midnight
`` Actually , there was no one in the room , of course ? '' `` No one . It was some awful illusion ; but I can never forget it . '' Half-Moon Street was very still ; midnight had sounded nearly half-an-hour ; but still Robert Cairn paced up and down his father 's library . He was very pale , and many times he glanced at a book which lay open upon the table . Finally he paused before it and read once again certain passages . `` In the year 1571 , '' it recorded , `` the notorious Trois Echelles was executed in the Place de Grève .