about four o'clock
* * * * * It was some time after midnight when he let himself into the uptown apartment . He thought he heard his mother , trying to be swift , padding down the hallway as if she had been waiting near the door . That would have angered him . The first of these nights , only four weeks before -LRB- it seemed years -RRB- , he had come in hotly about four o'clock and gone to bed . About five he thought he heard sounds , almost like the scratch of a little dog at his door . He sprang up and flung it open . The flash of his mother 's gray-flannelette wrapper turned a corner of the hall .