepared for the hot rain of tears; only I ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... at present. There was a tomb opened at one of the camps, not long ago, which told a tragic story of the end of robbery and plunder. The roof had fallen in while the burglar was busy unwrapping the cloths from the dead mummy. He was evidently trying to get at the heart-scarab, I suppose, and at the jewels which the windings held in their place. He had been smothered, taken in the act. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... compelling arms, and, realizing that further locomotion was impossible, the front end submitted to capture and stood resignedly in a state of some agitation. By this time a flood of young people was pouring down-stairs, and Mr. Tate, suspecting everything from an ingenious burglar to an escaped lunatic, gave crisp directions ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald |
