half
past seven
These considerations led him a good distance on his way . Then the Mile End Road beguiled him , lying straight and foreign looking , and empty in the sunlight . The Barometer man 's weather apparatus must have been at fault , for in all the sky there was not a cloud , nor the symptom of the coming of a cloud . Away down near the docks , a clock over a public house pointed to half past seven , and he judged it time to return . He came back . The Mile End Road was still deserted , the city round the bank was destitute of life , Fleet Street empty . Pompeii lay not more utterly dead than this weird city of vast business palaces , and the Strand shewed nothing of life or almost nothing , every shop was shuttered though now it was close upon nine o'clock .