eleven o'clock
He had begun to grow , and the change in his face and expression which had begun in London had become more noticeable . He had been given his `` place , '' and a work to do which entitled him to hold it . No one could have suspected them of carrying a strange and vital secret with them as they strolled along together . They seemed only two ordinary boys who looked in at shop windows and talked over their contents , and who loitered with upturned faces in the Marien-Platz before the ornate Gothic Rathaus to hear the eleven o'clock chimes play and see the painted figures of the King and Queen watch from their balcony the passing before them of the automatic tournament procession with its trumpeters and tilting knights . When the show was over and the automatic cock broke forth into his lusty farewell crow , they laughed just as any other boys would have laughed . Sometimes it would have been easy for The Rat to forget that there was anything graver in the world than the new places and new wonders he was seeing , as if he were a wandering minstrel in a story . But in Samavia bloody battles were being fought , and bloody plans were being wrought out , and in anguished anxiety the Secret Party and the Forgers of the Sword waited breathlessly for the Sign for which they had waited so long .