He brightened and rubbed his thin hands together as he listened to the meagre but remarkable details.

A long series of sterile weeks lay behind us, and here at last there was a fitting object for those remarkable powers which, like all special gifts, become irksome to their owner when they are not in use.

That razor brain blunted and rusted with inaction.
Sherlock Holmes's eyes glistened, his pale cheeks took a warmer hue, and his whole eager face shone with an inward light when the call for work reached him.

Leaning forward in the cab, he listened intently to MacDonald's short sketch of the problem which awaited us in Sussex.

The inspector was himself dependent, as he explained to us, upon a scribbled account forwarded to him by the milk train in the early hours of the morning.