midnight
`` Lord Dreever , '' it read , and in the corner the name of a well-known club . The name Dreever was familiar to Jimmy . Everyone knew of Dreever Castle , partly because it was one of the oldest houses in England , but principally because for centuries it had been advertised by a particularly gruesome ghost-story . Everyone had heard of the secret of Dreever , which was known only to the earl and the family lawyer , and confided to the heir at midnight on his twenty-first birthday . Jimmy had come across the story in corners of the papers all over the States , from New York to Onehorseville , Iowa . He looked with interest at the light-haired young man , the latest depository of the awful secret . It was popularly supposed that the heir , after hearing it , never smiled again ; but it did not seem to have affected the present Lord Dreever to any great extent .