one
o'clock
Where did he come from ? Had he been missing since last night ? On these inquiries the Superintendent launched several intelligent men , and then was forced for the time to turn his attention to the business of the day . To search a large town for a missing man takes time , and the searchers did not happen to fall in with Company B of Procession 3 , which at one o'clock had mustered in Digby Square , prepared to march to the Public Park . Had they done so , it might or might not have seemed to them worth noticing that Company B of Procession 3 , which was composed of carpenters and joiners , had missed some one , namely the officer whom they called their `` Marshal , '' and who was to have ordered their ranks and marched at their head ; and the name of their Marshal was none other than François Gaspard . The Superintendent himself was keeping watch over Company B , but , in a professionally Olympian scorn of processions , he was far from asking or caring to know who the Marshal was , and indeed , if he had known , he would scarcely have drawn such a lightning-quick inference as that the missing Marshal and the missing murderer were one and the same . So Mr. Gaspard 's absence was passed over with a few curses on his laziness , or , from the more charitable , a surmise that there had been a misunderstanding , and Company B , having appointed a new Marshal , went on its way .