three o'clock
Charlie was only twenty-three , it seemed ; and when he was ten his father had died and left eight or ten millions in trust for him , in the care of a poor , foolish aunt whom he twisted about his finger . At the age of twelve he was a cigarette fiend , and had the run of the wine-cellar . When he went to a rich private school he took whole trunks full of cigarettes with him , and finally ran away to Europe , to acquire the learning of the brothels of Paris . And then he came home and struck the Tenderloin ; and at three o'clock one morning he walked through a plate-glass window , and so the newspapers took him up . That had suddenly opened a new vista in life for Charlie -- he became a devotee of fame ; everywhere he went he was followed by newspaper reporters and a staring crowd . He carried wads as big round as his arm , and gave away hundred-dollar tips to bootblacks , and lost forty thousand dollars in a game of poker . He gave a fete to the demi-monde , with a jewelled Christmas tree in midsummer , and fifty thousand dollars ' worth of splendour .