CHAPTER 9
When Greek Meets Greek
Gregory could almost see the thoughts racing through the German's brain. He was putting two and two together with extraordinary rapidity. He had been too wrapped up in his own plan to kidnap or kill King Haakon to wonder why a German staff-colonel should, within five hours of the invasion, have completed any work he had to do and be at liberty to set off into the blue as a casual helper in this wild chase. Here was the explanation. His companion for the last twenty-seven hours was not a German officer at all, but a British spy. The Rolls-Royce car had a diplomatic number-plate, so evidently its owner was an Englishman who had escaped from the British Legation in Oslo, and he had given away this old friend of his, Mr. Gregory Sallust, without realising what he was doing.
It must have been this spy who had somehow managed to warn King Haakon to leave his Palace at a moment's notice. It was this wolf in sheep's clothing who on the previous night had suggested that instead of remaining in the police-station to be bombed they should give warning of the air-raid; so he had managed to save the King again on the specious excuse that if they saved themselves they could always capture or kill him the following day. Now it was this snake that he had been nurturing in his bosom who had proposed that they should go ahead of the column to make quite certain that Lillehammer was undefended; but evidently his intention had been to get yet one more warning to the King so that he could leave the town before the German troops came up. Von Ziegler was an ambitious man and he had counted upon receiving signal honours from his Fuehrer for the capture of King Haakon; now he saw how step by step his plan had been foiled by the British agent whom he had been fool enough to take as his companion and confidant.
With a roar of rage he sprang; but Gregory side-stepped and put out a foot to trip him. For once Gregory had met his match. Von Ziegler was still much too concerned for the preservation of his own plans to be willing to risk sabotaging them further for the joy of injuring the man who had tricked him. The thing uppermost in his mind at that moment was the urgent necessity of escaping from the two Englishmen, who might try to hold him prisoner, and of getting back to his troops round the bend of the road. He had leapt at Gregory only in order to drive him out of the way. Swerving suddenly, he jumped into the driving-seat of the Rolls. Its tall owner grabbed at him but he fended him off with one hand while releasing the brake with the other. Next minute the big car slid away in a cloud of dust.
Gregory could not help admiring the tactics by which von Ziegler had made his get-away and he smiled at the Englishman. 'Well, Gussy, old friend, I'm afraid that's good-bye to your Rolls.'
The Honourable Augustus Langdon-Forbes stared after four thousand pounds' worth of the world's most excellent machinery, which was now streaking southward. Then he looked ruefully at Gregory.
'Who's your ill-mannered friend? I seem to know his face.'
'You should,' Gregory replied. 'He's the Air Attache at the German Legation in Oslo and he rejoices in the name of Captain Kurt von Ziegler.'
'Of course. Still, damn'd unsporting of him, I think, to make off with my car like that without so much as
"by your leave".'
'There is a war on, Gussy, old thing,' Gregory remarked quietly.
The other's eyes suddenly flickered with amusement. 'So I gather. In recent months we've even had one or two dispatches about it from London.'
'I should have thought you might also have seen something of it yourself in the last few hours. Did you by any chance pass through Hamar early this morning?'
'Yes; and I found it a most regrettable sight—most regrettable. I see no reason at all why we and the Germans shouldn't kill one another, if we feel that way, without burning up the houses of a lot of unfortunate Norwegians.'
'The Germans considered that they had an excellent reason. They were out to capture King Haakon—and they'll get him yet if we don't do something about it. Do you by any chance speak Norwegian?'
'A word or two. I've been en poste here for over two years you know.'
'Enough to make yourself understood over a telephone?'
Augustus Langdon-Forbes' brown eyes twinkled again. 'I might succeed in that.'
'Come on, then; you must get on to the police—or, better still, to the Sandvig's house, where the King is staying, and warn him to get out at once. There's a column of German troops lurking round the corner up there all ready to come racing into the town, and another lot are making their way up through the trees on the other side of the water.'
'God bless my soul! D'you really mean that, Gregory? I know the German motor-cyclists are pretty swift movers but I never thought that they'd get here as quickly as this.'
Gregory had turned and was striding towards a long, low building just beside the petrol station, as he replied grimly: 'They didn't come on motor-cycles; they dropped straight out of the sky like a lot of lovely fairies who had been cursed by a wicked witch and turned into sausage-eating hoodlums with two-ton boots.'
'Parachute troops, eh?' Augustus said lazily.
'How did you guess, Gussy dear?'
'Oh, we are not altogether without our sources of information,' the diplomat shrugged, 'and I had a sort of idea that they might try out their new technique if they decided to go for Scandinavia.'
'Then why the hell didn't you pass on your "sort of idea" to the War House?'
'We did, old fellah—we did; but the wallah who received this epic testimony to our foresight and care for our country's weal probably thought we were pulling his leg. After all, it's asking a bit too much to expect a British general to believe in fairies.'
As they hurried into the low building Gregory realised that it was not, as he had supposed, the rather spacious bungalow of the owner of the petrol pumps, but some sort of club. There was a man behind a desk in the hallway, which opened into a broad lounge-room where a number of Norwegians with worried faces were earnestly talking together in little groups.
Langdon-Forbes stepped forward and proceeded to air his word or two of Norwegian. This proved to be a complete and rapid command of the language, without any attempt to speak it as it was spoken by the Norwegians, and his rather high, clipped accent still branded him as Winchester and Balliol although he was speaking in a foreign tongue. What he said to the man behind the desk Gregory did not know, but the man was galvanised into instant activity and two minutes later Gussy was speaking swiftly and clearly on the telephone. As he hung up the receiver he said to Gregory:
'Well, that's that. Dr. Koht, the Foreign Minister, is with the King and I spoke to his secretary, whom I know personally, so they will be on their way in half an hour.'
'Half an hour?' exclaimed Gregory. 'That's no good; the Boche are only just round the corner; once they start they'll be in the town inside ten minutes—and they may start at any moment.'
'Sorry; but the King is in his bath. He's had rather a trying time, poor old chap, and he thought a bath and a bit of massage would restore him. They'll tell him at once, of course, but it's bound to take him a quarter of an hour or so to get dried and dressed.'