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Leaving Nottidge to consider his next movement, Wedgwood hurried back to Hunter Street as fast as a taxi-cab could carry him. He anticipated little from another meeting with Mr. Patello, but the mention of Mrs. Patello's name had aroused a good deal of curiosity in him. Until a few minutes before his departure from Nottidge House he had stuck to his theory that Mrs. Patello, as the result of certain machinations known only to herself and her sister Mrs. Clagne, was the tall, spare woman in a long fur coat who had lured Avice Mortover away from her lodgings.

There was nothing in the statement of Marco the waiter and Hobson the cab-driver to controvert that theory. But when he heard that Mrs. Patello had called to see him at the police-station he began to be doubtful: it was scarcely likely, he thought, that Mrs. Patello would come seeking a police-officer if she had been mixed up in what to say the least of it was a doubtful proceeding. Still—he did not know Mrs. Patello. Mrs. Patello might be one of those