nine o'clock
On that point , however , I , who tell the tale , will not dogmatise . The scene was a street in the West End of London , a little south of Eaton Square : the hour just twenty-five minutes short of midnight . A wind from the North Sea had been blowing all day across the Thames marshes , and collecting what it could carry ; and the shop-keepers had scarcely drawn their iron shutters before a thin fog drifted up from lamp-post to lamp-post and filled the intervals with total darkness -- all but one , where , half-way down the street on the left-hand side , an enterprising florist had set up an electric lamp at his private cost , to shine upon his window and attract the attention of rich people as they drove by on their way to the theatres . At nine o'clock he closed his business : but the lamp shone on until midnight , to give the rich people another chance , on their way home , of reading that F. Stillman was prepared to decorate dinner-tables and ball-rooms , and to supply bridal bouquets or mourning wreaths at short notice . The stream of homeward-bound carriages had come to a sudden lull . The red eyes of a belated four-wheeler vanished in the fog , and the florist 's lamp flung down its ugly incandescent stare on an empty pavement . Himself in darkness , a policeman on the other side of the street flashed his lantern twice , closed the slide and halted for a moment to listen by an area railing .