“Will the Denver gate still be operational in 1888?” Armstrong asked quietly.
Mr. Gilbert answered. “I don’t see why not. The Wild West Gate is very stable, has been for years, or we wouldn’t be using it as a tour gate. I can’t imagine it going suddenly unstable and closing.”
“Then our boy might try it,” Skeeter mused. “All he’d really need to do is mug a Denver tourist for his ID to get through the gate.”
Armstrong gave him a grudging glance. “Not a bad point. So, we comb the steamship ticket offices?”
Margo eased the icepack into a new position as color returned to her cheeks. “It’s a start,” she nodded. “And we’d better put one of the groomsmen in each major railway station, in case he tries to catch a train for another port city. Liverpool did a lot of trans-Atlantic shipping, passenger as well as cargo.” She grimaced, wincing slightly under the icepack. “James Maybrick certainly shuttled back and forth between Liverpool and the States for years. In fact, he met his wife on one of the crossings, poor woman. I wonder how many trains leave tonight? Or how many ships are scheduled to sail? It’s going to be a long night.”
Fortunately, the Gilberts were able to produce a table of scheduled ship departures from the day’s newspapers. Hettie Gilbert copied them out while her husband retrieved a map of the docklands. He spread it out across his desk, then turned up the gaslight for better illumation. Skeeter stared in rising dismay at the immense stretch of land to be searched. Wapping, the Isle of Dogs, Poplar and Limehouse and Shoreditch, not to mention Whitechapel, of course, and Shadwell. St. Katharine’s Docks, London Docks, Wapping Basin, Shadwell Basin, and the Old Basin below Shadwell. And there was the great West India Docks complex and the smaller Junction Dock, Blackwell Basin, and Poplar Docks. And east of there stood the East India Docks, the Royal Victoria and Albert Docks, and south of the Thames, the vast Surrey Commercial Docks . . .