two o'clock in the morning
He could tell , of course , the nature of the roadbed . They were running on an asphalt road , that was obvious enough ; but city streets and suburban streets and hundreds of miles of country road around New York were of asphalt ! Traffic ? He was quite sure , for he had strained his ears in an effort to detect it , that there was little or no traffic ; but then , it must be one or two o'clock in the morning , and at that hour the city streets , certainly those that would be chosen by these men , would be quite as deserted as any country road ! And as for a sense of direction , he had none whatever -- even if the car had not been persistently swerving and changing its course every little while . If he had been able to form even an approximate idea of the compass direction in which they had started , he might possibly have been able in a general way to counteract this further effort of theirs to confuse him ; but without the initial direction he was essentially befogged . With these conclusions finally thrust home upon him , Jimmie Dale philosophically subordinated the matter in his mind , and , leaning back , composed himself as comfortably as he could upon his seat .