ten o'clock
And that is just what four o'clock on the morning of the fourteenth of September meant to me . Britton and I set forth in the automobile just at the break of dawn , crossing the river a few miles below the castle , and running back to a point on the right hand bank where we were to await the arrival of the boat conveying the Countess and her escort . Her luggage , carefully disguised as crated merchandise , had gone to Trieste by fast express a couple of days before , sent in my name and consigned to a gentleman whose name I do not now recall , but who in reality served as a sort of middleman in transferring the shipment to the custody of a certain yacht 's commander . It was required of me -- and of my machine , which is more to the point -- that the distance of one hundred and twenty miles through the foothills of the Austrian Alps should be covered and the passengers delivered at a certain railway station fifty miles or more south of Vienna before ten o'clock that night . There they were to catch a train for the little seaport on the upper Adriatic , the name of which I was sworn never to reveal , and , as I have not considered it worth while to be released from that oath , I am of necessity compelled to omit the mention of it here . Mr. Bangs went on to Vienna the night before our departure , taking with him Helene Marie Louise Antoinette , a rather shocking arrangement you would say unless you had come to know the British lawyer as well as we knew him . They were to proceed by the early morning train to this obscure seaport .