about twelve
o'clock
A negro named Caesar Augustus Cleary was the doctor 's assistant in the laboratory . The other physicians in the hospital said that Cleary had become so accustomed to Jarvis ' ways that , like a Mississippi mule , he had to be cursed before he could be made to understand anything . Cleary slept in a little closet similar to the doctor 's , and on the opposite side of the laboratory . He was asleep there , about twelve o'clock on the night after Nick 's visit to Lawrence Deever , when Nick crept softly through the window . All these rooms were on the ground floor and entrance was easy . Nick had spent a part of the evening in the garden . He had watched till the light went out in the laboratory and another appeared in the doctor 's bed-room .