midnight
The train was pulling slowly into the station when he reluctantly abandoned his latest unfeasible scheme for shaking off the little Englishman , and concluded that their salvation was only to be worked out through everlasting vigilance , incessant movement , and the favor of the blind goddess , Fortune . There was comfort of a sort in the reflection that the divinity of chance is at least blind ; her favors are impartially distributed ; the swing of the wheel of the world is not always to the advantage of the wrongdoer and the scamp . He saw nothing of Hobbs as they alighted and hastened from the station , and hardly had time to waste looking for him , since their train had failed to make up the precious ten minutes . Consequently he dismissed the fellow from his thoughts until -- with Brussels lingering in their memories a garish vision of brilliant streets and glowing cafés , glimpsed furtively from their cab windows during its wild dash over the broad mid-city , boulevards -- at midnight they settled themselves in a carriage of the Bruges express . They were speeding along through the open country with a noisy clatter ; then a minute 's investigation sufficed to discover the mate of the _ Alethea _ serenely ensconced in the coach behind . The little man seemed rarely complacent , and impudently greeted Kirkwood 's scowling visage , as the latter peered through the window in the coach-door , with a smirk and a waggish wave of his hand . The American by main strength of will-power mastered an impulse to enter and wring his neck , and returned to the girl , more disturbed than he cared to let her know .