The Black Baroness Read Free Page A

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 shallbe 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 LouisDane 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