twenty minutes to six
Very few of us can assert as much . I can truthfully say that in the last fifteen years I have not known what it is to enjoy sound health for a single day . Marlowe , '' he proceeded , swinging ponderously round on Sir Mallaby like a liner turning in the river , `` I assure you that at twenty-five minutes past four this afternoon I was very nearly convinced that I should have to call you up on the ` phone and cancel this dinner engagement . When I took my temperature at twenty minutes to six ... '' At this point the butler appeared at the door announcing that dinner was served . Sir Mallaby Marlowe 's dinner table , which , like most of the furniture in the house had belonged to his deceased father and had been built at a period when people liked things big and solid , was a good deal too spacious to be really ideal for a small party . A white sea of linen separated each diner from the diner opposite and created a forced intimacy with the person seated next to him . Billie Bennett and Sam Marlowe , as a consequence , found themselves , if not exactly in a solitude of their own , at least sufficiently cut off from their kind to make silence between them impossible .