"Keyhole" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... day, I cannot pretend to tell. But late in the afternoon a dreadful screaming was heard, and when people rushed from all parts of the house to see what was the matter, behold the nursery door was locked, and nobody could get in. Aunt Izzie called through the keyhole to have it opened, but the roars were so loud that it was long before she could get an answer. At last Elsie, sobbing violently, explained that Dorry had locked the door, and now the key wouldn't turn, and they couldn't open it. Would they have to ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... one in the house," rejoined old Peter, after applying his ear to the keyhole; "I ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... petitions rammed in ahead of every roll-call, lobby committees from the farmers' associations tramping around the State House in their cowhide boots, and a good government angel peeking in at every committee-room keyhole! Jeemsrollickins! Jim Blaine, himself, couldn't play the game ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... parlor with Miss Hawkins. He came the day but one before he was shot. She let him in. He appeared flustered like. She heard talking in the parlor, I peared like it was quarrelin'. Was afeared sumfin' was wrong: Just put her ear to—the—keyhole of the back parlor-door. Heard a man's voice, "I—can't—I can't, Good God," quite beggin' like. Heard—young Miss' voice, "Take your choice, then. If you 'bandon me, you knows what to 'spect." Then he rushes outen the ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... first time since the thing began Clara was left out completely. Flora knew she was even left out of a possibility of listening at the keyhole. For the bright, tight, little room into which Harry followed her was approached by a square entry and a double door. The room itself overhung the garden as a ship's deck overhangs the sea. Leather books and long red curtains were ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... ridiculous, it was maddening,—but it was true. Patty was locked in a room and could not get out. She hadn't heard a key turn, but it must have done so. Peeping in the keyhole, she could see that the key was in the ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... budge when they pushed against it, and there was just light enough to make out the large keyhole of a massive inset lock. Jason probed lightly with the pick and curled his lip ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... shouting abuse at them through the keyhole; and the three friends then met in conference ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... hands fell a little lower, to a different surface. It was a short wooden door. She pushed against it, gently, but it did not yield. She felt it across and up and down. There was no latch and she could find no keyhole. Again she pushed, this time with all her strength. Jerking suddenly, the door opened inwards, and Ellenor, leaning against it, fell forward over the high threshold into pitch darkness. She felt a blinding blow and a sickening pain, ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... furious painter, who still continued his song of oaths and execrations, and made sundry efforts to break open the door. Chagrined as our hero was, he could not help laughing when he heard how the patient had been treated; and his indignation changing into compassion, he called to him through the keyhole, desiring to know the reason of his distracted behaviour. Pallet no sooner recognized his voice than, lowering his own to a whimpering tone, "My dear friend!" said he, "I have at last detected the ruffians who have persecuted me so much. I caught ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... happened that a gentleman was now living in Rockland who united in himself all these advantages. Who he was, the sagacious reader may very probably have divined. Just to see how it looked, one day, having bolted her door, and drawn the curtains close, and glanced under the sofa, and listened at the keyhole to be sure there was nobody in the entry,—just to see how it looked, she had taken out an envelope and written on the back of it Mrs. Manilla Veneer. It made her head swim and her knees tremble. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... after some reflection, must proceed from the small servant, who always had a cold from damp living. Looking intently that way one night, he plainly distinguished an eye gleaming and glistening at the keyhole; and having now no doubt that his suspicions were correct, he stole softly to the door, and pounced upon her before she was ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... along the wall until he came to the cellar door and found the keyhole. After much fumbling he got the key in, turned it, ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... ostensibly gone to Brussels, something happened to produce an explosion. She found a letter in his pocket, a photograph, a trinket, que sais-je? At any rate there was a grand scene. I didn't listen at the keyhole, and I don't know what was said; but I've reason to believe that my poor brother was hauled over the coals as I fancy none of his ancestors have ever been—even by angry ladies who weren't ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... Tom. "Ain't possible. There ain't neither handle nor knob inside, to pull on. No lock nor keyhole in it, neither. Must be barred on the outside. That's another reason for thinkin' it was built for ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... So that, one afternoon, while Monsieur and Mademoiselle Stangerson were out for a walk, and while Daddy Jacques was away, he entered the latter by the vestibule window. He was alone, and, being in no hurry, he began examining the furniture. One of the pieces, resembling a safe, had a very small keyhole. That interested him! He had with him the little key with the brass head, and, associating one with the other, he tried the key in the lock. The door opened. He saw nothing but papers. They must be very valuable to have been put away in a safe, ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... of Elizabeth's room, knelt down and tried to look through the keyhole. The inside key was there, which seemed to confirm ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... by the nightmare man, a kind of evil spirit, struggling with one. It is prevented by placing a sharp knife under the pillow, and stuffing the keyhole with ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... arose as soon as the door closed behind the constable, and stuffed a piece of damp sponge into the keyhole; he then returned and took a ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... I batter at a senseless door, I'll to the keyhole train my tortured ear. (Listening.) Dead silence!... is it over—or, to come? Hark! was not that the click of meeting shears?... Again! and followed by the sullen thud of thumbs that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... far as possible. Then she took down the old elephant-gun from the wall, and finding Piet's pouch and the bullets, she loaded it and laid it on the table. All the time the Kafirs made no sign, and from the keyhole she saw them still sitting in silence, ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... inflated at first, to all the successive degrees of loose bagginess as he leads the reckless young man he has originally contracted with from dazzling pleasure to pleasure, till at last he is a mere shrivelled silver string such as you could almost draw through a keyhole. That was the striking moral, for the young man, however regaled, had been somehow "sold"; which we hadn't in the least been, who had had all his pleasures and none of his penalty, whatever this ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... Sewer! Here's this morning's New York Stabber! Here's the New York Family Spy! Here's the New York Private Listener! Here's the New York Peeper! Here's the New York Plunderer! Here's the New York Keyhole Reporter! Here's the New York Rowdy Journal! Here's all the New York papers! Here's full particulars of the patriotic Locofoco movement yesterday, in which the Whigs were so chawed up; and the last ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... two who said he entered by that door-that small door down the passage, sahib, where there is no light. It is a teak door, bolted and with no keyhole on the outside." ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... of his pocket, and when he tried it in the keyhole it fitted exactly. He turned it, the door flew open, and Teddy ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... but he could not in that darkness fit it into the padlock; and he asked me if I had any matches. I had a little silver box of wax vestas in my pocket, and struck one to help him in his search for the keyhole which he found to have been covered by the escutcheon. Before I threw the match away I held it up and glanced back across the garden. The shadows leaped and stiffened to attention, and I flung the match away, but ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... done?" said Bill. " It's no use knockin', because they'd look through the keyhole and refuse to come out, and, not bein' burglars, we can't bust the door in. It seems to me that there's nothin' for it but to give ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... the combatants, for the other fled, squeaking as with pain. While I listened, with strained attention, for the next episode in this queer drama, expecting that now would come another assault upon the window, to my unbounded surprise I heard a key thrust in the keyhole, the lock turned, and the front door thrown open with a furious bang. It was closed as loudly as it was opened. Then the door of the room in which I was, was dashed open, with the same display of excitement, and of clamour, footsteps ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... it yet, Gogol," he said in a fatherly way. "When once they have heard us talking nonsense on that balcony they will not care where we go afterwards. If we had come here first, we should have had the whole staff at the keyhole. You don't seem to know anything ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... had to use, but use them she must; and after discoursing, often with dignity and delicacy, to me, she would move away on her "souliers de silence," and glide ghost-like through the house, watching and spying everywhere, peering through every keyhole, listening behind ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... chair for the purpose on Nogam's first night in the room; whether or no, it was not in character that, having established this precedent, Nogam should depart from it. And in any event, the coat-draped chair effectually eclipsed a possible keyhole view of ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... Coles, the botanist, writes: 'It is said, yea, and believed, that Moonwort will open the locks wherewith dwelling-houses are made fast, if it be put into the keyhole.' And Culpeper, the herbalist, writes thus: 'Moonwort is a herb which, they say, will open locks and unshoe such horses as tread upon it. This some laugh to scorn, and these no small fools neither; but country people that I know call it Unshoe-the-horse. Besides, I have heard commanders say that ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... he was examining began upon the brass work on the right-hand side of the keyhole, and extended for about four inches, where it had scratched the varnish ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... If you are present and hear me, please step to this door and look into the keyhole. It is a friend, who will aid you, ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... people pay visits to me, I wish them to come to the front-door, and ring the bell, and send up their names. I don't wish them to climb in at the window, or creep through the pantry, or, worst of all, float through the keyhole, and catch me in undress. So I believe that in all worlds thoughts will be the subjects of volition,—more accurately expressed when expression is desired, but just as entirely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... anything that isn't cash down on the nail—with the money locked up in a safety deposit vault. By the sheerest good luck, the Mormon president of the S. L & E. happened to be in New York at the time when Adair had his ear to the Transcontinental keyhole. Adair hunted him up and made a hypothetical case of a sure thing: if our Western Extension and the Transcontinental, standard-gauged, should be knocking at the Green Butte door at the same time, what would the S. L & E. do? The Mormon ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... chill of death seemed to strike upon him. No light stole through crack or keyhole—all was darkness and silence—and he sank upon his knees, to remain motionless for a few minutes, and then rise firmer of purpose ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... as they saw the little tailor, they said to themselves, "A little fellow like this could creep through a keyhole, and aid us greatly." So one ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... line with it lay the two penitentiaries. Lines of lofty palisades ran round the settlement, giving it the appearance of a fortified town. These palisades were built for the purpose of warding off the terrific blasts of wind, which, shrieking through the long and narrow bay as through the keyhole of a door, had in former times tore off roofs and levelled boat-sheds. The little town was set, as it were, in defiance of Nature, at the very extreme of civilization, and its inhabitants maintained perpetual warfare with ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... have war intelligence to communicate, it is best to believe that every person has ears, and that every door has a keyhole. I learn from this letter that the Scotian sailed from Glasgow, and the Arran from Leith. The agent is of the opinion that both these steamers are fitted out by the same owners, who have formed a company, apparently to furnish the South with gunboats for its navy, as well as ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... there, directly, and bring this lady's bill, d'ye hear—d'ye hear?' 'Cert'nly, Sir,' replied Sam, who had answered Wardle's violent ringing of the bell with a degree of celerity which must have appeared marvellous to anybody who didn't know that his eye had been applied to the outside of the keyhole ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... reformed temperance lecturer. I went to his shop to get shaved, but he was absent. I could smell hair oil through the keyhole, but the Colonel was not in his slab-inlaid emporium. He had been preparing another lecture on temperance, and was at that moment studying the habits of his adversary at a neighboring gin palace. I sat down ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... with ivy. Behind the wall the wind rustled amid the pines and oaks like the vague murmur of a coming storm. And there, at the end of the narrow path, half hidden by the ivy, was the little gate he was seeking. He cautiously brushed aside the leaves and felt for the keyhole; but, just as he was about to insert the key, which burned in his feverish ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... an ordinary 6 inch rim-lock of English manufacture. At a short distance it looks like a superior article; the follower and keyhole appear as if they were bushed with brass. But let us take it to pieces, and see what we can find. The follower is a rough casting, not turned at the bearings, and is in no sense a fit. The screw holes are not countersunk, ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... indeed by chance, for it was cunningly hidden. Whatever the danger, he must enter the garden again in search for his comrade. The door was shut, and as he felt along it from top to bottom, touching no latch nor handle, nor keyhole even, he realized that entrance that way was barred. The door only opened from within. He had stepped back to consider how, and at what point, he could best scale the wall, when a slight movement close beside him caused him to stand ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... wondering for a few minutes before I stretched out my hand and felt that I was in my bed, and as I lay there, I suddenly saw in the darkness the shape of my door formed by four faint streaks of light which grew brighter, and directly after there was the sharp point of light where the keyhole ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... was no answer, and she was just stooping down to call through the keyhole when she saw that the wall-paper was nothing but a vine growing on a trellis, and the door only a little rustic gate leading through it. "And, dear me!—where has the furniture gone to?" she exclaimed, for the curly chairs had changed into flower-pot stands, and the bed ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... was mysterious, very, and I cannot make it out now. My first thought was, that he must have had airy wings, and after he had come they had disappeared. My second thought was that he was so very little as to be able to come through the keyhole, and increased rapidly in size, just as it says in the Bible that a grain of mustard-seed springs to be so large a tree that the fowls of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... don't believe it," said Will, through the keyhole, "all you have to do is to come down and see for yourself. We've got everything fixed up O. K. all right. But say! when are you fellows—I mean girls—going to ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... am I, slaving day and night to support Beale, and when I try to get into my own house his infernal dog barks at me. Upon my Sam it's hard!" He brooded for a moment on the injustice of things. "Here, let me get to the keyhole. I'll reason with ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... above the whistling wind, I heard the welcome rain,— A fusillade upon the roof, A tattoo on the pane: The keyhole piped; the chimney-top A warlike trumpet blew; Yet, mingling with these sounds of strife, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... blankets were taken from the bed and hung over the door, that no ray of light from the room might be visible in the hall, through either crack or keyhole. ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... door leading into the room marked with a cross in the plan drawn for me by Q. It was a rough affair, made of pine boards rudely painted. Pausing before it, I listened. All was still. Raising the latch, I endeavored to enter. The door was locked. Pausing again, I bent my ear to the keyhole. Not a sound came from within; the grave itself could not have been stiller. Awe-struck and irresolute, I looked about me and questioned what I had best do. Suddenly I remembered that, in the plan Q had given me, I had seen intimation of another door leading into this ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... gratification. She sought the close physical contact of the young children in her care. She would lie on her bed naked, with two or three naked children, make them suck her breasts and press them to every part of her body. Her conduct was discovered by means of other children who peeped through the keyhole, and she was placed under Penta for treatment. In this case the loss of moral and mental inhibition, due probably to troubles of the climacteric, led to indulgence, under abnormal conditions, in those primitive contacts which are normally ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... know. Maybe I can help you. The box was an old, old box. It was of mahogany, heavy, bound with brass, with neither key nor keyhole, and only those who had been shown how could open it. Is ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... on our ears. It seemed to come through the keyhole, and resembled the contemptuous sniff with which Elizabeth always expresses incredulity. But, of course, it ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... out of order, neither can I discover what occasioned the disturbance. However, I went to bed, grumbling against Tenterden Street,[102] and all its works. If there was no entrance but the keyhole, I should warrant myself against the ghosts. We have a set of idle fellows called workmen about us, which is a better way of accounting for nocturnal noises than any that is to be found in ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... prisoners through the keyhole; and if they had made the least attempt to set the house ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... case, there is the gentleman who is returning home late at night, from a Freemasons' dinner, and who, noticing a light issuing from a ruined abbey, creeps up, and looks through the keyhole. He sees the ghost of a 'grey sister' kissing the ghost of a brown monk, and is so inexpressibly shocked and frightened that he faints on the spot, and is discovered there the next morning, lying in a heap against the ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome
... she exclaimed, "what else could any one do? I heard the row and,—shall I admit it?—peeped through the keyhole. I couldn't see anything, so I opened the door softly and heard something of what was going on. This old revolver was lying on your dressing-table, but I had an awful hunt for the cartridges. Whoever ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as though he would rather ascend to where he could at least enjoy the sunshine than go further down where it became darker and colder. They walked a considerable distance along dark passages, and halted in front of a rickety iron door. A huge key was thrust into the keyhole and slowly the ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... After some moments, light foot-steps approached the door, and the voice of Sinang said through the keyhole: ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... slender hand-vice, with a very powerful grip, and a considerable leverage, which last was accidentally owing to the shape of the handle. Nothing was simpler than, when the key was in the lock, to seize the end of its stem in this vice, through the keyhole, from the outside, and so lock the door. Previously, however, to doing this, I burned a number of papers on Simon's hearth. Suicides almost always burn papers before they destroy themselves. I also emptied some more laudanum into Simon's glass,—having first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... plaster, was here let into the wall. What could be the object of it? With a fresh nail the boy began to scratch off the paint from the surface of the disk, in order to determine whether it were actually iron, or some other metal; in so doing a small movable lid, like the screen of a keyhole, was pushed aside, disclosing a little round aperture underneath. Archibald pushed the nail into it, thereby informing himself that the hole went straight into the wall, for a distance greater than the length of the nail; but how much greater, and what was at the ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... upstairs to peep through a keyhole, and it strikes her mother that John has been saying something. They are on too good terms to make an apology necessary. She observes blandly, 'John, I haven't ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... during which Irene, holding her handkerchief to her lips, crept to the connecting door and stood with her ear close to the keyhole. She held her breath. The pounding of her heart seemed to fill the ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... now speaking in a lower tone and he put his ear to the keyhole, to catch what they might say. Then, of a sudden, the door opened and he found ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... lay in irons, no doubt upon some rocks, or shores. If only the day would dawn! As I stood awhile, before entering the corridor through another shattered doorway, the glimmer of a light caught my eye. It came from the door upon the farther side of the lobby, seeming to shine through the keyhole. As I watched, the door opened and let in a blast of wind that shook the broken woodwork; it also let in the figure of a man, and that man, seen dimly in the shades of the light he carried, was Holgate. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... with pain and fear. She did not like the strange shadows on the dimly lit stairs. From behind the doors, now closed, came the heavy breathing of sleepers who had gone to their beds on rising from the table. A faint laugh was heard from one room, while a slender thread of light filtered through the keyhole of the old lady who was still busy with her dolls, cutting out the gauze dresses with squeaking scissors. A child was crying on the next floor, and the smell from the sinks was worse than ever and seemed something tangible amid this silent darkness. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the back bed-room door was a damp place, as if that part of the floor had been newly washed; and when led by curiosity, I peeped through the keyhole of the haunted chamber, my eye distinctly saw an open razor lying on ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... probably an ambush into which he was heading—but without this place, he had no chance of resting. He stared at the numbers painted on the dirty red doors, and went on up a second flight of stairs. The number he wanted was at the end of the hall, dimly lighted. He dropped to the keyhole, but found it had been filled long ago, probably when the Yale lock ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... afore yer honourable coort, brawly kens the laws. Elspeth Mowdiewort didna soop yer kirk an wait till yer session meetings war ower for thirty year in my ain man's time withoot kennin' a' the laws. A keyhole's a most amazin' convenient thing by whiles, an' I was suppler in gettin' up aff my hunkers then ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... in which I detected her confirmed my unpleasant suspicion. From the corner of the gallery I one day saw her, when she thought I was out and all quiet, with her ear at the keyhole of papa's study, as we used to call the sitting-room next his bed-room. Her eyes were turned in the direction of the stairs, from which only she apprehended surprise. Her great mouth was open, and her ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... upstairs, appearing again in a few minutes to announce that he had obeyed instructions and the lady had not answered. "But," he added, "one would say that an all little light came through the keyhole." ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... food. He had walked silently when he left his post; no one waiting in the room where the tray was could have heard him, he felt sure. Then how did that person know the instant he stepped away? He could not have been spied on through the keyhole of the door since no keyhole was there; the fastening on the other side was simply that of primitive bar. But that he had been spied on he was confident. Well, why not? The house was old and no doubt had known no end of intrigue in its time. The walls were thick enough ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... with my finger. The key was not in the lock. I knelt down, and looked through the keyhole. The next instant, I was up again on my feet, wild and giddy ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... and leave me locked in," called the poor prisoner through the keyhole. "Don't you go a-forgetting of me, Miss Ermie, or I'll be found a moldified skeleton here, by and by." Susy's tone was tearful, and Ermie's piteous entreaties to her to hush were scarcely listened to. Footsteps were heard coming ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... they venture, in dirt and in gloom, To peep at the door of the wonderful room Such stories are told about, none of them true!— The keyhole itself ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... bedstead aside; beneath each of the posts is a brass plate, as if to support the weight, but it is that upon the left, nearest to the wall, which must serve your turn—press the corner of the plate, and it will spring up and show a keyhole, which this key will open. You will then lift a concealed trap-door, and in a cavity of the floor you will discover a small chest. Bring it hither; it shall accompany our journey, and it will be hard if the contents cannot purchase me a ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... one night after her master had gone to the enchanted room, Cherry crept up to the door, and instead of only listening at it as usual, she knelt down and peeped through the keyhole, which, for once, ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... eyes the bully watched the first assistant disappear into the office with the compositions. Then, looking to make sure that he was not observed, he stole up to the door and applied his ear to the keyhole. What he heard ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... the Sophomores to trouble the Freshmen is to blow smoke into their rooms until they are compelled to leave, or, in other words, until they are smoked out. When assafoetida is mingled with the tobacco, the sensation which ensues, as the foul effluvium is gently wafted through the keyhole, is anything but pleasing to the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... sun was pouring in hot and bright; but a slender line of light lay across the blackness like a long finger, and I knew the moon was shining in at the windows of the shed chamber. I did a thing I had never done before in my life; that silver finger came through the keyhole, and it drew me to it. I ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... Zuleika on the threshold. A glance at the Duke's face when she showed the visitor up was enough to acquaint her with the state of his heart. And she did not, for confirming her intuition, need the two or three opportunities she took of listening at the keyhole. What in the course of those informal audiences did surprise her—so much indeed that she could hardly believe her ear—was that it was possible for a woman not to love the Duke. Her jealousy of "that Miss Dobson" was for a while swallowed up in her ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... would not have risked my neck and your peace of mind by such a suspicious means of ingress as the window; but if you will take the trouble to notice, the door is thick, and I am composed of too solid flesh to whisk through the keyhole; so I had to make my appearance ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... peeped through the keyhole; then she peeped through the window. Then she lifted the latch and peeped through the doorway; and, seeing nobody in the house, she walked in. And when she saw the porridge cooling on the table ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... thieves, having come to lodge in a public-house, with a view to robbing it, asked permission to pass the night by the fire, and obtained it. But when the house was quiet the servant girl, suspecting mischief, crept downstairs, and looked through the keyhole. She saw the men open a sack, and take out a dry withered hand. They anointed the fingers with some unguents, and lighted them. Each finger flamed, but the thumb they could not light—that was because one of the household was ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... one entrance to the place, an exaggerated keyhole, to carry out the similitude of the safe-door alluded to. The ground floor was occupied by the ordinary offices of the company; all the strong-rooms and safes lay in the steel-cased basement. This was reached both by a lift and ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... sir, wishes to know, with her respectful service, if she may have a word with you." Before father could reply mother told him to bring her. The housekeeper could not have been far off—that kind are generally near a keyhole—for she came at once. When she came in, she stood at the door curtseying and looking ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... letter this minute, Stella," he said in an almost inarticulate voice through the keyhole, he was so shaken with passion. "Open the door and let Martha hand it to me. ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... might be, but as I could see no way of finding out, and felt no special concern over his identity or purposes, I rose and left the office. As I stepped into the hall I discovered that somebody had a deeper curiosity than I. A man was stooping to the keyhole of Doddridge Knapp's room in the endeavor to see or hear. As he heard the sound of my opening door he started up, and with a bound, was around the turn of the hall and pattering ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... toilet, she heard her mother's voice in the room. This was unlucky; she must pass through that room to go out. She sat down and fretted at this delay. And then, as the baroness appeared to be very animated, Rose went to the keyhole, and listened. Their mother was telling Josephine how she had questioned Rose, and how Rose had told her an untruth, and how she had made that young lady write to Edouard, etc.; in short, the very thing Rose wanted to conceal ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... was forced, much against my will, to venture to the door and knock, in a hesitating manner, not being sure but what my answer might be the mouth of a carbine. However it was not so, for I heard a pattering of feet and a whispering going on, and then a shrill voice through the keyhole, asking, "Who's there?" ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... do not wish forgiveness. Many of you would much rather not have holiness. You do not want to have God. The promises of the Gospel go clean over your heads, and are as impotent to influence you as the wind whistling through a keyhole, because you have never been aware of the wants to which these promises correspond, and do not understand what it is that you ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... commanded the early retirement of her family, strongly excited Lydia's curiosity, and determined her, if possible, to discover the mystery of their meeting. Approaching without shoes the room in which the conference was held, and placing her ear to the keyhole, she heard the order read for the troops to quit the city on the night of the 4th, to attack the American army encamped at White Marsh. Returning immediately to her room, she laid herself down, but, in a little while, a loud knocking at the door, which for some time she pretended not ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... more and more fidgety. From time to time he turned towards my companion, as though about to speak, yet always changing his mind at the last moment. Once he went over and opened the door suddenly, apparently to see if any one were listening at the keyhole, for he disappeared a moment between the two doors, and I then heard him open the outer one. He stood there for some seconds and made a noise as though he were sniffing the air like a dog. Then he closed both doors cautiously and came back to the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... lips, her hands, and then released her, standing in the door and listening to her footsteps as they went up the winding stairs and out into the hall beyond—the dark, gloomy hall, where no light was, save a single ray, shining through the keyhole of ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... Shop! And what has he for sale? False evidence meant to weight Justice's scale, Eavesdroppings, astute fabrications, The figments of vile keyhole varlets, the fudge Of venal vindictiveness. Faugh! the foul sludge Reeks rank as the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... her to the communicating door, cautiously listened, then looked through the keyhole. The silence within was oppressive, but the flickering bougie warned me that I must make an effort, and without allowing myself time to think I hastily turned the key and opened ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... key has been used here lately," replied the other. "I can see marks around the keyhole to tell that. Chances are, they had one made to fit the door. A smart fellow could take an impression of the lock with wax, or something, and a locksmith would make him ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Marcus Wilkeson was idly turning the pages of a blue-and-gold favorite, the doorbell rang. In accordance with some mysterious law of acoustics, the sound was full three minutes descending the kitchen staircase, entering the keyhole of the kitchen door, and striking on the tympanum of Mash, the cook, who was sitting by the fire, reading the twenty-fifth chapter of "The Buttery and the Boudoir: A Tale of Real Life." When Mash became fully conscious (which was not till the end of the chapter) that the bell had rung, she expelled ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... closed, she was terribly frightened. She put the white kitten down and sprang on top of the trunk and scratched with all her might, but scratching did no good. Then she jumped down and reached up to the keyhole, but that was too small for even a mouse to pass through, and ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... bed, Tabitha pressed her ear to the keyhole to catch the rest of this interesting conversation, but as she listened, her face paled and a rebellious look came into the expressive ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... neighboring prior; ever since which the room has been nailed up, and branded with the name of the adultery-chamber. The ghost of Lady Frances is supposed to walk here: some prying maids of the family formerly reported that they saw a lady in a farthingale through the keyhole; but this matter was hushed up, and the servants forbid ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... law to administer "slight corporal punishment" to our servants, it being left entirely to individual taste to decide what "slight" shall be, and my neighbour really seems to enjoy using this privilege, judging from the way she talks about it. I would give much to be able to peep through a keyhole and see the dauntless little lady, terrible in her wrath and dignity, standing on tiptoe to box the ears of some great strapping girl big enough ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... condition that God has invented and arbitrarily imposed. The necessity of it is lodged deep in the very nature of the case. Air cannot get to the lungs of a mouse in an air-pump. Light cannot come into a room where all the shutters are up and the keyhole stopped. If a man chooses to perch himself on some little stool of his own, with glass legs to it, and to take away his hand from the conductor, no electricity will come to him. If I choose to lock my lips, Jesus Christ does not prise open my clenched teeth to put the bread ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Adam Adams tried the door and found it locked. More interested than ever, the detective, just avoiding Mrs. Morse, who was passing through the hallway, slipped Into the adjoining room, and finding, as he had imagined, a door between the two, applied his eye to the keyhole. ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... alternative suggested itself. If he himself were unable to enter the stable he would take measures to prevent the entrance of any other person. There was no difficulty about that and when five minutes later he strolled down the road toward the inn it was with the comforting reflection that the keyhole of the padlock was entirely filled up with clay and grit in such a manner that no key could ever ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... of a rather long interval, he turned round, as he heard nothing more, and, as he raised his eyes towards the door of his chamber, he saw a light through the keyhole. This light formed a sort of sinister star in the blackness of the door and the wall. There was evidently some one there, who was holding a candle ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... slaveys. Easily twig a man used to uniform. Squarepushing up against a backdoor. Maul her a bit. Then the next thing on the menu. And who is the gentleman does be visiting there? Was the young master saying anything? Peeping Tom through the keyhole. Decoy duck. Hotblooded young student fooling ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Fred. is quite down with the scarlet fever. Potiphar says I mustn't expose myself, so I don't go into the room; but Mrs. Jollup, the nurse, tells me through the keyhole how he is. Mr. P. sleeps in the room next the nursery, so as not to carry the infection to me. He looks very solemn as he walks down town. I hope it won't spoil Fred's complexion. I should be so sorry to have him a little fright! ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... began to appear, and the white phantom of a church. We could rather feel than see the houses, for the night was so dark, and, though here was evidently a village, there was no sign of a light anywhere, not so much as a bright keyhole; nothing but hushed, shuttered shapes of deeper black in the general darkness. So English villages must have looked, muffled up in darkness, at the sound of the ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... head. A grown person could not have passed through without stooping almost double. It was very narrow, too, and no one who was not slender could have squeezed through it. In this door there was a little black keyhole, with no key in it, but it was always locked. Letitia knew that her Aunt Peggy kept the key in some very safe place, but she would never show it to her, ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... shall I say of those poor men that are plagued with the pox and the gout? O how often have we seen them, even immediately after they were anointed and thoroughly greased, till their faces did glister like the keyhole of a powdering tub, their teeth dance like the jacks of a pair of little organs or virginals when they are played upon, and that they foamed from their very throats like a boar which the mongrel mastiff-hounds have driven in and overthrown amongst the toils,—what did they then? ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... major thus reflected, he kept coming nearer and nearer to the individual I lurking at the keyhole of every story. Only he had to go home, else how was his ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... afternoon." Madame L. then told me that while the young man was clean, sober, and industrious, he had been found rummaging among her husband's official papers, in a room which he was forbidden to enter, and had been caught several times listening at the keyhole of doors while private conferences ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... in the street outside by a large body of their fellow-citizens, who had accompanied them to the Palace, and who had been spending the time since their departure in listening by turns at the keyhole of the front-door. But as the Hall of Audience was at the other side of the Palace, and cut off from the front-door by two other doors, a flight of stairs, and a long passage, they had not heard very much of what had gone on ...
— William Tell Told Again • P. G. Wodehouse
... Mudge? who had been listening at the keyhole, but not in an audible voice. "Perhaps he will be again, if I get him back. I thought that letter was from Paul. I must get hold of ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... occasionally hitching his chair a trifle nearer to the door in the agony of impatience. By the time Jackson returned from the village with word that a copy of Town Truth was not to be had until the next day, he was so close to the door that if any one had happened to stick a hat pin through the keyhole at precisely the right instant it would have punctured his left ear with ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to the door that opened into the entry, and locked that softly and bolted it carefully. Then he turned the key so that the wards filled the keyhole, and taking out his handkerchief he hung it over the knob of the door, so that it fell across the keyhole, and no eye could by any chance ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... she was gliding on to death, entering its portals and descending with gentle moderation. At last, summoning all her strength for a final effort, she dragged herself as far as the hall door; but it was impossible for her to lift her head to the keyhole, impossible to cry out. And she would have died where she lay had not Adele, as she was passing in the morning, heard a groan, and, in her alarm, fetched a locksmith to open the door, and afterward a midwife to attend ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... him, stumbling against the furniture in her haste, and by the uncertain light. The door was not open, but the cuckoo had got through it—"by the keyhole, I dare say," thought Griselda; "he can 'scrooge' himself up any way"—for a faint "Cuckoo" was to be heard on its other side. In a moment Griselda had opened it, and was speeding down the long passage in the dark, guided ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... and closed the door; Jurgis, who was as sharp as he, observed that he took the key out of the lock, in order that he might peer through the keyhole. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... a snicker followed the sneeze. And by that time Grandaddy Beaver and his friends guessed who was inside the building. It was Ferdinand Frog; and he had been watching his callers all the time, through the keyhole, and listening to everything ...
— The Tale of Ferdinand Frog • Arthur Scott Bailey
... I did. So I did," answered the professor sharply. " I often find myself liking that kind of a boy in college. Don't I know them-those lads with their beer and their poker games in the dead of the night with a towel hung over the keyhole. Their habits are often vicious enough, but something remains in them through it all and they may go away and do great things. This happens. We know it. It happens with confusing insistence. It destroys theo- ries. There-there isn't much to say about it. And sometimes ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... the door, pushed violently against it, and I believe would willingly have broken it open; but finding her good intentions, I set my shoulder to the panel, taking care not to impede the light through the keyhole, which my valet tells me was inspected by her. She ruminated a few seconds and then went away; incredulous and high ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... they were spying on me. I cast a glance around the walls, the furniture, the ceiling, the hangings, the floor. I saw nothing to justify suspicion. I heard persons moving about outside my door. I had no doubt they were looking through the keyhole. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... said, 'To the keyhole let's creep, "There can be no harm just in one little peep! "We are women—besides, there are none to behold us! "If he wished us to leave it, he shouldn't have ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Margaret in an agony. She makes wild signs to him, pointing towards the closed doors as she does so. A nice girl, we all know, would rather die than put her ear to a keyhole, even if by doing so she could save her neck from the scaffold; but the very best of girls might by chance be leaning against a door through the chinks of which sounds might enter from the room beyond it. "She'll hear you!" ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... side of my waistcoat and supported the weight of my keys in my side trouser pocket. I confess it was an inconvenient arrangement. It was impossible to unlock my portmanteau without either half undressing, or kneeling down so as to bring the end of the chain on a level with the keyhole, or else standing the portmanteau on a chair or table to bring it up to the key. But it was undoubtedly the smart way of carrying keys. So the tailor said, and so one or two friends in whom I confided also ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... right enough," whispered Dave, who a moment later was crouching low and looking through a large keyhole devoid of a key. "There he goes into the room where the two ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... little slip from grace and there you were! Sure, and the priests were as wrong as the scientists. It must be Heaven that's easy to crash, for the front door of Hades is shut fast without even a keyhole to peep through." ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... paradoxically the mother of disaster. As for instance your own case. I imagine you're a blunderer anyway," he added impudently; "your fingers are too thick. If you hadn't been so anxious to learn when Wherry was likely to go," guessed Carl suddenly, "you wouldn't have listened and creaked at the keyhole last night. And more than likely you'd have gotten that ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... with astonishing swiftness to the staircase, looked down, then fixed his black eyes with a kind of animal ferocity upon the closed door of the Judge's office until he reached it, and laid one of his little red ears to the keyhole. ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... at the keyhole. It could not have been the wind, by the way, for there was no wind that night. Something else than the wind whistled in at the keyhole, sighed through into the room as much like a long-drawn breath as anything, and fell with a slight clink ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Katherine, an honest woman out of Lady Macbeth and a benevolent old gentleman out of Shylock. I have seen French players cast as the servants of Petruchio invade "The Taming of the Shrew" with a comic pantomime in which they fought for their turns at the keyhole of Petruchio's bedroom wherein Kate was being subjected to a little off-stage taming. It would have amused Shakespeare immoderately, I imagine, and certainly it would have surprised him. Until his piece is spoken, even the author cannot tell—and ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... it observed very attentively, then put a piece of wood in the keyhole, and tried to turn it round. Having been scratched by a cat with which it was playing, it could never be induced to touch pussy again. It untied knots easily, and regularly practised upon the shoes of those who came near. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... staple fixed in the centre of the desk. A piece of ornamental iron-work is fixed to the upright. It is made to represent a lock, but is in reality a mere plate of metal, and the tongue, which looks as though it were intended to move, is only an ornament, and is pierced by the keyhole. The lock is sunk in the thickness of the wood, behind this plate, and the bar, which terminates in a knob, is provided with two nicks, into which the bolts of the lock are shot when the key is turned (fig. 56). Between each pair of desks there is a ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... the course of his ascent. When at last he stopped outside our door, I could hear his finger tracing over the painted letters of my name, and I afterwards distinctly heard him breathing in at the keyhole. Finally he gave a faint single rap, and Pepper—such was the compromising name of the avenging boy—announced "Mr. Gargery!" I thought he never would have done wiping his feet, and that I must have gone out to lift him off the mat, but at last he ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the street a faint light shone under a slit between two boards. There was no door near it, no keyhole or shutter. The American thundered at the boards with a tin of jam which he took out of his pocket. The noise was monstrous in the blackness, but the town had heard noises more monstrous than that, and it lay in a barred ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... good idea," Nan had replied, laughing at her, "if there were only some furniture to pile. What are you doing, Bess? You aren't stuffing cotton in the keyhole?" ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... The level may then be worked out approximately by points above and below on the stream, for accurate reading, hold the aneroid face up, gently tap it, and read; then face down similarly, and take the mean. Guard that the wind does not blow against any keyhole in ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... as I was ready to go, he gravely escorted me to the door and bowed me out. I dropped my ear to the keyhole and heard the chink of the guineas. William clearly had a very pretty appreciation of the best means of keeping himself agoing. A suaver, defter rascal I have never ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... hot flash of a pistol from the keyhole, and a bullet smacked against the wall between us. We hurled ourselves against the door. It was massive, but rotten with age. With a splintering and rending it gave way before us. We rushed in, weapons in hand, to find ourselves in an ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... well. But the door closed with absolute tightness; it had not even a keyhole. His cries came to us ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... most noticeable feature is that it permits the use of a very small key, though the number of combinations possible is still enormous (several millions). In our illustrations (Figs. 219, 220, 221) we show the mechanism controlling the turning of the key. The keyhole is a narrow twisted slot in the face of a cylinder, G (Fig. 219), which revolves inside a larger fixed cylinder, F. As the key is pushed in, the notches in its upper edge raise up the pins A^1, B^1, C^1, D^1, E^1, until their tops exactly reach the surface of G, which can now be revolved ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... been shut up for several years. Yet voices were heard about the place, the lilacs nodded over the high wall as if they said, "We could tell fine secrets if we chose," and the mullein outside the gate made haste to reach the keyhole that it might peep in and see what was ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... had erected ere he left the chambers. "Why that?" reflected Gideon. "It seems entirely irresponsible." And drawing near, he gingerly demolished it. "A key," he thought. "Why that? And why so conspicuously placed?" He made the circuit of the instrument, and perceived the keyhole at the back. "Aha! this is what the key is for," said he. "They wanted me to look inside. Stranger and stranger." And with that he turned the key and raised ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... night Deleah slipped from her own warm bed to stand, an anxious little figure, shivering in her nightgown, her dark curls streaming down her back, a suspensive ear to the keyhole of her mother's door. People fainted because they had heart disease. Of heart disease they also died. She dared not go in, because papa was there, but waited, trembling with cold and fear, until her ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... kept an eye on what was going on, send his wife to bed; then he pressed now his ear, now his eye to the keyhole in order to try and discover what he called "the ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... methods he inserted a piece of strong wire into the keyhole, thinking to pick the lock by that ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... after taking a few steps, returned just in time to see Henri let in—not a woman, but a man. Chicot put his eye to the large keyhole. ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... not say anything, Billie," Nellie Bane warned her. "They're probably listening at the keyhole or something." ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... been a sound like a soft thump; but he could see nothing on account of intervening desks. But, all the same, Wrench's tom-cat had leaped gently down to the floor, and from there he bounded on to one of the lines of desks, along which he stole very carefully, pausing to sniff at each keyhole as he leaned over, fully aware as he was that several of these desks were used as menageries, in addition to a very favourite one where he had paused more than once on account of the delicious black-beetly odour stealing up through the cracks, ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... Suite 32 lasted until nearly midnight, with Dyckman painfully shadowing the corridor and sweating like a furnace laborer, though the night was more than autumn cool. The door was thick, the transom was closed, and the keyhole commanded nothing but a square of blank wall opposite in the electric-lighted sitting-room of the suite. Hence the bookkeeper could only guess what we ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... in his mind, Field crossed the hall and tried the dining-room door. He was not altogether surprised to find the door locked. He listened at the keyhole, but he could not hear anything whatever. Furthermore, the application of an eye to the keyhole disclosed the fact that the room was in darkness. Despite his courage a thrill ran down the spine of the inspector. There was some more than usually ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... it for you," said Cashel. She gave him the key, and he seized one of the bars of the gate with his left hand, and stooped as though he wanted to look into the keyhole. Yet he opened it ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... a pistol with me, your honour," Mike said. "I have seen doors blown in, by firing a gun through the keyhole." ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... genus, remarkable as it is, seems hitherto to have escaped notice. It is distinguishable from Catenicella, in the first place, by the anomalous circumstance that each cell is furnished with two or more, usually three, distinct keyhole-shaped mouths, and is doubtless inhabited by three distinct individuals. Whether these are separated from each other by internal partitions is unknown, but the closest examination of cells rendered transparent by means of acid fails to discover such. In cells ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... heart, Myra could hear no sound from the other side of her locked and bolted door, and the handle did not move again. Slipping out of bed after a few minutes, she stole noiselessly across the room and, dropping on one knee, put her ear to the keyhole and listened, but heard no sound save the throbbing ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... great, black forest waiting until the giant came back from killing her seven brothers. He would return with their seven heads swinging pitifully from his girdle, and, when he reached the castle gates, he would gnash his teeth through the keyhole with a noise like the grinding together of great rocks, and would poke his head through the fanlight of the door, and say, fee-faw-fum in a voice of such exceeding loudness that the castle would be shaken ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... it up to her! He ran back into the house and stole upstairs. Outside her room he listened with all his might, but could hear nothing; then tapped softly with one nail, and, putting his mouth to the keyhole, whispered: "Sylvia!" Again and again he whispered her name. He even tried the handle, meaning to open the door an inch, but it was bolted. Once he thought he heard a noise like sobbing, and this made him still more wretched. At last he gave it up; she would not come, would ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the Ash Goblin that few ever seek his door, and when he heard upon it the sharp knock of Black Shadow, he started with surprise. He crept across the dingy floor, and put his bulging eye to the keyhole to peer through, and discover who stood without. His astonishment at seeing Black Shadow was great, for never had she sought him out before, but he knew that he had no reason to fear her, so he ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... of Chadron made her distrustful at once of Major King. There must be some scheming and plotting afoot. She went down and stood in the hall again, not even above bending to listen at the keyhole. Chadron was talking again. She felt that he must have been talking all the time that she had been away. It must be an unworthy cause that needed so ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden |
