three o'clock
That it was also a day of other coincidences will appear in the casting up of the items on the page of events . For one thing , it marked the formal opening of the De Soto Inn for the summer season ; the De Soto being the resort hotel spoken of by the clerk of the Hotel Chouteau in the little ante-dinner talk which had given Griswold his first outline sketch of Wahaska . For another , the special train from the far South arriving at noon and bearing the first detachment of the Inn 's guests , had for one of its Pullman passengers an elderly gentleman with a strongly marked Scottish face ; a gentleman with the bushy white eyebrows of age , the long upper lip of caution , the drooping eyelid of irascibility , and the bearing of a man of routine ; in other words , Mr. Andrew Galbraith , faring northward on his customary summer vacation , which -- the fates intervening -- he had this time determined to spend at the Wahaskan resort . For a third item , it was at three o'clock of this same Wednesday that Raymer came out of Jasper Grierson 's bank with his head down and a cloud on his brow ; the cloud dating back to an interview just closed , a short and rather brittle conference with the bank 's president held in Jasper Grierson 's private room , with the president sitting at ease in his huge arm-chair and his visitor standing , quite destitute of ease , at the desk-end . A little farther along , this third item dovetailed with a fourth and fifth . Raymer , dropping into a friend 's office to use the telephone , chanced upon a crossed wire . He had called up Mrs. Holcomb , and while he was waiting for the widow to summon Griswold from his up-stairs den , there was a confused skirling of bells and Raymer , innocently eavesdropping , overheard part of a conversation between two well-known voices ; namely , the voices of Miss Charlotte Farnham and her father .