No; I am not sure that it was not the left-hand pocket.
Quivering with excitement he bent again over the book and studied it intently. After all, he had not been wrong! He could assert now, without fear of refutation, that Stryker had lied.
Some one had wielded an industrious pencil on the page. It was, taken as a whole, fruitful of clues. Its very heading was illuminating:
LONDON to VLISSINGEN (FLUSHING) AND BREDA;
which happened to be the quickest and most direct route between London and Antwerp. Beneath it, in the second column from the right, the pencil had put a check-mark against:
And now he saw it clearly--dolt that he had been not to have divined it ere this! The _Alethea_ had run in to Queensborough, landing her passengers there, that they might make connection with the eleven-ten morning boat for Flushing,--the very side-wheel steamer, doubtless, which he had noticed beating out in the teeth of the gale just after the brigantine had picked him up. Had he not received the passing impression that the _Alethea_, when first he caught sight of her, might have been coming out of the Medway, on whose eastern shore is situate Queensborough Pier? Had not Mrs. Hallam, going upon he knew not what information or belief, been bound for Queensborough, with design there to intercept the fugitives?
Kirkwood chuckled to recall how, all unwittingly, he had been the means of diverting from her chosen course that acute and resourceful lady; then again turned his attention to the tables.
A third check had been placed against the train for Amsterdam scheduled to leave Antwerp at 6:32 p. m. Momentarily his heart misgave him, when he saw this, in fear lest Calendar and Dorothy should have gone on from Antwerp the previous evening; but then he rallied, discovering that the boat-train from Flushing did not arrive at Antwerp till after ten at night; and there was no later train thence for Amsterdam. Were the latter truly their purposed destination, they would have stayed overnight and be leaving that very evening on the 6:32. On the other hand, why should they wait for the latest train, rather than proceed by the first available in the morning? Why but because Calendar and Mulready were to wait for Stryker to join them on the _Alethea_?