In his time he had been a great reader of detective tales, and even now he thought there was no pleasanter reading.

It was that which had first drawn him to Joe Chandler, and made him welcome the young chap as cordially as he had done when they first came to London.
But though Ellen had tolerated, she had never encouraged, that sort of talk between the two men.

More than once she had exclaimed reproachfully: "To hear you two, one would think there was no nice, respectable, quiet people left in the world!" But now all that was changed.

She was as keen as anyone could be to hear the latest details of an Avenger crime.

True, she took her own view of any theory suggested.