The assassin excused himself quietly and walked to the nearest door, some twenty feet from his chair. He stopped a servant and said, “Where’s the lavatory, please?” The servant gave instructions with jabs of his finger. That much would be seen by anyone in the room who might have been curious enough to be watching. It would explain his abrupt departure and it wasn’t likely the others at his own table would take much notice of his absence for quite some time.
He found himself in a narrow corridor that ran through the interior darkness of the villa. A turning brought him to a junction and he made an unhesitating turn to the right. The hall was narrow and plain-an access for the serving staff. It took him to the foot of a flight of unadorned wooden stairs: he climbed quietly on the balls of his feet into the housemaids’ wing of the building.
It made for a long and circuitous approach and it was not the route he would use for his escape; he had rehearsed the timing in his mind and it was based on a judgment of several factors, not least of which was the age and decrepitude of Devenko’s companions in the drawing-room conference. The room was architecturally the front sitting-room of a suite which contained the Grand Duke’s bedroom and two smaller bedrooms which presently were occupied by a doctor and two nurses. The doctor was at dinner in the dining hall below; the nurses would be no trouble.
The escape path he’d chosen was the fastest and most direct means of exit from the villa: down the portrait-gallery corridor, down the main staircase and across the foyer and out. From there it was a few strides into the deep shadows of the trees that encroached on the building; once in those trees at night he would be free to move at will. The Packard was parked half a kilometer along the road; he would be well away before a search could be organized effectively or the police brought in.
The assassination would be clean and simple because that was the approach that guaranteed success. If the door was locked he had prepared a ruse to induce them to open it-a “telegram from London for the General Devenko”-a tired-familiar gambit but as effective as any and more disarming than most.
One of them would open the door-perhaps carelessly, perhaps cautiously. In either case it was a matter of slamming the door fully open, finding Devenko, taking his shots and then making his run for it. They were old men in that room, all but the one who was Devenko’s brother and who therefore would react first by crouching at the victim’s side in concern. Even if any of them gave chase there was no cause for fear because he had the advantage of the interval during which they would be stunned and bewildered. And he had the gun.
He left the maids’ wing and went along the narrow hall to the front of the upper story; let himself out into the gallery and walked slowly past the head of the great stair, looking down into the foyer. It was quite unoccupied-every servant in the house had been called into the busy platoon in the dining hall.
He moved without sound along the rank of Romanov portraits. Midway along the gallery stood a small table supporting a half life-size bust of Peter the Great; he debated moving the table across the corridor but decided against it-there would be time to dodge around it. He went on to the drawing room door and stopped to listen: heard voices within but not the words. The oak was thick and sturdy.
He looked both ways along the corridor and lifted the Luger from his belt, testing the silencer to be sure it was screwed tight; locked his grip, flicked off the safety and lifted his left hand to knock.