nine o'clock
`` Isabel will advise me , '' he said to himself . `` We will decide together what we have to do . '' Meantime night had fallen . He returned to the hotel at nine o'clock and asked that Isabel should be told . He was amazed , almost stunned by the news that Miss Bakefield had gone . She had come down from her room an hour earlier , had handed in at the office a letter addressed to Simon Dubosc and had suddenly left the hotel . Disconcerted , Simon asked for explanations .