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 put in your application not less than four days before the passport is to be issued, when you must pay seven shillings and sixpence for it. And even then, unless you merely wish to travel to some one country there are tiresome things like endorsements and visas and other matters to obtain and attend to—the whole business is exasperating. But Wedgwood, reflecting on it, knew that if he could obtain information that Thomas Wraypoole had recently applied for and procured a passport it would show that for some little time he had been meditating taking his departure from his native land.

The Passport Office is in Queen Anne's Gate Buildings, not such a very long way from where Wedgwood remembered the existence of these tiresome documents, and he proceeded to walk in its direction. He had reached the southern end of Westminster Bridge when, glancing aside at the crowded traffic, he suddenly caught sight of Stainsby in a taxi-cab. The apprentice was leaning out of the window, pointing the driver either to something ahead or to some shop or office on the other side of the road. And Wedgwood, fancying Stainsby to be there on some business of his new employer's turned away, looking no more. Had he contrived to catch Stainsby's eye and gone over to speak to him, the detective would have saved himself