'MORS JANUA VITAE,' he smiled. (I recognized the quotation: it was
about all the Latin I knew.) 'I'm coming to that, but I've got to put
you wise about a lot of things first. If you read your newspaper, I
guess you know the name of Constantine Karolides?'

I sat up at that, for I had been reading about him that
very afternoon.

'He is the man that has wrecked all their games. He is the one
big brain in the whole show, and he happens also to be an honest
man. Therefore he has been marked down these twelve months
past. I found that out--not that it was difficult, for any fool could
guess as much. But I found out the way they were going to get
him, and that knowledge was deadly. That's why I have had to decease.'

He had another drink, and I mixed it for him myself, for I was
getting interested in the beggar.

'They can't get him in his own land, for he has a bodyguard of
Epirotes that would skin their grandmothers. But on the 15th day of
June he is coming to this city. The British Foreign Office has taken
to having International tea-parties, and the biggest of them is due
on that date. Now Karolides is reckoned the principal guest, and if
my friends have their way he will never return to his admiring
countrymen.'

'That's simple enough, anyhow,' I said. 'You can warn him and
keep him at home.'

'And play their game?' he asked sharply. 'If he does not come