The Man Who Knew Too Much

by G.K. Chesterton

"he can do more with a candlestick than most men with a pistol. But he is pretty sure to have the pistol, too." Even as he spoke the question was answered with a tongue of thunder.

For an instant it was lit from within as with red fire, followed by a thundering throng of echoes.

it's like an explosion!" cried Sir Walter; and indeed it was the only word for this unearthly energy, by which one man had been able to deal death or destruction on three sides of the same small triangle at the same instant.

I think they want a little education in this country."

a voice somewhat suggestive of an articulate yawn.

he tumbled off the table like lumber.

face was like marble for a space then there dawned in his eyes a light not unlike that of despair.

his long, thin hands dropped less with affectation and more with fatigue.

His white face and red hair were typical of him, for he was one of those who are cold and yet on fire for fame;

"I am the man who knows too much to know anything, or, at any rate, to do anything,"

he proceeded to talk learnedly and luxuriantly on all the wines of the world; on which subject, also, some moralists would consider that he knew too much.

A large map of London would be needed to display the wild and zigzag course of one day's journey undertaken by an uncle and his nephew; or, to speak more truly, of a nephew and his uncle.

he was one of those who achieve the paradox of being famous in an obscure way, because they are famous in an obscure world.

the things that interested Summers Minor, and the things that did not interest him, had mystified and amused his uncle for several hours.

He was solidly dazed by Westminster Abbey, which is not so unnatural since that church became the lumber room of the larger and less successful statuary of the eighteenth century.

He would cry out against a momentary confusion between a light-green Paddington and a dark-green Bayswater vehicle, as his uncle would at the identification of a Greek ikon and a Roman image.

his large eyes were oddly set in his face like the flat decorative eyes painted in old Egyptian profiles.

"I'm not sure it's even skeptical to believe in the royal family and not in the 'Holy' Family,"

I have no pocket money and no pockets, and all the stars are my trinkets." "They are out of reach, anyhow," observed Colonel Morris, in a tone which suggested that it was well for them.

The fitful enthusiasm of Stinks at once caught fire, and he eagerly asked if the lights and the door worked together.

A short, indescribable noise broke the stillness.

"Who's a child?" cried the indignant Summers, with a voice that had a crow, but also something of a crack in it.

silence also makes and unmakes."

looking steadily at the black velvet behind the glass screen. He was looking at the black velvet because there was nothing else to look at.

it seemed almost as if he had not realized that the return of the light revealed his brooding attitude.

Twyford had already run upstairs for news of his vanishing nephew, and he received news of him in a way that at once puzzled and reassured him.

what was the boy's exact definition of being all right.

I sometimes see things, even in the dark." "Nobody sees anything except in the dark," said the magician.

Heavy clouds of sunset were closing round the wooden hut, enormous clouds, of which only the corners could be seen in the little window, like purple horns and tails, almost as if some huge monsters were prowling round the place. But the purple was already deepening to dark gray; it would soon be night.

he dimly realized that eccentric aristocrats are allowed their fling.

"I see something shining on the floor, like the shadow or the ghost of it. It is over there in the corner beyond the desk."

And it is ten times more so when to the schoolboy you add the skeptic, who is generally a sort of stunted schoolboy.

Splendid." "Splendid," replied the man by the well. But the first man pronounced the word as a young man might say it about a woman, and the second as an old man might say it about the weather, not without sincerity, but certainly without fervor.

He was much too hot to be anything but cool.

"We certainly have the art of unmaking mistakes. That's where the poor old Prussians went wrong. They could only make mistakes and stick to them. There is really a certain talent in unmaking a mistake."

It was a peculiarity of Mr. Fisher that he always said that everybody knew things which about one person in two million was ever allowed to hear of.

Odd how often the right thing's been done for us by the second in command,

"Perhaps I believe the moral and not the fable,"

I should say that what you don't know isn't worth knowing." "You are wrong," replied Fisher, with a very unusual abruptness, and even bitterness. "It's what I do know that isn't worth knowing.

a garden heavily colored and scented with sweet semitropical plants in the glow of a desert sunset.

But let's talk about something else." They talked about something else longer than they probably imagined, until the tropical night had come and a splendid moon painted the whole scene with silver;

in spite of his affectation of indifference, was a person of a curious and almost transcendental sensibility to atmospheres, and he already felt the presence of something more than an accident.

He was even conscious of the gap in the well-lined bookshelf from which it had been taken, and it seemed almost to gape at him in an ugly fashion, like a gap in the teeth of some sinister face.

his big, bony hand clutching the rank and ragged grass.

there was nothing but the clear blue southern sky, and the beginning of the desert, except for the two great broken stones in front of the well. And it was in such a light and atmosphere that men could fancy they traced in them enormous and evil faces, looking down.

"It would certainly be very curious," replied Travers, "if the place played any part in it." "I think," replied Fisher, "that the part it didn't play is more curious still."

people caught in a real shock of surprise are sometimes found in the queerest postures."

there was a light under his heavy lids that was not often seen there. The mysticism that was buried deep under all the cynicism of his experience was awake and moving in the depths.

"that was what stumped me from the start. Not because it had anything to do with it, because it had nothing to do with it."

"He is a very brilliant and successful journalist. But for all that he's a thoroughly honorable man,