"Precisely," Ysidro said. "And don't pretend you did not know that you were hired to kill by other killers in the days when you took the Queen's Coin. Wherein lies the difference between the Empire, which holds its immortality in many men's consciousness, and the vampire, who holds it in one?"

It could have been a rhetorical question, but there was not that inflec-tion in the vampire's voice, and he waited afterward for an answer.

"Perhaps in the fact that the Empire never blackmailed me into serv-ing it?"

"Did it not?" There was the faintest movement of one of those curv-ing brows-like the smile, the bleached echo of what had once been a human mannerism. "Did you not serve it out of that peculiarly English brand of sentimentalism that cherishes sodden lawns and the skyline of Oxford and even the yammering dialects of your peasants? Did you not risk your own life and take those of others, so that ' England would remain England '-as if, without Maxim guns and submarines, it would somehow attach itself to the fabric of Germany or Spain? And when this ceased to be a consideration for you, did you not turn your back in disgust upon what you had done like a man falling out of love?

"We need a man who can move about in the daylight as well as in the hours of darkness, who is acquainted with the techniques of research and the nuances of legend, as well as with the skills of a killer and a spy. We merely agree with your late Queen as to the choice of the man."

Asher studied him for a long moment under the jumpy glare of the gas jet in its pierced metal sheath. The face was smooth and unwrinkled and hard, the slender body poised and balanced like a young man's in its well-tailored gray suit. But the jeweled eyes held in them an expres-sion beyond denning, the knowledge of one who has seen three and a half centuries of human folly and human sin reel gigglingly by; they were the eyes of one who was once human, but is no longer.