eleven in the morning
I got to a gate , skirted a hedge , and gained the main road . With difficulty I walked to the nearest town , a distance of about four miles , without meeting a soul , and to my surprise found myself in Hitchin . The spectacle of a man entering the town in evening dress and hatless in broad daylight was no doubt curious , but I was anxious to return to London and give information against those who had , without any apparent motive , laid an ingenious plot to poison me . At the `` Sun '' I learned that the time was eleven in the morning . The only manner in which I could account for my presence in Hitchin was that , believed to be dead by the Baron and his accomplices , I had been conveyed in a car to the spot where I was found . What , I wondered , had become of the fair-haired young man whom I had seen unconscious opposite me ? A few shillings remained in my pocket , and , strangely enough , beside me when I recovered consciousness I had found a small fluted phial marked `` Prussic acid -- poison . ''