Accordingly he had taken his station, secure from notice, at a point among the azalea bushes which commanded the path leading from below the terrace to the Mercury Pavilion. He saw a man’s figure emerge from the shadow of the high parapet and advance quickly along the alley which ran a few yards in front of where they stood. He made a sign to the two who waited behind him, and all three crouched down expectantly.
Von Bertheim came on steadily, unsuspectingly. They could hear his footsteps, now passing close to their ambush, presently striking the stone step of the pavilion and entering. Like feline beasts of prey they crept toward their quarry; Ompertz with a campaigner’s expert caution, the two Italians with the fell litheness of tracking leopards. Noiselessly they gained the alley and now retreat was cut off, the trap was complete.
“Wait here,” he whispered, motioning back the cutthroats at his side. “If I need you I will call.”
But one pressed forward at his shoulder. “Better make sure this time, Captain,” he urged.
However, Ompertz preferred to do the ill work his own way. In his idea the victim, being, as the uniform had told him, a soldier, should meet his death at the hands of a soldier, not at those of a professional spy and assassin which he shrewdly suspected to be the vocation of his two assistants.
“Stay here,” he repeated authoritatively. “I am no bungler—this is one’s man’s work.”
He went forward alone and stood in the doorway of the pavilion. Ludovic, who was sitting on a rustic chair at the farther side of the little room, started up at the sound of his step and began to cross to the door. Then he stopped, seeing it was a man’s figure that filled the entrance. A stream of moonlight came through the window and lay slantwise across the room, dividing the two men. Into this band of light a glittering object was suddenly projected. It was the barrel of a pistol pointing straight at Ludovic’s heart. He gave a quick cry.
“Hold your hand, fellow! I am——”
There was an answering, half smothered exclamation as the pistol was lowered and Ompertz’s face peered forward, coming into the shaft of light. “Lieutenant von Bertheim!” he said in a shocked whisper. “You? And, God forgive me, I was about to——”
“To put me out of Chancellor Rollmar’s way,” his intended victim supplied with a laugh. “If you have any scruples as to disobeying your orders I think I can remove them.”