ten
o'clock
I stole out of the house before daybreak the next morning , and riding to Yarmouth , took a very early and -LRB- with perhaps a subtle appropriateness -RRB- a very fishy train to London . So ill equipped was I to contend with a financier of Miste 's force that I did not even know the hour at which the London banks opened for business . A general idea , however , that half-past ten would make quite a long enough day for such work made me hope to be in time to frustrate or perchance to catch red-handed this clever miscreant . The train was due to arrive at Liverpool Street station at ten o'clock , and ten minutes after that hour I stepped from a cab at the door of the great bank in Lombard Street . `` The manager , '' I said , hurriedly , to an individual in brass buttons and greased hair , whose presence in the building was evidently for a purely ornamental purpose . I was shown into a small glass room like a green-house , where sat two managers , as under a microscope -- a living example of frock-coated respectability and industry to half a hundred clerks who were ever peeping that way as they turned the pages of their ledgers and circulated in an undertone the latest chop-house tale . `` Mr. Howard , '' said the manager , with his watch in his hand .