nine
o'clock
He found no more of interest in the newspaper than the information that the _ Saratoga _ had been sighted off Fire Island and was expected to dock in New York not later than eight o'clock that night . This , however , was acceptable reading . Lanyard had work to do which were better done before `` Karl '' and his crew found opportunity to communicate directly with their collaborators ashore , work which it were unwise to initiate before nightfall lent a cloak of shadows to hoodwink the ever-possible adventitious German spy . Nor was he so fatuous as to fancy it would profit him to call before nine o'clock at the house on West End Avenue . No earlier might he hope to find Colonel the Honourable George Fleetwood-Stanistreet near the end of his dinner , and so in a mood approachable and receptive . But there could be no harm in reconnaissance by daylight . He whiled away the latter part of the afternoon in taxicabs , by dint of frequent changes contriving in the most casual fashion imaginable to pass the Seventy-ninth Street branch of the Wilhelmstrasse no less than four times .