The Black Baroness

THE BLACK BARONESS

by

DENNIS WHEATLEY

Copyright: 1940

Author's Note

The sequence of the seven books which recount the war adventures of Gregory Sallust is as follows: The Scarlet Impostor, Faked Passports, The Black Baroness, V for Vengeance, Come Into My Parlour, Traitors' Gate and They Used Dark Forces. Each volume is a complete story in itself, but the series covers Gregory's activities from September, 1939, to May, 1945, against an unbroken background incorporating all the principal events of the Second World War.

Gregory Sallust also appears in three other books: Black August, a story set in an undated future; Contraband, an international smuggling story of 1937; and The Island Where Time Stands Still, an adventure set in the South Seas and Communist China during the year 1954.

CHAPTER 1

Hitler's Secret Weapon

Although it was mid-March snow still capped the tops of the Norwegian mountains which stood out white and clear against a pale, frosty sky. But the sun shone in the valleys and dappled the wavelets of the greenish sea as the little Baltic tramp steamer puffed its way into Oslo Fjord.

On the tramp's foredeck a man and a woman sat in a pair of rickety old basket chairs that they had carried out from the tiny saloon. The woman was golden-haired and very beautiful. Her proud profile and the lazy grace with which she half-reclined in the easy chair marked her at once as an aristocrat. The man was a loose-limbed fellow in the late thirties; dark, lean-faced, and sinewy by nature, a recent bout of fever had given him an almost wolfish look, but it was relieved by a pair of smiling eyes and a cynical twist to his firm, strong mouth.

The woman was the Countess von Osterberg or, since she preferred to be known by her maiden name, Erika von Epp. The man was Gregory Sallust or, as he preferred to be known by the name under which he was travelling, the Colonel-Baron von Lutz. It was March the 19th—six days since the Russo-Finnish War had ended and five days since they had escaped across the ice, which was beginning to break up in theGulf of Finland , to the little tramp that was now just completing the first journey of the year south to her home port.

For the first two days of the voyage they had lain in their narrow quarters almost comatose, gradually recovering from utter nervous and physical exhaustion; the result of the ten days' ordeal through which they had passed before escaping from Herr Gruppenfuhrer Grauber, the chief of the Gestapo Foreign Department, U.A.—I.

From the third day they had staggered out on deck to continue their convalescence in the fresh air and wintry sunshine. Gradually they were getting back to normal, but they still spoke little and slept from dusk to dawn each night, just content to be in each other's company.

Had it not been for their third companion, the Bolshevik General, Stefan Kuporovitch, who had decided to shake the dust of theSoviet Union off his feet with them, they would have talked even less, but the Russian was a talkative person and he had passed through no such ordeal as theirs.

It was he who had made arrangements for the three of them with the captain of the little tramp, but as they had approached the coast ofNorway they had realised that he could not enter another country without a passport. In consequence, he had been landed from the ship's boat, in the early hours of that morning, on a desolate stretch of the Norwegian shore, with the understanding that if he could evade the police he was to meet the others inOslo . So Erika and Gregory were at last alone.

While the tramp chopped its way down the Baltic, they had avoided any discussion about the future. The war had reached a stalemate; for many months the British had appeared satisfied to blockade Germany, while the French accepted the Siegfried Line as impregnable and did not even attempt to test it by attacks in force, and Hitler seemed content to remain blockaded indefinitely, only playing upon the nerves of his opponents and neighbours by threatening a Blitzkrieg on the Balkans, the Low Countries and Scandinavia from week to week in rotation. It looked as though things might go on in that way for years; which was not a happy prospect for the two lovers in view of the fact that she was a German girl and he an Englishman,

If Erika returned to Germany the Nazis would promptly execute her, but she refused to seek sanctuary inBritain orFrance , so her only course was to live in a neutral country where she might still work for Hitler's overthrow. Gregory, on the other hand, was perfectly free to return toEngland although, as a lone wolf, working entirely outside the Secret Service, there was no compulsion for him to do so. But Erika knew her man; he would never be content to settle down with her inNorway orSweden while his country was still lighting for its existence.

With every mile that the tramp came nearer to its destination that thought had troubled them both more and more. They had been in love for over six months and when Erika could get a divorce from her husband they intended to get married. It seemed utterly tragic that now that they were free and together again they must part so soon.

He had tried desperately hard to persuade himself that he was entitled to remain inNorway with her for a few weeks at least. Old Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust, who had sent him out on his strange mission, already knew the results of his wanderings, so there was no one to whom he felt bound to report. Even when he got home he might be kept kicking his heels for months before he was offered another job which really suited his unusual capabilities. Yet he knew that it was no good.Britain was at war and it was up to him to find a way of taking a new hand in the game without an hour's unnecessary delay.

'We should be in by about three o'clock,' he murmured.

She nodded. 'Yes; but they may keep us hanging about for hours before they allow us ashore.'

'That depends on how soon we can get hold of your friend at the German Legation, and how long it takes him to secure entry permits for us.'

'Yes, it's a bore our passports not having Norwegian visas but I'm sure Uli von Einem will soon fix matters up.'

'I only hope to goodness he doesn't happen to know that you're wanted by the Gestapo or that the real Colonel Baron von Lutz was killed while resisting arrest by the Nazis last November.'

Erika shrugged. 'As I said last night, it's not easy for any legation to keep track of what has happened to eighty million Germans while a war is going on and, even if they do know, they can't do anything to us while we're on a neutral ship. We'll just have to think up some other method of getting ashore or transfer to a ship that will take us round to a Swedish port and try our luck there.'

'I can always get in touch with the British Legation,' Gregory said slowly, 'and I might be able to wangle some way of getting you into Norway; but if I can continue to pose as a German it will prevent a lot of unwelcome speculation as to why we're always together while we are in Oslo.'

She turned suddenly and looked him full in the face. 'For how long is that to be, Gregory?'

'Not very long, darling—worse luck,' he replied quietly. 'You know how things are, so we needn't go over it all and add to what we're feeling. As soon as we land I must find out when there's a plane that will take me home, so we've now got only a few days together at the most.'

Erika could have screamed with the frightful injustice of it all. Through his crazy ambition this mountebank, Hitler, had sown the seeds of misery, poverty and death broadcast throughout half the world. The foul crop was barely visible as yet, but in time it would strangle innumerable beautiful things, and already the shoots of the filthy weed were forcing apart the roots of countless loves and friendships.

But she was a splendidly courageous person so she did not seek by a single word to dissuade Gregory from his decision, and her intense distress was shown only by a slight moistening of her very beautiful blue eyes.

An hour later the tramp had berthed and by six o'clock Uli von Einem had joined them with papers enabling them to go ashore. He was a thin, fair man, who in the past had been one of Erika's innumerable admirers, and he possessed all the tact of a born diplomat. Privately, he thought it a queer business that his lovely friend should arrive, without even a beauty-box for baggage, on a tramp steamer that had come from Leningrad, but the one lesson that Freiherr von Einem had learnt since the Nazis had come to power was that the less one knew officially about anything the less likelihood there was of finding oneself carted off, without warning, to a concentration-camp. The passports of both Erika and her friend were in perfect order except that they lacked Norwegian visas, and Erika had intimated that they were both on urgent secret business connected with the prosecution of the war, so von Einem had accepted her statement without comment.

Gregory had thrown overboard the Gestapo uniform that he had stolen from Grauber so he was dressed in a ready-made suit which he had bought off the first Mate of the tramp, but its poor quality was concealed under his rich furs. Erika also was still in her furs, and their only belongings were contained in a single handbag that Gregory had brought out of Russia with him, so they were not long delayed by the Customs. Von Einem drove them to the Grand Hotel in the Karl Johansgt and, having accepted an invitation to lunch with them on the following day, left them there.

On going into the lounge they saw, to their delight, that Kuporovitch had succeeded in evading the Norwegian coastguards. He was sitting with a long-stemmed glass in front of him but as soon as he caught sight of them he disposed of its contents and came hurrying over with a gay wave of his hand.

The Russian was a clean-shaven man in his early fifties. His grey hair was brushed smoothly back and, strangely contrasting with it, his eyebrows, which were still black, ran thin and pointed towards the temples of his smooth white forehead. Under them were a pair of rather lazy blue eyes, but their glance was apt to be deceptive as behind them lay an extremely shrewd intelligence. Up to the age of twenty-nine he had been an officer of the Imperial Russian Army, but when the Revolution had broken out a strange set of circumstances had resulted in his joining the Bolsheviks. After the Civil War he had come to loathe and despise his new masters, yet with the laudable desire to keep his head on his shoulders he had concealed his antipathy for many years with superlative skill. For a long time past he had been hoarding foreign currency with the idea of escaping from the dreary, depressing land of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics so that he might spend his old age among civilised people, and his great ambition was to see the Paris of his youth again.

Greeting his friends in French—which was their common language—he said with a smile: 'I've booked rooms for you— two bedrooms with a bathroom in between, so that you can preserve the proprieties of this charming old world into which I am so delighted to have returned. Come upstairs and I will show you.'

Upstairs, perched on Erika's bed and smoking a long cheroot, he told them, with many chuckles, of his adventures that day. It had all been too easy. He had walked to the nearest village, found its school and routed out the village schoolmaster, to whom he had said: 'I am a member of the French Legation in Oslo and was returning there after a visit to Kristiansand. When the train halted in the station here I got out to get some hot coffee in the buffet and the train went on without me. Unfortunately, too, it carried on my baggage and a small attache-case in which I had some papers and my ticket. Would you oblige me by acting as interpreter at the station so that I can buy another ticket and take the next train on?' The Norwegian had been most polite and helpful, so Kuporovitch had arrived in Oslo without the least difficulty.

Having washed and tidied themselves they went down to the grill-room. The head waiter was nearly guilty of raising an eyebrow when he saw them approaching, for Kuporovitch was in shoddy 'ready-mades' that he had bought at an old-clothes shop in Leningrad, Gregory was in the first Mate's second-best suit and Erika's tweeds showed obvious signs of the hard wear they had sustained; but as the man's glance swept across their faces he noted Erika's regal beauty and that in spite of their shabby clothes both her escorts had the air of men who were used to being obeyed. With a swift bow he led them to a sofa-table.

The under-waiter who took their order brought the maitre d'hotel scurrying back again, his face now wreathed in smiles. The strangely-dressed trio had ordered a superb meal and some of the best wines that his cellar boasted. He did not know that the broad-shouldered, middle-aged man with the black, pointed eyebrows had been cooped up in Russia for nearly a quarter of a century and that it was many months since the others had had a meal in a good restaurant. They were speaking French but he put them down as rich Germans who had been suffering from the Nazis' impoverished larder and had somehow managed to get away to Norway.

Although they had spared no pains or expense in ordering their favourite dishes, the meal was not the success that it should have been, because the black cloud of war and the coming separation weighed heavily upon the spirits of the little party. The tables were widely spaced so they were able to talk freely without risk of being overheard, and when they had reached the coffee and brandy stage Gregory turned to the Russian.

'The time has come, Stefan, when we must discuss plans. I shall have to leave here in a day or two—as soon as I can get a plane—for England. What do you intend to do?'

Kuporovitch smiled. 'Now that I am a free man once more I can hardly wait until I get to Paris; but the devil of it is that I have no passport. What are the intentions of Madame la Comtesse?'

'It would be unwise for her to remain here long. The Germans are so thorough that solely as a matter of routine von Einem will have reported our arrival in Oslo. It may take a week or two passing through the files of petty officials, but sooner or later the Gestapo will learn where she's got to.'

'Does that matter now that she is in a neutral country?'

Gregory grinned. 'You don't know the Gestapo, my friend. They're quite capable of kidnapping Erika or arranging one of their jolly little motor-car accidents in which she would be knocked down and killed.

Besides, as we told you on the tramp, by the merest fluke we happened to come into possession of the German war plan. They've followed it step by step so far, and Norway is the next on their list. Her life would not be worth a moment's purchase if she were still here when they staged an invasion.'

Erika drew slowly on her cigarette. 'What d'you suggest then?'

'Stage 7 of the plan lays it down that Sweden is strong enough to require a separate operation, so she should be left for the time being, but that Norway and Denmark can be taken over together. Sweden would then be entirely isolated and so in no position to resist whenever the Germans consider it convenient to take control there. The plan then passes to Stage 8, which concerns Holland and Belgium, and no further mention of Sweden is made at all. As it's quite on the cards that the Germans will be content to absorb Sweden's entire exports without actually walking into the place for some considerable time, I suggest that Erika should move there.'

The Russian raised his dark eyebrows. 'But surely she will be just as liable to secret attacks from the Gestapo in Sweden as she would be here?'

'No. Here she had to disclose her true identity to get into the country. My suggestion is that she should quietly slip away from Oslo and cross the border at some place up-country; then she could settle in Sweden, under an assumed name, until I can make arrangements for her to sail to America.'

'America!' Erika exclaimed. 'But, darling, once there I may not be able to get back, and I just can't live unless I'm to have some hope of seeing you again before many months are past.'

Gregory sighed. 'We'll talk of that later, my sweet. Your immediate safety is the most important thing. It shouldn't be difficult for you to keep out of trouble in some small Swedish town, even without a passport, for the next few weeks, and my idea was that Stefan could go with you.'

'But I have no wish at all to go to Sweden,' the Russian protested. 'It is to see Paris again ...'

'I know.' Gregory interrupted swiftly; 'but you didn't let me finish. Without a passport you haven't got a hope in hell of getting to France, but the British Government owes me a bit for services rendered so I mean to try to get you a passport and entry permit to France at the same time as I get them for Erika to the United States. In the meantime you can take care of each other.'

'Ah, in that case'—Kuporovitch waved his cigar—' I shall be delighted to place myself at the disposal of Madame la Comtesse.'

'That's settled, then,' said Gregory. 'Let's pay the bill and go up to bed.'

Kuporovitch accompanied them only as far as the lift, since now that he was back in civilisation he had other ideas as to how he meant to spend his evening.

Very reluctantly the following morning Gregory and Erika got up at eleven o'clock and went out into the clear, frosty air of the Norwegian capital. Since he was staying at the hotel as a German, they went to Cook's, where he was able to produce his British passport, and he managed to secure a seat on the air liner which would be leaving for London two days later— Friday the 22nd; after which they bought a number of things that would add to their comfort and some new clothes to make themselves more presentable.

Uli von Einem lunched with them and, preserving the same discretion as on the day before, forbore to inquire into their private concerns but gave them the latest war news that had come through the German Legation. The Finns were submitting peaceably to the terms which the Russians had imposed upon them.

The uncaptured portion of the Mannerheim Line was being rapidly evacuated and Soviet troops had already taken over Finland's 'Gibraltar' on the island of Hangoe, so Russia was now the unchallenged mistress of the Northern Baltic. That was the price that Germany had had to pay to keep her eastern neighbour quiet while she dealt with her enemies in the West. On the other hand, Hitler and Mussolini had met on the Brenner Pass the previous Sunday. No details had been allowed to leak out about the matters discussed there, but it was understood that the meeting had proved highly satisfactory. One presumable result had been the withdrawal of Italy's support from Rumania so that King Carol had been compelled to lift the ban on the Rumanian Iron Guard, which was definitely a victory for the Nazis. Gregory took it all in with the glib appreciation which might have been expected from a German officer, and it did not add to his satisfaction about the way in which the war was going.

He had already scanned the latest English papers to reach Oslo so was more or less au fait with the situation. The big news item was that an Indian fanatic had assassinated Sir Michael O'Dwyer and succeeded in wounding Lord Zetland, Sir Louis Dane and Lord Lamington before he was overpowered, but otherwise old England seemed to be jogging along as though the war were just a rather remote and tiresome business. The British Union, the Nordic League, the Peace Pledge people, and all sorts of other dangerous bodies composed of rogues, cranks, half-wits and actual traitors were still allowed complete liberty to publish as much subversive literature as they liked and to advise cowards how to evade military service on the plea that they were conscientious objectors.

One had only to glance at the small news items in the National Press to see how a weak-kneed government was being intimidated by a handful of irresponsible M.P.s into permitting Hitler's Fifth Column in England absolute freedom to contaminate thousands of misguided idealists and so immensely weaken Britain's war effort. Gregory would have liked to have been given Gestapo powers in the Home Office for half a day. He would have signed the death warrant of every spy caught red-handed since the beginning of the war, had them shot in the courtyard and published photographs of their bodies to intimidate the others. He would then have made both the Fascist and Communist Parties illegal, locked the Home Secretary up in one of his own asylums, retired every permanent Civil Servant over the age of fifty and departed with reasonable confidence that the younger men who remained would have got their bearings in a week and settled down to the job of making Britain safe from her internal enemies.

When lunch was over Erika went off to have a permanent wave, and Gregory spent the afternoon in a state of gloomy depression. It was bad enough that he would so shortly have to leave her, without this awful feeling that a gang of woolly old men were letting Britain drift into the gravest danger.

That night they dined alone and went to Oslo's best musical show, where in spite of the fact that they did not understand Norwegian, they were able to forget for a few hours the separation which so soon was to render them even more miserable.

On the Thursday they did not get up until lunch-time; their last lunch together until neither knew when. In the afternoon, in a desperate effort to forget themselves again, they hired a car and a guide and drove round the principal sights of the Norwegian capital, but by cocktail-time they were gazing forlornly at each other over their glasses, with hardly a word to say. For dinner Kuporovitch joined them. They had seen little of him during the past two days. Perhaps he would really have done them better service if he had remained with them as much as possible to cheer them up, but realising how little time they had together he had tactfully left them to themselves and amused himself with a glamorous blonde whom he had acquired in a dance-club on his first night in Oslo. But it was necessary that their final arrangements should be made, as Gregory's plane left early on Friday morning.

To Gregory’s' relief he found that the Russian was a much more capable companion than the stout-hearted but unimaginative young airman, Freddie Charlton, who had accompanied him on his travels through Germany, Finland and Russia. Kuporovitch had spent such time as had not been occupied in playful dalliance with the glamorous blonde in thinking out the details of the plan that Gregory had outlined two nights before.

He proposed to accompany Erika as her deaf-and-dumb uncle and had already booked accommodation for them at a hotel in Flisen, a small town about seventy miles north-east of Oslo and only about fifteen miles from the Swedish border. After Gregory's departure they would leave Oslo by the eleven-fifty train, sleep at Flisen and hire a car for a week. During the next few days they would make several motoring expeditions as though seeing the sights of the country, in order to carry out a careful reconnaissance of the frontier, which, as Norway and Sweden were on the most friendly terms, must be very lightly guarded; then it should not prove difficult to drive to an unfrequented spot one night, abandon the car and slip over the border. Having arrived in Sweden he suggested that they should make their way to the university town of Uppsala, where they were not likely to run into any foreign diplomats who might know Erika by sight, but which, owing to the nature of the town, included in its inhabitants many foreign teachers and students whose presence would render them inconspicuous while living there quietly. As soon as they were settled in they would send Gregory their address by air mail and await his further instructions. He then handed Gregory a slip of paper with the names under which he proposed they should travel, and three copies of a passport photograph of himself that he had had taken.

'Bless you,' smiled Gregory. 'It's great that you should have thought all this out already. Erika had a passport photograph taken yesterday, so all that remains is the question of money, You had most of mine off me in Kandalaksha and Erika hasn't got any, so by the time I've settled the bill here we shall be pretty well stony.'

Kuporovitch shrugged. 'I have plenty; all my savings in foreign currency that I brought out of Russia as well as the six thousand marks which I changed for you. I'll see to that side of it.'

'Thanks. Whatever you pay out on Erika's behalf I'll refund when you get to France. If they won't let me send cash from England, I've got quite enough pull to fix a trip to Paris and meet you with it there.'

Erika sighed. 'Oh, Stefan, how lucky you are. If only I could go to Paris, too. As it is, I suppose when you two meet I'll be on my way to America.'

Gregory looked across at her with sudden intentness. 'There's time to reconsider your decision yet, darling. Why the hell can't you be sensible and let me get you a permit to enter England as a refugee from Nazi persecution?'

She swallowed hard but shook her head. 'No, dearest, it's no good. Because my country has fallen into the hands of a set of unscrupulous blackguards that doesn't make me any the less a German. I can't accept the hospitality of England or France while your friends and mine are killing one another.'

For a long time they were silent. The fine wine remained almost untasted in the glasses and they ate perfunctorily, hardly noticing the rich dishes which were placed before them. Kuporovitch did his best, but after one or two false starts even the jovial Russian gave up any attempt to make it a jolly party.

Gregory could have coped with most situations but this was beyond him. He and Erika were perfectly free; nothing compelled her to remain in Norway or him to leave it; they could both change their minds at the last moment, but he felt certain now that she would not change hers and he knew quite well that he would not change his. The very fact that their coming separation was self-imposed seemed to make it ten times harder, but a force that was stronger than either of them had them firmly in its grip and was tearing them apart just as surely as diverging currents would carry two pieces of driftwood in different directions.

This was their last night together, perhaps for years, perhaps, in the uncertainties of war, for ever; yet instead of savouring every moment of it they were sitting there tongue-tied and speechless. He felt that he was letting Erika down appallingly badly—after all, it was always up to the man to make the running—yet for the life of him he could not bring himself to be even normally cheerful—let alone gay and entertaining.

Erika knew just what he was feeling and her heart went out to him. Like him, she would have done anything to be able to recall their mood of the night on which they had first abandoned themselves to their wild passion for each other; but she was wise enough to know why that was impossible. Then they had just been a very beautiful woman and a damnably attractive man, both of whom were highly experienced in the art of love; two born pagans, who openly boasted that they had always taken with greedy hands all the joys that the gods had given them; but they had hardly known each other. Two brief meetings, with an interval of a few weeks between, had lit the flame of desire in both of them; each knew that the other was courageous, unscrupulous and clever, but no more, and after that night, but for a far deeper attraction, their interest in each other might soon have exhausted itself. That had been passion; this was love. And where Passion is given to those whom the gods love as a glorious plaything, Love is a harsh taskmaster.

They could have parted after that night with no regrets and a lovely memory; they could only part now, after they had come to know each other so well, with an actual physical pain that seemed to grip them in the pit of the stomach and rend each separate heart-string. To have pretended anything else would only have been a hideous attempt at play-acting which Erika could not have borne. She was terribly glad that Gregory did not attempt it.

From a glance at the clock she saw that it was already half-past nine. In less than twelve hours Gregory would have left her. She was not greedy for the caresses he had lavished on her in the previous nights, because her passion was temporarily numbed by her acute despair, but she wanted desperately to lie in his arms while he comforted her, to cling close to him in every moment that was left to her and gather all the strength she could for their separation. So she thrust back her chair and said:

'You've got to make an early start tomorrow, darling. I'm sure Stefan will forgive us if we desert him.'

Kuporovitch smiled sympathetically. 'Please. I can take care of myself, and I'll settle the bill. I shall see you both in the morning.'

Gregory nodded his thanks and followed her out into the lounge. At one table a little group of people were sitting drinking coffee and liqueurs. There was a very handsome dark girl of about twenty-three among them. She had a well-modelled, full-lipped mouth, fine, regular features, a strong, determined chin and large, lustrous brown eyes. On seeing Erika her eyes widened and she stood up.

Erika smothered an exclamation of annoyance as the dark girl hurriedly left the table and came towards them. This was the last moment she would have chosen to exchange meaningless gossip with her best friend—let alone a woman who was only a casual acquaintance—but there was no escape. The girl seized both her hands impulsively and exclaimed:

'My dear! How absolutely marvellous to see you! I thought —I thought . . .' Her voice tailed off as she glanced uncertainly towards Gregory.

Erika introduced them, 'Oberst-Baron von Lutz—Fraulein Paula von Steinmetz,' and asked: 'What did you think Paula? You can speak quite freely in front of the Colonel-Baron.'

Paula extended her hand to Gregory with a gracious smile, upon which he clicked his heels, bowed from the waist and kissed it in the approved manner of the Prussian officer; then she turned back to Erika.

'I thought that after the Army revolt last November the Nazis had passed a sentence of execution on you.'

'They did,' smiled Erika; 'but, as you see, they haven't carried it out yet.'

'The swine gave me ten years because I hid my brother Oscar, the one who is a Captain of Uhlans; and they're holding him as a hostage for my good behaviour,' Paula said quickly. 'They've done the same sort of thing with any number of girls I know. There are at least forty of us here in Oslo; but as they passed the death penalty on you I was afraid that you had been pig-headed and refused to play.'

'How are you finding life here?' asked Gregory amiably.

She shrugged. 'Naturally, I hated the idea at first, but it's much more fun being here than in Germany now there's a war on, and they give me plenty of money. I'm rather sorry for the poor Norwegians, but, after all, in the long run it's going to be much better for them that they should succumb to Hitler's secret weapon instead of having a long war in which lots of the poor dears would get killed—isn't it?'

'Of course it is,' smiled Gregory. 'That's a very sensible way to regard matters. You and Erika could do more damage between you than an armoured division, any day.'

'What a charming way of putting things.' Paula's lovely dark eyes swept over Gregory's lean face with approval. 'Will you both lunch with me tomorrow? You must—I insist. I've got the sweetest apartment—No. 97 Universitesgaten.'

Erika hesitated for a second, then she said quickly: 'May I telephone you in the morning?'

'Of course.' Paula squeezed her arm, flashed another dazzling smile at Gregory and added: 'I must fly now; I've got a little Major man in tow who is in command of one of the forts outside the harbour. But I shall expect you both at one o'clock so don't dare to telephone and say that you're not coming.'

Having smiled 'Goodnight' Gregory and Erika walked in silence towards the lift, and it was only as they were going down their corridor upstairs that she said bitterly: 'I never knew Paula intimately, but she comes of a decent family, and it makes me almost physically sick to think that a girl who is really one of us should have sold out to the Nazis.'

Gregory shrugged. 'Don't be too hard on her, darling. It isn't everyone who has your strength of character; and remember, those devils have got her brother. From what she said, it's clear that they gave her the choice of death for him and ten years—the best ten years of her life—in some God-awful concentration-camp, or to come here as one of their agents. One can hardly blame her, and from that

"come hither" eye of hers I shouldn't think she finds the job they've put her on by any means distasteful.

Naturally, on seeing you she jumped to the conclusion that you had bought your liberty on the same terms.'

At their respective doors they parted, but a quarter of an hour later Gregory entered Erika's room through the bathroom they were sharing. He was wearing a brightly-hued silk dressing-gown which he had bought two days before; in one hand he was carrying a fat Turkish cigarette and in the other a magnum of champagne.

She looked across at him from her bed as he set the magnum down and walked over to a side-table to collect some glasses that were standing with a half-empty bottle of Madeira which they had opened that morning.

'Darling,' she murmured a little hesitantly, 'would you mind very much if we didn't make a night of it?—I mean—not a magnum-of-champagne sort of night—because all I want now is to hold you very close to me for every moment that's left to us, and we've got so little time—so desperately little time.'

'Have we?' he said, turning suddenly, and she saw that his whole face had altered. 'Don't you believe it, sweetheart!'

'Oh, Gregory! You mean . ..' Her face suddenly lit up but the rest of her sentence was never uttered.

With one great, panther-like spring he landed right on her bed and seizing her face between his hands he forced it back on the pillow, pressing his mouth to hers.

When he released her he was laughing like a genial devil as he cried: 'I mean, my angel, why should I go home now there's work to be done here in Norway? Tomorrow we are lunching with Hitler's secret weapon.'

CHAPTER 2

Fifth Column at Home

Before they had been in Paula von Steinmetz's flat for ten minutes, Gregory knew that his decision to stay in Norway had been thoroughly justified. Either she already had a luncheon party arranged for that day or else she had quickly got a number of people together after Erika had telephoned to her that morning. Her guests and their attitude were both a shock and a revelation.

The men consisted of a high Balkan diplomat and four Norwegians, one of whom was a member of the Storting and one the editor of a leading paper; the two others were the Major with whom Paula had been the night before and another Army officer. All the women were German born, although one of them was the diplomat's wife and so nominally of his nationality, and another had married the Norwegian M.P. only a fortnight before. The women accepted Erika as one of themselves, and paid a special deference to Gregory in his role of a Prussian aristocrat who had served with distinction upon their own General Staff.

They talked with complete freedom about the hopeless plight of the Democracies under their aged and effete leaders and with supreme confidence about everything going according to plan and Hitler's becoming the first World Fuehrer in 1944. The Norwegians and the diplomat obviously accepted this forecast as quite inevitable and, far from showing any distress at the thought of their own countries becoming vassal states to a foreign power, appeared to consider themselves as the chosen vessels for carrying the Light of the new world order to their countrymen. In fact, Gregory had to keep on reminding himself that he really was in Norway and not attending a luncheon with a number of Nazi Party chiefs and their women in Berlin.

He had always realised that the Scandinavian countries were strongly pro-German, however greatly the majority of English people liked to believe the contrary. During the last world-war they had seriously hampered the Allied blockade not only by selling most of their own produce to Germany but also by reselling to her a very large proportion of the raw materials which the Allies had allowed through for neutral consumption. Moreover, when the Allies had at last had the sense to tighten up their blockade, and Germany was beginning to feel the pinch, the Scandinavians had done their utmost to relieve the pressure by taking enormous numbers of German women and children as refugees for the remainder of the war. That was a work of humanity, but Gregory believed in facing facts. The Germans were waging unrestricted submarine warfare at that time; they were also bombing Paris and London on every possible opportunity, thus sending considerable numbers of our women and children to their deaths. As Germany was eventually brought to her knees through the pressure of the blockade, the fact that the Scandinavians were feeding a considerable section of her population during the latter part of the war simply meant that the war had gone on several months longer than it need have done, during which many thousands of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians owed their deaths entirely to this humanitarian gesture which had been made by the pro-German neutrals.

Knowing all that, and having no reason to suppose that the attitude of the Scandinavians had materially altered in the past twenty years, Gregory had not expected to find the bulk of the people in Norway waving Union Jacks, but he had supposed that they at least had every intention of preserving their tradition of independence and he was utterly horrified at this revelation that such prominent and influential Norwegians as those at Paula's luncheon-party had obviously sold out to Hitler.

At luncheon he was given the place of honour on Paula's right and she lost no opportunity of seeking to attract him. With her young, dark beauty and full-lipped smile she was a fascinating person but she got little chance to talk to him alone until the end of the meal, when the others all became involved in a general discussion on the eternal question as to where the Fuehrer would really strike first now that spring was here. She then inquired about the reason for his visit to Norway, upon which he became intriguingly mysterious, but she only laughed at him and began to pull his leg.

'Of course you mustn't tell me,' she mocked him. 'Still it's obvious that arrangements have to be made for the troops to land when the country is actually taken over and all the details must be seen to with the thoroughness for which our General Staff is so justly famous. But really you are to be congratulated upon having a delightfully "cushy" job, because there won't be any fighting—or hardly any. With Hitler's new technique you Army men will have to take a back seat for a change, and it's girls like Erika and myself who will reap the real honours of the new war.'

'You certainly seem to be getting a great deal of fun out of your baptism of fire,' Gregory smiled.

As the others were not listening she shrugged and went on in a low voice: 'It's quite true that most of us acted from compulsion to begin with, but once one gets into the game it becomes frightfully thrilling. After all, whatever we may have said about the Nazis in the past, Hitler himself is an amazing man, you know.

One must confess that. And although we may not agree with all his methods he is showing us Germans how to conquer the world. One must admire him for that. So, quite honestly, I'm all for him now and I'm not a bit shamefaced about this business any more.'

Gregory could only agree that she was perfectly right and that for Germany to be supreme above all nations was the only thing that really mattered; then he laughingly expressed the hope that he might be present to applaud when the Fuehrer decorated her with the Iron Cross for her services to the Third Reich.

Her wicked eyes crinkled at the corners. 'Wouldn't it be more appropriate if he instituted a new Order called Ladies of the Golden Garter?'

'Grand!' laughed Gregory. 'Grand! Yet somehow I don't think he's quite the right fellow to bestow the decoration personally. It would be much more fun for the girls if he selected certain stalwarts among his Black Guards to put the garters on.' She shook her head. 'No. They are so dull—great, stupid animals. I think each girl should be allowed to choose her own man to deputise for the Fuehrer, and the installation should take place at night to soft music and in candle-light. One might even adopt the procedure of the Ancient Orders of Chivalry, where squires who were to receive the accolade spent the night on their knees, in prayer, before the high altar of a church.'

'I get you,' Gregory grinned. 'The night would not be spent in prayer, but the lady would receive her decoration in the morning.'

'That's it.' Paula's hand brushed his as she reached out for a chocolate. 'Now, what sort of man d'you think I should choose for my initiation?'

Her question was an open invitation for Gregory to describe himself, and in other circumstances he would have done so without hesitation, but now he had Erika to consider. Quite apart from the fact that, being in love with her, he was not in the least interested in any other woman, he had to make allowance for her possible reactions to any signs of Paula and himself becoming somewhat more than friendly. Erika would, of course, say that she trusted him completely and did not at all mind his entering on a flirtation with Paula for the sake of the interests they served, but Gregory owed much of his success with women to the fact that experience had taught him a great deal about the workings of the female brain. Erika would quite honestly mean it when she said that she trusted him, but that would not affect the fact that it would make her extremely unhappy if he played up to Paula very far and that was bound to have an adverse effect upon their own happiness.

Fortunately his acquaintance with Paula was still so slight that she had had no time or opportunity to develop a real interest in him. It was just that she was a gregarious young woman who was obviously prepared to have an affair with any attractive man whom she might meet and, having put Gregory down as a desirable property, she had evidently decided that it would be rather fun to try to take him away from such a handsome rival as Erika. He therefore made up his mind at once that before be was drawn further on to this extremely dangerous ground he must side-track Paula by conveying to her that he was not really a very desirable property at all.

After a moment he looked up at her and smiled a little weakly. 'I must say I'd envy the chap who got the job and I'd apply for it myself if I thought that I had the least chance.'

'Nothing venture—nothing win,' she murmured, lowering her long lashes.

"The trouble is,' he admitted slowly, 'that I'm always a damned sight too honest with myself, and knowing my limitations so well I'm quite certain that when it came to the point I should let you down.'

'Why?' she asked in an astonished voice. 'Whatever makes you think that?'

'Well, the sort of man you want is a chap who'd treat you rough and give you a beating if you played him up.'

'Mein Gott, nein!' Paula protested quickly.

'Oh yes, you do,' Gregory assured her. 'Every woman does. I don't mean a drunken blackguard or anything of that kind, but a chap with a will of his own who wouldn't stand any nonsense and if he saw you flashing those lovely eyes of yours at anybody else would take you home and give you a good spanking.'

Paula's colour deepened a little under her make-up and Gregory knew that he had judged her rightly.

She was a strong, highly-sexed young woman who would thoroughly enjoy occasional rows with her lovers and derive tremendous kick from a mild beating-up in which she was finally possessed forcibly, so that her sobs of anger gave way almost imperceptibly to gasps of passionate emotion.

'Well,' she admitted slowly, 'if one loves a man one naturally expects him to assert himself at times, otherwise how can one possibly respect him?'

'That's just it,' Gregory nodded, 'and although I don't think I'm really a weak character—certainly not as far as my job is concerned—once I fall for a woman I find it utterly impossible to say "no" to her. I just follow her around saying, "Yes, darling," "Of course, darling," and give way to her in every single thing. I suppose you'll think me an awful fool to have told you that, but it's just a stupid weakness that I can't get over.'

'I see,' said Paula with a tinge of disappointment in her tone.

'Still,' Gregory went on more hopefully, 'some women prefer a quiet life and having their own way in everything without any trouble.' He lowered his voice to a murmur. 'Of course, I'd have to be careful about Erika, but if you think I wouldn't bore you too much—couldn't we—er—meet somewhere just for—er—a quiet meal?1

Paula stiffened slightly. 'I'm afraid you've rather misunderstood me, Herr Oberst-Baron; but perhaps that is owing to the turn our conversation took. We were only talking nonsense, and, in any case, it's one of my rules never to pinch my girlfriends' men, so let's say no more about it.'

'I'm so sorry,' Gregory murmured awkwardly, and as he spoke his face wore such a hang-dog look that Paula almost laughed. She would have been livid with rage if she had known the real Gregory and how inside himself he was laughing at her and the thought that he had got her just where he wanted her.

He was, however, very far from laughing when he and Erika had returned to their hotel and were discussing matters together.

'It's incredible!' he exclaimed. 'D'you realise that if what Paula said last night is true, about her knowing at least forty German girls of her own class who have been sent over here on this job, there must be scores of them having affairs with half the leading men in Norway. They're undermining the whole political structure of the country and if we can't do something to stop it the place will fall into Hitlers' hands without a shot being fired.'

She nodded. 'It's rather amazing that we should so quickly have tumbled to what is going on. I don't suppose the real Norwegian people have any idea of it at all, and we shouldn't have, either, if we hadn't happened to run into Paula last night; but, naturally, she assumed that I was just one more of the lovelies whom the Nazis had sent to do their dirty work and opened up the whole business to us. What's our next move?'

'We must stick close to the von Steinmetz, then she'll lead us to the other women who are playing the same game and we can find out which Norwegian leaders are still trustworthy and which have succumbed to Hitler's fascinating secret weapon.'

'That shouldn't be difficult. I saw her making a play for you at the end of lunch.'

He grinned. 'She cooled off when I intimated that, although I'd love to play, I'm really a bit of a weakling when it comes down to brass tacks.'

'Oh, darling,' Erika roared with laughter and flung her arms round his neck, 'what delicious nonsense!

And she really took that in?'

'You bet she did! And she promptly changed her tactics, becoming one of those high-principled girls who never snatches her friends' men. She even declined a stolen meeting on the first occasion that I could get you safely out of the way, but as I paid her the compliment of appearing to get all hot-and-bothered about her, honour is satisfied. She now has no use for me at all in the role of prospective lover but will continue to play ball. It is a case of no offence given—and none taken, I'm sure.'

'You adorable swine. Then we can tell her that we know hardly anybody here and suggest throwing a dinner-party to which we'll ask her to bring her friends.'

'I think we should go further than that. I'm certain that Paula is the type who thoroughly enjoys a playful beating, and since I disappointed her by deliberately labelling myself "tame cat" we must arrange for the lady's requirements to be satisfied elsewhere.'

'Stefan!' said Erika.

'Exactly,' grinned Gregory. 'Paula can't be getting much fun with that old Norwegian Major, who is obviously her duty boyfriend at the moment, and Kuporovitch is like a dog with two tails to wag, he's so full of beans after his escape from the Soviets. These Russians have the hell of a reputation with the girls so I don't think Stefan should find much difficulty in making the running. The question is, though, would he be prepared to play a hand with us against the Gestapo?'

'True. He's a neutral, and there's no earthly reason why he should involve himself in our affairs, but I'm sure that we can trust him not to give us away, and he'd be splendid bait for Paula. Let's tackle him this evening and see how far he is prepared to go.'

That night after dinner, in a quiet corner of the lounge, Gregory explained to the Russian the reason why he had cancelled his departure for England at the last moment, and as Paula was really a very attractive young woman he was able to describe her without unduly overpainting the picture, which might have led to Kuporovitch's being disappointed when he later saw her in the flesh.

'She sounds a most delightful person,' the Russian remarked, 'and although my blonde is a nice little thing she is exceedingly stupid so I should much prefer a mistress of my own class. It was most charming of you to think of me, but'—his blue eyes narrowed slightly—'what is the catch in it?'

'There is no catch in it at all,' Gregory assured him. 'If you can get her, Stefan, it will be all for love and should be excellent fun for you, but while we are on the matter I'd like to know what you really feel about the war.'

'What has that to do with it?'

'Just this. We've told you how we met Fraulein von Stein-metz and what she's up to here. Erika and I are two of the considerable number of people in this world who have made up their minds that Hitler has got to be slogged for ten and counted out for keeps, and we don't particularly mind if we lose our own lives in helping along the process. You probably don't feel so strongly that way—or you may even admire the Nazis, for all I know, although I suppose the real fact is that you don't give a hoot for any of us. What I really want to get at is if you would be prepared to pass on to us any information you may be able to get out of Paula should you succeed in making the running with her.'

Kuporovitch showed his even white teeth in a wide smile. 'You are right; I am now a man of no country and no allegiances. My own poor land is ruined beyond repair and I have no interest in Germany or Britain. All the same, I have certain convictions about how people should be governed. I did not like living under an Autocracy where some rascally favourite of the Tsar might say "Off with his head!" about any person he didn't like, at any minute, and promotion could be achieved only by influence or bribery.

Equally, I should not like to live under a Democracy. I despise leaders who are afraid to lead because they must pander to every whim of an ill-informed mob for fear that if they do not they will be thrown out of office at the next election; but even under these two muddle-headed systems something of man's independence and creative spirit is allowed to survive.

'On the other hand, in a Totalitarian state that is not so. People lose all their individuality and become only pieces of the state machine which they are compelled to serve from birth to death. I know that, because I have lived under such a regime for nearly a quarter of a century. There is no more colour in life, no more joy; only one eternal fear of being reported, which forces one to curb every ambition or desire to express oneself and, instead, to take the protective colouring of the great illiterate mass.

'I am an old-fashioned person animated by entirely selfish motives. Quite frankly, I am not in the least interested in the betterment of the masses, but I am extremely interested in gratifying the tastes which I acquired when I was young. I like good food and good wine, beautiful women to make love to, fine horses to ride, freedom to travel and meet many people, music, painting and books which will enable me to explore every type of mind and discuss it without restraint. No Totalitarian world-order would permit me to enjoy more than a fraction of these things—and then only surreptitiously. Since, therefore, this is not a war of nations but a world-wide civil war, I am neither for the British nor for the Germans but I am one hundred per cent against the Nazis.'

'Good man!' cried Gregory. 'We can rely on you, then, to secure all the dope you possibly can through the beautiful Paula?'

Kuporovitch nodded and his lazy blue eyes took on a thoughtful look. 'Leave her to me. Unless I have lost my cunning I have rather a way with young women and, if you have described her type accurately, she will take like a duck to water to some of the little Russian tricks that I can show her. What is it that you particularly want me to find out?'

Gregory's reply came without hesitation. 'The date on which Hitler proposes to invade Norway.'

CHAPTER 3

The Rats of Norway

Paula's French was not excellent but adequate, and love—if you can call it love in such a case—has its own language. At the dinner-party that Erika gave the following night she did not place Kuporovitch next to Paula but next to herself, and she quite obviously cold-shouldered Gregory for him. Erika and Gregory had given out that they had spent the last few months in Finland but nothing had been said of their having been in Russia with Kuporovitch, so the impression was created that he was a new acquaintance who happened to be staying in the same hotel.

When at last, in the lounge afterwards, he did get a word alone with Paula, Erika gave them only a few minutes together, then, feigning ill-concealed jealousy, intervened to reclaim him. Paula was, therefore, all the more tickled the following morning when he rang her up to say that he had succeeded in obtaining her address from one of the other guests at the party and that he was so impatient to see her again that he absolutely demanded that she should lunch with him.

From that point matters developed rapidly. Erika pretended to be peeved and Paula became all the nicer to her as she could not resist the temptation to patronise the lovely rival over whom it had given her such a kick to triumph. In consequence, she showered Erika with gifts and secured invitations for her and Gregory to every party that any member of her set was giving.

Inside a week they knew a hundred people, all of whom appeared entirely unconcerned with the grim struggle that was being waged outside Norway's borders. They lunched and chattered; cocktailed and flirted; dined, danced and drank far into each night. Oslo was throwing off its winter furs and coming out to enjoy the spring sunshine. All Paula's friends seemed to have plenty of money and nearly all of them were indulging in some illicit love-affair which provided gossip and speculation for the rest. It was a grand life for those who liked it, and the Norwegians, who formed far the greatest proportion of the men in this interesting set, were quite obviously having the time of their lives. Norway is not a rich country and her official classes cannot normally afford the same extravagances as their opposite numbers in London, Paris or New York, but Gregory noted with cynical interest that this group of soldiers, politicians, diplomats and Civil Servants always had ample funds and nice new cars in which to take their little German girl-friends about.

Since many of them were middle-aged men, heavily married and in responsible positions, a certain amount of circumspection was observed, but, as Erika and Gregory soon discovered, the 'goings-on' in the apartments of the Frauleins, Gnadige-fraus, Baronins and Grafins concerned were just nobody's business.

'It's just the age of the men that makes the whole thing so simple,' Gregory said to Erika one day. 'If they were handsome young fellow-me-lads they would be wrapped up in girl-friends of their own nationality or their young wives, and Hitler's secret weapon might find it a bit difficult to muscle in; but it's a dozen years or more since these middle-aged gentry have had the chance of a cut at a good-looking young woman except by picking something up late at night, on the sly, and paying for it. Paula and Co. are giving them back their lost youth; without any risk of blackmail, no nasty scares about divorce, and a good time to be had by all.'

Although Kuporovitch was no younger than the average Norwegian in whom Paula and her friends were compelled to interest themselves he was infinitely more virile. Moreover, never having been burdened with a conscience or a wife, and the ethics of the Soviet Union being extremely elastic, he had kept his hand in with the prettiest young women he could find in every town where he had been stationed, so his advances had none of the nervous fumbling of the Norwegians who had lived as respectable married men for a number of years. He just bit Paula hard on the first occasion that they were alone together— so hard, in fact, that she had to wear a chiffon scarf round her neck for some days afterwards. She had, of course, hit him and flown into a fearful rage but he had flung himself on his knees and, embracing her in a bear-like hug, vowed that he had been driven crazy by her beauty; upon which her anger had given place to bewildered curiosity and a violent urge to discover what other excitements this tempestuous wooer would provide for her. In consequence, a few days later Erika remarked to Gregory, not very kindly, that to see Paula with Stefan was like watching a bird fascinated by a snake.

He was clever enough not to interfere with her 'duty' affair with the elderly Norwegian Major, neither did he overdo it and make a nuisance of himself, but he saw to it that she never had a moment of spare time and thoroughly enjoyed himself in the process. Apparently he had no other object whatever in life and while he never showed the least curiosity about the course of the war he appeared to delight in scandal as much as any old woman, so Paula produced every titbit she had for his amusement and in this way he was able to secure a mass of data about her girl-friends and the occupations of the various Norwegians they had in tow.

Gregory was delighted with Stefan's success, and although he knew that by remaining in Oslo he and Erika were as good as sitting on a powder barrel which might blow up at any moment, he felt that they were doing really useful work. Except for those forebodings of trouble to come they were able to abandon themselves to the joys of what amounted to an unofficial honeymoon while gathering much important information about the machinations of the enemy and transmitting it to Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust in London.

Gregory dared not go near the British Legation or be seen with any of its officials, for fear of arousing suspicion among Paula's set, so he could not put anything through in the Legation Bag, but as Norway was still at peace there was no censorship of mail leaving the country and he was able to communicate by the ordinary post. There was the risk that his letters might be opened or stopped by people in the Norwegian post-office who were in the pay of the Nazis, but that had to be taken, and in order to minimise such a risk he sent a duplicate of each letter that he wrote, on the following day, and used the utmost discretion in his communications.

His first effort was to buy an English edition of Ibsen's play, The Rats, on the blank front page of which he wrote: With best wishes for a happy birthday, from Gregory. Underneath his signature he put Oslo and the date. That would be quite sufficient to inform Sir Pellinore that he had got safely out of Russia and had arrived in Norway, but the astute old gentleman would naturally speculate on the meaning of this strange present, and, having looked through it to see that no passages were specially marked, he would undoubtedly concentrate upon the title.

By the same air-mail Gregory sent a postcard to his faithful henchman, Rudd, on which he wrote the laconic message: Having a grand time here, except for the fact that the whole place is overrun with vermin, knowing quite well that Rudd would immediately take the postcard to Sir Pellinore, who, linking rats and vermin, would guess that Gregory referred to the human variety.

A few days later he wrote a long, chatty letter to his nonexistent half-brother, Otto Mentzendorff, an entirely bogus personality who was supposed to be Sir Pellinore's foreign valet. In it he said that he had succeeded in obtaining a situation as butler to a German Countess, although he omitted to mention the Countess's name. He then went on to describe life as the Countess's servant and the parties she gave, disclosing the fact that all her German women acquaintances had Norwegian men-friends who held positions of some importance. There was not a word of harm or slander in the letter; it was just the sort of screed that one gossip-minded servant with a sense of humour might have sent to another, and a good half of it was devoted to a description of a mythical young woman who was supposed to be the Countess's lady's-maid upon whose virtue the writer had very definite designs.

By the time he had been in Norway a fortnight the details about his commerce with this buxom young Norwegian had reached such heights of both temperament and temperature that if anyone was following the correspondence the reader would have paid scant attention to the rest of the letter but waited for the next instalment with the utmost anxiety.

Had the writer's plan for getting into the girl's room succeeded or not? No time for more; they're calling for drinks.

Yes, it had, but he feared that their mistress had seen him slip through the door. Was he discovered? No time for more. That accursed front-door bell again!

No, he had not been discovered, but the girl had been so scared that she had turned him out immediately and forced him to leave by the window. There followed the night on which they had had the house to themselves—a god-sent opportunity; supper; the girl well primed with cherry brandy. Then: No time for more. The Countess will wear the legs off me! I am late in taking her filthy poodle for its evening outing.

So the hectic saga continued, and Sir Pellinore was kept well posted as to who was taking an interest in whom in Oslo. The man who featured most prominently in these reports was the Air Attache at the German Legation, a Captain Kurt von Ziegler. He was a lean, fair-haired man with a long, pointed nose and rather a pleasant smile, and he played a considerable part in directing the activities of the women; so he was evidently a secret member of the Gestapo. There was a distinct dash of the adventurer about him which appealed to Gregory, and he would have liked to cultivate the Captain further, but he did not dare to do so as every time he met him he feared that his assumed name of Oberst-Baron von Lutz might feature in one of the Captain's reports to Berlin. However casually the mention was made it would be quite enough to imperil the lives of Erika and himself.

The war was still meandering on, but Gregory was conscious of a growing tension. In Oslo he was able to listen to the English, French and German broadcasts as well as seeing the more detailed accounts of events in the newspapers of the three countries a few days later. It had been strongly suggested that the real reason for the Hitler-Mussolini meeting on the Brenner had been to persuade the Italians to adopt a less antagonistic attitude towards Russia and consent to a three-power Axis; but that had been offset by Molotov's making a speech which was equally offensive to Germany and the Allies.

A few days after Gregory's arrival in Oslo the R.A.F. had bombed Sylt; that being the first attack on a land-target. The British Press loudly proclaimed that the operation had been a huge success while the Germans declared with equal force that no damage of any consequence had been done and that a number of the raiders had been shot down. As Gregory was in a situation to hear neutral reports of the affair he knew the truth, and it made him almost sick with rage.

Sylt was probably the best-defended military zone in all Germany, and instead of being directed to attack any of the innumerable vulnerable points in the German economic system, which were comparatively lightly defended, our wretched pilots had been ordered to go for this base which positively bristled with anti-aircraft guns. In consequence, twelve British bombers had been shot down, with hardly a thing to show for it.

Dissatisfaction in France had led to the fall of the Daladier Government, and Monsieur Reynaud had been chosen as the new Premier; so it seemed that public opinion there was at last pressing for a more vigorous prosecution of the war. In Britain, too, there was evident discontent. Churchill was the only outstanding figure who really possessed the confidence of the public, and the broadcast that he made on March the 30th, in which he warned neutrals that it was quite time they took their ostrich beads out of the sand and, facing facts, united against Hitler before they were gobbled up piecemeal, was a joy to listen to. But he seemed to be carrying the whole burden while the remainder of the War Cabinet concerned themselves with fostering Britain's trade prospects after the war before they had even started to think about how they were going to win it.

By April the 2nd, even with the knowledge that he had conducted himself as warily as possible, Gregory was becoming intensely anxious. They had now been in Norway for a fortnight. At any moment some little cog in the vast German system might turn over and Herr Gruppenfuhrer Grauber learn that the pseudo Oberst-Baron von Lutz and the beautiful Erika von Epp, his two most inveterate enemies, were hobnobbing with all his best agents in Oslo and informing themselves of exactly what was going on.

After that it needed only one brief radiogram to blow the whole party sky-high. The people at the German Legation would warn Paula and her friends to make no apparent difference in their attitude to these enemies who had crept into their midst, but to report their every movement; the Gestapo murder-squad in Oslo would be instructed and, like a bolt from the blue, the blow would fall. The steering-gear of the car that Gregory had hired would suddenly go wrong when he was driving along one of the mountain roads around the city, so that they crashed over a precipice; or one night at a party poison would be put into some sandwiches specially prepared for them, then a doctor who was in the Nazis' pay would make it his business to see that they did not recover.

There were so many things which he had no means of guarding against, and he knew that they were running a frightful risk every day that they now remained in Oslo. Although they had not secured even a hint of the invasion date the material he was getting through was of considerable value, so he was determined to stay on himself, but the work could be continued without Erika's assistance and he became desperately anxious to have her safely out of it.

At first when he tackled her on the subject she flatly refused to go, but he managed to bring her to a more reasonable frame of mind by pointing out that if trouble broke he would be in a much better situation to cope with it if he had not her to look after; and over breakfast in bed on the morning of Wednesday, April the 3rd, they reopened the project of Erika's flitting into Sweden, with the proviso that in the event of an emergency he should join her there.

An hour or so later when Gregory was dressing in his own room, Kuporovitch came in looking extremely glum and, on Gregory's asking him what was wrong, he said:

'Paula has been ordered to leave Norway; she received fresh instructions last night from La Baronne Noire.'

'The Black Baroness,' Gregory murmured with a puzzled look. 'And who may she be?'

The Russian shrugged. 'I have no idea. It is just a nom-de-guerre by which they sometimes refer to one of their key agents. Anyway, Paula is being sent to Holland.'

He then went on to say that it seemed as if Hitler's secret weapon had done its work in Norway and Himmler did not want the pick of his young women murdered by the infuriated Norwegian populace when they realised that their leaders had sold them out to the Nazis. In consequence, Paula and her friends were methodically receiving instructions to tell their Norwegian chers amis that they were returning home for a short holiday or that they had to leave Norway for a week or so on urgent business affairs but that they would return as soon as they could to continue the gay life, and in the meantime the Norwegians were to be good boys and carry out all the things that they had promised.

Erika joined them at that moment and, on discussing that matter further, they then recalled that several of Paula's friends had disappeared in the last few days and that others had talked vaguely of ailing relatives or of husbands who were coming on leave to their homes in Germany, which would necessitate their leaving the delightful Norwegian capital for a brief spell.

'How does Paula take the idea of going to Holland?' Gregory asked.

Kuporovitch grimaced. 'Not at all well. She says that the Dutch are even duller than the Norwegians and that she will be broken-hearted unless I agree to go with her.'

'But you have no passport.'

'That, apparently, can be arranged. Major Quisling could fix it with the Norwegian Foreign Office.'

'What, that conceited little poop?' exclaimed Erika.

Kuporovitch half-closed his eyes. 'It is a mistake to underrate that Quisling man because he appears to be only an empty-headed swaggerer. He has a finger in every pie.'

'Yes,' Gregory added. 'He's a nasty piece of work if ever there was one, but he's up to the neck in this thing. I can hardly recall a party at which he hasn't been present and I'm quite convinced that he's the fellow who produces some new Norwegian general or statesman every time another blonde arrives from Germany. What have you decided to do?'

'I should like to go to Holland, as it is no great distance from France, and once I am in possession of a Norwegian passport I could easily get to Paris; but I would not say anything definite without consulting you, so I told Paula that I would think matters over and let her know.'

'That's fine. Now, d'you think that you could get Erika a passport in another name and take her with you?'

'That sounds an extremely tricky proposition. How d'you suggest that I should set about it?'

Gregory lit a Turkish cigarette and replied quietly: 'The story that you will tell is this: Erika has also been ordered to Holland, but she's afraid to go there in her own name because a young Dutchman fell in love with her when she was there about eighteen months ago and as she refused to have anything to do with him he practically went off his rocker and threatened to kill her. Even if he doesn't attempt to do that, he may make an appalling nuisance of himself and seriously interfere with her duties should he learn that she has returned to the country. In consequence, it would make things ever so much easier if she could go there as a Norwegian. The Gestapo people here could, of course, fake a passport for her, but it would be much simpler and sounder if the Norwegian Foreign Office could be persuaded to grant her one instead. Naturally, she's in no position to apply for this officially, but if Major Quisling can get you a passport I see no reason why he shouldn't wangle one for Erika at the same time.'

'So far, so good,' Kuporovitch nodded. 'But you seem to forget that this business has to be negotiated through Paula, and I hardly imagine that she will look kindly upon my proposal to take another woman to Holland with us.'

Gregory grinned. 'That, my friend, is where your devastating sex-appeal comes in. As you have known Paula barely a fortnight you are still in the first hectic flush of your love-affair with her. That gives you the whip-hand, and it is pretty certain that although she may treat you to a pretty scene she will give in and do what you wish when you make it clear that it is conditional upon your going to Holland with her. To still her jealousy you can say that Erika once did you a great service and that you wish to repay her in this way, but that otherwise you have no interest in her at all and not the least objection to her travelling in a different ship from Paula and yourself. That, I think, should put matters right.'

Kuporovitch stubbed out his cigar and stood up. 'Very well; I'm seeing her this afternoon and I will let you know tonight what happens.'

When the Russian had gone Erika smiled rather wanly at Gregory. 'So you're determined to get rid of me?'

'Yes, darling. If only Stefan can do his stuff this opportunity is much too good to miss. Apart from the risk you're running here already, Oslo is such a small place that Grauber would be certain to spot you when he turned up—as he always does wherever the Nazis mean to make a kill.'

'You're convinced that it will be soon, then?'

He nodded. 'The rats are leaving the sinking ship, so these stupid Norwegians who have been playing with fire will, very soon now, find their flirting and dancing replaced by bloodshed and famine.'

CHAPTER 4

Up Goes the Curtain

Paula pouted, wept and swore—but she had fallen completely under the spell of the sardonic Russian, who treated her with the utmost brutality but made love to her with more vigour than any man she had ever known; so eventually she agreed to put up to Major Quisling the matter of obtaining a Norwegian passport for Erika. Stefan left her with the conviction that she was really frightened of him and so would do as he said, but it was an anxious time waiting to hear the result of her endeavours.

On the Wednesday night that she was to tackle Major Quisling news came through that there had been a reshuffle in the British Cabinet, but its results were disappointing. The only definitely good thing which came out of it was the appointment of Lord Woolton as Food Minister. The other leeches clung on to their jobs in spite of the fact that both Press and public obviously considered them incompetent to fill them.

On the Thursday morning Paula telephoned to say that she thought that things would be all right, and that if Erika had any preparations to make she had better get on with them, as, subject to the arrangements going through, they were to sail in a boat which left two days later—Saturday, April the 6th.

On Friday they learned definitely that the matter had been settled. That afternoon Erika received her passport in the name of Yonnie Rostedal, and Kuporovitch his in the name of Odo Assburg. Both passports had been duly visaed by the Dutch Legation and each was accompanied by a note to say that special accommodation had been reserved in the ship which was sailing for Rotterdam on the following day.

'Such,' remarked Gregory cynically, 'is the power of the Nazis in this so-called neutral country.'

Ever since their discussion with Kuporovitch on Paula's projected departure Gregory and Erika had realised that the possibility of their own separation was once again imminent, but they did not take the thought by any means so hardly as they had done before. Then it had been their own affair and a voluntary act which might result in their not seeing each other again as long as the war lasted; now it was dictated by policy and they could part with a reasonable hope of being reunited in the comparatively near future. There was no longer any question of Erika's leaving for the United States, as in Holland she would now be able, under a new identity, to continue her work against the Nazis with some degree of safety.

The plan was that she should live there very quietly, so as to run as little risk as possible of meeting any Germans who might know her as Erika von Epp, but keep in touch with Paula through Kuporovitch and transmit, by carefully-worded letters to Sir Pellinore in London, all the particulars that could be obtained about the operations of Hitler's secret weapon in Holland. Gregory, meanwhile, would remain in Norway and continue his endeavours to ascertain the date of the projected invasion until either he was found out or the balloon went up; but he meant to join her in Holland as soon as his work permitted.

On the Thursday evening Paula was giving a farewell party to which they were all invited. When they arrived about half-past nine they found her big apartment already crammed to capacity. The women were nearly all Germans, Austrians or Hungarians who came from good families and had been specially picked for their looks. The men were Norwegians or pro-Axis members of the Diplomatic Corps in Oslo. No secret was made of the fact that Hitler was regarded as the master of them all and they laughingly 'heiled'

one another as though the party were being given in Germany. But although Gregory cautiously sounded everyone there to whom he talked about the date of the anticipated German take-over he drew a complete blank; none of them seemed to know anything definite.

Major Quisling was there; an arrogant-looking man with fair hair that was turning grey, and heavily-lidded eyes. He quite obviously considered himself cock of the walk and many of the Norwegian officers who were his senior in rank openly deferred to him.

At one period of the evening, when Gregory was exchanging playful badinage with a plump, dark-haired, bright-eyed little Hungarian girl, Quisling was standing just behind him talking to the dashing German Air Attache, Captain von Ziegler. Straining his ears Gregory endeavoured to listen to their conversation but he could catch only scraps of it. They were planning something for which Quisling said that the airman would receive the personal thanks of Hitler, but what, was by no means clear. Then Quisling said, 'If you succeed you must fly him straight to Germany,' which gave Gregory the cue that a kidnapping was on foot.

Von Ziegler had a sense of humour, and he replied with a laugh: 'I shall need an outsize plane for that, because he's six-foot-two in height, you know.' But immediately afterwards they moved away towards the buffet so Gregory heard no more, and there were so many people in Norway on whom the Nazis had designs that he knew he might puzzle his wits indefinitely without getting any farther, so he dismissed the episode from his mind.

As it was their last night together in Oslo he and Erika left the party early and were back at the hotel shortly after midnight. For a long time they talked quietly together while she lay in his arms, but at last he managed to soothe her fears that they might never meet again and she dropped off to sleep.

Next morning he took her down to the dock, but they had already made their farewells as both had decided that for him to hang about until the ship sailed would only prolong the agony. During the time that he had been with them Kuporovitch had grown extremely attached to them both, but the Russian was such a cynical devil that Gregory was both surprised and touched when, just before Erika went up the gangway, he drew him aside, and said:

'Keep in good heart, my friend. I will postpone my trip to Paris until you can join us in Holland, and you may sleep soundly with the knowledge that I will tear the throat out of any man who attempts to lay a finger on her.'

Gregory knew that the Russian had a lion's courage and a serpent's cunning, and that when he said a thing he meant it, so he could not have asked a better protector for Erika. For once he was almost at a loss for words and could only murmur: 'That's good of you, Stefan—damned good of you.'

That week-end of April the 6th and 7th proved a trying one. He was not unduly worried about Erika as, although her change of name was only a comparatively slight protection against her being traced sooner or later by the Gestapo, her new Norwegian nom-de-guerre coupled with her removal to another country would almost certainly secure for her a fresh period of immunity from their unwelcome attentions; but he was restless and uneasy.

He now had many acquaintances in Oslo but that Saturday none of them seemed to be available. They had left the city without warning or were busy arranging to depart on all sorts of different excuses. Even the Norwegian officers whom he had met no longer seemed to have time to spare to amuse themselves; they either had urgent duties or had gone up-country to various military stations, so Gregory decided that zero hour must now be very near.

Having sent to Sir Pellinore all the information that he could secure there was no more that he could do about it, but he was hoping that the Allies would forestall Hitler by a sudden coup. It was common knowledge in Oslo that the Germans had an armada of troopships all ready to sail from their Baltic ports and British Intelligence must be aware of that. In addition, there were his own reports which conveyed the fact that a large section of the ruling caste in Norway had been so seriously undermined that the country would almost certainly capitulate after only a show of resistance. It seemed, therefore, the obvious thing for the Allies to act first and invade Norway before Hitler could get there.

By evening the curious quietness of the city had affected him so strongly that he decided to risk sending an almost open telegram direct to Sir Pellinor. It read: RATS HAVE ALMOST UNDERMINED FOUNDATIONS OF ENTIRE HOUSE STOP SEND

RAT POISON BY AIR AND DISPATCH PESTOLOGIST BY FIRST SHIP STOP MOST

URGENT.

He had no idea what, if any, plans the War Office had made for the invasion of Norway in such an emergency, but he hoped that due notice had been taken of the entirely new tactics which the Germans had used with such success in their conquest of Poland and that the Allies would first seize the Norwegian air-fields then follow up as swiftly as possible with troop-landings.

On the Sunday he spent his time out and about in the city, mixing with the crowd and entering into casual conversation with as many people as possible wherever he found that they could speak English, French or German. He talked to a girl in a tobacconist shop, a professional guide, a taxi-man, several barmen and quite a number of people who were having drinks in bars, and by the end of the day he was beginning to think that he had drawn too black a picture of the situation through having mixed entirely with pro-Nazis during his stay in Oslo.

Quite a large proportion of the ordinary Norwegians were sympathetic to Germany but very few of them were pro-Hitler and none at all thought that it would be a good thing if Norway were incorporated into a German-led federation under him. They had heard too much about the concentration-camps, the forced labour, the suppression of the Press and of free speech, which all went with the Nazi regime, to have the least wish to surrender themselves to it. Their one desire was to preserve their independence and they were prepared to fight for it if they had to; but when Gregory asked why, in that case, they did not take Mr. Churchill's tip and come in with the Allies in defence of their liberties while the going was good they seemed to think that that was a crazy idea, because Germany was so much nearer to them and so much stronger than Britain. Their success in keeping out of every war for the past hundred years had convinced them that if they kept quiet and gave no offence to their powerful neighbour they would be able to keep out of this one, and some of them even showed definite ill-feeling towards Britain for what they considered her unreasonable attitude in making it difficult for them to maintain good relations with Germany.

In reconsidering the whole situation that evening Gregory came to the conclusion that the Norwegians would fight if they were given a chance, but he was extremely dubious as to what sort of show they would be able to put up in view of his private knowledge that so many of their leaders had already succumbed to Hitler's secret weapon.

On the Monday the quiet tension of the city suddenly gave way to intense excitement. The British Navy had appeared in force off certain points along the coast and was laying minefields in Norwegian territorial waters. The official reason given for this was that the Allies had at last decided to take a strong line and close the winter route by which Germany secured her supplies of iron ore from Narvik.

With huge satisfaction Gregory bought himself a bottle of champagne and sat down to drink it. He was a clever fellow— a monstrous clever fellow—and he was used to reading the news which lies behind the headlines; the story about blocking the iron-ore route was all 'my eye and Betty Martin'. Now that spring was here and the Baltic open again the Nazis could get all the iron ore they wanted without bringing it down the coast of Norway, so why should the Allies suddenly decide to block the winter route of the iron-ore ships when they had left it open until summer was almost here? The thing did not make sense, but was perfectly obvious to anyone. The Navy was really laying minefields to protect lanes through which troopships, bearing the British Army, could come to take over the country. Good old Winston had managed to kick some of his colleagues in the pants and Britain was at last stepping out to fight a war.

Having finished his bottle he went out to the Oslo air-port confidently expecting to see the R.A.F. sail in.

There might be a little mild fighting but he doubted if the Norwegians would put up any serious resistance and thought that if he could establish contact with the British landing-force he might prove useful to them as he now had a thorough knowledge of Oslo and its environs.

Although he waited there until an hour after sunset the British planes did not appear, so he assumed that they meant to make an early-morning landing on the following day, at the same time as the troopships appeared off the Norwegian coast. Back at his hotel he found plenty of people who were only too ready to air their views over rounds of drinks in the bar, and through them he learnt that the Norwegian Press had suddenly turned intensely anti-British. In spite of the number of their ships that had been torpedoed by the Germans they appeared to resent most strongly any suggestion that the British should protect them from the people who were murdering their sailors. Then a Norwegian naval officer came in with the startling news that German battle cruisers and destroyers convoying over one hundred troop and supply ships were reported to have left their ports.

Gregory promptly ordered another bottle of champagne. Such tidings were all that was needed to crown his happiness. The British Fleet was also either in or approaching Norwegian waters. They would catch the Germans and there would be a lovely battle in which they, with their superior numbers, would put paid to Germany's capital ships and sink or capture those hundred transports. Allied transports and aircraft carriers were evidently lying out at sea, just out of sight of the Norwegian coast. The intention was to let the Germans make the first open act of war against Norway so that world opinion and the Norwegian public should quite definitely be swayed on to the Allied side. The Germans were to be given a chance to land a few hundred men, then the balloon would go up; the Navy would sail in and shell their ships to blazes while British forces landed farther up the coast.

He went to bed about one o'clock in a high good humour and full of impatience for the momentous events which he felt certain this Tuesday, April the 9th, would bring. At four o'clock he was wakened by the crash of guns.

He had already made his preparations the night before, so within seven minutes he was dressed and downstairs in the hall, where a little group of people—mostly in their night attire— was assembled.

Nobody knew what was happening and most of the Norwegians seemed pathetically surprised—even stunned —at the thought that their policy of so-called neutrality had not saved them after all. They were as shocked and indignant at this unprovoked attack as an ostrich, considering itself hidden by burying its head in the sand, might have been upon receiving a sharp stone in the backside, aimed by a small boy with a catapult.

Police whistles were blowing, the guns continued to thunder and people were exchanging the wildest rumours, but no shells or bombs fell in the centre of Oslo and it seemed that the fighting was confined to the harbour district.

Within twenty minutes of the first alarm it was definitely established that the Germans were the attackers.

Apparently, considerable numbers of Nazi troops had been concealed in cargo ships in the harbour.

Under cover of darkness they had landed and were now shooting down anyone who attempted to oppose them, while their warships were engaging the shore-batteries along the Fjord.

This news perturbed Gregory considerably. It was all in order that Germany should be branded as the aggressor by being allowed to land troops before the Allies arrived on the scene, but what had happened to the British Navy? Why hadn't it intercepted the German Fleet that was bombarding the forts? But perhaps the German battle squadron had been deliberately allowed to reach its destination with the idea that it would be more certainly destroyed if the British sailed in behind it so that it was caught between two fires.

By 5 a.m. the invasion was reported to be in full swing by land, sea and air and Gregory began to plan what he had better do if Oslo fell to the Germans before the British put in an appearance. As the British had command of the seas it seemed reasonable to suppose that the Germans would not venture to send troopships out into the open ocean beyond the waters of the Skagerrak, whereas the Allies could land their troops anywhere along the Atlantic coast. Bergen, being the nearest large Norwegian port to Scotland, was the obvious choice for a British landing in force, so Gregory decided that he had better go there. However, he felt that there was ample time to have breakfast first and run from the Germans afterwards.

As the hotel staff was completely disorganised there was little prospect of getting proper service, so he walked downstairs to the kitchens and just shouldered his way past the stunned-looking people who had gathered there from fear of air-raids. In the larder he found that day's selection for the restaurant's cold table and while the other people sat or stood about in gloomy foreboding he made an extra large meal of some of his favourite foods because he had no idea at all when he would get another.

After his admirable breakfast he learnt that simultaneously with their invasion of Norway the Germans had invaded Denmark. The news did not surprise him and he felt that there was nothing very much that could be done for the unfortunate Danes. If Hitler had succeeded in forcing their frontier, which should not have proved a very difficult task, he could bring such a mass of men and metal to bear that no Allied expeditionary force could have hoped to hold Denmark for the Democracies. Norway, however, was a very different proposition, and he remained convinced that at any time now news would come through of landings by British troops who would oust the Germans because they could not be supported by sea-borne reinforcements from their bases.

On going upstairs again he heard that the Gneisenau had been sunk by one of the shore-batteries in the Fjord, which cheered him up a little. The place was thick with rumours that every sort of treachery was on foot and that certain commanders of forts on the Fjord had deliberately refrained from shelling the Germans; but there was evidence that at least one officer had had the courage to use his guns before a 'cease fire' order had been telephoned to him.

Soon after 7 a.m. word flew from mouth to mouth that a somewhat belated German ultimatum had been received in Oslo. The Nazis demanded the unconditional surrender of Norway's armed forces, the reception of German garrisons, the resignation of the Norwegian Government and the setting-up of a new one under Major Quisling. During his three weeks there Gregory had received good reason to conclude that the pompous Major was a big cog in the German Fifth Column machine, but it now seemed that he was an even bigger fish than he had appeared. The Norwegian Parliament was said to be already in session and Gregory waited with growing anxiety to hear what reply they would give to the high-handed ultimatum.

At 7.45 the Government's decision came through. They had rejected the ultimatum and had resolved to fight. Gregory was considerably relieved, as although he naturally assumed that they already had a promise of full Allied support, and that that support was close at hand, he had begun to fear that Hitler's secret weapon had done its work so effectively that the Norwegian Government might betray their trust and the Norwegian people. Feeling that Norway's entry into the war as an ally thoroughly justified a bottle, and that there was still no urgent reason for leaving the capital, he went downstairs to the cellar.

Many of the hotel guests were gathered there and several of them, who had sought out the cellar hours before, were sitting on the floor drunk to the world. He helped himself to a bottle of Krug Private Cuve 1928 and proceeded to drink it to the damnation of the Nazis.

He had only just finished the bottle when bombs began to fall. Evidently the Germans were demonstrating their displeasure at the rejection of their ultimatum by letting their airmen loose on the virtually defenceless city. The attack, by comparison with the Russians' first air-raid on Helsinki, was like the performance of a village dramatic society compared with a first night in a famous theatre of a great capital. It was little more than a demonstration; but it was enough to rattle the Norwegians, who had no experience of air-raids.

Everyone in the hotel crowded down to the basement so that it became a jam of angry men and hysterical women. In consequence, Gregory went up to the lounge again. The hotel was solidly built and by sitting on the floor behind the hall-porter's desk he was quite safe from bomb-splinters or the flying glass of shattered windows, and if the place received a direct hit from a really heavy bomb the people in the basement would just as certainly be crushed to death as those on the ground floor. As a result of his move he heard the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Professor Koht, make the first Government broadcast, via a radio-set which had been left turned full on in the manager's office nearby.

He could not understand Norwegian but the head hall-porter, who had also remained upstairs, gave him the gist of the speech in English. Apparently the Minister, who only the day before had been protesting most violently about the British mine-laying as an infringement of Norway's neutrality, was now calling upon all loyal Norwegians to resist the German invasion by every means in their power. He also stated that the Norwegian Government had asked for aid from the Allies, who had agreed to send the Norwegians armed support as soon as possible.

With some alarm, Gregory questioned the head porter upon the last phrase, but the man was quite definite about it, which gave him furiously to think. The statement should have been to the effect that, in anticipation of German aggression, the Allies had had troopships waiting off the coast which were now landing forces in support of the Norwegian Army, but apparently all that the Allies had said was that they would send troops; which might mean this year, next year, some time or never. Even if they were leaving now—at this very moment—by the time they reached Norway they would find that the Germans had secured a solid foothold and were well dug-in there. Evidently somebody had slipped up pretty badly.

It was now after nine o'clock and Gregory decided that the time had come for him to make a move. The bombing had ceased some twenty minutes before, and it seemed that comparatively little damage had been done except that the Nazis had put one down plumb on the American Legation. The Minister and his staff had escaped, but Gregory felt that by destroying their papers and belongings Hitler had done his good deed for the day; nothing could be better calculated to arouse the fury of the people in the United States than this wanton destruction of their property, and since we still had no propaganda there worth talking about it was just the sort of thing that we wanted.

Out in the street he found people now hurrying about and many cars stacked high with baggage, so evidently the unfortunate folk of Oslo who had the means to do so were already in flight from the city.

That would jam the roads and make his trip to Bergen longer and more difficult, but he was well-fed and well-clothed so he had no doubts at all about his ability to arrive there without suffering any great discomfort.

Round at the garage, however, he received a nasty shock. The man who filled his hired car with petrol told him that the Germans were in Bergen. Gregory gaped at him, amazed, angry, helpless; he could only suppose that a convoy of German troopships had slipped past the British naval patrols in the night.

Anyhow, the presence of the Germans in Bergen put any question of going there now right out of the picture, so he decided to head north, for Trondheim.

As he drove slowly through the crowded streets he once mere reviewed the situation. By allowing the Germans to get into both Oslo and Bergen the Allies had landed themselves in a pretty mess. With their usual amazingly efficient staff-work the Nazis would now be able to seize all the strong points in southern Norway and, the power of defence being so vastly superior to that of attack, they would sit there—perhaps for weeks—wiping out any Allied forces that were sent against them. With such a lead they might even succeed in putting Norway right out of the war before Allied help could reach her.

From this he began to speculate on what measures the Germans would take in an endeavour rapidly to subdue the whole country. Obviously they would make every effort to get control of the Government machinery so that an official announcement could be made calling upon the Norwegians to lay down their arms. Paula and her friends had put in so much useful work with Norway's official classes that the way was already prepared for such a move. But it could be done only by exerting pressure on King Haakon.

The Ministers who had remained uncontaminated by Hitler's secret weapon would advise him to fight on and to put his trust in the eventual victory of the Allies; the others would urge him to spare his people the horrors of war and continue to rule over his kingdom by the gracious permission of the Nazis. What would the King decide to do?

As Gregory was pondering the point he caught sight of a man driving a car a little way ahead of him. It was the German Air Attache, Captain von Ziegler. Instantly the snatches of conversation that he had overheard at Paula's farewell party, between von Ziegler and Major Quisling, flashed back to him. They had been planning for von Ziegler to kidnap somebody and fly him into Germany, and it was somebody who had the unusual height of six-foot-two. King Haakon had that unusual height.

Gregory's brain began to race. Could it be? It must be. It was the King whom they intended to kidnap and torture into surrender. At that moment von Ziegler turned his car out of the main stream of traffic and shot up a side-turning. Instantly abandoning all thoughts of Trondheim, Gregory jerked round his wheel, narrowly missing a lamp standard, and roared after him.

CHAPTER 5

Gregory Sallust Makes His Will

A few hundred yards farther on, von Ziegler's car entered the Stor-Tory, the great square which is Oslo's principal market; but no market was being held there this morning. The German attack had opened before the vegetable and flower growers had left the suburbs so the square was innocent of stalls and its permanent booths were shut. Only a few knots of people stood there, gazing skyward at the German planes which were still circling overhead. Passing the massive red-brick tower of the Vor Frelser's Kirke, which dominates the square, the German Air Attache turned again and Gregory saw that he was heading for the Palace. Jamming his foot down on the accelerator he put on a spurt and drew level with the car ahead. Von Ziegler, catching sight of him, recognised him at once and smilingly waved him on, but Gregory signalled to him to slow down and with a frown of annoyance the German pulled up.

'What is it, Herr Oberst-Baron—what is it?' he called. 'I am in a hurry—I have urgent work to do.'

'I know,' nodded Gregory, getting out of his car and stepping over to von Ziegler, who was leaning from the driving-seat of his. 'I've been sent to help you.'

Before the airman had a chance to express surprise, Gregory hurried on: 'I've done my job already, so Quisling said that the most useful thing I could do now was to lend you a hand.'

'I see.' Von Ziegler's bright-blue eyes remained quite expressionless for a moment, then he asked: 'Do you know what I'm about to do?'

'No,' grinned Gregory, 'not officially; but I have a pretty shrewd idea, as Quisling said that I should find you somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Palace. It was by sheer luck that I caught sight of you driving through the Stor-Tory just now.'

Von Ziegler suddenly smiled. 'You must have a pretty useful imagination, Baron, if you've guessed what I mean to attempt when I reach the Palace.'

'I don't hold down a job on the General Staff for my good looks, Herr Hauptmann, and I assume that you've got a number of our Fifth Column people reporting to you. It would be fine work if we could surround the Palace so that the King can't communicate with his Government.'

'It's a much more hazardous enterprise than that.' Von Ziegler's smile widened.

'Whatever it is, I'm game, and naturally in this affair I shall consider myself entirely under your orders.'

'Danke Schon, Herr Oberst-Baron. If I'm any judge, you're just the sort of man that I should like to have with me in this business. It needs quick wits and courage and I'm sure that you have plenty of both. But we mustn't waste time talking. Jump into your car and follow me; I'll tell you what the scheme is when we get there.'

Still grinning, Gregory got back into his car and drove after the Air Attache through a number of narrow side-turnings by which he was avoiding, as far as possible, the main thoroughfares of the city which were now choked with refugees. The two cars pulled up one behind the other outside the Palace and their occupants met on the pavement.

Von Ziegler just nodded to the sentry on the gate and walked through into an inner courtyard with Gregory beside him. As they crossed the courtyard he said in a low voice: 'We're going to arrest the King.'

'Donnerwetter!' exclaimed Gregory, simulating thunderstruck astonishment.

'I don't wonder you're a bit taken aback,' murmured the airman, who was obviously enjoying his momentous disclosure, 'and it is a pretty risky undertaking. That's why I'm not sorry to have you with me.

But if we keep our heads I think we'll be able to pull it off all right.'

'What, in his own palace, surrounded by his guards? That's taking on a packet, isn't it?'

'It would be if his guards were all loyal to him, but if Quisling has done his stuff properly none of them will lift a finger. If he hasn't, we shall probably be dead in about five minutes; but you said that you were game for anything. Of course you've got your gun on you?'

Gregory nodded. Evidently he had been right about von Ziegler; anyone who would attempt to carry out such a desperate business was a man after his own heart. For the moment he was almost sorry that he was on the other side, but war was war, and if he found it necessary to do so he knew that, without hesitation, he would shoot the blonde, lanky airman.

Von Ziegler went on softly: 'This is my plan. There is a Major Heering in attendance on the King this morning—you've probably met him at Magda von Krims'—she's been looking after him for us—and it will be his job to take us up to the King without our being formally announced. He'll tell the King beforehand that two members of the Russian Legation are asking urgently for a private audience but that they don't wish to be seen going in to him. Russia has not declared her policy yet, and as Norway has rejected our ultimatum the King will naturally be incredibly anxious to know what Russia intends to do. Is she going to come in with us and attack him across his northern frontier, or can she be kept out so that he has a chance to form a solid front against us in the south? In consequence, it's certain that he will consent to see us and agree to our coming up by way of the back stairs.

'Directly we get into his room we simply hold him up at the point of the pistol. He is just as liable to die in agony from a couple of bullets in the stomach as any of his subjects, so I very much doubt if the old boy will have the courage to call our bluff. We shall be very polite but quite firm about it and offer him the choice of a sticky death or of coming quietly downstairs with us to my car, with Heering in attendance, so that, for his own protection, we can remove him to a safer place than his Palace is at the moment.'

'That's all very well,' Gregory protested, 'but, besides this chap Heering, there may be other people with him when we get up to his room, and he must know you by sight as you're a member of the Diplomatic Corps here. Directly he sees your face he'll realise that Heering has lied to him about the Russians.'

'No; we shall be all right on that score, because Heering will tell him beforehand that we have insisted that nobody else shall be present at the interview, and once we are in his room it's just a toss-up as to whether he notices my face first or the automatic I shall be holding in my hand.'

At that moment they passed another sentry and reached a covered entrance. On going inside, von Ziegler asked the uniformed porter there to tell Major Heering that the gentleman whom he was expecting had arrived. While the message was being sent up a liveried footman showed them into an empty waiting-room and closed the door behind them.

Gregory produced his cigarettes and inquired in a low voice: 'What happens if the King tells us to go to blazes?'

'Thanks.' Von Ziegler took one and went on: "Then things may prove a bit tricky, but I think we'll still manage to pull it off. According to Quisling, two-thirds of the officers of the Royal Guard have been fixed and the men are not likely to attempt anything without orders. We shall keep the King covered, and, if necessary, use physical force to restrain him from leaving the room. In any case he could not get out of the Palace now, as every entrance is specially guarded and a pro-German Norwegian officer posted at each with orders to stop him. While we are holding up the King, Heering will leave us and collect his friends. They will then proceed to arrest any Ministers, secretaries and other people who are in the Palace and might cause trouble, while we sit tight with the King until some of the troops who have landed in the harbour district have managed to fight their way up here. If we can prevent the King's communicating with anyone for two or three hours we should be all right, as by that time our Storm-Troopers will have artillery trained on the Palace and the loyal portion of the guard won't be able to offer any resistance even if they want to.'

'That's fine,' murmured Gregory, 'fine. But what happens if the King pulls a gun on us? He might, you know, and it only needs the sound of one shot to bring everybody running; then the men would probably start shooting at Major Heering and his friends and it might be anybody's day out.'

Von Ziegler shot a supercilious glance at Gregory. 'If by any chance you don't like the idea, Baron, there's still plenty of time for you to quit. I was rather under the impression, though, that you said you were game for anything.'

'I am, Herr Hauptmann,' Gregory replied quietly; 'but if anything does go wrong it looks as though you and I are going to be in the forefront of the battle. I've been under fire quite a number of times before, but nothing about my own job led me to suppose that I should be again this morning; and I haven't made my Will.'

'Made your Will?' echoed von Ziegler.

'Yes. It's a queer habit of mine; I always make a new Will before going into action. It's rather like taking an umbrella out when you're anxious that it shouldn't rain—at least, that is how it has always been with me—and, being a superstitious person, I have no intention of neglecting the custom.'

As he spoke, Gregory moved over to the other side of the room, drew a blank sheet of paper from a desk-set and began writing on it, while von Ziegler eyed him with amusement. Having completed the document, Gregory folded it neatly in two, leaving only the lowest inch of the face of the sheet visible, and called over his shoulder:

'D'you mind witnessing this for me?'

'With pleasure,' von Ziegler laughed. He seemed greatly tickled by the whole episode, but appended his signature at the bottom without comment.

'Thanks,' nodded Gregory, and folding the sheet again he slipped it into his pocket.

For a further five minutes they sat smoking in silence while Gregory badgered his wits wondering what on earth he was going to do next. If von Ziegler was correct, Major Quisling had planned the whole coup very efficiently. Even now the King's faithful friends and retainers were doubtless being got out of the way. As they would almost certainly remain close at hand, a pistol-shot in the King's room would bring them rushing to it, but traitor Heering's men would be posted in the corridors to prevent them from reaching the King's apartment. If Gregory let off his own pistol with the idea of giving an alarm it was unlikely that it would do the King any good, but would probably result in von Ziegler's realising that the shot had been fired deliberately and in his shooting the alarmist.

He could, of course, shoot von Ziegler, but it did not look as though that would do very much good either. If he did so now it would prevent the projected interview ever taking place, but it was quite clear that the conspirators had no intention of allowing the King to leave the Palace, so they would simply report to Major Quisling what had happened and wait until he sent another German officer to confront their Sovereign and carry out the arrest which they themselves were apparently ashamed to make.

If he waited until they got upstairs before shooting von Ziegler that would hardly improve matters. There would still be Major Heering to tackle and, even if he succeeded in outing him too, Heering's friends would still control the corridors and overcome any resistance which might break out at the sound of the shooting. Meanwhile he would be trapped with the King in his apartments and would have to wait there until the German troops arrived and they were both arrested. Those seemed the only alternatives to the germ of a plan which Gregory had conceived soon after entering the Palace, but that seemed so wild that he feared it would be quite impossible to carry it through without arousing von Ziegler's suspicion.

He was still racking his brains over the problem when the door opened and Major Heering came in. He was a short, stocky man with bulbous eyes and a red face which suggested that he lived too well.

The Major showed no surprise at Gregory's presence, as they had met casually at two or three parties, and since he was posing as a German Staff-Colonel there was nothing surprising about his having accompanied the German Air Attache upon this unusual occasion. Having closed the door behind him, Heering shot a nervous glance at von Ziegler and said:

'You may have to wait some time; the whole place has been in a pandemonium ever since the guns opened at four o'clock this morning. I've been trying to get him on his own for the last quarter of an hour but it's next to impossible.'

'You'll have to manage it somehow,' replied von Ziegler with brusque authority, and Gregory noted grimly that now that the German troops were in the country their representative no longer troubled to conceal the iron hand beneath the velvet glove; things were obviously going to go badly for the red-faced Norwegian if he failed to fulfil the German Air Attache's wishes.

'I've been doing my best,' protested the Major huffily.

'Then you must do better, my friend,' was the smooth reply.

'All right. Wait here; but you must be patient, otherwise we may ruin the whole thing.' The flustered Major disappeared.

Gregory prayed that the Major might still find it impossible to get a word alone with the King for a considerable time to come, since if they were detained long enough in the waiting-room it might give him just a chance to pull a fast one over the German.

He was a little chary of discussing the invasion, as in his role of a German staff-officer he would naturally be expected to know the main outlines of the operation and if he slipped up and showed ignorance upon any essential point in the plan he would immediately arouse von Zieglers' suspicions, but he began to talk of Norway in a general way and of the benefits that Germany would derive from its occupation.

Von Ziegler agreed that it was a clever stroke as, apart from the produce that could be looted from the country, it would give them many hundreds of miles of tortuous sea-coast where submarine bases could be established for attacks on Britain. 'Of course,' he added with a laugh, 'the whole thing would have been impossible if the British had proper leaders. One must not underrate them as a people, because they're tough as blazes when it comes to a real show-down, but the old gentlemen who are running the country now have simply played into our hands. If they hadn't been dead from the neck up we should never have been able to land our troops in Bergen, Trondheim and Narvik.'

It was all Gregory could do to suppress an exclamation of astonishment and fury. He could hardly believe that the Germans had been allowed to land as far north as Trondheim—let alone Narvik—without any attempt being made to intercept them, but he knew that von Ziegler would never have made such a statement if it were not true. However, the German went on in a way which revealed that the Nazis had had their men hidden in barges and other vessels all ready to come ashore in these ports, which to some extent explained what had happened. Naturally, the British could not have known that they would do that, so they had had no chance to sink these Nazi contingents before they reached their destination. Evidently it was the Intelligence, and not the Navy, who were to blame, and Gregory endeavoured to comfort himself with the thought that in this way the Germans could not have landed any considerable forces with tanks and modern war equipment. They would be unable to reinforce their landing-parties and when the British arrived they would mop them up at their leisure.

As they talked Gregory kept his eye on the clock and as the minute-hand circled the dial his hopes gradually rose. When it touched half-past ten they had been in the Palace for over an hour, so he felt that he might attempt to put his wild scheme into operation with a reasonable chance that von Ziegler would not suspect what he was up to.

First he began to fidget, then he stood up and started to pace up and down. Von Ziegler glanced at him after a few moments and murmured: 'What's the matter?'

Gregory walked over and pressed the bell as he replied: 'I've been on the go ever since one o'clock this morning so I'm going to leave you for a moment.'

In response to his ring the liveried footman appeared and Gregory, guessing that all the Palace servants would understand German, said quietly: 'Show me the way to the toilet, will you?' Then he walked calmly out of the room with the man behind him.

While it had appeared that at any moment they were about to arrest the King he had not dared to pull that old bluff to get a few moments out of sight and earshot of von Ziegler; but once it seemed that their time of waiting had become indefinite his decision to absent himself temporarily could not be taken as unnatural. Everything hung upon von Ziegler's remaining unsuspicious of him, and it was for that reason that he had felt it absolutely vital to remain there talking for so long before playing this risky card.

Even now it was only a long shot that his plan would come off, but it was better to try it than to do nothing. He allowed the footman to lead him down a long corridor and when the man threw open the door of a tiled wash-room he turned and faced him.

'How d'you feel about this morning's events?' he asked tonelessly.

The man remained standing in the half-open doorway and looked uncomfortably at his feet. 'Your soldiers are killing my countrymen down at the docks, sir,' he muttered. 'You cannot expect me to feel happy about that.'

Gregory's face twisted into an ugly sneer. 'If they are fools enough to resist, that is their own fault. But they won't resist for long; you Norwegians are too soft and pampered for that; it's time you had a lesson.'

The footman suddenly looked up and his brown eyes were flashing. 'You're wrong there; my people are a hardy folk. You wait until you get up into the mountains—some of us Norwegians will teach you lousy Nazis a thing or two then!'

Gregory's face suddenly relaxed into a smile. Producing his 'last Will and Testament' he held it out to the astonished footman and said: 'You're a loyal Norwegian—thank God for that! Now listen. The King is in the utmost danger. Never mind who I am or how I know. Never mind about etiquette—if necessary, push past anybody who tries to stop you—but you've got to go upstairs at once and give this piece of paper into the King's own hand. If you can do that you will have the right to be the proudest man in Norway, because you will have saved your King from being kidnapped by the Nazis.'

His tone was so earnest that it never even occurred to the man to doubt him. With a swift nod he took the paper and put it in his pocket. 'Very well, sir; I'll do that. It was lucky, though, that you spoke to me and not some of these chaps in service at the Palace—half of them have gone pro-Hitler.'

Two minutes later Gregory was back with von Ziegler and he sat down to await the outcome of his plan.

Knowing that the King spoke English, he had written his 'Will' in that language and it read:

Get out—get out—get out—instantly! Your guards have arranged to betray you to the enemy and German officers are already waiting downstairs to arrest you. Tear off the bottom strip of this paper and leave by one of the back entrances to the Palace. If anyone tries to stop you, present the slip and it may get you through. I urge Your Majesty not to lose a moment.

Then, underneath, he had written another three lines in German, French and English, each of which ran: TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN. New factors have necessitated a change of plan. It is of the utmost importance that His Majesty should be got away from the Palace as quickly as possible. Your co-operation in this is required most urgently.

Below it, little knowing what he had signed, Captain Kurt von Ziegler had appended his signature.

Gregory was far from being optimistic about the success of his stratagem. Luck had served him in that the footman had proved a loyal Norwegian and he felt confident that the man would manage to get the paper to King Haakon, but that was only the first step in this desperate attempt to save the King from capture.

As Gregory had never been presented his name would have conveyed nothing to the Monarch, so there had been no point in signing his message. The King might therefore suspect that the instructions were designed to lead him into a trap where he would be assassinated by Gestapo agents outside the back door of his Palace, if he came out of it unaccompanied. It was almost certain that he would consult his entourage before acting on it, and if anyone to whom he showed it was among the conspirators steps would at once be taken to prevent his leaving.

Again, even if he got as far as one of the back gates, what would happen then? Gregory knew that at each of them a pro-Nazi officer was stationed, and as all educated Norwegians could read German, French or English the officer would be able to understand the message which purported to come from von Ziegler. But would he act upon it?

Kings do not normally present passes to their guards when they wish to leave their own palaces. If the officer had any intelligence at all it would immediately occur to him that if his German paymasters really wanted the King out of the Palace there was no earthly reason why he should not have left by his own front door, in his own car and with his Equerries in attendance. At the first suspicion that the order had been faked he would hold the King until he had had the instructions verified. In a very short space of time one of Major Heering's colleagues would pass the slip to him and he would come pelting downstairs with it to inquire if von Ziegler had gone crazy. The second the German saw it he would realise how Gregory had obtained his signature by a trick, and then the fat would be in the fire.

Outwardly Gregory appeared perfectly calm but he knew that, except for the most extraordinary luck, in getting von Ziegler to sign that paper he had signed his own death-warrant.

CHAPTER 6

Caught Red-handed

The clock in the waiting-room ticked on with interminable slowness. It was barely five minutes since Gregory had given the warning message to the footman. The Palace was not a big one as palaces go but, all the same, it was quite a sizable building. The King's private apartments were probably quite a distance from the waiting-room. It might have taken the footman the best part of those five minutes to reach them.

The King was in perpetual conference with his advisers and during the last two hours even Major Heering had found it impossible to get him on his own for a moment, so what chance did an ordinary footman stand of managing that? Having acquired the habit of deference from being in the service of the Crown, would the man screw up the courage to force his way into the King's presence or would he waste invaluable time hanging about the corridor until the King came out?

If he did force his way in, the King would certainly not be alone, and it was almost certain that he would show the warning to whoever was with him. Even if he kept it to himself, and decided to act upon it, how was he going to get out of the Palace without Major Heering and his fellow-conspirators realising what was on foot? Gregory realised that although he had attempted to throw a spanner into the works he had actually thrown only a straw which had very little chance of wrecking the Nazi machine.

As he sat there he was considering what he should do when his little plot was discovered and the balloon went up. The automatic that he was carrying already had a bullet in the barrel so he had only to slip back the safety-catch. If he were first on the draw there was a chance that he could hold up von Ziegler and Heering while he got out of the room. But directly he was out of sight they would begin to shout; the sentry on the outer door would come charging in with his rifle, and the other two, having drawn their pistols, would come dashing after him, so he would be caught between two fires and shot down in the passage. The waiting-room was on the ground floor but its window had stout, old-fashioned, iron bars strongly embedded in the wall, so there was no escape that way, and the room had only one door. By and large, it was about as tricky a situation as even Gregory had been in for some considerable time.

On reconsidering the matter he decided that his only chance lay in shooting von Ziegler and Major Heering before they could draw their weapons. His shots would raise the alarm so he would still have to face the sentry on the outer door, but it was time enough to worry about that when he had succeeded in killing the other two.

At a quarter to eleven Gregory stood up and walked to the window in order to get behind von Ziegler, took out his gun, pressed up the safety-catch and slipped it into his right-hand overcoat pocket where he could hold it by the butt all ready to be whipped out at a second's notice.

At six minutes past eleven he caught the faint sounds of hurrying footsteps. Someone was running down the stairs outside three at a time. A moment later the footsteps were pounding along the passage; the door was flung violently open. Major Heering stood in the entrance, red-faced, pop-eyed, panting.

Von Ziegler had sprung to his feet. Gregory remained absolutely motionless, his eyes fixed on the Major, as von Ziegler still had his back turned to him and was therefore completely at his mercy.

'The King's gone—gone—disappeared!' gasped Heering.

'Teufel nochmal!' shouted von Ziegler. 'When? How did this happen?'

'I don't know,' panted the Major. 'Nobody knows. Apparently he just told the members of the Council that he was going to the safe in his bedroom to get some papers and that he would be back in a moment.

The Crown Prince was with him and he asked him to come and help him fetch them. The Council waited for ten minutes and there were so many urgent things to settle that his Equerry was sent in to look for him.

When they got there they found that the safe was empty and both the King and the Crown Prince had disappeared.'

Von Ziegler's face had gone pale with anger; his long nose seemed to stand out more sharply than ever and his bright-blue eyes were blazing. Stepping forward he seized the Norwegian by the shoulder and began to shake him.

'You fool!' he almost screamed. 'You miserable fool! You will pay for this mess-up before you're much older.'

'It wasn't my fault.' The Major cringed away. 'I wasn't in the Council Chamber—and, even if I had been, I couldn't have stopped him going into his bedroom.'

'No, imbecile! But someone must have warned him.'

'I know—I know.'

'And it was your job to prevent such a thing happening. Who was it? Who was it, eh?'

Gregory tensed his muscles and his hand tightened on his gun. Now for it! The footman could not possibly have got into the Council Chamber without Major Heering seeing him, and once the footman was exposed von Ziegler's swift mind would link the man with Gregory's absence from the room three-quarters of an hour before. He watched the Major's thick lips begin to move again so that he might act the very instant that a single syllable fell from them which would give away the part that he had played.

'No one said anything to the King,' muttered the Major. 'I'm certain of that, because our friends who were with him say so. He must have been warned by a written message.'

'Who entered the Council Chamber last?'

As Gregory saw the Major's mouth form the words 'a footman' he drew his gun.

But von Ziegler's back was still towards him and the Major's eyes were riveted upon the stern face of the German airman, as he hurried on:

'He only brought in the King's morning coffee. I saw him, through the doorway, set it down at the King's elbow and walk straight out again, so it couldn't have been the footman. One of the members of the Council must have found out something earlier, but had to wait for an opportunity, when he was unobserved, to pass a scribbled note.'

Gregory turned his gun over sideways and began to examine it as though he were just making certain that the mechanism was all in order. The footman had turned out a trump. Evidently, on realising that to give the King the paper openly might arouse the suspicions of any members of the Council who were traitors, he had conceived the brilliant idea of waylaying his colleague who was on duty upstairs and by some means or other arranging to take the King's coffee-tray in himself; after which it had been a simple matter to slip the folded message under the King's cup, where he would be bound to see it and could remove it without much chance that anyone else would notice what he was doing.

But Gregory knew that he was by no means out of the wood yet. The infuriated conspirators would immediately institute an inquiry among the guards at the various entrances of the Palace and the damning bottom strip of the paper which von Ziegler had signed would come to light. He might almost have put the thought into von Ziegler's mind by mental telepathy as the German snapped at Heering:

'Anyhow, what in thunder were your people on the gates doing to let the King through? Who was responsible for that?'

'Have patience,' the Major snapped back in a sudden spurt of rebellion against the airman's bullying.

'Colonel Ketch is now visiting the posts to find out. He will be here at any moment; then we shall know.'

Von Ziegler turned angrily away and began to pace impatiently up and down the room while Gregory, in his role of sympathetic co-conspirator, proceeded to ignore Heering's presence and began a slashing attack upon the inefficiency of the Norwegians who had bungled the job so badly.

Some moments later a broad-shouldered officer with a fine flowing moustache arrived. Von Ziegler evidently knew him already and Gregory rightly assumed that this was the Colonel Ketch whom Heering had just mentioned. Having stamped into the room the Colonel said with a worried frown:

'The King must have known that the gates were being watched, as he didn't go out by any of them. He and the Prince climbed over the wall of the tennis-court and dropped down into the street. One of the sentries saw them, but by the time the fool had gone inside and reported to his officer the King and the Prince had made off and were out of sight.'

'Donnerwetter!' roared von Ziegler. 'The lot of you shall answer to the Gestapo for this!'

Gregory snapped down the safety-catch of his automatic, drew out the magazine and began to toss it playfully up and down.

'Well, that's that,' he murmured with a sigh. 'We're out of luck this morning, and I suppose it's not much good our waiting here any longer.'

Von Ziegler looked round at him. 'There's no such thing as luck, Baron; only brains and organisation—as I propose to show this afternoon. Come on.' Without another word to the two Norwegians he shouldered his way past them and strode out of the room.

Gregory followed more slowly and, pausing in the doorway, said to the other two conspirators: 'I'm afraid you've made rather a mess of things, gentlemen, and in Germany such mistakes are not readily overlooked. Your only chance is to get out of the country while the going is good. There are still some neutral ships in the harbour and if I were you I should get on to one of them without an hour's delay.'

Having clicked his heels and bowed sharply from the waist he turned and left them.

His advice sounded like that of a sympathetic German who was not whole-heartedly with the Nazis and was sorry for two officers who had bungled a very important operation. Actually, it was a Machiavellian piece of cunning by which he hoped to ensure that those two traitors would get their just deserts.

If they fled up-country—as they probably would have done had he not spoken to them—it was highly probable that they would have evaded capture, for the Germans had only just landed in the capital; but if they followed his advice and went down to the harbour their capture was quite certain. No neutral ship would now be allowed to leave Oslo without German permission and if they were caught trying to get out of Norway the assumption would be that they had made up their minds to go over to the Allies; so what had only been a blunder in the first place would, in German eyes, be aggravated to deliberate treachery, and they would be dealt with accordingly.

Von Ziegler was already half-way across the courtyard when Gregory reached the door. As he followed the German he blessed King Haakon and the Crown Prince. Evidently they had had the wit to see that to present any kind of pass to a sentry on their own doorstep was certain to excite comment, so they had decided not to use the pass but to go out over the wall; and that, Gregory felt, had probably saved his life.

When he caught von Ziegler up the German was climbing in to his car. 'What d'you propose to do now?' Gregory asked.

'Go after them, of course. They can't have got far. Would you like to come with me, or would you prefer to go and let Quisling know how the Norwegians have ruined our admirable plan?'

Nothing was further from Gregory's wishes than to go and see Quisling at that moment, but he hesitated artistically before he said: 'I think perhaps I'd better go with you. It will now be a matter of a hold-up in the open, and as there are two of them you may need my help if they happen to be armed.'

'Right. Are you taking your own car or will you come in mine?'

'If I leave mine here somebody may pinch it, so I think I'll go under my own steam. I'll be close behind you.'

With a nod von Ziegler let in the clutch and his car streaked away. Gregory jumped into his and ran smoothly along behind him, knowing that with the roads now so choked with refugees the adventurous airman would not get very far at the pace at which he had set off. For ten minutes they wound in and out of the slow-moving traffic until they reached the Oslo Police Headquarters, outside which von Ziegler pulled up.

'What now?' thought Gregory. 'Surely the Nazi organisation can't have managed to get the Norwegian police force under its thumb.' But he was mistaken. After he had waited outside in his car for nearly forty minutes von Ziegler came out again and hurried up to him. His blue eyes were shining and a satisfied smile curved his strong mouth.

'We're on to them,' he said. 'Oslo is such a little place that everyone here knows the King and the Crown Prince by sight. I felt certain they'd be recognised by scores of people before they had gone ten miles. We had to wait until we could get reports of them from well outside the town so as to make certain in which direction they were heading. They've taken the road to Eidsvold, a small town about forty-five miles north from here.'

Two minutes later they had joined the stream of traffic heading north and Gregory settled down to what he knew would be a dreary chase. Had he been von Ziegler he would almost have wept with frustration at the impossibility of getting every ounce out of his car, but, as it was, he was quite content to loiter. In fact, he knew that the longer they were held up by the refugees the more chance the King would have of getting away, for even crowds who had been panicked from their homes would make way at the sight of their King, whereas they would certainly not give way to anyone who had the appearance of an ordinary civilian; but in this he had counted without von Ziegler.

Directly they were outside the town and the traffic was a little less congested the German pulled up at the roadside and took two large squares of paper out of his pocket, one of which he proceeded to paste on his own windscreen and the other on Gregory's. Both bore large printed inscriptions in Norwegian, which Gregory could not understand, but the airman said Swiftly: 'No good putting them on before we were out of that crush, but they'll help us a lot now. These notices say: "POLICE—URGENT!" and the small lettering underneath means 'Offence to obstruct".'

'Grand!' said Gregory. 'You think of everything; I couldn't have tackled the job better myself.' And as they went on again he noticed with dismay how the law-abiding Norwegians paid due deference to the placards. Each time that von Ziegler sounded his Klaxon they turned to stare and immediately gave him room to pass.

Even with these aids-to-travel their going was miserably slow, as the way curved and twisted through the mountains, where it was much too dangerous to shoot ahead for any distance with one solid line of traffic blocking half the road, and Gregory reckoned that they could not be making much more than fifteen miles an hour. But the King could not be doing any better, so he had no more than his original lead, which, allowing for their long wait at the police-station, was just about an hour.

Now that spring had come, southern Norway was gradually divesting herself of her winter robe of snow.

All the mountains were still white-capped but the thaw was climbing out of the deep valleys day after day and every stream and river was in spate. The road lay well below the snowline, but it was very chilly and Gregory thanked his stars that he was warmly clad. He pitied the poor wretches they were passing as he felt certain that many of them would not be able to find accommodation for the night, but conditions were nothing like so appalling for them as they had been for the Finns whom he had seen driven out of Helsinki, in the depths of winter, by Russian bombers.

At a quarter to four they entered Eidsvold, a little town that had only one hotel of any size, in its market square. Von Ziegler drew up in front of it and marched into the crowded lounge. As Gregory had not had anything to eat or drink for over eleven hours he got out too, but his hopes were disappointed. Von Ziegler simply produced a Norwegian police-pass, buttonholed the porter and, addressing him in fluent Norwegian, asked if the King was there.

For Gregory's benefit he translated the man's answer. 'No; he's not here, but he passed through about an hour ago on the way to Tangen.' And while he was speaking von Ziegler was already leading the way back to the cars.

It was about another twenty miles to Tangen and for most of the way the road lay along the east shore of the beautiful Mjose Lake, which is not very broad but extends for over forty miles, like a great inland fjord. They had ample time to admire the scenery, as the road was still choked with Norwegian families moving north, who had left Oslo early that morning; but the going along the lake-shore was distinctly better and they reached Tangen by five o'clock.

There, once more, von Ziegler produced his police-pass at the only hotel of any size, and they learnt that the King was still an hour ahead of them on the road to Hamar, a considerably larger town which lay some fifteen miles farther along the lake.

At Hamar von Ziegler had better luck. The King and the Crown Prince had halted there and were now in the private house of a rich Norwegian. When the place was pointed out to them they saw that it stood on a small promontory where it had a beautiful view over the pine-fringed lake and was cut off from the mainland by a high wall enclosing its own grounds.

Immediately they had left their informant von Ziegler said: 'Now, the question is—does the King mean to spend the night here or has he stopped only for a meal?'

'I could do with a sandwich and a drink myself,' murmured Gregory.

'Plenty of time for that, Baron,' replied the single-minded German. 'Come on; we must find out,' and getting into the cars again they drove along to the house at which the King had decided to make a break in his journey.

On the gate there was a squad of half a dozen armed police and others were standing about in the grounds, so evidently the best part of Hamar's police force had been mobilised to protect the King. But there were no military, as Norway has only a very small regular army and Hamar was not a garrison town. Quite unperturbed by this considerable body of police, von Ziegler jumped out of his car and yelled in Norwegian for their inspector. Gregory could not help admiring his tactics as he would have employed the same self-confident manner himself.

The inspector was brought; an elderly, grizzled man with a drooping walrus moustache, who did not look too happy at the great responsibility which had suddenly been thrust upon him. His normal life in this little country town was, Gregory felt sure, as placid as the surface of the lake below them, and it could be no joke for such a man to learn, on top of the news that his country had been invaded, that his King was in flight from the enemy and looked to him for protection.

Gregory wished that he could have understood the conversation that followed, as he was anxious to know if von Ziegler's swashbuckling audacity would carry him to the lengths of endeavouring to get into the house and attempting to secure the person of the King in the face of the bulk of the Hamar police force. He sincerely hoped that the airman had no such intention, for it was one thing to plan the arrest of the King in his Palace, where a considerable body of traitors had already agreed to render their assistance, and quite another to try to pull off such a coup here in the country where the King was surrounded by men who were almost certainly loyal to him. If von Ziegler started anything there was going to be bad trouble, and Gregory, as his companion, felt that half that trouble would be coming his way.

To his relief, von Ziegler came back after a few moments. Evidently the special pass that he had illegally secured from some traitor in the Oslo Police Headquarters conferred considerable powers on him, as he said in a low voice: 'I made them tell me what we want to know. He has telephoned for his Ministers to join him here, so evidently he means to stay—anyhow, for the night.'

'Good. How about a meal, then?' replied Gregory, who was now distinctly hungry.

'Yes. Let's get back to the hotel, then after we've fed I'll make a few arrangements.'

The hotel was packed with people. Consequently the meal that they secured was a far from satisfactory one. Had it been summer-time they might have fared better, as the place was a favourite holiday resort, famed for its boating, fishing and excursions into the mountains, in addition to which many of the wealthier people in Oslo often motored up there for the week-end, so in the season the hotel kitchen might have coped with this unusual rush of business. But as it was early April, with snow still on the mountains, the management was catering only for the handful of guests—mostly retired people and invalids—who lived there through the winter, and the dinner to which Gregory had looked forward with pleasurable anticipation boiled down to a couple of salted herrings on half-rolls, eaten standing up. However, the cellar was well stocked so they managed to get a bottle of passable hock.

While among the crowd Gregory was very careful to refrain from talking. He made it a rule never to disclose to anybody that he spoke several languages, unless he had good reason to do so, and he had no reason at all to inform von Ziegler of that fact; while, as feeling against the Germans was running extremely high, he preferred to remain silent rather than run the risk of being lynched.

Von Ziegler, on the other hand, conversed fluently in Norwegian with a number of people, and later, having acquired a bottle of Loitens Norwegian Punch from the barman and found a quiet corner where they could not be overheard, was able to pass on to Gregory the latest news.

General Count von Falkenhorst, who was commanding the German forces, had outlawed King Haakon and his Government on their flight from the capital and had set up a puppet Government under Major Quisling instead. Oslo had then surrendered at four o'clock that afternoon and the German troops were already taking possession of the capital. Two German cruisers, in addition to the powerful battle-cruiser Gneisenau, were reported to have been sunk in the operations and fighting was still going on outside the city; but the Danish Government had capitulated that morning, so the whole of Denmark had fallen to the Nazis almost without a blow.

There were no beds to be had in the hotel, but when Gregory raised the question von Ziegler said casually that they could, if necessary, sleep quite well in their cars; a hearty attitude of which Gregory did not at all approve, but as this was not his party he forbore to argue.

At ten o'clock von Ziegler said: 'I've got a little job to do before we get some sleep, Baron, and you had better come with me. It may mean that we'll have to wait about for some time, but we can always talk of this and that together.'

'Certainly,' said Gregory obligingly, and he tactfully refrained from asking any questions as they walked round to the garage to get out von Ziegler's car.

In it they drove off the main road and along a side-turning that wound its way up into the mountains to the east, for about three miles. There was no traffic on the road at all and there were as yet no anti-aircraft regulations in force in Norway about motor-car headlamps, so von Ziegler's spotlight showed the winding way ahead in its full glare, and they were able to proceed at a good pace without difficulty.

At a point where the road curved sharply round a great rock von Ziegler drew up, ran the car backwards and forwards several times until he had got it placed absolutely to his satisfaction, and got out. Then he turned off the spotlight and dimmed the other lamps with covers which he took from a pocket of the car.

Gregory wondered if von Ziegler had come there for a secret meeting with another Nazi agent, but he asked no questions, and when von Ziegler got back into the car they proceeded to talk. The airman was a pleasant and amusing person when he was in a good temper and Gregory could not help liking him for his dash and devil-may-care courage but, unfortunately he possessed all the true Prussian ruthlessness as well as having been tarred by the Nazi brush so Gregory was troubled by no scruples about the fact that he was there to sabotage his plans.

It was bitterly cold up on the bleak mountainside, but Gregory had filled his flask with the Norwegian Punch when he was down at the hotel and the airman had another which was two-thirds full of Brandtwein, so they were able to stall off the chill by swapping pulls at each other's flasks.

They had been there for over an hour when von Ziegler said, 'Hush!' and, sitting forward, began to listen intently. Gregory, too, listened, and the low note of a distant aircraft became increasingly distinct.

'That's one of ours,' said von Ziegler, and he switched on the spotlight again.

From the second Gregory had caught the sound of the plane he had tumbled to the idea. They were in the dark phase of the moon, so it was black as pitch all round them, but down in the valley he could just make out the distant lights of Hamar, some of which shimmered on the waters of the lake. That gave him his direction and he realised that von Ziegler had carefully oriented his car so that it was pointing due south down the valley, and that from their position high up in the mountains a light would have a clear field for many miles in the direction of Oslo. With swift, well-practised fingers von Ziegler began to flash the spotlight rapidly on and off, and Gregory knew that he was signalling to the German plane somewhere up there in the dark skies to southward.

For a split second it occurred to Gregory to pull his gun and stop the German, but an instant's reflection convinced him that he would be crazy to do so. If he killed von Ziegler some other Nazi would be sent in pursuit of King Haakon—someone whose intentions he would not know and so would have no chance of frustrating. It was sounder to let von Zeigler go ahead, learn his plans and then take every possible measure to wreck them.

Almost at once a pinpoint of light showed in the sky. Von Ziegler's signal had been seen and acknowledged. For several moments his fingers pressed the switch swiftly up and down. Gregory knew Morse and he tried to read the message, but soon found that it was in code so it was quite useless for him to follow it any further. The plane was much nearer now as it winked again several times before roaring high overhead. It then turned and sped back towards Oslo.

'Well, that's that,' said von Ziegler cheerfully. 'Now for some sleep. We'll find a sheltered spot somewhere down in the valley outside the town,' and he proceeded to get his engine running.

'You told them that we've located the King?' Gregory said.

'Yes. And since he's too closely guarded for us to get at him I've given them instructions to . . .' Von Ziegler's sentence was never finished. While he had been backing his car to turn it down the narrow road another car had come hurtling around the corner behind them. It pulled up with a scream of brakes.

Next second there was a blinding flash in the darkness. A bullet whistled over their heads and angry orders were shouted in Norwegian. Several men had sprung out of the other car and were running towards them brandishing revolvers. One man yelled in German as he ran:

'We saw you ruddy Nazis signalling to that plane when we were three miles away. Hands up, both of you! Hands up!'

The appearance of the newcomers had been so startlingly swift that neither von Ziegler nor Gregory had had time to draw their guns. As they raised their hands above their heads the horrid thought flashed into Gregory's mind that the next few moments might see him shot—as a German spy.

CHAPTER 7

'Think Fast, Herr Oberst-Baron'

The running figures flung themselves at the car. Two of them tackled von Ziegler, a third thrust an old-fashioned revolver into Gregory's face and the fourth dragged him out into the roadway. The light from the dashboard and the shaded headlamps was sufficient to show that they were Norwegian police.

The man who seized Gregory was a huge fellow with hairy hands and he did not use them lightly.

Wrenching Gregory's wrists behind his back he clapped a pair of handcuffs on to them, then lifting his great boot he gave him a kick on the behind that sent him flying head first into the ditch under the rock wall. His yowl of pain was cut short as the fall drove the breath out of his body and, since his hands were secured behind him, he went down flat on his face, cutting his cheek badly on a stone. For the next minute he was practically out and when he got back his wits he found that he had been lugged to his feet.

Von Ziegler had evidently fared no better, as between gasps of pain he was cursing fluently in German.

The two of them were thrown into the back of the airman's car and the big fellow sprawled on the seat, planting his huge feet on top of them, while another policeman took the wheel. The car started with a jolt and began to run down the road towards Hamar.

'Here's a pretty kettle of fish!' thought Gregory. 'To be pinched while operating as a British agent against the Germans is the fortune of war, but to be caught and shot as a German spy is a bit too thick! What the devil does A. do now?'

He realised that there was nothing to stop him producing his British passport and disclosing to the Norwegians the real reason for his being with von Ziegler; but at the back of his mind persisted the nasty, worrying thought that they might not believe him. Von Ziegler was carrying a pass to which he obviously had no right, so Gregory felt sure that when they were searched the Norwegians would also regard his passport as a forgery.

In ordinary times he would at least have been allowed to get in touch with the British Consul and would have been assured of a proper trial at which steps could have been taken to prove his true identity, but from that morning of Tuesday, April the 9th, the times in Norway had become extraordinary. After a hundred years of peace the people had suddenly woken to the unbelievable—they were at war—a full-scale invasion of their country was taking place. Under cover of darkness, foreign troops had entered all their principal cities. Screaming shells, hurtling bombs and spates of machine-gun bullets were exploding and spattering amongst them. They had been taken entirely off their guard, and were now fighting for their very existence. With such an upheaval in progress all normal judicial procedure would have been thrown overboard and they were living from minute to minute while they took such steps as they could for their protection. Two enemy spies, caught red-handed, would almost certainly be shot after the barest formalities. Gregory did not at all like the look of things.

The cars pulled up in the main street of Hamar and the two captives were lugged into the police-station.

For the time being they were allowed to sit on a worn pitch-pine bench while the German-speaking police sergeant who was in charge of the party that had caught them held a long telephone conversation.

The other policemen stood round eyeing them malevolently, and only waiting for a chance to give them another beating-up should they show the least signs of any attempt to rush the door which led to a short passage and the street.

Gregory's bottom hurt him abominably where the big fellow's boot had landed, and he had to sit sideways on the hard bench, which was extremely uncomfortable, but the cut on his cheek was not deep and the blood had already dried. Von Ziegler, he noticed, had a lovely black eye which was beginning to colour up, and his white collar had been torn away from its stud where somebody had grabbed him at the back of the neck.

After about twenty minutes the dumb-looking, walrus-moustached inspector arrived whom they had seen outside the house occupied by King Haakon. The sergeant made his report and the inspector stared grimly at the prisoners, after which he gave some order and the other men moved towards them.

Von Ziegler stood up and, squaring his shoulders, began to talk quickly but firmly. He went on for about five minutes, while the men scowled angrily at him, but the old inspector seemed considerably troubled by what he said and, when he had finished, gave another order; upon which his men led both the prisoners away and locked them up in a fairly roomy cell with two beds and a wash-place.

'Well?' asked Gregory, who had not understood a single word of all that had been said.

'They were going to shoot us out of hand,' said von Ziegler, 'but I managed to get the old boy rattled.

He's just a country policeman and I imagine he's reached the rank of inspector only by doing his job conscientiously for the best part of forty years, and avoided any responsibility unless his little book of rules has given him chapter and verse for taking it.'

'How did you manage to get him scared?' asked Gregory curiously.

'I admitted quite frankly that we were German officers in civilian clothes. I also admitted that we were communicating with the enemy—there was no sense in denying that, seeing that we were actually caught on the job—and that as we were not in uniform the penalty for our offence was death; but I told him that the police had no power to pass or to carry out such a sentence. I insisted that, however brief our trial, it must be held by the military and that sentence and execution must be carried out by them.'

Sitting down gingerly on one of the beds Gregory lit a cigarette. 'That was a damned clever line. I take it that you were gambling on the fact of there not being any troops in the town? I wonder, though, that he believed you.'

Von Ziegler grinned. 'He didn't at first—I could see that in his rheumy old eyes—but I told him that it was quite definitely a piece of international law. I pointed out that at four o'clock this afternoon Oslo had surrendered to General Count von Falkenhorst and that our troops were also in possession of Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim and Narvik; that his people, therefore, hadn't a hope in hell of holding the rest of the country and that we should be in full possession of it inside a week. I reminded him that immediately afterwards an investigation into events in every town would be carried out with our usual German thoroughness and that we had plenty of sympathisers in Hamar as well as in other places; that if he liked, therefore, he could have us taken out into the back yard and shot, but that he would never be able to cover it up; it would be reported directly German troops arrived here and perfectly legal reprisals would be carried out against him. Our Gauleiter would have him shot, with the whole of his firing-squad that shot us, and all their families would be sent to a concentration-camp in Germany. After all, that's perfectly true, you know—except the part about its not being legal for police to shoot enemy spies. These Norwegians can't go shooting German officers like you and me and not expect to pay for it; so really I've done the old boy a good turn by scaring the wits out of him.'

Gregory nodded. 'Yes; our comrades would inflict pretty sweeping penalties for the loss of an Air Attache and a Staff-Colonel. I think you handled the situation magnificently. Unfortunately, though, the bluff you put up has only saved us temporarily. Our lives are still hanging by a hair; the moment any troops turn up we shall be handed over to them and promptly executed.'

'Maybe,' said von Ziegler, by no means happily, 'maybe; but things will start to happen long before any Norwegian troops come on the scene.'

'What sort of things?' asked Gregory. 'Have you got some Fifth Column people among those ferocious-looking policemen who will come and let us out later on, when the excitement has quietened down?'

'No; unfortunately I haven't. These country folk are much more difficult to get at than the Norwegians in the towns. The thing I'm thinking of may give us an opportunity to escape, but on the other hand it may settle our problem for good and all.' The airman began to pace a little nervously up and down the narrow cell, as he added: 'Have you got that Will, Baron?'

'Eh?' Gregory almost said: 'What Will?' but he checked himself in time and replied instead: 'Why d'you ask?'

'Only that you may need it, unless it goes up in smoke with you. This place is going to be bombed to blazes in less than half an hour.'

'Hell's bells!' Swinging round, Gregory stared at him. 'So that is what you were signalling about?'

'Yes. I ordered three squadrons to come up at twelve-thirty and blow Hamar off the face of the earth.'

'Phew!' Gregory whistled. 'The devil you did! But why, in God's name? I thought you wanted to get the King alive?'

'I did—this morning. But we couldn't go into that chateau on the lake and carry the old man off now he's surrounded by a lot of friends and loyal police—we wouldn't have stood a chance—and from the policy point of view it doesn't very much matter which we do—secure his person or kill him. The essential thing is that since he's decided to fight we must render him powerless to inspire his people. It would have been fun to fly him to Germany, but once that became impossible, it was up to us to bring about his death in any way we could.'

Gregory drew heavily on his cigarette. 'I suppose the idea was that we should sit up there in safety on the mountainside while Hamar was blown to bits, then come down and inspect the ruins to make certain that he hadn't escaped?'

"That was the scheme; but, unfortunately, things have panned out rather differently. I told them to begin on the chateau, then to go for the road-junction and the railway station in case he escaped the first salvo and tried to get away; and lastly, to plaster the whole town in case he had taken refuge anywhere after leaving the chateau. I suppose this police-station is as solid a building as anything hereabouts, but if our Flieger do their stuff properly it's not going to be a very jolly party for you and me now. Still, there's a chance that part of the building will be damaged and that we may be able to escape in the ensuing confusion.'

Gregory's brain was working overtime again. The first thing was to get a warning to the King before the German planes came over, and that should not be difficult. He had only to bang on the cell door and start creating a fuss, upon which the German-speaking sergeant would be brought along; he could then tell the man what was intended, and it was quite certain that the police would not waste time inquiring why Gregory had chosen to give the warning, but would take immediate steps to see that the King removed himself to a place of safety.

Such a course meant giving himself away to von Ziegler, but that was immaterial now that the German had done his worst and was a captive. They would both be removed to a place outside the town until after the air-raid, and von Ziegler would definitely be shot immediately troops arrived in that area, but Gregory might get off through having given the warning which had saved the King.

On the other hand, he might not. It would probably be reasoned that he had given the warning only out of sheer funk for his own life, which did not affect the fact that he had communicated with the enemy for the purpose of bringing about the King's death, and jointly with von Ziegler he would still be held responsible for the destruction of the town and for the deaths of any Norwegians who were killed in the air-raid. On further consideration he did not think that there was much chance of the Norwegians reprieving him because he had given away the fact that the raid was to take place. It was much more likely that he and von Ziegler would be torn to death by an infuriated mob in the light of the blazing ruins.

Time was passing with horrifying swiftness and he knew that he had got to think mighty quickly if he was to get both the King and himself—not to mention the wretched inhabitants of Hamar—out of this ghastly mess, and for about ten agonising minutes he could think of no way out at all.

Suddenly the idea came to him that it might be possible to use the information he possessed as a bargaining counter, and he said quickly to von Ziegler: 'This isn't good enough. Our boys may get the King but they'll probably get us too; and if they don't, it's a hundred to one that we'll be lynched afterwards by a howling mob. I'm perfectly prepared to die for the Fuehrer, but we can be much more useful to him alive.'

The airman was a brave man, but the last ten minutes had done him no good at all. Little beads of perspiration were standing out on his forehead and he had gone quite pale about the gills. He knew, just as well as Gregory did, what an extraordinarily slender chance they stood of getting out of that police-station alive, and he said after a moment:

'Yes. It was one thing to take a sporting chance of being wounded or killed in an attempt to get the King, but it's another to have to sit here waiting for almost certain death—as we now have to. I wasn't reckoning upon being trapped like this. What d'you suggest?'

'You'd better leave this to me,' replied Gregory. 'Just get me that police sergeant who speaks German.'

Von Ziegler hammered on the door and when it was opened spoke to the warder, who shut it again and a moment later returned with the sergeant.

'Look here,' said Gregory, 'my friend and I have been thinking things over. We fully realise that we shall be shot directly some of your troops turn up, and we've been wondering if we couldn't save our lives by doing a deal with you. We are in possession of very important information; something which may change the whole fate of Norway. As a German officer and nobleman I give my word for that. My proposal is that we should give you this piece of information and that, in exchange, you should allow us to walk out of here immediately afterwards as free men. If you don't agree—all right, we're not talking; we'll go to our deaths with our mouths shut—but you'll regret it as long as you live.'

'I must send for the inspector,' said the sergeant cautiously.

Gregory shook his head. 'Sorry, there's no time for that. This matter is of the utmost urgency, so you must make the decision yourself. My friend and I have excellent reasons for wanting to be outside this station as soon as possible, and the information will be no good to you unless you act on it at once. If you haven't made up your mind in two minutes the deal is off.'

The sergeant was a much more intelligent-looking man than the old inspector and he did not waste further time beating about the bush. Instead, he said quietly: 'In that case you must give me your information and leave yourself in my hands. If I consider that the information is really worth it I'll let the two of you go.'

The man had an open, honest face and Gregory knew that the only thing that he could do was to trust him, so he said: 'All right; I'll take your word for that. We were signalling, as you saw, to one of our planes. It went back to Oslo with the information that King Haakon has taken refuge in the chateau here and with orders for three squadrons of bombers to come up and blow the place to hell. There is no means of cancelling the order, so you've got about twelve minutes left to warn the King and get the inhabitants out of the town.'

'Right,' said the sergeant. 'You're free. Out you go—both of you!' Then he yelled an order in Norwegian to the astonished warder and raced for the telephone. A moment later Gregory and von Ziegler stood out in the street mopping the perspiration from their brows—but free men.

'Mein Gott! You handled that well,' sighed von Ziegler. 'And you were right; we should have been crazy to stay there and let ourselves be blown to bits. Now we're free again we'll get the King tomorrow and still live to wear Iron Crosses of the First Class for the job.'

His car was still standing outside the station and he ran towards it. As he started it up and swung round the wheel Gregory jumped in beside him, yelling: 'Hi! Not that way— back to the hotel! I want to collect my car.'

'We haven't much time,' muttered the airman.

'Time enough for that,' replied Gregory, 'and it may prove useful.'

'Schon!' Von Ziegler put his foot on the accelerator and the car sped down the street. Realising that at that time of night the garage would be locked, they drove straight to the hotel entrance. When Gregory raced up the steps he heard a fire-alarm ringing loudly; a warning had just been telephoned to the hotel and the night-porter had had the sense to set the alarm going as the quickest way of rousing the guests.

The bedless crowd who had settled down in the lounge to get what sleep they could were already hurrying to the cellars and other people in their night-attire were running down into the lounge from the rooms above. After one hasty glance round, Gregory saw the night-porter and grabbing him by the arm demanded the key of the garage. The man took it off its hook and thrust it into his hand. Without losing an instant he ran out of the hotel again and jumped on to the footboard of von Ziegler's car, so that the airman could run him round to the garage gates.

The open space outside it was blocked with the cars of refugees who had selected the hotel as a temporary shelter for the night, and when Gregory got the door open he found that the garage also was jammed to capacity with cars; so he did not bother to look for his own, as it might have taken him a quarter of an hour or more to get it out. Instead, he ran his eye swiftly down the front line and selected a car of the same make, which his ignition key would fit. Thrusting it in, he turned on the engine, then glanced at his watch; there was still about five minutes to go. Getting into the car, he sat back and lit a cigarette.

He waited there, keeping an eye upon the minute-hand of his watch and listening with all his ears for the sound of aeroplane engines. Three minutes passed, then von Ziegler came dashing in.

'Come on!' he yelled. 'Come on! What the hell are you waiting for?'

'All right,' Gregory called back. 'I've been trying to find my own car but it must be somewhere at the back, and it's only just occurred to me to take this one instead.' As he spoke he drove slowly out of the garage, but directly he got the car on to the road he stopped again and, getting out, lifted the bonnet to examine the engine.

'Come on!' shouted von Ziegler. 'They'll be over in a minute!'

'Right,' yelled Gregory. 'Let me just fix this,' and he pretended to tinker with the carburettor. He had been at it for about a minute when he caught the faint hum of aeroplanes. 'There they come,' he thought.

'Just like the old Boche—punctual as a clock.' And slamming down the bonnet he jumped back into the car.

Von Ziegler's car was already in motion and he was cursing furiously. He had meant to drive north out of the town immediately they left the police-station, and so get ahead of the Royal party, as it was a hundred to one that the King would renew his flight in that direction. But Gregory's insistence on collecting his car had necessitated their going to the southern end of Hamar, and now it was too late to drive back through the town. Unless he was prepared to risk being caught in the open street he had to take the road south: which was just as the crafty Gregory had intended that it should be.

They were hardly outside the town when the planes roared over. Three parachute flares dropped; a second later the first stick of bombs landed with a frightful crash in the grounds of the chateau. The speeding cars felt the impact but they were now far enough away to be out of danger from a direct hit, though there was still a chance that they might be caught by a flying piece of metal. Realising this, both of them pulled up and, jumping out, scrambled down into a ditch.

The earth shook and quivered as flight after flight of planes came over and salvo after salvo of bombs hurtled down half a mile to north of them. A number of people who had fled immediately on receiving the warning were out there on the roadside near by, but others who had lingered had been caught, and from where they were they could hear the screaming of the wounded.

Very soon the flames from the burning buildings lit the surrounding countryside almost as brightly as daylight, and as Gregory crouched beside the author of this havoc he watched the drawn, bitter and terrified faces of the people about him. One man was muttering to himself unceasingly, and although Gregory could not understand what he said he knew that the poor fellow was solemnly and persistently, from the bottom of his heart, cursing Hitler and all his workers; while near him lay a woman who was sobbing quietly.

At first the bombing had been down on the lake-shore, then it had shifted to the railway station, which was on higher ground, and along the road to the north, over a mile away from them; but soon the German airmen, having thoroughly plastered their first targets, began to attack any buildings that they could see by the light of the flames, and some of the bombs fell very much nearer.

The noise was positively deafening as out of the night sky the planes shrieked down, practically on to the roof-tops, before letting go their bombs. Hamar was totally undefended and the raiders had nothing whatever to fear from diving right on to their objectives. A large bomb caught the last house to the south of the village and the whole building seemed to dissolve in a sheet of flame and smoke while brickbats and pieces of metal hurtled hundreds of yards through the air in all directions. One lump of rubble caught a woman who had injudiciously raised her head above the level of the ditch and she let out a piercing scream as she slumped sideways.

At last the pandemonium subsided and, locking their cars, Gregory and von Ziegler walked back among the crowd to the entrance of the town. The havoc that had been created was absolutely frightful. Hardly a building was left standing, and those that remained were in flames. Burning beams, steel girders and masses of rubble choked the roadway, and it was some small consolation to Gregory to see that the bombers had done their work so thoroughly that it was now impossible for von Ziegler and himself to get through the town in their cars until the road was cleared. He could only hope that the King and the Crown Prince had managed to get away to the north before the air-raid started.

As everybody was speculating on what had happened to the King it was not difficult to get news of him, and von Ziegler soon learnt from people in the crowd that he had succeeded in getting clear of the chateau but had been caught at the railway station. It seemed that he had gone there believing that a train, for which he had given orders to take him farther north first thing in the morning, was already in the siding.

The station was almost a total wreck but the building in which the Royal party took shelter had escaped the first attack, and immediately afterwards they had been bundled into a car that had managed to get away before the Germans bombed the road to the north.

Gregory hid his satisfaction while condoling with von Ziegler, who was furious; not so much at the King's having got away, for he had more or less reckoned that the warning of the raid would give him time to do so, but at the fact that with the road blocked he would be unable to follow him, perhaps for many hours.

When they had confirmed these rumours Gregory remarked: 'Don't you think it would be wise for us to get out of the town again? It's true that the sergeant gave us our freedom but we might find ourselves in a nasty mess if we were recognised by one of those ferocious policemen. Now that they know we're German officers it's quite on the cards that they might turn the mob on us, and if that happens we'll never see Berlin again.'

'You're right,' von Ziegler agreed. 'Come on; let's get out of this.' And they began to pick their way south again over the heaps of rubble, among which the inhabitants of Hamar were already searching for their belongings and endeavouring to cope with the innumerable fires that were destroying the remnants of their property.

'I think the best thing is for us to sleep in the cars until morning,' the German added. 'With refugees still streaming north from Oslo they'll have to clear the main street, as there is no way of getting round the town except by a long detour through the mountains, so with luck the road may be passable again soon after dawn.'

Even down there in the valley it was very cold, once they were away from the area of the burning houses, but they had thick overcoats and, fortunately, there were rugs in both cars, so when they reached them they curled themselves up on the back seats and settled down to get some sleep.

Gregory was pretty tired after his twenty-two-hour day but before he dropped off he reviewed the situation. The war had now started in deadly earnest by the German invasion of Norway that morning; and he had a fine little private war on his hands into the bargain. So far he had kept his end up. Twice in fifteen hours he had saved King Haakon from capture or death and secured him another clear start; but von Ziegler was no mean opponent, and Gregory wondered for just how long he would be able to continue to outwit him.

CHAPTER 8

To Catch or Kill the King

Von Ziegler woke first and roused Gregory. Full day had come and the sun was shining. During the night many refugees in other vehicles had pulled up near them. Evidently the road through Hamar was not yet clear, as the long line of cars and vans was stationary and their owners were either lounging about near them or busy preparing picnic meals for themselves at the roadside.

When they went forward to have a look at the town they found that, with the exception of one big fire which was still raging near its centre, the place was now only a blackened ruin. Many of the walls were still standing but there was hardly a roof to be seen and most of the houses were just empty shells or huge piles of rubble which had collapsed in the roadway. However, quite a considerable amount of progress had already been made in clearing the main street and gangs of townsfolk reinforced by a number of refugees were hard at work shovelling away the great heaps of brick and dragging clear the fallen beams.

Keeping careful watch for the police, they set about trying to find some breakfast, but not a shop was left where they could buy anything and none of the people whom von Ziegler questioned had anything to sell, so they had to content themselves with cigarettes and a few pulls from their flasks. It looked as though the road would be clear by mid-morning and, as they had no wish at all to run into one of the policemen who had caught them the night before, they retired to the cars, where Gregory, curling up in his, managed another two hours sleep.

Shortly after eleven o'clock von Ziegler roused him again to say that the long line of vehicles was on the move and, joining the procession, they set off. The going was now even slower than it had been the day before as the cars were able to pass through the partially-cleared streets of the town only in single file; the pace of the column was that of its slowest member and there were constant halts for no apparent reason.

At last, when they got on the clear road to the north they were able to go a little faster, as both cars had the police notices stuck on their windscreens and the refugees gave passage to them wherever possible.

About five miles farther on von Ziegler pulled up on a grassy stretch at the roadside and produced a map which he consulted while Gregory joined him for a cigarette. It was a large-scale map of German origin and every building was marked upon it. The airman pointed to a solitary square that stood a little apart from a cluster of rectangles, denoting the village of Jesnes.

'That's the place I'm looking for,' he said. 'It can't be far now; judging by the contours, it's just round the next bend. We'll find friends there and if these blasted refugees haven't eaten them out of house and home we'll get some breakfast.'

They crawled on for another mile and round the bend entered Jesnes, where von Ziegler turned right, up a steep, winding side-road, until he reached the gates of a chalet which stood about a hundred and fifty feet above the village. Here they got out and the airman tinkled a bell, upon which a flaxen-haired, fresh-cheeked maid with voluminous petticoats, came out of the house and along a short path of chipped stones to ask them what they wanted.

On the previous night they had had their guns taken from them but they had not been searched after the inspector's decision to hand them over to the first troops that arrived in Hamar, so von Ziegler still had his Norwegian police pass on him. He showed it to the girl and asked to see Professor Elvdalen, but it proved unnecessary for her to fetch her master as at that moment he appeared on his own doorstep.

The Professor was a plump, rosy-faced man of about forty, and on the girl's showing him von Ziegler's pass he asked them to come inside. The house was a well-kept but unpretentious place with the type of furnishings that are bought on the hire-purchase system, and Gregory judged that Elvdalen was probably a minor official of some kind—perhaps to do with the fisheries or the forests—as the only thing which made the living-room into which their host conducted them at all out of the ordinary was that on one wall there was a number of large-scale maps of the district, which had evidently not been pinned up recently for they were yellow from exposure.

When the girl had gone about her housework von Ziegler spoke to Elvdalen in Norwegian, upon which the plump man immediately straightened himself up and gave the Nazi salute. Having acknowledged it von Ziegler introduced Gregory, and it was found that the Norwegian could speak a little German but not very much, so von Ziegler did not use that language for giving him instructions.

These resulted in the Professor's going out to give some orders to his maid and then settling down to make a number of telephone calls. While he was still at it the maid came in bearing a heavily-laden tray with hot coffee, eggs, cold meat and preserves. Except for the brodchen in the hotel at Hamar, Gregory and von Ziegler had had nothing at all to eat for over thirty hours, so they set to with a will. They were still eating when Elvdalen finished his telephoning and came over to report. The King had reached Lillehammer, about thirty miles farther north, in the small hours of the morning and there was reason to suppose that he intended to stay there, for the time being at all events.

'Why?' asked Gregory, and the airman replied: 'Because it is at the entrance to the great Gudbrandsval Valley and there is no town of any importance farther north until one reaches Trondheim. He can't go there because we have already occupied it, and if he's going to continue any attempt to govern the country he must make his headquarters in a town where communications will be reasonably easy with the other large towns that the Norwegians are still holding.'

Gregory nodded. 'From what I remember of the map, the valley is over a hundred miles in length, so there are plenty of places where he could go into hiding in it; but, of course, if he did that he'd have great difficulty in keeping any control over the situation at all.'

'Exactly. And the thing that makes me pretty certain that he intends to establish permanent headquarters at Lillehammer is that he is staying with the Sandvigs.' 'What has that to do with it?'

'It was old Sandvig who fathered the collection of Norwegian peasant arts. He went in for the gaily-printed chests and cupboards that they have in their houses, and for silver-work and embroidered costumes, but his interest didn't stop there. He also collected the most interesting specimens of the ancient Norwegian log-houses with their oriental-looking gables and had them re-erected round the shores of a small lake on his estate at Maihaug, outside Lillehammer. Elvdalen learnt from his informant that there has been great activity going on out there all this morning and that they are fitting up these old show-houses with beds, wash-basins, etc. As the houses are fairly well scattered over the estate the people who occupy them will naturally be much safer from air-raids than they would be if they were concentrated in two or three large buildings in the town, so it looks to me as if the King intends to house his Ministers and staff in them while he stays with the family who own the place.'

'I see. And what do we do now?'

Von Ziegler yawned. 'First I must try and get through to Oslo to make fresh arrangements, but the lines must be terribly congested so that may take some time. While Elvdalen is getting me my number we'll have a bath and a shave.'

This was welcome news to Gregory as, although the good meal had appeased his hunger, he was still feeling stale from a night spent in his clothes and his bristly chin was begrimed with dirt from the ditch in which they had sheltered from the air raid and with smuts from the burning buildings.

While they bathed, the maid cleaned up their soiled garments and when they were dressed again the fatigues and discomforts of the past night were forgotten, but they found that Elvdalen had failed to get through to Oslo. He reported that the bombing of Hamar had destroyed the telephone exchange there and had cut direct communication with the south, so calls to Oslo could be got through only via Lillehammer and a long circuit of village exchanges; the delay reported was at least five hours.

'We can't wait all that time,' said von Ziegler impatiently; 'I'll have to use other methods. As the line to the north is still functioning we ought to be able to get through to Ringsaker. It's only about ten miles north along the road and I've got a man there who could do the job for us.' Turning to Elvdalen he told him to get a Ringsaker number and in less than five minutes the call was put through. Taking the instrument von Ziegler himself spoke. When he put it down he was smiling.

'That's fixed,' he told Gregory. 'My man there has a secret wireless so my new instructions will reach our Oslo Air Headquarters in the course of the next few minutes.'

'Fine,' laughed Gregory, but inwardly he was cursing. These damned Germans seemed to have a hundred strings to their bow. How could any ordinary army put up a prolonged resistance against a people who had secret agents established in almost every hamlet?

Von Ziegler led the way out to the hall and began to take a swift leave of the Professor, who expressed the honour he felt at their having made use of him. Gregory would have liked to smash in the face of the treacherous Norwegian who was selling his country and stood there fawning on its enemies; but he had a better plan. He had purposely left his cigarette-case in the sitting-room and, leaving the others in the hall, he went back to fetch it.

Elvdalen had been smoking a heavy pipe and he had laid it down in an ash-tray on his desk. Taking from his waistcoat pocket a small phial of cyanide, which he always carried, Gregory inserted a little of the deadly powder into the hole of the pipe-stem. No human court was needed to convict the Professor; a higher court had decreed that when he betrayed his King it should be before a witness who was also prepared to act as judge and executioner. Gregory's act was carried out with cold deliberation and when he rejoined the others he only felt a mild gratification at the thought that Elvdalen was now most unlikely to live to enjoy the rewards of his treachery. Five minutes later the two cars were descending the winding track to the village.

On the main road there was still a long line of vehicles streaming north but this time they had no great distance to go and they arrived at Ringsaker at half-past two. The place was a fair-sized country town and it stood on a long, narrow arm of the great Mjose Lake, which ran all the way from Hamar to Lillehammer.

Von Ziegler drove straight through the town and some way beyond it until they reached a point where the foothills of the mountain range rose sharply to the right of the road but on its left was a mile-wide strip of flat, cultivated land between it and the Lake. Driving through an open gateway into a meadow, he pulled up and got out. Gregory followed suit and they sat down on a near-by bank to smoke some cigarettes that Elvdalen had pressed upon them.

There was no reason at all why von Ziegler should not have taken Gregory into his confidence as to what the next move was to be, but the adventurous airman evidently derived considerable pleasure in producing one rabbit after another out of the hat for the edification of his companion, who was technically his senior officer, and by now it had become more or less accepted between them that Gregory should ask no questions but only offer useful advice if they got into any difficulty; so he controlled his impatience to know why they should have halted outside Ringsaker instead of going straight on to Lillehammer.

As they were still many miles from King Haakon's new headquarters it seemed pointless to halt here if another air attack on the King had been ordered, and he could only assume that von Ziegler had made a rendezvous at that spot with the man who had the secret wireless-station in the town. But once again he proved wrong.

Just before three o'clock von Ziegler got to his feet and began to pace restlessly up and down. Gregory noticed that he kept glancing at the sky to the southward until, after a few moments, he suddenly gave a whoop of joy and cried: 'Here they come!'

Following the German's glance Gregory could just make out a number of tiny black specks in the sky, which were growing in size with considerable rapidity, and a second later the droning note of the aeroplanes was quite clear. 'Perhaps,' he thought, 'they're going to bomb the King again after all, but, if so, why should we have pulled up in a spot where we have no possible chance of seeing the effect of the attack and it will take us at least an hour to reach the scene of the raid to find out if it has proved successful?'

Then the shape of the planes became perceptible and he saw that they were not dive-bombers but troop-carriers of the JU 52 pattern. As he watched six of them roared over and out of each tumbled a succession of what looked like large black parcels. For an instant he thought that they must be some new type of bomb, but there seemed no point whatever in bombing these quiet fields and meadows on the lake-shore. A second later the parcels burst and a wavy object billowed out above each. They were men descending from the aeroplanes by parachute.