nine o'clock
That done he relapsed immediately into unconsciousness again . The doctor took out a large handkerchief , wiped his brow and smiled . Peter , his quick relief like a storm of joy , went downstairs to tell his friends of the Reform Committee , and do a thousand other things . By nine o'clock the town was ringing with the wild story , and in the still watches of the later night the telegraph flung it to far places , to be read in wonder next morning in a million homes . Overnight , the great eye of the country turned like an unwinking searchlight upon the dingy town by the Hudson where happened to dwell Mrs. Elbert Carstairs and her only daughter , Mary . And all the world read how two men who were doubles had strangely met in a lonely house with a drunken mob outside ; how one of them , who had earned the mob , turned the other out to face it ; how the son of a famous captain of industry had shamed the Berserkers in his passionate muscularity : how one `` double '' had fled to save his skin and how the other , battered almost beyond recognition , now lay trembling between life and death . In Hunston , there followed next day a whirl of police activity , of which the net results were tame in the extreme .