midnight
Bagheera the cat had slipped into the room before the door was closed , and lay pressed against his mistress 's stout little boot . Our small garrison was assembled , surely for as strange a defense as ever sober moderns undertook . For my part , it was wonder enough to study that captive who was at once so strange yet so intimately well known to me . The Tiffany clock on the mantel shelf chimed midnight . Soon after , we began to experience the first break in the heavy monotony of heat and fog that had overlaid the place for three days . The temperature began to fall . The fog did not lift .