six o’clock
Paul assisted his employer into the big fur coat , assumed his own and the shabby cap Pauer had given him , and went out at Darco 's heels . A closed brougham waited in the street . They entered and were driven away . It was nearing six o'clock by this time , and as they were driven downhill they came into a stratum of cold yellow fog , through which the gas-lamps stared with a bleared and drunken look . The vehicle rumbled along for some three-quarters of an hour , and pulled up in a shabby side-way strewn with cabbage-leaves and all manner of decaying vegetable offal Darco rolled out of the brougham , and plunged with a waddling swiftness into a narrow , ill-lit passage which smelt of escaping gas . Paul followed , and in half a minute found himself for the first time within the walls of a theatre and on the stage . The darkened auditorium loomed beyond the solitary T-bracket like a great sepulchre .