ten o'clock in the evening
The gorilla answered : `` I am your old friend , Jack Gale ; do n't leave me . '' So Coriander 's famous gorilla was no other than my old crony , Jack Gale . And this is how Jack happened to be a gorilla : Coriander 's keepers were too watchful to permit much conversation , but taking from the gorilla -- for such he still was to me -- the address of Jack Gale , No. 1283 , Morusmulticaulis Street , I went home to revise some of my deductions relative to the origin of the human species , founded on observations of the gorilla in a state of comparative wildness . The menagerie closed at ten o'clock in the evening , and precisely at half-past ten I was at Jack 's lodgings , to which I climbed up four flights of crooked and very dark stairways . The room was small and cheerless ; the windows were carefully guarded by thick curtains ; three or four swinging bars depended from the ceiling for the practice of its inmate in acrobatic exercises ; across the foot of the bed lay a well-dressed gorilla 's skin , and at a small table , and absorbing the contents of a pot of beer , sat the wearer of this discarded robe . This was the haunt of the African gorilla . He told his story in a few words .