midnight
An occasional wayfarer passed along the flagged pavement with speedy footsteps . Here and there a few lights glimmered at the windows of some of the larger blocks of offices . The bustle of the day was finished . There is no place in London so strangely quiet as the narrow thoroughfares of the city proper when the hour approaches midnight . Laverick , who since his partner 's departure had been studying with infinite care his private ledger , closed it at last with a little snap and leaned back in his chair . After all , save that he had got rid of Morrison , it had been a wasted evening . Not even he , whose financial astuteness no man had ever questioned , could raise from those piles of figures any other answer save the one inevitable one , the knowledge of which had been like a black nightmare stalking by his side for the last thirty-six hours .