About nine o'clock
FOR SCEPTRE AND CROWN . About nine o'clock on a dark April evening in the year 1866 , a Berlin cab drove up the Wilhelmsstrasse with the trot peculiar to those vehicles , and stopped between the two lamps illuminating the door of No. 76 , the house of the Minister for Foreign Affairs . The ground floor of this long two-storeyed house was well lighted up , and any one who peeped through the green blinds could see into many office-like rooms , well-filled with industrious writers , notwithstanding the lateness of the hour . The windows of the upper storey were only faintly lighted here and there . From the cab which drew up before this house stepped a middle-sized man , dressed in a dark paletot and black hat ; he came close to the gas-lamp to look in his purse for the right coins with which to pay the fare , and as soon as he had settled with the numbered Automedon he rang loudly at the door-bell .