Ross Macleod needs money -- which makes him undertake an unpleasant job, to follow Alice, Sir Arthur Haley-White's rebellious, tawny-haired daughter, to France where she has eloped to marry an unscrupulous gigolo. Young Alice is not the "little rich girl" that Ross expects, and to his surprise, he finds himself in love with her. The setting is Arles, during the Mistral festival -- the atmosphere, Provence in a blazing summer, hot, savage, with an edge of corruption that is linked to the character of a man no one sees but everyone knows -- a seemingly simple wine salesman whose baleful charm is felt from Paris to London to Lisbon. -- Who is this man? -- Where is he? --- For some one of the several women he has betrayed is going to kill him. -- But possibly not in time....