four
o'clock in the morning
It is a strange fact , for which I do not expect ever satisfactorily to account , and which will receive little credence even among those who know that I am not given to romancing -- it is a strange fact , I say , that the substance of the following pages has evolved itself during a period of six months , more or less , between the hours of midnight and four o'clock in the morning , proceeding directly from a type-writing machine standing in the corner of my library , manipulated by unseen hands . The machine is not of recent make . It is , in fact , a relic of the early seventies , which I discovered one morning when , suffering from a slight attack of the grip , I had remained at home and devoted my time to pottering about in the attic , unearthing old books , bringing to the light long-forgotten correspondences , my boyhood collections of `` stuff , '' and other memory-inducing things . Whence the machine came originally I do not recall .