midnight
Perhaps I attached too great a value to what may have been a delusion ; perhaps my theory rested upon no more solid foundation than the belief that I had seen Karamaneh in the shop of the curio dealer . If her appearance there should prove to have been phantasmal , the structure of my theory would be shattered at its base . To-night I should test my premises , and upon the result of my investigations determine my future action . Museum Street certainly did not seem a likely spot for Dr. Fu-Manchu to establish himself , yet , unless my imagination had strangely deceived me , from the window of the antique dealer who traded under the name of J. Salaman , those wonderful eyes of Karamaneh like the velvet midnight of the Orient , had looked out at me . As I paced slowly along the pavement toward that lighted window , my heart was beating far from normally , and I cursed the folly which , in spite of all , refused to die , but lingered on , poisoning my life . Comparative quiet reigned in Museum Street , at no time a busy thoroughfare , and , excepting another shop at the Museum end , commercial activities had ceased there . The door of a block of residential chambers almost immediately opposite to the shop which was my objective , threw out a beam of light across the pavement , but not more than two or three people were visible upon either side of the street .