"Smooth" Sam Fisher
An intellectual kind of crook, "Smooth" Sam Fisher got his nickname for his silky manners as much as for his slippery scheming. He has bright, humorous brown eyes and a plump and rosy complexion, and makes a regular business of trying to kidnap Ogden Ford, a.k.a. The Little Nugget.
He first tried in 1906, in New York, and makes several attempts during Ford's sojourn at Sanstead House. Inveigling himself into the house in the guise of a butler named White, Fisher later proclaims himself, when discovered by Peter Burns chasing villains from the grounds with a revolver, to be a detective from the Pinkerton agency. A master of disguise, he makes a highly convincing butler, and keeps many fooled with his detective story for some time.
He later reveals his true identity to Burns, knowing that Burns' own plans to kidnap the boy will prevent him from revealing it. Burns repeatedly scuppers Fisher's schemes, until he is at last forced to team up with his more brutal rival, Buck MacGinnis. With MacGinnis' help, Ford is successfully taken, and Fisher steals him from the hapless MacGinnis and takes a job as the boy's bodyguard, in lieu of ransom.
Read more about this topic: P. G. Wodehouse Minor Characters
Famous quotes containing the words smooth, sam and/or fisher:
“There are acacias, a graceful species amusingly devitalized by sentimentality, this kind drooping its leaves with the grace of a young widow bowed in controllable grief, this one obscuring them with a smooth silver as of placid tears. They please, like the minor French novelists of the eighteenth century, by suggesting a universe in which nothing cuts deep.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Well, it’s early yet!”
—Robert Pirosh, U.S. screenwriter, George Seaton, George Oppenheimer, and Sam Wood. Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho Marx)
“For anyone addicted to reading commonplace books ... finding a good new one is much like enduring a familiar recurrence of malaria, with fever, fits of shaking, strange dreams. Unlike a truly paludismic ordeal, however, the symptoms felt while savoring a collection of one man’s pet quotations are voluptuously enjoyable ...”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)