"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 rôles. 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."