noon
Please go on . '' `` Approximately eighteen months later a man named Thurston -- Mitchell Thurston -- was considered a dangerous aspirant for the hand of Sara Law . He was exceedingly well fixed in a money way -- a sort of dilettantish architect , with offices in the Metropolitan Tower . One day at high noon he left his desk to go to lunch at Martin 's ; crossing Madison Square , he suddenly fell dead , with a bullet in his brain . It was a rifle bullet , but though the square was crowded , no one had heard the report of the shot , and no one was seen carrying a rifle . The conclusion was that he had been shot down by somebody using a gun with a Maxim silencer , from a window on the south side of the square . There were no clues . ''