midnight
And the drone became a sighing of birch tops , and I was stalking Big-Horn across mountain peaks of _ café parfait _ , where a pompous English butler served _ pêches Melba _ on the edge of every second precipice . When I woke up it was broad daylight , and my wall-eyed waiter was there waiting for his second bill . And I remembered that I ought to phone Benson so he could have the coffee ready by the time I walked home through the mellow November air . It was two hours later that the first memory of those murmuring midnight voices came back to me . The words I had overheard seemed to have been buried in my mind like seeds in the ground . Then here and there a green shoot of suspicion emerged . The more I thought it over , the more disturbed I became .