ten o'clock
In other words , where Perlmer had to play his man cautiously and get what he could , Danglar could go the limit and get all . As it stood , then , Danglar and the gang had not found out the location of that hoard ; but they had found out where Perlmer kept his spurious papers -- stuffed in at the back of the bottom drawer of his desk in his office , practically forgotten , practically useless to Perlmer any more , for , having once shown them to Viner , there was no occasion to call them into service again unless Viner showed signs of getting a little out of hand and it became necessary to apply the screws once more . For the rest , it was a very simple matter . Perlmer had an office in a small building on lower Sixth Avenue , and it was his custom to go to his office in the evenings and remain there until ten o'clock or so . The plan then , according to the code message , was to loot Perlmer 's desk some time after the man had gone home for the night , and then , at midnight , armed with the false documents , to beard old Nicky Viner in his miserable quarters over on the East Side , and extort from the old miser the neat little sum that Danglar estimated would amount to some fifty thousand dollars in cash . Rhoda Gray 's face was troubled and serious . She found herself wishing for a moment that she had never decoded the message .