eight o'clock
Two incidents , widely different in character yet bound together by results , marked the night of January the twenty-third . On that night the blackest fog within a four years ' memory fell upon certain portions of London , and also on that night came the first announcement of the border risings against the Persian government in the province of Khorasan the announcement that , speculated upon , even smiled at , at the time , assumed such significance in the light of after events . At eight o'clock the news spread through the House of Commons ; but at nine men in the inner lobbies were gossiping , not so much upon how far Russia , while ostensibly upholding the Shah , had pulled the strings by which the insurgents danced , as upon the manner in which the ` St. George 's Gazette ' , the Tory evening newspaper , had seized upon the incident and shaken it in the faces of the government . More than once before , Lakely -- the owner and editor of the ` St. George 's ' -- had stepped outside the decorous circle of tradition and taken a plunge into modern journalism , but to-night he essayed deeper waters than before , and under an almost sensational heading declared that in this apparently innocent border rising we had less an outcome of mere racial antagonism than a first faint index of a long-cherished Russian scheme , growing to a gradual maturity under the `` drift '' policy of the present British government . The effect produced by this pronouncement , if strong , was varied . Members of the Opposition saw , or thought they saw , a reflection of it in the smiling unconcern on the Ministerial benches ; and the government had an uneasy sense that behind the newly kindled interest on the other side of the House lay some mysterious scenting of battle from afar off .