ten o'clock
`` You need n't lose any sleep worrying about that , '' was the curt reply ; and without waiting for the train arrival , Blount turned the car and sent it racing on the way back to the city . By all the tests he knew how to apply , he was little better than a dead man when he returned the hired auto to the side-street garage and made his halting way around to the hotel . He had long since given up the idea of trying to see Blenkinsop . He knew that the editor would not be in his office much before ten o'clock , and the two-hour wait was not to be endured . Clinging desperately to the single purpose of getting back to the deserted room before his absence should be discovered , and weighed down by a crushing sense of the immorality of the step he had just taken in bargaining with a hunted criminal and in conniving at his escape , he pressed on , pushing through the revolving doors and slipping once more into the Saturday evening lobby throng . Edging around to the stair , he took all the cautious steps in reverse ; ascending first to his own room to leave the rain-coat and the hat , and afterward feeling his way down the servants ' stair and through the lower corridor to the locked door in his father 's private suite . Past this he had a hazy notion that part of him -- the observing part -- stood aside and looked on while the other part slowly and painfully struggled out of its clothes and into its pajamas .