"Enough!" he said. "You are madmen, dreamers! You come to me after all these years, to ask me to be a party in destroying the peace and prosperity our great country enjoys and has enjoyed for more than thirty years. You ask me, twice President of the Republic which I helped to make--" Zorilla lifted his hand and the great Brazilian diamonds in his rings shot out baleful fires. "Enough, senor," he said in a thick voice. "That is your unalterable decision?" Morse laughed contemptuously. "While Azucar stands," he said, "I stand where I am, and nothing will change me." "You stand where you are, Mendoza," said the marquis with a new gravity and dignity in his voice, "but I assure you it will not be for long. You have two years to run, that's true. But at the end of them be sure, oh, be very sure, that the end will come, and swiftly." Morse rose. "I will endeavor to put the remaining two years to good use," he said, with grim and almost contemptuous mockery. "Do so, senor," said Zorilla, "but remember that in our forests the traveler may press onward for days and weeks, and all the time in the tree-tops, the silent jaguar is following, following, waiting--" "I have traveled a good deal in our forests in my youth, Don Zorilla. I have even slain many jaguars." The three men looked at each other steadily and long, then the two visitors bowed and turned to go. But, just as they were moving off towards the lift dome, Zorilla turned back and held out a card to Don Mendoza. It was an ordinary visiting card with a name engraved upon it. Morse took it, looked at the name, and then stood still and frozen in his tracks. He did not move until the whirr of the bell and the clang of the gate told him the roof-garden was his own again. Then he staggered to the table like a drunken man, sank into a chair and bowed his head upon the gleaming pearl and crimson. CHAPTER ONE When my father died and left me his large fortune I also inherited that very successful London newspaper, the _Evening Special_. I decided to edit it myself. To be six-and-twenty, to live at high pressure, to go everywhere, see everything, know everybody, and above all to have Power, this is success in life. I would not have changed my position in London for the Premiership. On the evening of Lady Brentford's dance, I dined alone in my Piccadilly flat. There was nothing much doing in the way of politics and I had been playing golf at Sandown the whole of the day. I hadn't seen the paper until now, when Preston brought it in--the last edition--and I opened it over my coffee. There were, and are, few things that I love better than the _Evening Special_. I claim for it that it is the most up-to-date evening newspaper in England, bright and readable from the word "go," and singularly accurate in all its information.