m in
despair. What _can_ I do?"

She looked at me in piteous appeal, the tears brimming over, her hands
stretched towards me with a gesture at once pathetic and enchanting.

"Say, rather, what can _we_ do, Lady Claire," I corrected her. "This
is my business, too, if you will allow me to say so, and I offer you
my advice for what it is worth."

"Yes, I will take it thankfully, I promise you."

"The only safe course now is the boldest. You must make another
exchange with your sister, Lady Blackadder--"

"Call her Lady Henriette Standish. She has dropped the other
entirely."

"By all means. Lady Henriette then has determined to take the first
train from Amberieu at--Have you a Bradshaw? Thank you--at 5.52
A.M., which will get her to Culoz at 6.48. You must, if
possible, exchange babies, and at the same time exchange _roles_. I
feel sure that you, at any rate, are not afraid of going to Marseilles
with the real baby."

"Hardly!" she laughed scornfully. "But Henriette--what is to become of
her?"

"That shall be my affair. It is secondary, really. The first and
all-important is for you to secure the little Ralph and escape with
him. It will have to be done under the very eyes of the enemy, for
there is every reason to fear they will be going on, too. The other
detective, this Tiler--I have heard them call him by that name--will
have told them of her ladyship's movements, and will have summoned
them, Falfani at least, to his side."

"If I go on by that early train they will, no doubt, do the same. I
must not be seen by them. They would fathom the trick of the two
parties and the exchange."

"Yet you must go on by that train. It's the only way."

"Of course I might change my appearance a little, but not enough to
deceive them. Cannot I go across to the station before them and hide
in some compartment specially reserved for us?"

"It might be managed. We might secure the whole of the seats."

"Money is no object."

"It will do most things, especially in Switzerland. Leave it to me,
Lady Claire. All you have to do is to be ready to-morrow morning, very
early, remember. Before 5 A.M."

"If necessary I'll sit up all night."

"Well, then, that's settled. I'll knock at your door and see you get
some coffee."

"Philpotts shall make it; no one in the hotel must know. There will be
the bill."

"I will see to that. I'll come back after you're ensconced, with the
blinds drawn. Sick lady on the way, via Culoz to A