midnight
`` A new agent of death , Petrie ! Something born in a plague-spot of Burma -- the home of much that is unclean and much that is inexplicable . Heaven grant that we be in time , and are able to save Guthrie . '' THE train was late , and as our cab turned out of Waterloo Station and began to ascend to the bridge , from a hundred steeples rang out the gongs of midnight , the bell of St. Paul 's raised above them all to vie with the deep voice of Big Ben . I looked out from the cab window across the river to where , towering above the Embankment , that place of a thousand tragedies , the light of some of London 's greatest caravanserais formed a sort of minor constellation . From the subdued blaze that showed the public supper-rooms I looked up to the hundreds of starry points marking the private apartments of those giant inns . I thought how each twinkling window denoted the presence of some bird of passage , some wanderer temporarily abiding in our midst .