eleven o'clock
Clearly , therefore , it was the duty of every sort of musician to like M. Firmin Richard . The only things to be said against him were that he was rather masterful in his ways and endowed with a very hasty temper . The first few days which the partners spent at the Opera were given over to the delight of finding themselves the head of so magnificent an enterprise ; and they had forgotten all about that curious , fantastic story of the ghost , when an incident occurred that proved to them that the joke -- if joke it were -- was not over . M. Firmin Richard reached his office that morning at eleven o'clock . His secretary , M. Remy , showed him half a dozen letters which he had not opened because they were marked `` private . '' One of the letters had at once attracted Richard 's attention not only because the envelope was addressed in red ink , but because he seemed to have seen the writing before . He soon remembered that it was the red handwriting in which the memorandum-book had been so curiously completed .