midnight
Alighting in Grand Central Terminus late at night , he made his way to Forty-second Street and there , in the staring headlines of a `` Late Extra , '' read the news that the steamship _ Saratoga _ had suffered a crippling engine-room accident and was limping slowly toward port , still something like eighteen hours out . Wondering if it were presumption to construe this as an omen that the stars in their courses fought for him , Lanyard went west to Broadway afoot , all the way beset with a sense of incredulity ; it was difficult to believe that he was himself , alive and at large in this city of wonder and space , where people moved at leisure and without fear on broad streets that resembled deep-bitten channels for rivers of light . He was all too wont with nights of dread and trembling , with the mediaeval gloom that enwrapped the cities of Europe by night , their grim black streets desolate but for a few , infrequent , scurrying shapes of fright ... . While here the very beggars walked with heads unbowed , and men and women of happier estate laughed and played and made love lightly in the scampering taxis that whisked them homeward from restaurants of the feverish midnight . A people at war , actually at grips with the Blond Beast , arrayed to defend itself and all humanity against conquest by that loathsome incubus incarnate , a people heedless , carefree , irresponsible , refusing to credit its peril ... . Here and there a recruiting poster , down the broad reaches of Fifth Avenue a display of bunting , no other hint of war-time spirit and gravity ... . Longacre Square , a weltering lake of kaleidoscopic radiance , even at this late hour thronged with carnival crowds , not one note of sobriety in the night ... .