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.