“I can’t do that!” I said. “They’d throw me out for good, and then where would you be? Just wait and see, that’s the best thing to do.”

Lucy made a face, but she saw I was right. And as it happened, none of us had long to wait, because only a minute or so later Frau Muller the housekeeper (as surly as a goose, and with the same way of leaning at you with a long neck when she was cross) came bustling in.

“Miss Lucy and Miss Charlotte! You’re to go and wash yourselves and brush your hair and come down to your Uncle Heinrich in ten minutes. And you, Kelmar, put that sewing down and get along to the drawing-room—Dettweiler fell over in the courtyard and broke her ankle, stupid girl, so you’ll have to be parlormaid for the time being.”

They were hustled away, and I took a candle and hastened down to the drawing-room. Poor little Susi Dettweiler—Count Karlstein had made her cry three times yesterday, and now she breaks her ankle! My heart was thumping wildly as I went in, in case my clumsiness attracted Count Karlstein’s attention. I feared he’d lash at me like a tiger.

But when I opened the door, I saw him so deep in conversation with the skinny old stranger, and the skinny old stranger paying such close attention to him, that neither of them noticed me for a moment or two. I don’t know what I should have done, but I stood in the shadows, too nervous to go forward, and listened to what they were saying.

“Damn it, Haifisch,” said Count Karlstein (Haifisch! Lucy was right, then: this cool old skeleton was the lawyer from Geneva), “you’re not sure? After nine years? How much longer d’you want? Would a hundred years be sufficient? Would you be able to say then, ‘Yes, Count Karlstein, we have finally established that there is no other claimant—for if there was, he must be dead by now’? Eh?”

Meister Haifisch showed no sign that Count Karlstein’s tone annoyed him. He was as calm as he’d been when he’d stepped out of the coach, having missed certain death by the thickness of a wheel rim.

“You asked me to make certain, Count Karlstein,” he said evenly. “Certainty without evidence, in a case like this, is worthless.”

Count Karlstein snorted. “Worthless! You’re worthless, Haifisch, if you can’t do better than that. If evidence is all you want, can’t you manufacture some? Eh? Make it up?”