eleven o'clock
* * * * * Then came the final dramatic coup . Of its exact details I have no knowledge . I give -- as I have given all through this narrative of fact -- only what I _ know _ to be actual truth . On December 29th , at eleven o'clock , I left the palace to take a message to Protopopoff , and to interview the much-travelled Hardt , who was coming to Petrograd from Stockholm with his usual fortnightly dispatch from Berlin . I returned to the Palace about eight o'clock in the evening , when I received a message through one of the silk-stockinged servants , whose duty it was to wait upon `` his holiness , '' to the effect that the monk had gone suddenly to Petrograd upon urgent business , and would return on the morrow . Naturally , I accepted the message , ate my dinner , read the paper , and after a chat with Madame Vyrubova , who lived in the adjoining apartments , I retired to bed . Next day I returned to the Gorokhovaya , but the monk had not come back .