"In what way s'il vous plait?"
Bending forward, his black eyes flashing, Keralio said earnestly:
"That woman is devoted to only two beings in this world—her husband and her baby. Sooner or later, perhaps only in a few days, she will discover that Handsome is an impostor. He is such a fool that exposure is inevitable. The blow will almost kill her. Above all, it will humiliate her pride to know that unwittingly she has allowed that drunken brute, that poor counterfeit of her husband, to caress and fondle her. Next in her affections comes her baby. If any danger threatened the child, she would stop at nothing, she would make any sacrifice to ward off the danger. I propose to bring about just that situation——"
The valet half started up from his chair. Hardened and callous as he was in crime, he was hardly prepared to go to that extreme.
"Death?" he exclaimed, horror stricken, "you would kill ze child?"
"No fool—not kill the child. I'll kidnap it—that's all. We'll bring the child here and, then I'll write the mother, telling her where it is and to come to it, but warning her that if she values the child's life, she must tell no one, and must come here unaccompanied. Once she is here, I will take care of the rest. Do you understand?"
The valet breathed more freely.
"So you will that I——"
His chief nodded.
"Precisely. You'll take the flyer to Philadelphia. Say you come from the mother. They'll have no suspicion. Take the child and come here at once. Understand?"