Page:Buchan - The Thirty-Nine Steps (Grosset Dunlap, 1915).djvu/25

 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 they win, for he's the only man that can straighten out the tangle. And if his guvernment [sic] is 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 asked. "They're not going to let their guests