six o’clock
If Armand had been actually arrested , he would almost certainly be confined in the Chatelet prison , where he would be closer to hand for all the interrogatories to which , no doubt , he would be subjected . Blakeney set his teeth and murmured a good , sound , British oath when he thought of those interrogatories . Armand St. Just , highly strung , a dreamer and a bundle of nerves -- how he would suffer under the mental rack of questions and cross-questions , cleverly-laid traps to catch information from him unawares ! His next objective , then , was Armand 's former lodging , and from six o'clock until close upon eight Sir Percy haunted the slopes of Montmartre , and more especially the neighbourhood of the Rue de la Croix Blanche , where Armand had lodged these former days . At the house itself he could not inquire as yet ; obviously it would not have been safe ; tomorrow , perhaps , when he knew more , but not tonight . His keen eyes had already spied at least two figures clothed in the rags of out-of-work labourers like himself , who had hung with suspicious persistence in this same neighbourhood , and who during the two hours that he had been in observation had never strayed out of sight of the house in the Rue de la Croix Blanche . That these were two spies on the watch was , of course , obvious ; but whether they were on the watch for St. Just or for some other unfortunate wretch it was at this stage impossible to conjecture .