eleven o’clock
I kept back any information as to my being in the dark closet and said nothing about the drugging . We did not wish to suggest in any way that Mademoiselle Stangerson had been expecting her nocturnal visitor . The poor woman might , perhaps , never recover , and it was none of our business to lift the veil of a secret the preservation of which she had paid for so dearly . Arthur Rance told everybody , in a manner so natural that it astonished me , that he had last seen the keeper towards eleven o'clock of that fatal night . He had come for his valise , he said , which he was to take for him early next morning to the Saint-Michel station , and had been kept out late running after poachers . Arthur Rance had , indeed , intended to leave the chateau and , according to his habit , to walk to the station . Monsieur Stangerson confirmed what Rance had said , adding that he had not asked Rance to dine with him because his friend had taken his final leave of them both earlier in the evening .