midnight
There was no evidence that it had been jimmied open , just as there was nothing to show that the lock itself did not stand intact and uninjured . A second test of the knob , however , showed me that the door was unmistakably open . My obvious course , at such a time , would have been to wait for a patrolman or to slip quietly away and send word in to police headquarters . But , as I have already said , no man is wholly sane after midnight . Subliminal faculties , ancestral perversions , dormant and wayward tendencies , all come to the surface , emerging like rats about a sleeping mansion . And crowning these , again , was my own neurasthenic craving for activity , my hunger for the narcotizing influence of excitement . And it has its zest of novelty , this stepping into an unknown and unlighted house at three o'clock in the morning .