about eleven o’clock
`` Your story is sufficiently interesting , Inspector , '' he declared , `` even to divert my mind from the eternal contemplation of the Fu-Manchu problem . This would appear to be distinctly a case of an ` astral bell ' such as we sometimes hear of in India . '' `` It was Stevens , '' continued Weymouth , `` who found Mr. Maddison . He -LRB- Stevens -RRB- had been out on business connected with the household arrangements , and at about eleven o'clock he returned , letting himself in with a key . There was a light in the library , and getting no response to his knocking , Stevens entered . He found his master sitting bolt upright in a chair , clutching the arms with rigid fingers and staring straight before him with a look of such frightful horror on his face , that Stevens positively ran from the room and out of the house . Mr. Maddison was stone dead .