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.'