midnight
`` That felt just like a sea-fog creeping up behind ; stupid to keep the window open even in spring , '' he said as he picked up a log from a basket by his side and threw it deftly into the wide-open grate , leant sideways to separate two brass ornaments on a table which had jangled one against the other , and sighing turned restlessly in his chair . `` Confound those great market lorries , '' he muttered , looking round the room with its cabinets and shelves filled with the strange and weird , beautiful and unsightly curios he had brought back from every corner of the globe . `` They shake the house enough to bring it down about one 's ears . '' The moon was slowly shifting as he leant back and settled himself comfortably in the high leather chair ; the room was getting darker and there had fallen that intense almost palpable stillness which envelops most great cities after midnight , and against which his thoughts stood out like steel points upon a velvet curtain . Clear and sharp as steel they shot indeed , this way and that through his mind ; but hold them he could not , analyse or arrange them he could not , neither would his hand move towards the pen a few inches from the finger-tips . `` God ! '' he suddenly thundered , striking the arm of the chair with his fist .