"Red-handed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the public learned from the press at the time, hence the writer will only allude in this connection to the effect created in various Circles of the Order, by the attempt upon the part of the Government to thwart the perpetration of the red-handed crimes contemplated by the leaders. When it was officially announced by Reuben Cassile, presiding Grand Seignior of the Chicago Temple, then recently removed from the Invincible Club Hall to McCormick's Building, that disclosures of the Order in St. ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... be sitting in the cockpit of a fishing boat, amid recent traces of business with salmon, codfish, and the like. The heat was putting a point on the smell of defunct fish. The dried scales of them still clung to the small vessel's timbers. In keeping, the girl should have been buxom, red-handed, coarsely healthy. And she was anything but that. No frail, delicate creature, mind you,—but she did not belong in a fishing boat. She looked the lady, carried herself like one,—patrician from the top of her russet-crowned head to the tips of her ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... toward the entire Jewish nation,—and how many such trains have arrived here lately! And if you were to stop and ask who established the guilt of these people, and whether it is thinkable that all these tens of thousands of men, women, and children should have been caught red-handed, no one will stop to listen to you. A Jew is a spy,—this is the only impression that becomes indelibly branded in the brains of the Russian population which witnesses the new tragedy of the Jewish nation. The effect of the passage of these trains is truly terrible, ...
— The Shield • Various
... remarks to a friend passing in the street, or waved salutations with a duster. Swift upon such discoveries, she would execute a flank march across the few steps of garden and steal into the house, noiselessly ascend the stairs, and catch the offender red-handed at this public dalliance. But all such domestic espionage to right and left was flavourless and insipid compared to the tremendous discoveries which daily and hourly awaited the trained observer of the street that lay directly in front of ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... the contriver of a murder is punished as severely as the doer; and persons accused of the crime are forbidden to enter temples or the agora until they have been tried (Telfy). (d) At Athens slaves who killed their masters and were caught red-handed, were not to be put to death by the relations of the murdered man, but to be handed over to the magistrates (Telfy). So in the Laws, the slave who is guilty of wilful murder has a public execution: but if the murder is committed ...
— Laws • Plato
... man be?" asked Ailill of Fergus. "Indeed, but we know him," Fergus made answer; "the wild, red-handed, [3]rending[3] lion; the fierce, fearful bear that overcometh valour. [4]He is the high doer of deeds, warlike, and fierce,[4] Errge Echbel ('Horse-mouth'), from Bri Errgi ('Errge's Mound') in the north, is ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... character, and cruel in the extreme. Finally a game warden caught him red-handed, arrested him, and took him to Cody for trial. It happened that the judge on the bench had once trapped with him, and therefore "he set the game-killer free, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... 1538, the old feud between Pizarro and Almagro culminated in a battle between their two factions, and Almagro was defeated and killed. Pizarro now ruled the country with red-handed despotism. The benignant laws of the Incas were replaced by the rapine of the conquerors. Not only gold and silver, but the land itself and its former peaceful occupants, were apportioned among them; and slavery and concubinage ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... on the alert. Never before had he known this kind of hospitality to be tendered in a police station to a man arrested red-handed. And although suspicious, he was nevertheless flattered. All criminals, whether at the top or bottom of their profession, ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... an astonished voice. "Well, of all effrontery! Got him, you miserable thief? The police are coming and they'll get you, and I can identify you, if they don't succeed in nabbing you red-handed." ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... possibly suit his purpose. He thought his position one uncommonly difficult. As Maitland, he had on his hands a female thief, a hardened character, a common malefactor (strange that he got so little relish of the terms!), caught red-handed; as Maitland, his duty was to hand her over to the law, to be dealt with as—what she was. Yet, even while these considerations were urging themselves upon him, he knew his eyes appraised her with open admiration ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... angered Gay far more than the original poaching had done. To be flouted in his own pasture on the subject of his own game by a handsome barbarian, whom he had caught red-handed in the act of stealing, would have appealed irresistibly to his sense of humour, if it had ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... schoolfellow; but in Arden of Feversham the number of touches as telling and as striking as this one is practically numberless. They also show a far stronger and keener faculty of poetic if not of dramatic imagination. The casual encounter of little Sanders with the yet red-handed murderer of his father is not comparable for depth and subtlety of effect with the scene in which Arden's friend Franklin, riding with him to Raynham Down, breaks off his "pretty tale" of a perjured wife, overpowered by a "fighting at his heart," at the moment when they come ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Alfred drew in his breath and bore down upon Jimmy with fresh vehemence. "The only time I get even a semblance of truth out of Zoie," he cried, "is when I catch her red-handed." Again he pounded the table and again Jimmy winced. "And even then," he continued, "she colours it so with her affected innocence and her plea about just wishing to be a 'good fellow,' that she almost makes me doubt ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... of righteous and advantageous to you; that nevertheless, when you have come into court as the sworn representatives of the State, to sit in judgement upon the report of these proceedings, you should acquit the author of all the evil, when you have taken him red-handed in actions like these. {133} Who is there of all your fellow citizens—nay, who of all the Hellenes—that would not have good cause for complaint against you, when he saw that though you were enraged against Philip, who in making peace ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... now helpless poet rose And said: "I am discovered, I suppose. Though I have taken all precautions not To sign my name to any verses wrought By my transcendent genius, yet, you see, Fame wrests my secret from me bodily; So I must needs confess I did this deed Of poetry red-handed, nor can plead One whit of unintention in my crime— My guilt of rhythm and ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... creature. But you will find that you have chosen the wrong person. And it's no excuse for you her being a little—a little—not so bright as some girls, and not so good-looking. Oh, it's enough to make any girl loathe her own looks! You mustn't suppose you can come here red-handed—yes, it's the same as a murder, and any true girl would say so—and tell me you care for me. No, Walter Ashley, I haven't fallen so low as that, though I have the disgrace of your acquaintance. And I hope—I hope—if you don't ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... down the pier how this ship of pirates had been captured, red-handed, her own captain still on board,—the good ship Alarm having seen a redness in the sky, and heard some firing in the night before; and how Captain How had put it to his crew, Would they fight or not? And they had fought, rushing in before the pirate's long-range guns ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... straight," muttered Dick. "At all events, I'll look into this game for all it's worth. What if we are about to catch the thief red-handed?" ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... the house and waited, with galloping pulses and a perfect vacancy of mind, the coming of the stranger who might mean so much to them. They had no plan, no story prepared; there was no time to make one; they were caught red-handed and must stand their chance. Yet this anxiety was chequered with hope. The island being undeclared, it was not possible the man could hold any office or be in a position to demand their papers. And beyond that, if there was any truth in Findlay, as it now seemed ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... hearken my commands. Outside the city is a mound, where, dear To Ceres once, but now deserted, stands A temple, and an aged cypress near, For ages hallowed with religious fear, There meet we. Father, in thy charge remain Troy's gods; for me, red-handed with the smear Of blood, and fresh from slaughter, 'twere profane To touch them, ere the stream hath cleansed me ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... had done. Chauvelin had told her nothing, it was true; but she remembered how sarcastic and evil he looked when she took final leave of him after the ball. Had he discovered something then? Had he already laid his plans for catching the daring plotter, red-handed, in France, and sending him to the guillotine ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... ancient customs of hospitality, by which a man who has once entered the tent of the chief, and partaken of food there, is safe, not only from his pursuers, but from his host himself, even though that host should be the kinsman-avenger. The red-handed murderer, who has eaten the salt of the man whose duty it otherwise would have been to slay him where he stood, is safe from his vengeance. And thus they who cast themselves upon God have nothing to fear. No other hand can pluck them from the sanctuary ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was farthest removed from the Revolutionists of the vulgar, red-handed class. He consecrated his life to prevent Revolution. All his action in the conflict between Labor and Capital aimed at conciliation. He told the plutocrats their defects with brutal frankness, and if he promoted laws to curb them, it was because he realized, as they did not, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... as abstract liberty; it is not even thinkable. If you ask me, "Do you favor liberty?" I reply, "Liberty for whom to do what? Just now I distinctly favor the liberty of the law to cut off the noses of anarchists caught red-handed or red-tongued. If they go in for mutilation let them feel what it is like. If they are not satisfied with the way that things have been going on since the wife of Duke Albert the Pious was held under water with a pole, and since the servitors of the Suabian ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... But still red-handed at your horrid trade You wrought, to reason deaf, and to compassion. But now with gods and men your peace is made I beg you to be good and ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... suppose in the matter. I could swear to you. But I would not, lad—not if I caught you red-handed. You must know, Clarke, since there is none to overhear us, that in the old days I was a Justice of the Peace in Surrey, and that our friend here was brought up before me on a charge of riding somewhat late o' night, and of being ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the night passed rapidly. I was anxious about the ascent, for gusts of ominous sound swept through the pines at intervals. Then wild animals howled, and "Ring" was perturbed in spirit about them. Then it was strange to see the notorious desperado, a red-handed man, sleeping as quietly as innocence sleeps. But, above all, it was exciting to lie there, with no better shelter than a bower of pines, on a mountain 11,000 feet high, in the very heart of the Rocky Range, under twelve degrees of frost, hearing sounds of wolves, with shivering stars ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... except just enough to see him with no choice of party allegiance but between a rabble up to the elbows in robbery and an old regime red-handed with the rabble's blood." ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... had felt like a servant girl taken red-handed and heavy-footed from the kitchen and suddenly placed in the drawing-room upon terms of equality with her mistress and her mistresses's friends, but she had profited by her opportunities and now brought back with her something of the air and manner ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... old-clothes and junk dealer, and, as a side line, at times a very profitable side line, had been known to act as a "fence" for stolen goods. He had skirted for years on the ragged edge with the police, and then, caught red-handed at last, had changed his occupation for a more useful one during a somewhat prolonged sojourn in Sing Sing. Affairs after that had not prospered with Melinoff. His wife, honest if her husband was not, and already an old woman, had been hard put to it with the shabby shop and ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... fugitive slaves were stealthily passed on to Canada, became famous. Methodist professors riotously attempted to rescue an arrested fugitive at Oberlin. A Southern grand jury threw out the bill of indictment against a slave-trading crew caught red-handed. In California Democrats belonging to what was nicknamed "the chivalry" forced upon Senator Broderick, a literally democratic Irishman and the bravest of the Democrats who stood out for fair treatment to Kansas, a duel in which he might fairly ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... a slight pain at her forehead and then remembered the cross which Pierre had thrown into her face. Casting that away he had thrown his faintest chance of victory with it; it would be a slaughter, not a battle, and red-handed McGurk would leave one more foe ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... knew it. It was as pervasive of America as Ford's cars, but cosily, quietly pervasive. It was only less visible because it stayed at home. It was more like a wife than Ford's cars were. From a sinner caught red-handed, Mr. Twist, its amiable creator, leapt to the position of one who can do no wrong, for he had not only placed his teapot between himself and judgment but had accompanied his proofs of identity by a suitable number ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... there are men that have shown as much self-devotion in carrying a lone wall-flower down to the supper-table as ever saint or martyr in the act that has canonized his name. There are Florence Nightingales of the ballroom, whom nothing can hold back from their errands of mercy. They find out the red-handed, gloveless undergraduate of bucolic antecedents, as he squirms in his corner, and distil their soft words upon him like dew upon the green herb. They reach even the poor relation, whose dreary apparition saddens the perfumed atmosphere of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... what intense interest I have watched its reception at the hands of the press, and I think the shallow, flippant criticisms were almost as nauseous to me as they must have been to you. Your book has had a fierce struggle with these self- consecrated, red-handed, high-priests of the literary Yama; but its success is now established, and I bring you news of its advent in England, where it has been republished. You can well afford to ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... thousands of enemies; the people curse and groan at him; if he were stabbed by an Italian, 'Oh, another of those Camorristi wretches!' would be the cry. The agent must come from England, and, if he is taken red-handed, then let him say if he likes that he is connected with an association which knows how to reach evil-doers who are beyond the ordinary reach of the law; but let him make it clear that it is no Camorra ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... who, sinning and laden with the burden of human guilt, has once fallen a victim to the Eumenides, cannot, as a figure in a drama, go off on pleasure trips, nor can he go about the usual business of daily life. Fate seizes him red-handed, causes him to see blood in every glass of champagne and to read his warrant of arrest on every chance scrap of paper. And the Comic Muse is even less indulgent. When Aristophanes would mock the creations of Euripides, which are meant to move the public by their declining fortunes, he at once ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... his blood may have been cold enough as he watched the great robber coursing the poets as a wild dog rages in a flock. And when his turn came, when they were all dead, and the grim, red-handed man trod at him, Fionn may have shivered, but he would have shown his teeth and laid roundly on the monster with his hands. Perhaps he did that, and perhaps for ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... All he saw was a typical ragamuffin of humanity in the grip of the policeman, Nemesis. Adair had been caught trying to do what thousands of other ragamuffins achieved daily with success. He had been arrested red-handed in the act of stealing forbidden happiness. It was his first offense. He was inexpert and had bungled. He had bungled because, while assuming the role of roguery, he had remained at heart an honest man. Now that he was caught, he took the exposure of his ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... though he delighted in the spirit which dictated it, could not quite see his way to so simple and direct an application of the golden rule in the case of men who had so recently been caught red-handed in a cold-blooded murder. While he was still hesitating as to his reply to this humane proposal, an event occurred which rendered ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... Capital must ever be timid in visiting a town of such reputation, apart from investing any money therein; then, changing to the personal phases of the case, he spoke of the absolute disregard of law shown in the act charged, mentioned the red-handed deed of this lawless and dangerous person who had thus slain a pig, no less the pride of the community than the idol ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... pistol, "one motion of your hand and you are a dead man. Stand still where you are. You are caught red-handed." ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... and I had another queer bout with some thieves. They were not after the land this time, but they planned to get at the ore and carry off as much of the gold as they could lay hands on. Our old friend, Rattlesnake Mike, caught them red-handed, and now they are serving a term in prison at ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... The old man spoke in a queer, suppressed tone, and his eyes, when he turned them upon his fellow-packer, were even smokier than usual. "Somebody's up to a little thievin', most likely, and it looks like I had 'em red-handed. I've been layin' ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... of the household; and how he and the other little children were carried off by a weeping aunt into the woods, to comfort and distract them on the funeral day. He also told us of an incident prior to this event which should not be overlooked. How he himself, being caught red-handed, at the age of four or thereabouts, with his hands in a box of sugar-plums, had immediately confessed the awful fact that he had been about to eat them, and he was brought then and there before his Aunt Maria for sentence. She at once decided ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... back into the little office where Mary Carstairs waited, fresh from more cheap plotting in which she was the innocent central figure; and faced her, uncomfortable, ill at ease, disquieted inwardly as a conspirator taken red-handed. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... your hearts and nothing but your hearts.' As she did not allude to her debts, the populace threw up their caps; the Prince de Monaco, just cured of his wound at Crecy, placed his sword at her service; and the Baron de Benil, red-handed from a cruel murder, besought her patronage which, perhaps from a fellow-feeling, she promised with great alacrity. At Grasse she won all hearts and made many more promises, and finally, arriving at Avignon, she found ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... companions becoming hungry, stole a goat and killed it. Zinti ate of the goat, for they told him that they had bought it for some beads, and while they were still eating the Basutos came upon them and caught them red-handed. Next day they were tried by the councillors of the tribe and condemned to die as thieves, but the chief, who wanted servants, spared their lives and set them to labour in his gardens, where they were ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... Gods of battle! red-handed! Wise it was to have banded Such arms as are these for embracing of gain! Hearken to each war-vulture Crying, "Down with all culture Of land or religion!" Hoch! to our refrain Of flourish ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... it was Frobisher's intention, if Admiral Ting agreed, to leave the man in ignorance of the suspicions he had aroused, until he should grow careless and over-bold, and then to pounce suddenly upon him and catch him red-handed. The Englishman knew that unless the man were actually caught in the act, so that there could be no possible doubt as to his treachery, he possessed sufficient money and influence to worm himself out of almost any predicament, however strong ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... shouts I, without a further thought than that here was the midnight miscreant and cattle-stealer, and that I had caught him red-handed. ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... really wanted. He had headed some one of the many small riots against Rome which were perpetually sputtering up and being trampled out by an armed heel. There had been bloodshed, in which he had himself taken part ('a murderer,' Acts iii. 14). And this coarse, red-handed desperado is the people's favourite, because he embodied their notions and aspirations, and had been bold enough to do what every man of them would have done if he had dared. He thought and felt, as they did, that freedom was ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... cottage, a mile out of Thorpe-Michael; and the keepers at the big place by name of Trusham, hard by, declared that Mr. Green was a fearsome poacher and hated the sight of the little man, though never had they catched him red-handed, nor been able to fetch up legal proofs ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... and whistling of the loafers; the continuous changing of the tide; the opening of the lock gates; the departure of the tug; its triumphant return, leading in custody a timber-laden barque from the Baltic, a little self-conscious and ashamed, as if caught red-handed in iniquity by this fussy little officer; the independent sailing of a grimy steamer bound for Sunderland and more coal; the elaborate wharfing of the barque:—all these things on a hot still day can exercise an hypnotic influence more real and strange than the open sea. The romance ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... received by Madame de Vassart. Here she took leave of us, abandoning us to our own designs. Mine was to find a large arm-chair and sit down in it, and give Speed a few instructions. Speed's was to prowl around Paradise for information, and, if possible, telegraph to Lorient for troops to catch Buckhurst red-handed. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... reason for the appearance of Tertullus against St. Paul at Caesarea. A Roman citizen—that is, a person possessed of full Roman rights—if he either denied the jurisdiction or was in danger of being condemned to capital punishment, might, unless he had been caught red-handed in certain heinous crimes, appeal to Caesar and claim to be sent to Rome. Unless the governor had been expressly entrusted with exceptional powers, or unless the case was so self-evident that he had nothing to fear from refusing, he had no alternative ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... understand German thoroughness, they will go over their final plans in detail to make sure that everything is understood. The darkness will let us slip up closer to the house, and we may be able to overhear what they say. Don't forget, too, that our main job is to catch the Hoffs red-handed." ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... possible. A big room had been turned into a projection chamber, and films were being run off over and over. The films, taken by hidden cameras watching the computer-secretaries, had caught two technicians red-handed punching errors into the machines. Boyd had leaped on this evidence, and he and his crew were showing the movies to the technicians and questioning them under bright lights in an effort ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... "The's some red-handed, bloody murderers among 'em, too, I kin tell ye," Tom Fish growled. "I got no rest whilst ye was gone, a thinkin' ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... up the dark cheek of M'liss and kindled a savage light in her black eyes. Relieved by the background of the sombre woods, she might have been a red-handed Nemesis looking over the city of Vengeance. As the long tongues of flame licked the broad colonnade of the National Hotel, and shot a wreathing pillar of fire and smoke high into the air, M'liss extended her tiny fist and shook it at the burning building with an inspiration ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... had finished my copying, I took the thing back, meaning to slip it under Miss Denistoun's cushion. But she had returned to her chair, and so I was caught red-handed. 'So it was you?' said she. 'What have you been doing with my magazine?' 'Skimming it,' said I—which was true enough, literally, but I didn't manage it very well. 'Did you find anything to interest you specially?' she asked. 'Well, yes,' I admitted;' I picked ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stronger and more suited to fan the public rage. The recent trial was called an outrageous travesty on justice; attention was directed to the damnable vagaries of recent juries which had been impaneled to try red-handed Italian murderers. ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... had fortified a position in the town, and had certainly taken up arms, presumably for the purpose of inflicting grievous harm on loyal fellow-citizens. As their opponents were certainly the government, what could they be but declared foes who had been caught red-handed in an act of treason so open and so violent that the old identity of "traitors" and "enemies" was alone applicable to their case? Thus legal theory itself proclaimed the existence of civil war, and handed on to future generations of party leaders an instrument of ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... organization, right here in this city, a sort of assassin's club, as it were, aimed at all the powerful men the world over. Why, the most refined and intellectual reformers have joined with the most red-handed anarchists and—" ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... Edinburgh, and the next morning they were tried before the Lord Provost, and each sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment with hard labour. I was called to give evidence in the court, and chagrined the two London sharpers must have felt to find out how they had been caught red-handed. This was my first appearance ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... alleys, in the depths of which skulked the tramp and the outcast thief with loathsome wrecks that had once laid claim to the name of woman. Every foot of it reeked with incest and murder. Bandits' Roost, Bottle Alley, were names synonymous with robbery and red-handed outrage. By night, in its worst days, I have gone poking about their shuddering haunts with a policeman on the beat, and come away in a ferment of anger and disgust that would keep me awake far into the morning hours planning means of its destruction. That was what it was like. Thank ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... been uplifted time and again. It was the year of a great Indian war. The blood of hundreds of our soldiery had been shed, without protest from these of Puritan stock, but they shuddered at thought of reprisals. Aunt Agnes coming to Cushing! Aunt Agnes to meet the colonel and his "red-handed horde of ruthless slayers!" ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... out in a fictitious name, it was prima-facie evidence that he had done the job and had the balance somewhere. What would his denials, his protestations of innocence count for? He was an ex-convict, a hardened criminal caught red-handed with a portion of the proceeds of robbery—he had succeeded in hiding the remainder of it too cleverly, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... hurrying him on to destruction, and not leaving a single loophole of escape? Who would believe the story of his innocent ramble on the turnpike that Tuesday night? Who could doubt that he had gone directly from the Slocums' to Welch's Court, and then crept home red-handed through ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... I think they called it. The old man's sudden breaking out in this way turned every face towards him, and each kept his posture as if changed to stone. Our Celtic Bridget, or Biddy, is not a foolish fat scullion to burst out crying for a sentiment. She is of the serviceable, red-handed, broad-and-high- shouldered type; one of those imported female servants who are known in public by their amorphous style of person, their stoop forwards, and a headlong and as it were precipitous walk,—the waist plunging downwards ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... assassins, and in the darkness of night betakes himself to Rome. He and his accomplices enter the house of Pietro Comparini and his wife, and, not content with slaying them, also murders Pompilia. But they are discovered, and Guido is caught red-handed. Pompilia's evidence alone is damnatory, for she was not slain outright, and lingers long enough to tell her story. Franceschini is not foiled yet, however. His plea is that he simply avenged the wrong done to him by his wife's adulterous connection with the priest Caponsacchi. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the worst, and read the letter through with a superhuman effort. It almost choked him to read. The very consecutiveness and coherency of the sentences seemed all but incredible under such awful circumstances. A murderer, red-handed, to speak of his crime so calmly as that! And then, too, this undying anger expressed and felt, even after death, against his victim Nevitt! Cyril couldn't understand how any man—least of all his own brother—could write such words about the murdered man whose body was then lying ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... had been taken from the apartment. Evidently the man was disturbed at his work and, when suddenly surprised, had made the bluff that he was calling on Mr. Underwood. They had got the right man, that was certain. He was caught red-handed, and in proof of what he said, the valet pointed to Howard's right hand, which was ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... here, and who do you think is here too? The cat with nine lives has turned up again, and, by Jupiter! Bob, he's brought another cat with him. Dennis is with me without a scratch, and he's captured Ottilie von Dussel, red-haired and red-handed!" ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... hang on his flank, follow his trail wherever it led, in the hope of finding the rendezvous of the gang. Then he would ride with whip and spur to the ranch, Melton would gather his men together, and they would swoop down on the outlaws' camp and catch them red-handed with their booty. ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... tavern appositely labeled the "Inn of Good Morals," he began to throw bottles at some stevedores who had accepted a cut in wages; and when the police came in to restore order, they caught him, red-handed, chasing his enemies over the tops of the tables with his knife drawn. More than one week-end he spent in the jail at headquarters whence his mother's tears and the "pull" tio Mariano had as a politician and distributor of election money, would finally extricate him. And arrest proved so salutary ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Gable, who had been eating industriously for the last quarter of an hour. The old man, finding himself ignored, had smartly conveyed a large spoonful of jam from the pot to his mouth. He choked over it now, and wriggled and blushed like a child taken red-handed. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... little scarlet flame of frenzy— Tweetie himself—with his feathers ruffled and on fire with fury. The robin on the branch actually WAS an Impostor and Tweetie had discovered him red-breasted if not red-handed with crime. Oh! the sight it was to behold him in his tiny Berseker rage at his impudent rival. He flew at him, he beat him, he smacked him, he pecked him, he shrieked bad language at him, he drove ...
— My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... school stern methods were necessary, and total prohibition was the initial step—a step highly lauded by the public in general, and by the white topers of the city in particular. The coloured bibbers were thus suddenly reduced to water, and some twenty of them—caught red-handed in crime—were lashed and sent to prison for two years. One or two got off with a caution, and with instructions to preach to the locations on the heinousness of hooliganism, and of the power of Martial Law to hang "boys" for less than murder—as ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... deprived of its chief; the remaining four conveyed Pierre to the little wood, while the robbers, hearing no signal, did not venture to stir. According to agreement, Pierre Buttel was tried by the archers, who promptly transformed themselves into a court of justice, and as he had been taken red-handed, and did not condescend to defend himself, the trial was not a long affair. He was unanimously sentenced to be hung, and the execution was then and there carried out, at the request of the criminal himself, who wanted the game to be properly played to the end, and who ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... belongs to the De Vescis, the blackest Lancaster fellow of all! His daughter is the widow of the red-handed Clifford, who slew young Earl Edmund on Wakefield Bridge. They say her young son is in hiding in some moss in his lands, for the King holds him in deadly ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... know what I'm talking about. I was there, you see, and caught the little limb of Satan red-handed, so to speak—though, of course, she doesn't know it." Then, as Eliot remained stonily silent, he proceeded loquaciously: "It was last June or thereabouts. I was stopping a night or two at the Hotel de Loup, up in the mountains above ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... American field Sir Joseph has connived with a syndicate to purchase factories, to stop production at the source, since your U-boats and your red-handed diplomatic spies cannot stop it otherwise. Your agents have corrupted a few of the Yankees, and killed others, and would have killed more if the name of your people had not become such a horror even in that land where millions of Germans live that every ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Ironsides" herself would have perhaps sailed out of Annapolis harbor to have a wooden Jefferson Davis shaped for her figure-head at Norfolk,—for Andrew Jackson was a hater of secession, and his was no fitting effigy for the battle-ship of the red-handed conspiracy. With all the great fortresses, with half the ships and warlike material, in addition to all that was already stolen, in the traitors' hands, what chance would the loyal men in the Border States have stood against the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... about this last affair, anyhow," said he, as he took us into his office. "You might say the man was caught red-handed! All the same, Mr. Lindsey, he's in his rights to ask for a lawyer, and you can see ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... itself and all that hurrying about in the dark had shocked and excited me! The whole theater of life had changed. Its audience had suddenly enlarged and was rushing over the stage and a kind of terror was in every face and voice. There was a red-handed villain behind the scenes, now, and how many others, I wondered. Men were no longer as they had been. Even the God to whom I prayed was different. As I write the sounds and shadows of that night are in my soul again. I see its gathering gloom. I hear its rifle shot which started all the galloping ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... different. He belongs with the worst element on board, and only joined us from fear of being killed just as Estada was. He has no heart in this job, and would accept any chance to square himself with those cut-throats below. I'll have trouble with him before we are done, but prefer to catch the man red-handed." ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... with &c (meddle) 682. be in action; come into operation &c (power at work) 170. Adj. doing &c v.; acting; in action; in harness; on duty; in operation &c 170. Adv. in the act, in the midst of, in the thick of; red-handed, in flagrante delicto [Lat.]; while one's hand is in. Phr. action is eloquence [Coriolanus]; actions speak louder than words; actum aiunt ne agas [Terence]; awake, arise, or be forever fall'n [Paradise Lost]; dii pia facta vident [Lat.] [Ovid]; faire sans dire [Fr.]; fare ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... across the line to stock a respectable ranch. Not one of the established ranches had escaped heavy losses; so heavy, indeed, that the owners faced the option of going broke or of exterminating the rustlers. Once or twice the thieves had nearly been caught red-handed, but the leader of the outlaws had saved the men by ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... offends her," agreed the old man, impatiently. "I never mention it myself unless I catch her red-handed; then I storm a little ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... Harvard-Penn' game in 1904, at Soldiers' Field. In this year there was great rivalry between the players representing Harvard and Pennsylvania. The contest was sharp and bitterly fought all the way through. Both teams had complained frequently to Edwards, the Umpire. Finally he caught two men red-handed, so to speak. There was no argument. Both men admitted it. It so happened that both men were very valuable to their respective teams. The loss of either man would be greatly felt. Both captains cornered Edwards and both agreed that he was perfectly right in his contention ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... poor girl, to leave a happy home with her heart full of innocent mirth, only to encounter murder lurking red-handed ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... in his own way for a quarter of an hour. There had been no possible doubt of the crime, it was the week after the Derby, and Bulteel had lost heavily it was said. He was caught red-handed and got off abroad that night, and the matter would have been hushed up probably but for the added sensation of Lady Hilda's elopement with him. That set society by the ears, and the thing was the thrill of the season. Mr. Marchant had been ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... capturing the moonshiner has changed considerably from that of other days. Then the revenooer (mountain folk usually call him the law) slipped up from behind the bushes on the offender and caught him red-handed at the still. In those days the men who were making had their lookout men who gave warning by a call or a whistle, even by gun signals, of the approach of the law while the moonshiner took to his heels, hiding in deep underbrush or far back under cliffs. Today these mountain men have learned ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... journalistic adulteries? Only wait: you shan't complain that the sequel is commonplace, and perhaps, one day, when you read in the papers the sequel to the sequel, you will remember and be entertained. He caught us red-handed, you see. It was one evening when we hadn't expected him home until after midnight, and at ten o'clock the door opened and he stood suddenly in the room. Squalid enough, isn't it? To this day I don't know whether he had laid ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... said. "Thanks to you, Hank. Principally. To the boy, too! We've caught six men red-handed right on the rookery, with dead seals, most of them females. The launch ought to intercept the boat. There's not wind enough for a schooner to get far away by the time the revenue cutter arrives. Besides, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... called Tom to his chum, as the latter gave him this information. "The Firefly is tuned up for a hundred miles an hour! We'll be there in ten minutes! We must catch him red-handed, if possible!" ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... tone at some of her own cruelties. Some day he would have it out with her when the right moment came. Before he reached the house he had had time to sketch a number of scenes in which she, caught extraordinarily red-handed, was forced to listen to his exposition of the evil of such methods as hers. He would say to her, "I remember that you once said to me, Mrs. Farron—" Anger cut short his vision as a cloud of her phrases came back to ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... could blame us if we paid him a visit. For all the world knows how often some cows, or a calf or two, have vanished on a dark night from the hillsides at Harden, and though a Murray hath never yet been ta'en red-handed, it is easy to know where the larders o' Elibank get their plenishing. Turn about is fair play, say I, and now that the pastures at Harden are empty, 'tis time that we thought of taking our revenge. Sir Juden was a wily man in his youth, and sly as a pole-cat, but men ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... Commission of Inquiry that he was ready to point out the description of the ritual murder ceremony in a "secret" Hebrew work. When the book was produced and the incriminated passage translated, it was found that it referred to the Jewish rite of slaughtering animals. The apostate, thus caught red-handed, confessed that he had turned informer in the hope of making money, and was by imperial command sent into the army. The confidence of St. Petersburg in the activity of the Velizh Commission of Inquiry vanished more and more. Khovanski was notified that "his Majesty the Emperor, having observed ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... deed which had produced so widespread a feeling of horror was a proceeding fraught with peril to the royal cause. Anger does not discriminate, and to the Protestants of England, North and South, old Irish, and Anglo-Irish, honourable gentlemen of the Pale, and red-handed rebels of Ulster, were all alike guilty. Nor was this Charles's only difficulty. The Confederates declined to abate a jot of their terms. The free exercise of the Catholic religion, an independent Irish parliament, a general ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... wellnigh took me red-handed; and that was better luck than I deserved. If I'd not been drunk and in my tantrums, you'd never have got my hand within a thousand ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the artist, with a strange smile, and even a challenge. Even when caught red-handed, he did not betray any signs of repentance, and looked rather sarcastic than guilty. Having examined more closely the drawings on the wall, which represented human figures in various positions, I became interested in the strange reddish-yellow colour ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... Front-de-Boeuf. "These fellows dared not to have acted with such inconceivable impudence had they not been supported by some strong bands. There are enough outlaws in this forest to resent my protecting the deer. I did but tie one fellow, who was taken red-handed and in the fact, to the horns of a wild stag, which gored him to death in five minutes, and I had as many arrows shot at me as were launched in the tournament. Here, fellow," he added to one of his attendants, "hast ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... considered, in its day, one of the most traitorous crimes in our history. And you, sir, a citizen of high standing and repute, were detected in the act of transferring many of these important papers to a spy, thus periling the safety of the nation. You were caught red-handed, so to speak, but made your escape and in a manner remarkable and even wonderful for its adroitness have for years evaded every effort on the part of our Secret Service Department to effect your ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... replied Hal promptly, and with enthusiasm. "Shrimp was hard to swallow, and he would have made this place purgatory to us. But he was caught, red-handed, and we've had a lesson, the first day in the service, that real justice rules always in the Army. The breaking-in as recruits, Noll, is going to be harder than I thought, even if we have such fine men as Brimmer and Davis all the time. But, after we get through that ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... and turning, rend those who now preyed upon them. It would be "dog eat dog" again, with positions reversed, and he saw for one instant of time that splendid house sacked to its foundations, the tables overturned, the pictures torn, the hangings blazing, and Liberty, the red-handed Man in the Street, grimed with powder smoke, foul with the gutter, rush yelling, torch in hand, through ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... native Christians, and had taken them to a temple where they were engaged in torturing them with a refinement of cruelty. One of our leaders collected a few marines and some volunteers, marched out and surrounded the temple and captured everybody red-handed. The Boxers were given short shrift—those that had their insignia on; but in the sorting-out process it was impossible to tell everybody right at first sight. Christians and Boxers were all of them gory with the blood which had flown from the torturing and brutalities ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... him, the red-handed murderer!" broke out the woman, fiercely. "He is probably a thief; he killed my poor husband, and then sat down like a cold-blooded villain that he ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... Julia, the Court of Vesta, the Temple of Castor and Pollux; we have a more vague notion of the Senate Hall; the hideous arch of Septimius Severus stares us in the face; so does the lovely column of evil Phocas, the monster of the east, the red-handed centurion-usurper who murdered an Emperor and his five sons to reach the throne. And perhaps we have been told where the Rostra stood, and the Rostra Julia, and that the queer fragment of masonry by the arch is supposed ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the red-handed Wardour, married Sybil Knockwinnock, the heiress of the Saxon family, and by that alliance," said Sir Arthur, "brought the castle and estate into the name of Wardour, in the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the voice of the people. The Valerian, the Porcian, and the Sempronian laws had all been passed to that effect. Now there had been no popular vote as to the execution of Lentulus and the other conspirators, who had been taken red-handed in Rome in the affair of Catiline. Their death had been decreed by the Senate, and the decree of the Senate had been carried out by Cicero; but no decree of the Senate had the power of a law. In spite of that decree the old law was in force; and ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... were told than of the bloody buccaneer himself. That the walls of his house were ceiled with jewels, shedding their accumulated lustre of years so that never candle need shine in the place, was well known. That the spellbound souls of all those on his red-handed ancestor's roll were fain to keep watch and ward over their once treasures, by night and noon, white-sheeted and faint in the glare of the sun, wan in the moon, blacker shadows in the starless dark, found belief. And there were those who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... came in groups of two each from the trampled hill slope, bearing on stretchers their ghastly burden of bleeding and wounded men. Although coming within musket-range of the American force, no molestation was offered. Their work of humanity was felt to be too sacred for even red-handed War to disturb. Indeed, both American and British wounded were cared for ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... just time to make out that it was a bell-handle and name-plate, when the pursuers came up—six or seven "peelers" and specials, with a ruck of men and boys. We were collared on the instant. The fact of the property being found in our possession constituted a flagrans delictum—we were caught "red-handed." It was vain to argue that, had we been the delinquents, we should scarcely have been standing there still, awaiting discovery. The idea of arguing with a rural policeman, when, by a rare coincidence, popular feeling is with him! The mob regarded ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... into the castle, rescued the imprisoned outlaws, and at the same time carried off some of the wounded who were lodged in the town. One man was too much hurt to be moved, so he was left behind, and eventually sent to London, tried, and—having been captured red-handed—was hanged. This happened only at the ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... really anything in this story, I doubt the wisdom of going to Mrs. Gwyn with it, and certainly it would be a bad plan to speak to Viola. We've got to handle this matter ourselves. I want to catch Barry Lapelle red-handed. That is the surest way to convince Viola that he is an unworthy scoundrel. It is my duty to protect my—my sister—and I shall find a way to do so, whether she likes it or not. You know, perhaps, that we are not ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... was so clear, so overwhelming, that there was not the slightest doubt about the verdict which would be passed upon him. He had been caught practically red-handed in his deed of treachery; but this was not all. Tom Pollard's action had led to a number of other facts coming to light. He had by many cunning devices been in communication with the enemy; he had constantly made known the plans which he had learnt at the Divisional Headquarters, and ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... visitors. It had long been decided that she must be taken in the act of sorcery, and warning had that day been given that she expected illustrious company in the evening. The watch were to find her red-handed, so to speak; the leech was to prove whether her house was indeed plague-stricken; and in either case the senate wished to have the sorceress safe in prison and at their mercy, though even Philippus had not been taken ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not hungry, which, in the circumstances, was as well. Mistress MacWalter had caught him red-handed on one occasion. He was taking a bit of hard oatcake out of the basket of "farles" which swung from the black, smoked beam in the corner. Kit had cause to remember the occasion. Ever since, she had cast it up to him. She ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... And when Crenshaw did not reply: "Wherein are you different from any other felon taken red-handed—except that you were taken twice ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... an arrested man is presumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty. In England, if a murderer is caught red-handed over his victim, he is held guiltless until the judge sentences him. In France we make no such foolish assumption, and although I admit that innocent men have sometimes been punished, my experience ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... so completely restored, moreover, but that they caused him another nervous tremor. Then he grasped the truth; while the detective, latent in every moralist, sprang to attention. Here were criminals to be brought to justice, criminals caught red-handed. Reginald Sawyer, having been rather badly scared himself, lusted—though honestly ignorant of any personal touch in the matter—to ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Buck, "one noon, in th' foothills, we come on what we was after, an' we did some stalkin' t' do it. We ketched three guys red-handed. They was artistic-like re-brandin' some of our calves so's Lazy I'd read Circle W. 'Course, they wa'n't but one thing t' do with them fellers, an' we perceeds to do it. But unfortunate enough they wa'n't a tree within miles of that there spot. It'd seem as though nature hadn't figured ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... from pleasing to young Geoffrey. But Elaine showed him how no other way was to be found by which Sir Francis could be trapped red-handed and distant from help. While the knight was bending his brows down with trying to set his thoughts into some order that should work out a better device, a glare shone over the next hill against the ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... treasure he could carry off, and then getting out of the bad business. Already six days had passed since the Arabs and Nubians had left him alone in his camp; and though it was lucky that we had learned what was going on, it might be too late to profit by the information. Even if we caught Corkran red-handed, he might have hidden his spoil where none but he, or some messenger, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... had established a bad precedent. A "squaw man" driving out a brown wife to make room for a white is not a heroic figure. It had been done before, but it would not hand down well in the traditions of the settling of this great country. Trespass of law and order, with their swift, red-handed reckoning, were but moves of the great game of colonization. But to shove out a brown woman for a white was a mean move. Few stopped at the Rodneys' ranch, though it marked the first break in the journey from town to the gold-mining ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... but the brightness of his countenance was not accounted for by his answer: "I believe she has treated me with it once or twice already, and I still survive. In fact, I am inclined to think the doctor caught her red-handed on one occasion, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... I thought," said Chester. "Now I am almost positive that the conspirators will gather for one more session before the German advance, if only to make sure that nothing has gone amiss. We can surround the house and capture them red-handed." ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... tell the combatant, unless he be caught red-handed. They all wear khaki, the only difference being that a civilian wears pearl buttons, the soldiers the metal military button with the Imperial Crown stamped on it. When it is borne in mind that the buttons are hooked on, one can imagine ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... of course. Well, Doctor Browne, my keeper and I were out taking a look round at the young pheasants in their coops last evening, when we took these confounded young dogs red-handed, ferreting rabbits with that scoundrelly poaching vagabond you have taken into your service, when nobody else ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... The Communists caught red-handed in the streets of Paris in 1870 died with hardly less formality than was observed at the death-scene of the Prince of the Moskowa and Duke of Elchingen, and the truth then became plain. The Bourbons could not, dared not, attempt to carry out the sentence of the law with the forms of the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... staring after him, I felt like a murderer of the deepest dye. It is one thing to hand over to the police their natural prey, a thief taken red-handed, but quite another, and a much more harrowing one, to have him slip through your fingers, precipitate himself into mid-air, and drop four stories to the pavement, scattering his brains far and wide. There was not a vestige of hope for the ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... no surprise that they were traversing the river trail. He even thought he knew how he could head his man off by a short cut. But this would not serve his purpose. He wanted to get him red-handed, and to leave him now would be to give him a chance that he was confident would be taken advantage of at once. The river trail led to the ranch. And the only branches anywhere along its route were those running north and south at ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... have stated it, Rasula," said Chase. "I'm sorry you are against me, for I would be your friend. I've told you how to reach the secret cave. The chests are there. The passage is closed. You can trap him in the attempt to rob the bank. I could have taken him red-handed and given him over to Lord Deppingham. But you would never have known the truth. Now I ask you to judge for yourselves. Give him a fair trial, Rasula—as you would any man accused of crime—and be just. If you need ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... expensive machinery of criminal justice if the tongs went gayly on shooting each other up and incidentally taking the lives of innocent bystanders? Wasn't the law intended to cover Chinamen as much as Italians, Poles, Greeks and niggers? And now that one of these murdering Celestials had been caught red-handed it was up to the D.A. to go to it, convict him, and send him to the chair! They did not express themselves precisely that way, but that was the gist of it. But Peckham knew that it was one thing to catch a Chinaman, even red-handed, and ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... a man, who on the river corresponds to the sneak thief ashore, is caught red-handed stealing rope or metal or ships' oddments there is resistance. But always the police win. They know the game. A hand-to-hand struggle in a swaying boat, even a fall overboard with a desperate prisoner, does ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... Government enforcement agents, game protectors, State Constabulary, all keep an eye on Clinch. Harrod's trespass signs fence him in. He's like a rat in a trap. Yet Clinch makes money at law breaking and nobody can catch him red-handed. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... the quality of the delayed dinner down to the things that the guests were likely to be saying in her absence. Then, young as she was, she took her resolution. After that, she would catch her father suddenly, and bring him back, red-handed. A man like Doctor Keltridge ought not to be reduced to the conventional dead level of his fellow townsmen; it would be a waste of rare material. Rather, as the phrase is, he should be featured. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... well make a clean breast of the whole business, young man. I've caught you red-handed, snooping about the lot for two days quizzing ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... by the lake, The sunny Venice of the western world; There many corpses, rotting in the wind, Poked up stiff limbs, but in the leprous rags No jewel caught the sun, no tawny chain Gleamed, as the prying halberds raked them o'er. Pillage that ran red-handed through the streets Came railing home at evening empty-palmed; And they, on that sad night a twelvemonth gone, Who, ounce by ounce, dear as their own life's blood Retreating, cast the cumbrous load away: They, when brown foemen lopped the ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... possible even when you were dying. That was what they did with your father, wasn't it, Carl? Brave Peter Golden, who had fought Rinehart so hard, who had begged and pleaded for universal rejuvenation, waited and watched and finally caught Rinehart red-handed, to prove that he was corrupting the law and expose him. Simple, honest Peter Golden, applying so naively for his rightful place on the list, when his cancer was diagnosed. Peter Golden had been all but dead when he had finally whispered ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... head. "Sometimes it is necessary to take a chance," she answered. "You've got to catch Mascola's bunch red-handed. When we round the 'bull-nose' we'll be right on top of ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... there is nothing that you can do. Mere impersonation is not a crime. If I had exposed him when we met, you would have gained nothing beyond driving him from the house. Whereas, if we wait, if we pretend to suspect nothing, we shall undoubtedly catch him red-handed in an attempt ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... two exceedingly noxious aristos, as he had hoped to do; but he held the threads of an abominable conspiracy in his hands, and the question of catching both Bertin and Madame la Comtesse red-handed was only a question of time. But little time had been lost. There was always someone to be found at the offices of the Committee of Public Safety, which were open all night. It was possible that citizen Chauvelin would ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... that all the Arabs on board the dhow, taken red-handed as they were, deserved hanging, would gladly have left the task of putting them out of this world to the Sultan. The difficulty was to prove that they were his subjects; and they were not likely to acknowledge this to be so, unless they thought that he would pardon them. After some further ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... Though countless aeons pass them by, They rise at last to day. The spirits of our fathers rise Triumphant through the starry skies; And we may hear their choral song,— The firm in faith, the noble throng,— It bids us crush a deadly wrong, Wrought by red-handed Cain. AND WE SHALL CONQUER! for the Right Goes onward with resistless might: His hand shall win for us the fight. WE, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... he was caught red-handed firing the grass on Warenda Station, on his way to Boulia. He was brought before the Boulia justices, who sentenced him to three months' imprisonment under the "Careless Use of Fire Act." This was the maximum penalty that could be inflicted. On completion of his ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... infamous title. Rapine, murder, lust, oppression, high-handed bullying, servile slavishness in every vile abandonment, have bred up delicate, dreamy aristocrats. Their ancestors, by the two strains, were either red-handed marauders, or easy Delilahs." ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage |
