midnight
Now , if one thing more than another stirs the blood of the man who has occasion to walk by night , it is the discovery that his steps are being dogged . The thought of being watched , of having a possible enemy behind one , wakens a thrill that is ancestral . So , instead of continuing my busily aimless circuit about that high-spiked iron fence which encloses Gramercy Park , I shot off at a tangent , continuing from its northwest corner in a straight line toward Fourth Avenue and Broadway . I had thought myself alone in that midnight abode of quietness . Only the dread of a second sleepless night had kept me there , goading me on in my febrile revolutions until weariness should send me stumbling off my circuit like a six-day rider off his wheel . Once I was in the house-shadows where Twenty-first Street again begins I swung about and waited . I stood there , in a sort of quiet belligerency , watching the figure of the man who had been dogging my steps .