five o'clock
Here Gerard established his party , during the two weeks of practice work . He did not choose to have Corrie in New York , although Rupert chafed and he himself was obliged to go in to the city frequently , at considerable inconvenience . On the last afternoon before the race , he returned from such a trip , and arrived before the hotel just as Corrie rolled up with the Mercury Titan and halted it opposite him . `` It 's five o'clock , '' the driver explained , stilling his roaring motor and leaning out . `` Everyone is coming in , to get ready for to-morrow . '' There was little trace left of the petulant , gaudily dressed boy who a year before had driven the pink car , in this serious young professional clad in the Mercury 's racing gray and bearing the Mercury 's silver insignia on his shoulder . The bend of his mouth was firmer , his dark-blue eyes had acquired the steady , all-embracing keenness of Gerard 's -- the gaze of all those men with whom the inopportune flicker of an eyelid may mean destruction .