three o'clock in the morning
But , as I have already said , no man is wholly sane after midnight . Subliminal faculties , ancestral perversions , dormant and wayward tendencies , all come to the surface , emerging like rats about a sleeping mansion . And crowning these , again , was my own neurasthenic craving for activity , my hunger for the narcotizing influence of excitement . And it has its zest of novelty , this stepping into an unknown and unlighted house at three o'clock in the morning . That novelty takes on a razor-edge when you have fairly good evidence that some one who has no business there has already preceded you into that house . So as I stepped inside and quietly closed the door after me , I moved forward with the utmost care . Some precautionary sixth sense told me the place was not unoccupied .