5:09
Thus inspired , Kirkwood took counsel with the girl , and when the train paused at Ghent , they made an unostentatious exit from their coach , finding themselves , when the express had rolled on into the west , upon a station platform in a foreign city at nine minutes past one o'clock in the morning -- but at length without their shadow . Mr. Hobbs had gone on to Bruges . Kirkwood sped his journeyings with an unspoken malediction , and collected himself to cope with a situation which was to prove hardly more happy for them than the espionage they had just eluded . The primal flush of triumph which had saturated the American 's humor on this signal success , proved but fictive and transitory when inquiry of the station attendants educed the information that the two earliest trains to be obtained were the 5:09 for Dunkerque and the 5:37 for Ostend . A minimum delay of four hours was to be endured in the face of many contingent features singularly unpleasant to contemplate . The station waiting-room was on the point of closing for the night , and Kirkwood , already alarmed by the rapid ebb of the money he had had of Calendar , dared not subject his finances to the strain of a night 's lodging at one of Ghent 's hotels . He found himself forced to be cruel to be kind to the girl , and Dorothy 's cheerful acquiescence to their sole alternative of tramping the street until daybreak did nothing to alleviate Kirkwood 's exasperation .