the hour of twelve
And if so , by whom ? It may seem absurd that I should have made so much of the inferences that followed my consideration of this problem , but the truth is that my mind was so intensely occupied with one subject that everything seemed to point to the participation of the important Arthur Banks . At any other time I should not have troubled about the clock ; now , I looked to it for evidence . And however ridiculous it may appear , I was influenced in my excited search for clues by the fact that the clock had , after it was re-wound , only struck the hour of twelve . The significance of that deduction lay in the observation -- my experience is , admittedly , limited -- that clocks which have run down must be patiently made to re-toll the hours they have missed , or they will pick up their last neglected reminders of the time at the point at which they stopped . And from that I inferred an esoteric knowledge of mechanics from that rewinder of the stable-clock who had got the horrid contrivance correctly going again without imposing upon us the misery of slowly working through an almost endless series of , as it were , historical chimes . I agree that my premises were faulty , far too lightly supported , but my mind leapt to the deduction that the mechanic in this connection could be none other than Banks .