eight o'clock
We go in at a gate from the lane behind , and I think you should wait at that gate , and put your men at hand . We must n't go in as a crowd . The rector had better go first , and you and I will follow on the opposite side of the road . '' So the procession was formed , and it was still some three minutes short of eight o'clock when Hewitt and Plummer joined the clergyman at the door in the garden wall behind Mason 's house . The door was ajar as had been promised in Mason 's note . Leaving Plummer on guard without , Martin Hewitt and the rector stepped as silently as possible through the little kitchen garden and across a strip of lawn toward where a dull light illuminated the conservatory , at the right-hand end of the house . The door of the conservatory was ajar also , and this the rector pushed open .