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 they win, for he’s

the only man that can straighten out the tangle. And if his Government are

warned he won’t come, for he does not know how big the stakes will be on June

the 15th.”

 

“What about the British Government?” I said. “They’re not going to let their

guests be murdered. Tip them the wink, and they’ll take extra precautions.”

 

“No good. They might stuff your city with plain-clothes detectives and double

the police and Constantine would still be a doomed man. My friends are not

playing this game for candy. They want a big occasion for the taking off, with

the eyes of all Europe on it. He’ll be murdered by an Austrian, and there’ll be

plenty of evidence to show the connivance of the big folk in Vienna and Berlin.

It will all be an infernal lie, of course, but the case will look black enough

to the world. I’m not talking hot air, my friend. I happen to know every detail

of the hellish contrivance, and I can tell you it will be the most finished

piece of blackguardism since the Borgias. But it’s not going to come off if

there’s a certain man who knows the wheels of the business alive right here in

London on the 15th day of June. And that man is going to be your servant,

Franklin P. Scudder.”