four o'clock
Then Bob began his story . It was , for a reporter of his experience , brilliant , with good deductions , good guesses and good ambiguous generalities . It seemed to tell more than it really did . At four o'clock that afternoon Ned and Alan were speeding over the green and fertile prairies of middle Kansas in blissful ignorance of what Bob Russell had done . Under striking headlines appeared the following story : `` Ned Napier , the famous young aeronaut of Chicago , passed through the city this morning on his way to the southwest to execute the most daring and important balloon journey ever undertaken in this country . Accompanied by an assistant , Alan Hope , and on board a special car packed with $ 50,000 worth of apparatus he will proceed to Clarkeville , an insignificant town in New Mexico , from which place he will make his hazardous flight over the mountains lying to the north . The aerial journey may possibly extended over the Sierra Nevadas as far as the Pacific Coast .