midnight
The sentinels stared rather as these two figures pushed their bicycles through the gates , and undoubtedly did for some time afterwards wonder who they could have been . The same thing happened down below on the bridge ; but once over that and in the town all they had to do was to ride straight ahead . They were going to bicycle fifteen miles to Rühl , a small town with a railway station on the main line between Kunitz and Cologne . Express trains do not stop at Rühl , but there was a slow train at eight which would get them to Gerstein , the capital of the next duchy , by midnight . Here they would change into the Cologne express ; here they would join the bribed maid ; here luggage had been sent by Fritzing , -- a neat bag for himself , and a neat box for his niece . The neat box was filled with neat garments suggested to him by the young lady in the shop in Gerstein where he had been two days before to buy them . She told him of many other articles which , she said , no lady 's wardrobe could be considered complete without ; and the distracted man , fearing the whole shop would presently be put into trunks and sent to the station to meet them , had ended by flinging down two notes for a hundred marks each and bidding her keep strictly within that limit .