five o'clock
The day had closed down in brilliance upon the city -- and the voice of the milkman was to be heard in the land -- when he trudged , still briskly if a trifle wearily , into Holborn , and held on eastward across the Viaduct and down Newgate Street ; the while addling his weary wits with heart-sickening computations of minutes , all going hopelessly to prove that he would be late , far too late even presupposing the unlikely . The unlikely , be it known , was that the _ Alethea _ would not attempt to sail before the turn of the tide . For this was his mission , to find the _ Alethea _ before she sailed . Incredible as it may appear , at five o'clock , or maybe earlier , on the morning of the twenty-second of April , 1906 , A.D. , Philip Kirkwood , normally a commonplace but likable young American in full possession of his senses , might have been seen -LRB- and by some was seen -RRB- plodding manfully through Cheapside , London , England , engaged upon a quest as mad , forlorn , and gallant as any whose chronicle ever inspired the pen of a Malory or a Froissart . In brief he proposed to lend his arm and courage to be the shield and buckler of one who might or might not be a damsel in distress ; according as to whether Mrs. Hallam had spoken soothly of Dorothy Calendar , or Kirkwood 's own admirable faith in the girl were justified of itself . Proceeding upon the working hypothesis that Mrs. Hallam was a polished liar in most respects , but had told the truth , so far as concerned her statement to the effect that the gladstone bag contained valuable real property -LRB- whose ownership remained a moot question , though Kirkwood was definitely committed to the belief that it was none of Mrs. Hallam 's or her son 's -RRB- : he reasoned that the two adventurers , with Dorothy and their booty , would attempt to leave London by a water route , in the ship , _ Alethea _ , whose name had fallen from their lips at Bermondsey Old Stairs . Kirkwood 's initial task , then , would be to find the needle in the haystack -- the metaphor is poor : more properly , to sort out from the hundreds of vessels , of all descriptions , at anchor in midstream , moored to the wharves of ` long-shore warehouses , or in the gigantic docks that line the Thames , that one called _ Alethea _ ; of which he was so deeply mired in ignorance that he could not say whether she were tramp-steamer , coastwise passenger boat , one of the liners that ply between Tilbury and all the world , Channel ferry-boat , private yacht -LRB- steam or sail -RRB- , schooner , four-master , square-rigger , barque or brigantine .