Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/215

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"Too cute for that!" replied the manager. "He'd his money in his pocket."

Wedgwood went away wondering what to do next. He was becoming more and more puzzled by the intricacy of the web which he had been given to take to pieces: it seemed to him that if he untied one knot it was only to find half a dozen present themselves in its place. But suddenly as he walked slowly along the gloomy streets a new idea came to him. If Thomas Wraypoole wanted to go abroad he would have to possess a passport. And Wedgwood knew something about passports. They are not got in a hurry; there are tiresome and tedious things to be done in getting them. Supposing you are a British subject, or naturalized in the United Kingdom, you have to fill up a declaration made by either a banker, or a mayor, or a magistrate, or a provost, or a justice of the peace, or a minister of religion, or a barrister-at-law, or a physician, or a surgeon, or a solicitor, or a notary public; the authorities may also require your certificate of birth and certain other evidence to show, one supposes, that you really are the person you claim to be. But that is not all. You must furnish with your application and its verification two copies of your photograph, one of which must be certified by the recommender. And you must