unearths some literary gems.
From The Case of the Negligent Nymph, by Erle Stanley Gardner:
***
[Shipped His Dripping Paddle dept.]
[The woman] had apparently been swimming in the nude with a small waterproof sack tied to her back. From this sack she removed a bath towel with which she dried her slender, athletic body. Then she produced stockings, shoes, and a low-cut evening gown.
Fascinated, Mason shipped his dripping paddle into the rented canoe....
[I call this metaphor drift (pun semi-intended)... but here's a coda, from the end of the book.]
“That goes double for me,” Della Street said. “It should teach Mr. Mason not to go around picking up nymphs who make passes at his canoe.”
***
"Jackson will see only the legal principles involved, and for the rest of it will regard her owlishly through those thick-lensed spectacles of his, blinking his eyes as though trying to chop the situation up into small pieces so he can more readily feed them into his mental digestive apparatus."
***
"Underneath this thin head of hair, back of these glassy eyes, is a ballbearing brain racing away like mad."
"Perhaps that’s why it’s so darned hard to get you started in a new direction," Mason said. "Your brain is just a huge gyroscope."
