about three o'clock in the afternoon
So , excepting his father , he had no confidant ; for above all it was necessary to keep the truth from Myra Duquesne -- from Myra around whom his world circled , but who yet thought of the dreadful being who wielded the sorcery of forgotten ages , as a brother . Whilst Myra lay ill -- not yet recovered from the ghastly attack made upon her life by the man whom she trusted -- whilst , having plentiful evidence of his presence in London , Dr. Cairn and himself vainly sought for Antony Ferrara ; whilst any night might bring some unholy visitant to his rooms , obedient to the will of this modern wizard ; whilst these fears , anxieties , doubts , and surmises danced , impish , through his brain , it was all but impossible to pursue with success , his vocation of journalism . Yet for many reasons it was necessary that he should do so , and so he was employed upon a series of articles which were the outcome of his recent visit to Egypt -- his editor having given him that work as being less exacting than that which properly falls to the lot of the Fleet Street copy-hunter . He left his rooms about three o'clock in the afternoon , in order to seek , in the British Museum library , a reference which he lacked . The day was an exceedingly warm one , and he derived some little satisfaction from the fact that , at his present work , he was not called upon to endue the armour of respectability . Pipe in mouth , he made his way across the Strand towards Bloomsbury . As he walked up the steps , crossed the hall-way , and passed in beneath the dome of the reading-room , he wondered if , amid those mountains of erudition surrounding him , there was any wisdom so strange , and so awful , as that of Antony Ferrara .