chateau is isolated, and God knows, this part of Provence is damned remote. What could anyone find out here? There’s nothing very strategic in your ten-kilometer radius unless you think that they’re going to start last-ditch battles for the smaller passes.”
“We’re very close to Switzerland. As many secrets as gold are brokered through Geneva and Zurich. With a listening post here, a great deal could be learned.” Saint-Germain raised one shoulder. “I may be feinting at shadows, but it worries me.”
“If they want a listening post for Switzerland, why not in Switzerland?” James asked.
“The Swiss take a dim view of the abuse of their neutrality. Certainly there are monitoring posts in Bavaria and Austria, but it is not as easy to watch Geneva and Lausanne. The Resistance have found men and women doing espionage work in these mountains before. Last year, it was a gentleman claiming to be a naturalist hoping to preserve a particular bird; he climbed all over the mountains, and stayed in the old monastery on the next ridge. He might have accomplished his task, whatever it was, if one of the Resistance men did not become suspicious when he saw the supposed naturalist walk by a nest of the bird in question without a second look. It may be that Madame Kunst is nothing more than an Austrian refugee in a panic, but I am not going to assume anything until she has shown me I have no reason to be concerned.”
James chuckled. “And where do you fit into this?”
“I don’t want to fit into it at all,” was Saint-Germain’s short rejoinder. “War ceased to amuse me millen … years ago.” He shook his head. “Apparently you haven’t considered our position. We are both foreigners in a country at war. If we are imprisoned, which could happen—it has happened before—our particular needs would make a prolonged stay … difficult.” He recalled several of the times he had been confined, and each brought its own burden of revulsion. “You would not like prison, Mister Tree.”
“I wouldn’t like it in any case,” James said at once. “I knew a reporter who was shot by the Spanish for trying to file an uncensored story. He’d done it before, and they caught him trying the same thing again.”
Saint-Germain lifted his head, and listened. “Ah. That will be Mirelle. We will continue this at a later time, Mister Tree.”
“What?” James cried, remembering the woman’s name all too clearly. Now he, too, could hear an approaching automobile.
“You do have need of her, Mister Tree,” Saint-Germain said quietly. “More than you know now.”
James came off the sofa to round on le Comte. “It’s monstrous. I’ve gone along with some of what you’ve told me, but I draw the line at this!”
“Perhaps you should wait until you have a better idea of what ‘this’ is,” Saint-Germain said, a touch of his wry humor returning. “She is looking forward to this evening. It would be sad if you were to disappoint her.”
“Come on,” James protested.
This time, when Saint-Germain spoke, his voice was low and his eyes compassionate. “Mister Tree, you will have to learn sometime, and we haven’t the luxury of leisure. Mirelle wants to have the pleasure of taking your vampiric virginity, and you would do well to agree. We are rarely so fortunate in our first … experiences. You will spare yourself a great deal of unpleasantness if you will set aside your worry and pride long enough to lie with her. Believe this.”
“But …” James began, then stopped. He could feel his hunger coiled within him, and he knew without doubt that it was hearing the beat of Madame Kunst’s heart that had sharpened it. “Okay, I’ll try. If nothing else,” he went on with a poor attempt at jauntiness, “I’ll get a good lay.”
Saint-Germain’s brows rose. “It is essential that she have the … good lay. Otherwise you will have nothing, Mister Tree. Males of our blood are like this.” He was about to go on when there was a quick, emphatic step in the hall and the door was flung open.
Mirelle Bec was thirty-four, firm-bodied and comfortably voluptuous. She did not so much enter the room as burst into it with profligate vitality. Drab clothes and lack of cosmetics could not disguise her sensuality. Her hair was a dark cloud around a pert face that was more exciting than pretty, and when she spoke, it was in rapid, enthusiastic bursts. “Comte!” she called out and hastened across the room to