half past nine at
night
The first robbery was at a tiny branch bank in Purley , and the bag amounted to a matter of a couple of hundred or so sovereigns ; the second was at Peckham -- on the outskirts , you understand ; the third at Harrow ; the fourth somewhere near Forest Hill , and the fifth in Croydon . Other places on the South East side of London have come in for their share , too , as for instance Anerley and Sutton . This last affair took place at Hendon , during the evening of Saturday last -- the sixteenth , was n't it ? No one observed anything untoward in the least , that is except one witness who relates how he saw a motor car standing outside the bank 's premises at half past nine at night . He gave no thought to this , as he probably imagined , if he thought of the coincidence at all , that the manager had called there for something he had forgotten in his office . '' `` And where , then , does the manager live , if not over the bank itself ? '' put in Cleek at this juncture .