The Black Baroness by Dennis Wheatley

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