twenty minutes past eight
`` Take good care of it , for there are twenty thousand pounds in it . '' Passepartout nearly dropped the bag , as if the twenty thousand pounds were in gold , and weighed him down . Master and man then descended , the street door was double-locked , and at the end of Saville Row they took a cab and drove rapidly to Charing Cross . The cab stopped before the railway station at twenty minutes past eight . Passepartout jumped off the box and followed his master , who , after paying the cabman , was about to enter the station , when a poor beggar woman , with a child in her arms , approached him . Her naked feet were smeared with mud , her head covered with a wretched bonnet , from which hung a tattered feather , and her shoulders shrouded in a ragged shawl . She mournfully asked for alms .