We found our lawyer—who looked almost like a caricature of a slick villain. He had a large paunch, a hair-thin mustache, smoked a big cigar, and talked out of the side of his mouth. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head one bit,” he said, putting a big hand on Mummy’s shoulder. “Cy Goldman told me to take care of you and take care of you I will. ‘Take care of my new star,’ Cy says and whatever Cy says, Cy gets. Know what I’m saying?”

He whisked us off to the Riverside Hotel, told us that a stay had been arranged in a bungalow at a dude ranch where they asked no questions, and that Mummy’s stand-in would report for duty as soon as Mummy wanted to check out. I could tell from her face that she’d like to check out in the next five minutes. However we did what we were told. The papers were filed with great ceremony. We walked up and down Virginia Street in the evening, visited casinos, and made sure that plenty of people noticed Claire Daniels.

“This is certainly not Monte Carlo,” Mummy said, coughing in the smoke-laden atmosphere as we walked between craps tables and penny slot machines. “I hope Max appreciates how I’m suffering for him. At this moment I could be at the villa on Lake Lugano, at my own dear little house in Nice or in London at Brown’s. I never believed I could feel so homesick and so far away.”

I shared her feelings. I lay listening to the mournful toots of goods trains as they rattled past and wondered what Darcy was doing at this moment and when I’d see him again. Had he caught his gentleman cat burglar? I wondered.

“Cor, miss, this is bloomin’ awful, ain’t it?” Queenie said. “If this is America, give me good old England any day.” Since she came from the backstreets of Walthamstow, near the gasworks, it really must have been bad.

It was hard to sleep with the heat and the trains and I was glad when we moved away from the tracks, out of town, to a ranch in the middle of the dusty desert. At least it had a swimming pool and shading cottonwood trees. Mummy refused to swim and stayed out of the sun. “I’m sure Queen Mary Tudor did not have a tan,” she said. “The English aristocracy have always been noted for their porcelain white skin. Look at you, darling. If you go in the sun you just freckle. You turn into a revolting orange blob, darling.”

“Thanks, awfully,” I said. “You really know how to boost my confidence.”