about half
past four in the morning
He learned they were the wife and the younger sister of a surgeon living at Stanmore , who had come in the small hours from a dangerous case at Pinner , and heard at some railway station on his way of the Martian advance . He had hurried home , roused the women -- their servant had left them two days before -- packed some provisions , put his revolver under the seat -- luckily for my brother -- and told them to drive on to Edgware , with the idea of getting a train there . He stopped behind to tell the neighbours . He would overtake them , he said , at about half past four in the morning , and now it was nearly nine and they had seen nothing of him . They could not stop in Edgware because of the growing traffic through the place , and so they had come into this side lane . That was the story they told my brother in fragments when presently they stopped again , nearer to New Barnet . He promised to stay with them , at least until they could determine what to do , or until the missing man arrived , and professed to be an expert shot with the revolver -- a weapon strange to him -- in order to give them confidence .