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Sleuth   /sluθ/   Listen
Sleuth

noun
1.
A detective who follows a trail.  Synonym: sleuthhound.



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"Sleuth" Quotes from Famous Books



... what is the meaning of this strange prodigy? Once the difficulty was to find the guilty, to search them out in their lair, to drag the confession of their crime from reluctant lips. Now, there is no hunting with a great pack of sleuth-hounds, no pursuing a timid prey; lo! from all sides come the victims to offer themselves a voluntary sacrifice. Nobles, virgins, soldiers, courtesans, flock to the Tribunal, dragging their condemnation from ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... two men who had visited the surgery that night, by a strange want of scent on the part of the sleuth-hounds of the law they were never found; one reason being that, with the cash they found in the belt Mark Heath wore, they had made their ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... were peopled with prospectors, but one by one they dropped away. The chief constable was loath to leave the riddle unsolved; he had the instinct of the sleuth-hound on the scent of blood. He had been a pursuer of bad works amongst the convicts for a long time, both in Van Diemen's Land and in Victoria, and had helped to bring many men to the gallows or the chain-gang. He had once been shot in the back by a ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... he. "One of those accursed fanatics, master, that dog and pry after honest men like sleuth-hounds, and leave them not until the flame licks their bodies. This is bad news, i' faith. ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher

... fellow agreed. "Then you and I can sleuth about this rotten country in search of gold! They say ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson

... business, don't they. The sleuth-hound touch. I expect to be asked for my photograph soon, for the Pink Pictorial and the Sunday Rag. I must ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay

... tutelary spirit at once the pride and the protector of the town. His voice is heard more often than any belfry beneath whose shadow I have lain. Holland, as we have seen, is a land of bells and carillons; nowhere in the world are the feet of Time so dogged; but Long John is the most faithful sleuth of all. He is almost ahead of his quarry. He seems to know no law; he set out, I believe, with a commission entitling him to ring his one and forty bells every seven and a half minutes, or eight times in ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... Banca, the south-westerly wind which we had with us generally falling slack in the middle of the day, and the land breeze of a night giving us the greater help; but, still, all the while, the suspicious proa never deserted us, following in our track like a sleuth-hound—keeping off at a good distance though when the sun was shining and only creeping up closer at dark, so as not to lose sight of us, and sheering off in the morning till hull down nearly on ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... distance of the house where Miller was staying. Inspired perhaps by the nickel detective stories he had read, the cowboy bought a pair of blue goggles and a "store" collar. In this last, substituted for the handkerchief he usually wore loosely round his throat, the sleuth nearly strangled himself for lack of air. His inquiries at such stables as he found brought no satisfaction. Neither Miller nor the pinto had been ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... Chatham County. He was a gallant trencherman, and the strange tropic viands tickled his palate. Heavy, commonplace, almost slothful in his movements, he appeared to be devoid of all the cunning and watchfulness of the sleuth. He even ceased to observe, with any sharpness or attempted discrimination, the two men, one of whom he had undertaken with surprising self-confidence, to drag away upon the serious charge of wife-murder. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... little man. He had taught school at Graniteville several winters, and had succeeded better at this business than at placer mining on the bars of the Middle Yuba. But "Bed-bug Brown," perennial picnicker, was not a scientific sleuth. ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall

... yet businesslike about this prairie sleuth. This man was the first of his kind he had seen, and he studied him with interest. The thought of Sheriff Fyles had come so suddenly into his mind, and so recently, that he had no time to form any imaginative picture of him. Had he done so he must inevitably have been disappointed ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... it is so hard to form any just opinion of detectives in general is that (except by their fruits) there is little opportunity to discriminate between the able and the incapable. Now, the more difficult and complicated his task the less likely is the sleuth (honest or otherwise) to succeed. The chances are a good deal more than even that he will never solve the mystery for which he is engaged. Thus at the end of three months you will have only his reports and his bill—which are poor comfort, to say the least. And yet he may have ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... waits For such as you to cherish it to Youth: Raw social soils untilled need Love's own verve That Peace a-flower may oust their weedy hates: And where Distress would faint from wolfish sleuth The perfect lovers' symbol is ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... Spaen, for one; who, being on guard, had admitted Katte into Potsdam once or twice in disguise:—for him and for the like of him, of whatever rank or whichever sex, let arrests be made out, and the scent as with sleuth-hounds be diligently followed on all sides; and Katte, stript of his uniform, be locked up in the grimmest manner. Berlin, with the rumor of these things, is ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... of the name of Linnett, was a very sleuth-hound in his ways, and he came upon Mr Girtle at all manner of unexpected times while he was waiting for Paul Capel's return to health, and tried to get information from him, ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn

... obligingly opened to Jean Valjean, was a bit of cleverness on Thenardier's part. Thenardier intuitively felt that Javert was still there; the man spied upon has a scent which never deceives him; it was necessary to fling a bone to that sleuth-hound. An assassin, what a godsend! Such an opportunity must never be allowed to slip. Thenardier, by putting Jean Valjean outside in his stead, provided a prey for the police, forced them to relinquish his scent, made them forget him in a bigger ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... I was going to bring you Eleanor herself," Peter said. "I got on the trail of a girl working in a candy shop out in Yonkers. My faithful sleuth was sure it was Eleanor and I was ass enough to believe he knew what he was talking about. When I got out there I found a strawberry ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... was thrown over our shoulders as we struggled down that slope. Our strength was urged to its utmost; and this was not much, for we had all lost blood in our encounter with the sleuth-hounds, and felt ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... a move could not fail to delude the sleuth hounds, who would suppose that he continued his flight directly away from the scene of his offence. In a little while he sobered his pace down to a walk; and shortly afterwards he sat down in the sombre solitude to ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins

... at Rouletabille and could not help smiling, on hearing this boy of eighteen talking of a man who had proved to the world that he was the finest police sleuth in Europe. ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux

... pack of sleuth-hounds in the ear of the timid deer came these stern demands to Edward the king. He dared not disregard them. It might be as much as his crown were worth. England meant business, and its king must take the lead or he might ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... moral sleuth, and woe betide an applicant for rooms, and occasional board, who could not produce unimpeachable references, and point to an unsullied record ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin

... the fact that her mother had changed her name in connexion with that sacred and glorious thing, an inheritance. A trust-fund would always be a splendid red-herring to draw across the path of Mrs. Grundy's sleuth-hounds—a quarry more savoury to their nostrils even than a reputation. And nothing soothes the sceptical more than being asked now and again to witness a transfer of stock, especially if it is money ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... himself into the case with heart and soul. The reporters united their efforts with those of the police. A famous English sleuth-hound crossed the Channel. A wealthy American, whose head had been turned by detective-stories, offered a big reward to whosoever should supply the first information leading to the discovery of ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... earnestness, the stoical poet's anathema against tyrants "Virtutem videant intabescantque relicta." Other writers would have turned back sickened from the task of following Tiberius through mazes of cruelty and craft. But Tacitus pursues his victim with the patience of a sleuth-hound; he seems to find a ruthless satisfaction in stripping the soul of its coverings; he treads the floor of hell and watches with equanimity the writhings of the damned. The reader is at once strangely ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... his knee before, He rode to the hind so near; But the hind would not from the sleuth-hounds flee, For the Knight to her ...
— Mollie Charane - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise

... cowboy an' rope the Texas steer! I'd like to be a sleuth-houn' or a bloody buccaneer! An' leave the foe to welter where their blood had made a pool; But how can I git famous? 'cause I got to go ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... was all right. At least, you would have said so. She talked a lot at dinner, and chaffed Bobbie, and played us ragtime on the piano afterwards, as if she hadn't a care in the world. Quite a jolly little party it was—not. I'm no lynx-eyed sleuth, and all that sort of thing, but I had seen her face at the beginning, and I knew that she was working the whole time and working hard, to keep herself in hand, and that she would have given that diamond what's-its-name in her hair and everything else she possessed to have one ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... fact is little Nini has admitted a well-dressed gentleman who asks to see you. Buteux is whistling the air, There's No Place Like Home, so it must be a sleuth. ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac

... Sherlock Holmes, though?" he jeered presently. "Got Old Sleuth skinned for fair and Nick Carter eating out of your hand! You damned skypilot!" His voice cracked. "You're all alike! Get a man on his back and then ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... east side of the Square, and entering from the Fourth street corner, sat down again. Once more the youth passed him and sat down beyond. There were but few people around; it was hardly possible that he thought his movements had not been perceived by the man he was following. "As a sleuth you're an amateur," thought Evan. "You don't care whether I'm on to you or not. But I must say you have your nerve with you. I'm considerably ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... mean merit. All the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those of Holmes, the sleuth-hound,[224-1] Holmes, the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive. In his singular character the dual nature alternately presented itself, and his extreme exactness and astuteness ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... though unknown to them; they had counted the greatest among themselves, and each one fearful that his own betrayal might come next, every crook, every thug in the Bad Lands now eyed his oldest pal with suspicion and distrust, and each was a self-constituted sleuth, with the prod of self-preservation behind him, sworn to the accomplishment of that unhallowed slogan—death to the Gray Seal. Almost daily now he must show himself as Larry the Bat in some gathering ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... the angle straight on Farquaharson," observed the sleuth who had for some time been Farquaharson's shadow. "He ain't that kind. I'm living in the same apartment hotel with him and my room's next door to his. I don't fall for the slush-stuff, Chief, but that feller gets my goat. He's hurt and hurt ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... through the darkness, Old Ben following the trail with the keenness of a sleuth-hound. But it was far from a pleasant journey, as Jack soon discovered, as he stumbled along over dirt and rocks and through the dripping bushes. He was soaked to the skin, and the rawness of the ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield

... me in time. Of all things, one was out of the question. Upon no account must this obtrusive fellow see the cart. Until I had killed or shook him off, I was quite divorced from my companions—alone, in the midst of England, on a frosty by-way leading whither I knew not, with a sleuth-hound at my heels, and never a friend but ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Ben Stone wins his way at Oakdale Academy, and at the same time enlists our sympathy, interest and respect. Through the enmity of Bern Hayden, the loyalty of Roger Eliot and the clever work of the "Sleuth," Ben is falsely ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton

... they only escaped by hiding under a bridge. This was what is known as Neck Bridge, over Mill River. As they sat beneath it they heard above them the hoof-beats of their pursuers' horses on the bridge. The sleuth-hounds of the law passed on without dreaming how nearly their victims had been within their reach. This was not the only narrow escape of the fugitives. Several times they were in imminent danger of capture, yet fortune always came ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... The sleuth led him back to the Waldorf. "Engage a couple of bedrooms and a parlour," he advised, ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... the professional sleuth asked. "Accordin' to your story you didn't get into the apartment until after ten o'clock. It might 'a' been done any time up ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine

... Reid commenced with analysis, and that consequently he embraced representationism,—in its spirit, if not positively in its letter. But how did he evade the fangs of scepticism and idealism—to say nothing of destroying—these sleuth-hounds which on this road were sure to be down upon his track the moment they got wind of him? We put the question in a less figurative form,—When scepticism and idealism doubted or denied the independent existence of matter, how did Reid vindicate it? He faced about and appealed boldly to our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... Everard is a regular sleuth-hound," said Tommy. "He is more native than the natives when there is anything of this kind in the wind. He is a born detective, and he and that old chap in the bazaar are such a strong combination that they are practically infallible ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... said; "they rode not in armour. Hark to it! and these hounds are deep-voiced sleuth-dogs! But come now, there ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris

... terrific pace the sleuth-hound of the sea tore towards the Hoorn, for such she was. Rounding under her squat counter, and reversing engines, the Capella brought up within fifty yards of the submarine before the astonished Germans could ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... and many other classical allusions, much more appropriate than agreeable. I heard voices and footsteps in the hall. The stairs creaked, and it was but too evident they were coming, and that with a most unerring and provoking perseverance. Surely, thought I, these gentry have noses like the sleuth-hound; and I made no doubt but they would undeviatingly follow them into the very scene of my labours; and what excuse could I make for the havoc I had committed? I stood stupefied, and unable to move. The thoughts of being ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... course he is," said Moses Gould equably; "it don't need old 'Olmes to see that. The 'awk-like face of 'Olmes," he added with abstract relish, "showed a shide of disappointment, the sleuth-like Gould 'avin' got ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... of dottrell, A swarm of bees, A school of whales, A shoal of herrings, A herd of swine, A skulk of foxes, A pack of wolves, A drove of oxen, A sounder of hogs, A troop of monkeys, A pride of lions, A sleuth of ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... snatches the paper she offers him, reads it rapidly, then to ANNICCA wildly). Look, look there— 'T is writ in blood: "My duty to my lord Forbids my telling you our present port." I would track her down with sleuth-hounds, did I not Abhor to see her face. Ah, press thy hands Against my head—my brain is like to burst— My throat is choked. Help! help! ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... and used to drop very Broad Hints, when she was chatting with the Lads who happened to be in the Soda-Water Resort when she dropped in. They liked Florine for Keeps, but when one of them thought of clinching with old Eagle-Eye, the Family Sleuth, he weakened. ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... unexpectedly, unannounced; and no one, save the initiated, realizes that an opportunity to act and to expend one's energies is close at hand. It has to be seized at once. A moment's hesitation may mean that we are too late. We are warned by a special sense, like that of a sleuth-hound which distinguishes the right scent from all the ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... been standing by the footlights in a theatre!" he burst out, brokenly. "Who saw it? Who didn't see it? Gorgett's sleuth-hound, the man he sent to me this afternoon, for one; the policeman on the beat that he'd stopped for a chat in front of the house, for another; a maid in the hall behind us, the policeman's sweetheart she is, for another! Oh!" he cried, "the desecration! That one caress, one that I'd ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... deductions—he knew of things as amazing, as prodigal of developments as anything in the problem play enacted beyond the pit and the stalls; he was the younger brother of Herbert Waring and the comrade of Jessie Joseph: at that moment deceiving the sleuth hounds of Stage law by parading in her fiance's evening dress and going ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... the word. Mart's! most respectable of "family hotels," wedged in between two quiet streets off Piccadilly with an entrance from both. If ever a man wanted to dodge a sleuth, especially a grimy tatterdemalion like the one sidling up Pall Mall ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... the little sleuth who was missing yesterday I guess we've gotten our call," commented Handyside, with an amused grin at the expression of bewilderment on ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... increased speed, but without any of the artful tactics that are so dear to the heart of the sleuth. The American was too broad to feel the instinct of the detective. He stood as an agent for the people of Anchuria, and but for political reasons he would have demanded then and there the money. It was the design of ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... still the pages helped. The sequel came quickly. The studio attained suspicious popularity with one or two new untried boys who mined the studio in Kenny's absence and tipped themselves. Kenny, as scandalized as only Kenny could be, turned sleuth and reported the thing in wrath. Everybody missed something and the club buzzed with scandal until the boys departed, likely, Kenny thought bitterly, to retire for life on the dimes and nickels they had dug out ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... that my braw callant," said I, "ne'er sail it be tauld o' Jamie Mc-Dougall, that he steeked his door again the puir and hauseless, an the bluidy sleuth hounds be on ye they'se find it ill aneugh I trow to get an inkling o' ye frae me, I'se sune shaw 'em the ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various

... Latin Americans," Henry commented. "Wants to have a drink and a chat without Charles. Won't get it, poor chap. Well, I shall sleuth around till they come out. I'm going to trail Charles home to his bed, if it ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay

... but firm. Evidently, P.C. Robinson was not one to be trifled with. Moreover, for a sleuth whose maximum achievement hitherto had been the successful prosecution of a poultry thief, it was significant that the unconscious irony of "a case of this sort" should have been ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy

... for sleuth work at first. Half a dozen times I was on the point of chuckin' the job. But the thoughts of havin' to face Old Hickory with a blank report kept me pluggin' away. I begun to get my bearin's a bit to see things, to ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... our specialties in this contest of wits. One was distinguished as a sleuth. He fed on detective mysteries as a cat on a chicken-bone. He thought them out by day and dreamed them out by night, to the great exasperation of the official detectives, with whom their solution was a commercial, not in the least an intellectual, ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... is going to have me on his trail till that exquisite creature is out of his clutches. Never was there a sleuth with his heart in his business as mine will be. Oh!"—Ben, pausing not in the march which sent Pearl to the top of a bookcase, raised his gaze heavenward—"what eyes, Miss Upton! Those beautiful ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham

... impulses to evil, the inward poverty, the unrest, the gnawings of conscience or its silence, the slavery under evil often loathed even while it is being obeyed, the dreary sense of inability to mend oneself, and often the wreck of outward life which dog our sins like sleuth-hounds, surely we shall not need to imagine a future tribunal in order to be sure that sin is a murderess, or to hear her laugh as she mocks her ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... performer but a composer of no ordinary merit. All the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those of Holmes the sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive. In his singular character the dual nature alternately asserted itself, and his extreme exactness and astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the reaction ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... Nemesis, if you please, that I have a double-barreled shotgun standing at the head of my bed every night, and that I am in the Nemesis business. You also refer to the fact that the sleuth-hounds of eternal justice are camped on the trail of the pampered millionaire, and you ask us to avaunt. If you see the other sleuth-hounds of your society within a week or two, I wish you would say to them that at a regular meeting of the millionaires ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... has regularly supplied the Peking Government with elephants, the skin of which is eaten as a tonic. After the annihilation of Wu by Yiieh, the cunning Chinese adviser of Yiieh decided to retire with his fortune to Ts'i, on the ground that the "good sleuth-hound, when there is no more work for him, is apt to find his way to the cooking-pot." Dogs (fed up for the purpose) are still eaten in some parts of China, and (as we shall soon see) they were eaten in ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... Rivers?" said Capt. Flannigan. "If we sell liquor we will be fined, and if we have to pay a couple of hundred dollars in this way, or kape company with the rats for five or six months in jail, I guess we'll soon tire of that game. And they say that ould nager of a service is a regular sleuth-hound on the hunt. By St. Patrick! if he comes nosing round my place I will bate him until his skin is blacker than it is at present, and to do that I'll have to nearly ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... living room, giving signs of recent use. He opened the door and looked out. The shadows of the forest were barely discernible through the driving rain. It was a boisterous night, its inclemency heightened when viewed from the shelter of this friendly roof, one which must defy their sleuth, the chauffeur, had he had the temerity or the stealth to follow them through the forest. Markham watched for a while, nevertheless, and then, satisfied that for the night at least they were safe ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... at the boy more curiously. He was a strange admixture of street boy and sleuth. His quick, darting eyes were never still, but warily alert to catch the meaning of any sound or motion on my part. I felt as if he read me through, and would not have been surprised to have him tell me he knew of my recent communications with Vicky. But I only ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells

... I'm not an Old Sleuth; I haven't any ambitions that way. I don't know anything about you—what you've ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln

... about it. My enemy had come with sleuth-hound Indians at his back to run me down. The savages were, no doubt, that band of over-mountain Cherokees pledged by their chief to pilot the powder convoy; and by their help the baronet ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... had got five ducks, gentlemen, when they came to me with that damned telegram. Bad business mine, 'cause people will die when you least expect them to. Let's go see what Howells has got on his mind. Bright sleuth, Howells! Ought to be ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp



Words linked to "Sleuth" :   monitor, investigate, sleuthing, inquire, snoop, enquire, detective, spy, stag, sleuthhound, supervise



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