midnight
`` I suppose we should not have been admitted if we had gone with you ? '' `` Nay , I could pass you in , Messieurs , if you cared to see the affair to the end , and followed in another _ fiacre _ . '' So we said we would see it to the end , and following the prisoner and his guard through all the rooms and corridors by which we had come , picked up a second cab on the Quai des Orfèvres , just outside the Préfecture of Police . It was now close upon midnight . The sky was flecked with driving clouds . The moon had just risen above the towers of Notre Dame . The quays were silent and deserted .