midnight
Only once did either of them offer to speak . `` You might do well to vary your costume a little , '' Garry observed impersonally , `` if your nimrod friend who hunts at dusk is going to persist in mistaking you for a deer . '' He drank hard that night from the bottle which Fat Joe , in obedience to Steve 's command , had left standing upon the shoulder-high shelf -- drank first in a self-conscious fashion with a mumbled excuse to Joe that the rainfall had chilled him ; then more and more openly , until he forgot that he had ever felt the need of an excuse . Not one of the three men had made a move to go to bed , and before midnight came around Garry 's black fit of absorbtion had given way to another mood . Blithely he chafed Fat Joe one minute , blind to that one 's sullen reception of his jocularity ; the next moment he turned eyes that had long before lost their enmity in a glassier light of goodwill upon Steve , working over a drawing-board at the other end of the table , impatient yet elaborately approving of his industry . And when Steve finally laid aside his work , signifying with a sigh that he had finished , Garry rose and lifted a half-emptied glass and made him a rollicking toast . `` Here 's to young Virtue 's triumph , Steve , '' he chanted , `` and damnation to the opposition !