midnight
And then suddenly she turned hurriedly into a cross street , and headed over toward the East Side . The experience had not been a pleasant one , and it had upset most thoroughly all her calculations ; but it was very far , after all , from being disastrous . It meant simply that she must now find Nicky Viner himself and warn the man , and there was ample time in which to do that . The code message specifically stated midnight as the hour at which they proposed to favor old Viner with their unhallowed attentions , and as it was but a little after ten now , she had nearly a full two hours in which to accomplish what should not take her more than a few minutes . Rhoda Gray 's lips tightened a little , as she hurried along . Old Nicky Viner still lived in the same disreputable tenement in which he had lived on the night of that murder two years ago , and she could not ward off the thought that it had been -- yes , and was -- an ideal place for a murder , from the murderer 's standpoint ! The neighborhood was one of the toughest in New York , and the tenement itself was frankly nothing more than a den of crooks .