"I thought you talked to him." "So I did," said Bull brightly; "but we talked in a pitch-dark room like a coalcellar.

There, you would never have guessed that." "I could not have conceived it," said Syme gravely.
"It is indeed a new idea," said the Professor.
Their new ally was in practical matters a whirlwind.

At the inquiry office he asked with businesslike brevity about the trains for Dover.
Having got his information, he bundled the company into a cab, and put them and himself inside a railway carriage before they had properly realised the breathless process.

They were already on the Calais boat before conversation flowed freely.
"I had already arranged," he explained, "to go to France for my lunch; but I am delighted to have someone to lunch with me.

You see, I had to send that beast, the Marquis, over with his bomb, because the President had his eye on me, though God knows how.