one o'clock
`` Well , it 's an old story now , '' said the driver , putting a small piece of very black tobacco into the corner of his mouth . `` I daresay it 's twenty odd years since it happened , but it 's not the kind o ' thing as slips out of a man 's memory . It was very late one night , and I was working my hardest to pick up something good , for I 'd made a poor day 's work of it . The theatres had all come out , and though I kept up and down the Strand till nigh one o'clock , I got nothing but one eighteenpenny job . I was thinking of giving it up and going home , when it struck me that I might as well make a bit of a circuit , and see if I could n't drop across something . Pretty soon I gave a gentleman a lift as far as the Oxford Road , and then I drove through St. John 's Wood on my way home . By that time it would be about half-past one , and the streets were quite quiet and deserted , for the night was cloudy and it was beginning to rain .