Sublime

The “poor chap” of whom the Colonel was thinking was his son, Denis, now a prisoner of war in Japanese hands. Whether the Colonel’s epithet was due to Denis’s plight or to the wife he had married was uncertain, but Colonel St Cyres disliked his daughter-in-law as heartily as any well-bred man allowed himself to dislike a woman.

figure for the author; Moriarty is a criminal who lures the detective-reader with his carefully crafted clues.

coarse badinage

were never to receive the orange pips which would show them that another, as cunning and as resolute as themselves, was upon their track.

defiled

He also called me an opprobrious name.