six o'clock
Merlin Grainger stood up and surveyed the wreck of the bookshop , the ruined volumes , the torn silk remnants of the once beautiful crimson lamp , the crystalline sprinkling of broken glass which lay in iridescent dust over the whole interior -- and then he went to a corner where a broom was kept and began cleaning up and rearranging and , as far as he was able , restoring the shop to its former condition . He found that , though some few of the books were uninjured , most of them had suffered in varying extents . The backs were off some , the pages were torn from others , still others were just slightly cracked in the front , which , as all careless book returners know , makes a book unsalable , and therefore second-hand . Nevertheless by six o'clock he had done much to repair the damage . He had returned the books to their original places , swept the floor , and put new lights in the sockets overhead . The red shade itself was ruined beyond redemption , and Merlin thought in some trepidation that the money to replace it might have to come out of his salary . At six , therefore , having done the best he could , he crawled over the front window display to pull down the blind .