That trick of his of breaking in on his friends' thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour's silence is really very showy and superficial.

He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine." "Have you read Gaboriau's works ?" I asked.

"Does Lecoq come up to your idea of a detective ?" Sherlock Holmes sniffed sardonically.

"Lecoq was a miserable bungler," he said, in an angry voice; "he had only one thing to recommend him, and that was his energy.

That book made me positively ill.