The other knocked out his pipe on his hand. “Perhaps,” says he. “Perhaps not.” He took a step towards me. “May I ask you, sir, what is your name?”

There was only one answer to that. I took a deep breath, looked down my nose, and said:

“I think you know it very well. I am Prince Carl Gutaf. And I think I may be entitled to ask, gentlemen, who you may be, and what is the explanation of this outrage?”

For a man with his heart in his mouth, I think I played it well. At any rate, the tall one said excitedly:

“You see! It could not be otherwise. Highness, may I….”

“Save your apologies, doctor,” says the short one. “They may be in order, or they may not.” To me he went on: “Sir, we find ourselves in a quandary. I hear you say who you are; well, my name is Sapten, and this is Dr Per Grundvig, of Strackenz. Now, may I ask what brings you to Jotun Gipfel, with your coat muddied and your breeches torn?”

“You ask a good deal, sir!” says I hotly. “Must I remind you who I am, and that your questions are an impertinence? I shall….”

“Aye, it sounds like the real thing,” says Sapten, smiling a grim little smile. “Well, we’ll see.” He turned his head. “Hansen! Step this way, if you please!”

And out of the hut, before my horrified gaze, stepped the young man who had greeted me at the wedding reception—Erik Hansen, Carl Gustaf’s boyhood friend. I felt my senses start to swim with sick terror; he had sensed something wrong then—he couldn’t fail to unmask me now. I watched him through a haze as he walked steadily up to me and gazed intently at my face.

“Prince Carl?” he said at last. “Carl? Is it you? Is it really you?”

I forced myself to try to smile. “Erik!” God, what a croak it was. “Why, Erik, what brings you here?”

He stepped back, his face white, his hands trembling. He looked from Sapten to the doctor, shaking his head. “Gentlemen, I don’t know…it’s he…and yet…I don’t know….”

“Try him in Danish,” says Sapten, his single grey eye fixed on me.

I knew then I was done for. Bersonin’s efforts had been insufficient to give me more than the crudest grasp of one of the hardest tongues in Europe. It must have shown in my face as Erik turned back to me, for the damned old villain Sapten added:

“Ask him something difficult.”

Erik thought a moment, and then, with an almost pleading look in his eyes, spoke in the soft, slipshod mutter that had baffled my ear at Schönhausen. I caught the words “Hvor boede” and hardly anything else. Christ, he wanted to know where somebody lived, God knows who. Desperately I said: