Frankenstein and the Vampire Countess by Brian Stableford

Author:Brian Stableford [Stableford, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Coat Press
Published: 2012-09-03T00:00:00+00:00

PART TWO: THE VAMPIRE IN PARIS

Chapter One

Fog in Paris

As Gregory Temple was about to turn the corner of the Rue de la Lanterne he heard a curious sound, something between a hiss and a whistle, which was evidently intended to attract his attention. He turned to look at the dark doorway from which it had come, but the combination of shadow and fog made it impossible to discern the face of the man who was lurking there. He cursed the bad weather; fog was the curse of London, but he appeared to have brought this one with him to the streets of Paris, where it seemed to him to be just as foreign as he was.

“Monsieur Temple!” The man in the door way was evidently impatient.

Temple did not move, although he had stopped dead. If the other man wanted to talk to him, then he would have to step out into the street, where he face would be lit, vaguely at least, by a street-light.

Eventually, the other accepted the necessity. He was a small man but a wiry one, dressed with unusual flamboyance for someone who maintained vigils in dark doorways, although he did not seem to have acquired sophisticated tastes, any more than he was blessed with natural elegance. He might have passed for a dandy in the worst kind of licherie, but he would have been a clownish caricature in the Bois de Boulogne.

“We’d do better to step into the shadows, Monsieur Temple,” the caricature said, speaking in vulgar French but obviously expecting to be understood. “You’re being followed, and you’re not the only visitor that Monsieur Sévérin is expecting tonight. Monsieur Vidocq suggested that I should look out for you, and make contact if I could. Don’t worry—we’re on the same side.”

Temple scowled in dire annoyance. He had not been in the best of tempers for some time, ever since discovering that Ned Knob had held back a considerable fraction of the story of what had happened in the Spezia. It was bad enough to be betrayed by one’s own petty low-life spies without having their French equivalents greet him as if he were a brother in arms. He had heard rumors at the Prefecture regarding the gang of ex-convicts who had set up as an arm of the detective police in the Petite Rue de Sainte-Anne, with the reluctant blessing of the Prefect, and was not at all pleased to learn that they had apparently heard rumors of his business—rumors that had evidently been updated as a result of his findings in the Prefecture files, which he had assumed to be known to no one else but himself. “Is that hulking brute dogging my footsteps another of Vidocq’s damned bagne-sweepings?” he demanded, angrily.

The agent did not seem at all alarmed by his attitude. “Monsieur Vidocq is a great admirer of your work, Monsieur Temple,” he said, earnestly. “He considers your book on the art of detection to be a masterpiece. My name is Coco-Lacour. I’m Monsieur

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