two to four on Saturdays
Yet he had a home and an interval of seclusion of which he was jealously mindful , and it was to this he was going to-night at his usual hour . His room was in a new building on one of the larger and busier thoroughfares . The lower floor was occupied by a bank , but as it was closed before he came home , and not yet opened when he left , it did not disturb his domestic sensibilities . The same may be said of the next floor , which was devoted to stockbrokers ' and companies offices , and was equally tomb-like and silent when he passed ; the floor above that was a desert of empty rooms , which echoed to his footsteps night and morning , with here and there an oasis in the green sign of a mining secretary 's office , with , however , the desolating announcement that it would only be `` open for transfers from two to four on Saturdays . '' The top floor had been frankly abandoned in an unfinished state by the builder , whose ambition had `` o'erleaped itself '' in that sanguine era of the city 's growth . There was a smell of plaster and the first coat of paint about it still , but the whole front of the building was occupied by a long room with odd `` bull 's - eye '' windows looking out through the heavy ornamentations of the cornice over the adjacent roofs . It had been originally intended for a club-room , but after the ill fortune which attended the letting of the floor below , and possibly because the earthquake-fearing San Franciscans had their doubts of successful hilarity at the top of so tall a building , it remained unfinished , with the two smaller rooms at its side .