Explore "The French Powder Mystery" by Ellery Queen on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"_Forty years in the service of the_ SÛRETÉ, _one might hazard, would dull the edge of one's zest for the hunt. Thank the good Lord, this is not so! at least in my own case, which has been as full of interest, I dare say, as the next.... There was the admirable Henri Tencqueville, who cut his throat before my very eyes when we cornered him in his Montmartre hideaway... and Petit Charlot, who shot two of my faithful lads to death and bit off a piece of the good Sergeant Mousson's nose in the_ mêlée _before he was subdued.... Ah, well! I grow tender in reminiscence, but... I would make the point that even to-day, old and enfeebled as I am, I would not give up the thrill of that final_ coup de main, _that last stage of the chase when the quarry, panting and desperate, has his back to the wall -- no, not for all the everlasting delights of the Turkish heaven!..._" -- From THE MEMOIRS OF A PREFECT, _By_ Auguste Brillon.
They came in one by one -- furtive, curious, impassive, bored, reluctant, openly nervous. Quietly they came in, conscious of the tight police cordon, of a quivering strain in the atmosphere, of shrewd eyes that noted and calculated their least movement -- conscious most of all of grim over-hanging disaster, to whom and with what dire effects they did not know and could only guess.