About nine o'clock
He nodded briskly and disappeared . But Gordon stood there , his handsome face awry with distress , the roll of bills clenched tightly in his hand . Then , blinded by sudden tears , he stumbled clumsily down the Biltmore steps . About nine o'clock of the same night two human beings came out of a cheap restaurant in Sixth Avenue . They were ugly , ill-nourished , devoid of all except the very lowest form of intelligence , and without even that animal exuberance that in itself brings color into life ; they were lately vermin-ridden , cold , and hungry in a dirty town of a strange land ; they were poor , friendless ; tossed as driftwood from their births , they would be tossed as driftwood to their deaths . They were dressed in the uniform of the United States Army , and on the shoulder of each was the insignia of a drafted division from New Jersey , landed three days before . The taller of the two was named Carrol Key , a name hinting that in his veins , however thinly diluted by generations of degeneration , ran blood of some potentiality .