by W E Johns
“Of course.”
“Who does she write to in Holland?”
“Usually it’s to one address.”
“Can you remember it?”
“I’ve seen it enough times. She writes to Mr. Rudolf Lurgens. His address is Rossenhalle, near Hillegom, Holland.”
“Does she ever send cablegrams to him?”
“She has, once or twice.”
“How does she usually sign herself?”
“Karena. That’s her Christian name, I believe.”
“I see. Give me a telegram form,” requested Biggles. “I want to send a cable to the same address.”
The postmaster looked surprised, but made no comment. He put a form on the counter. Biggles picked up a pen, and Ginger, looking over his shoulder, saw him write, after the address: “Return tonight without fail. Important new business.” He signed it “Karena”.
“You can get that off as soon as you like,” ordered Biggles, handing back the form. “Is Mrs. Vanester on the phone?”
“Yes. The number is Buckbury 401.”
“Her calls come through your switchboard?”
“Yes.”
“Will you be on duty yourself for the rest of the day?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Unless I ring up myself, personally, I want you to block all calls to and from Larford Hall until further notice. Say the line’s out of order—make any excuse you like. Can you do that?”
“If those are police orders, yes.”
“All right. Not a word of this to anyone, you understand?”
“You can rely on me,” said the postmaster. “Excuse me asking, but is this anything to do with Mrs. Teale’s boy, who was—?”
“What do you know about that?” asked Biggles sharply.
“I had to deliver the telegram saying he had been killed.”
“Ah, of course,” replied Biggles. “Yes, that’s it, but keep quiet about it.”
“I’ll keep quiet,” promised the postmaster grimly. “Eddy was a nice boy. I’ve known him since he was a toddler.”
Biggles went out. “Now I think we’ll park the car and have a cup of tea while we have the chance. Then we’ll take a stroll along the footpath to see what we can find there.”
“Do you think this man Lurgens is the man we’re looking for?” asked Ginger.
“He might be,” answered Biggles. “I took a chance on it. If it isn’t we’ve done no harm.”
Twilight was closing in by the time they had reached that part of the footpath that fringed the grounds of Larford Hall, a large red-brick house, sections of which could be seen through the trees. So far the path had traversed wooded country, but now, while timber persisted on one side, the other lay open to the big grass field in which, if Biggles’s reasoning had been correct, the apprentice had lost his life. Entrance to this field was, however, barred by a fence of formidable appearance. The lower four feet comprised tightly-stretched, square-meshed sheep wire. Above this ran three strands of barbed wire.
“Someone has been to some trouble to keep people out of the field, anyway,” observed Biggles.
Ginger pointed to a notice. “Beware of the bull,” he read. “That may be the reason.”
“As you say, it may be the reason—but I doubt it,” answered Biggles. “Such signs can be an old trick to discourage trespassers. I don’t see any bull, anyway.” He walked on slowly, examining the wire as he went.
“Are you looking for something?” asked Ginger presently.
“Yes, I’m looking for the place where the boy got over,” returned Biggles. “It shouldn’t be hard to find. He could hardly have climbed up that mesh without bending the wire that carried his weight. Ah! This looks like it.” He pointed to a section of wire that had been bent in the manner he had suggested. Speaking to Ginger, he went on: “If you were walking along here, carrying a haversack, and suddenly decided to climb the fence, what’s the first thing you’d do?”
“Dump the haversack.”
“I’d think that, too,” agreed Biggles. “The boy’s haversack shouldn’t be far away.”
Bertie stooped and lifted something from the bracken almost at his feet. “Here it is, poor little beggar,” he said quietly.
“Leave it where it is for the moment,” ordered Biggles. “This, then, is where he got over. Which means that the aircraft must have been standing just inside the field, or he wouldn’t have seen it. He must have wondered, not without reason, what it was doing there, and, deciding to find out, he got shot for his pains. Stand fast, you two. I’m going over.”
The others watched him climb the fence, walk a little way into the field and then quarter the area slowly. He stopped, looking at something on the ground. Then he stopped, picked up an object in his handkerchief and rejoined those on the path. “I was right,” he said. “That’s where the machine stood. She dripped a little oil out of the engine, as they usually do.”
“What did you pick up?” asked Ginger.
Biggles opened his handkerchief. “The case of the cartridge that killed Teak. The automatic ejected it after the shot. Being dark, the man who fired it couldn’t find it—or didn’t bother. We’re getting on.”
“And now what’s the drill, old boy?” asked Bertie.
“The drill is, as there’s nothing more we can do for the moment, I’m going to sit down and have a quiet cigarette for a little while. Then Ginger will come with me as a witness while I have a word with Mrs. Vanester. Bertie, you’ll stay here. If the machine lands, do nothing until the pilot has gone to the house, as I think he will. Then your job will be to see that the machine doesn’t leave the ground again.” Biggles looked of the sky. “It’s a fine night, anyway,” he remarked inconsequently.
It was ten o’clock when, with Ginger beside him, he rang the front-door bell of Larford Hall. It was answered by a butler. “I’d like to see Mrs. Vanester on a personal matter of importance,” Biggles told him.
They were invited into a hall, where the butler left them, presently to return and conduct them to a well-furnished sitting-room of some size. A tall, dark, heavily built but good-looking woman of middle age rose from a chair where she had been at work, apparently making a hat.
“Good evening. You have something to say to me?” she questioned, speaking with a pronounced accent.
“Yes,” replied Biggles. “I fear I am the bearer of bad news. We’re from police headquarters.”
The woman did not move or speak, but Ginger, who was beginning to know the signs of nervous emotion, saw the end of her nose turn white.
“Is Mr. Lurgens, of Rossenhalle, Holland, a relation of yours?” asked Biggles.
Mrs. Vanester’s hand flew to her heart. “He is my brother!” she cried. “Don’t tell me he has crashed? Always I feared that he would fall in his aeroplane and be killed.”
“I didn’t say anything about an aeroplane,” returned Biggles quietly. “But while we are on the subject, will you tell me why he found it necessary to land here last night instead of at an official airport? I have warned you that we are police officers.”
For a moment the woman did not answer. She stared at Biggles as if his face fascinated her. “Who said he landed here?” she asked at last, in a curious strained voice.
“I did,” replied Biggles evenly. “I asked you why he landed.”
“He wanted to see me, of course. Why not?”
“As you say, why not? But why land here? Why not land at the proper place?”
The woman shrugged. “I know nothing about flying.”
“I suggest that he landed here because he carried something he did not want to declare to the Customs officers.”
“Such nonsense!” scoffed the woman. “He brought nothing but a small present for me.”
“Would you call the box of feathers which I see on the floor beside your chair a small present?” inquired Biggles.
The woman drew a deep breath. “Very well!” she exclaimed curtly. “What of it? What are a few feathers? I
s the possession of feathers a crime?”
“That depends on the feathers and how they were brought here,” replied Biggles.
“So!” challenged the woman haughtily. “If there is a duty to pay I will pay it.”
Biggles shook his head. “You cannot, Mrs. Vanester, evade the law in this country and gloss over it as easily as that.”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m hoping to discuss that with your brother.”
“That is impossible. He is in Holland.”
“On the contrary, I think I hear him landing now,” averred Biggles imperturbably.
For the first time the woman looked shaken. “Is he mad?” she muttered. “What could have brought him here?”
“I took the liberty of suggesting that you were anxious to see him.”
“But I don’t want to see him.”
“No, but I do,” said Biggles softly. “Here he is now, I think.”
The door was thrown open, and a swarthy man, with an unstrapped flying helmet on his head and a leather jacket on his arm, strode into the room. After a swift glance at the two men he looked at the woman and said tersely: “What is this? Why do you ask me to come back?”
With a hand resting on his hip, Biggles answered. “Your sister didn’t ask you to come back. I sent the telegram. I am a police inspector and I arrest you for the murder of Edmund Teale, an aircraft apprentice, outside this house last night. I must warn you that anything you say—”
The accused man did not say anything. But he acted—swiftly. The flying jacket fell from his arm as his hand flashed to his pocket. Biggles moved just as fast. Two shots crashed almost as one, making the lights jump. Silence fell. Pale blue cordite smoke reeked across the room. Biggles swayed a little on his feet, then stood still, his lips a thin line, a smoking pistol still half raised. The man facing him stretched out a hand for the table. His eyes, wide open, were on Biggles’s face. His pistol fell with a soft thud on the carpet. Then, like a coat slipping from a peg, he crumpled in a heap on the floor.
The woman screamed, stumbled to a settee and collapsed on it.
Said Biggles, slowly and deliberately: “He asked for it. Ginger, pick up that gun. The phone’s over there. Call Sergeant Winskip. Tell him he’ll need an ambulance. Give my name to the operator or you may not get through.” Then he walked stiffly to a chair and sat down.
Thus ended dramatically the case of the murdered apprentice. Lurgens, already wanted for murder, had nothing to lose by shooting at Biggles, who, realising this, was ready. Both shots took effect. Lurgen’s shot hit Biggles in the side, making a flesh wound that put him in hospital for a week. Biggles’s bullet did not kill Lurgens. It lodged in his body and was successfully removed. He was in hospital, on the way to recovery, when he made a desperate attempt to escape, tearing the stitches in his wound and causing complications from which he died a fortnight later.
Mrs. Vanester was deported as an undesirable alien.
Later it was revealed that Lurgens had once been employed as a pilot by a Dutch air-line company operating in Indonesia, and had been discharged for the very offence that in the end cost him his life. Ironically, the feathers that provided such a vital clue must have been only a sideline, judging from the big stocks of contraband goods found in Larford Hall, and black-market British currency found by the Dutch police in his house in Holland.
Exactly how Apprentice Teale met his death was never known, although it was proved by ballistic experts that Lurgens’ pistol had fired the fatal shot. The probable explanation, supported by bloodstains in Lurgens’ Fokker, was that Teale, on his way home, had seen the machine standing in the field, and, investigating, hit on the truth. Anyway, the smuggler had shot him and disposed of the body in a manner which he had every reason to suppose would be simple and safe. It may have been simple, but, as events proved, it was not safe. The body, from the lonely sandbank on which it fell, called for justice, and it did not call in vain.
[Back to Contents]
THE CASE OF THE STOLEN AIRCRAFT
“IN MY time I’ve seen and heard so many surprising things that I’ve often told myself that nothing could ever surprise me again.” Biggles smiled whimsically as; sitting in his room at the Operations Headquarters of the Air Police at Gatwick Airport, he reached for a cigarette.
“What is it this time, old warrior?” enquired Bertie, adjusting his monocle.
Biggles looked across at the map table on which Algy and Ginger were plotting a course. “Come here and listen to this,” he requested.
“Have you just come from the Yard?” asked Algy, as he walked over.
“Yes. I found Wing Commander Lyall, Provost-Marshal of the R.A.F., there with the Air Commodore; and he told us as queer a yarn as I ever heard in my life, I think. I got a laugh out of it, too.”
“Shoot away,” demanded Algy.
“Follow the story closely and don’t miss a word,”, said Biggles. “Here we go. Some time ago a pupil at the R.A.F. Training Establishment at Marling Road, in Suffolk, was detailed to do a cross-country test in a certain aircraft—to be precise, a Lysander numbered K.8009. Half an hour later, sweating in his flying kit, he returned to the Flight Office to say that he couldn’t find the machine anywhere. Other people, including the Station Commandant, started looking, and they couldn’t find it, either. In short, K.8009 wasn’t on the airfield. Where was it? Nobody knew. Records showed that it had been overhauled and refuelled three days earlier and pulled out onto the concrete. With what reluctance we can well imagine the Station Commander had no alternative than to report to the Air Ministry that he had mislaid one perfectly good aircraft.” Biggles stubbed his cigarette.
“A day or two after receiving this report the Air Ministry did the obvious thing. They sent a signal to all stations asking for a check to be carried out to see if anyone had an aircraft surplus to establishment. It was just possible that some thoughtless fellow had flown the machine to another airfield and forgotten to bring it back—a most unlikely proceeding, we must admit, but it was the only solution the Air House could think of. The check was carried out according to orders, but, far from producing the missing machine, another Station Commander, at another training unit, had to confess that he was one short. He had lost a perfectly good Mosquito, of all things. At any rate, it wasn’t on the airfield. Nor could its absence be accounted for.
“Upon receiving this information the Air Council
became exceedingly wrathful, and Station Commanders up and down the country began to lose their beauty sleep. The R.A.F. started looking for its lost sheep, but they were not to be found. About this time somebody remembered that just before the scare started someone had rung up to say that, while out shooting grouse on the Yorkshire moors, he had come upon the wreckage of an aeroplane. He thought the Air Ministry might like to know about it. Nobody had paid much attention to this at the time because war-time wreckage is still lying about the more desolate parts of the country, and nobody had been reported missing, anyway. However, somebody was sent along to have a look at this particular mess. And, sure enough, it turned out to be the bits and pieces of Lysander K. 8009. It had obviously gone into the ground flat-out, nose first, and scattered itself all over the landscape. Apparently it was flying itself at the time. At all events there was nobody in it or near it. How could you account for that?”
“The pilot, knowing he was going to collide with the floor, had already baled out,” offered Ginger.
“Correct,” answered Biggles. “That’s the only possible answer. But who was he? Where was he going? What was he doing? Why didn’t he report the accident? If something had gone wrong he would have been justified in stepping out.”
Nobody answered.
“There is more to come,” resumed Biggles. “The next step in this chain of curious events was a letter sent to the Air Ministry by a farmer in Lincolnshire. Very politely he asked them to remove the aeroplane that was standing in one of his fields as his cattle w
ere using it as a rubbing post and he was afraid this wasn’t doing it any good. An officer was sent along. What did he find?”
“The missing Mosquito,” replied Bertie promptly.
Biggles nodded approvingly. “There are moments, Bertie, when your perception amounts almost to genius,” he declared with gentle sarcasm. “You’re quite right. There stood the lost Mosquito with hens roosting on it and a cart-horse scratching its tail on the rudder. How it got there nobody knows. The farmer swears he woke up one morning and found it there. But wait a minute. A very odd circumstance now arose. Records showed that just before the aircraft disappeared its tanks had been topped up ready for a long flight. When it was found the tanks were practically dry. That is to say, when the Mosquito left the ground it carried rather more than five hundred gallons of juice, which would give it a range of well over two thousand miles. Yet here it was, with almost empty tanks, within forty miles of the place where it started from. What do you make of that?”
“Nothing,” said Bertie helplessly. “Absolutely nothing.”
“I thought you wouldn’t,” murmured Biggles softly.
“Are there no pilots missing?” asked Ginger.
“Not one,” answered Biggles.
“What I want to know,” put in Algy, “is what happened to all the petrol? Did the pilot fly round and round for hours and hours until he’d used it all up?”
Biggles shook his head slowly. “That doesn’t sound to me like the answer.”
“But I say, look here, old boy; what does all this add up to—if you see what I mean?” asked Bertie.
“It doesn’t add up to anything that makes sense,” replied Biggles.
“And where do we come in?” enquired Ginger.
“We don’t,” Biggles told him. “At least, that is, not officially. The Air Ministry, as a matter of course, has now informed the Yard of these queer goings-on. I happened to be with Raymond and so heard about them. The Air Ministry has, I gather, confessed itself beaten, so if we can find the answers it should be a feather in the Air Commodore’s cap. On the face of it the case is odd rather than sinister, but in aviation one never knows what lies behind a thing, however simple it may look. Until the mystery is solved it’s impossible to say which government departments may be affected. It might be a matter of simple smuggling for Customs and Excise; it might be an ordinary police court job; but it might just as well come within the province of the National Security Office. If the aircraft had disappeared entirely the thing wouldn’t be so strange. One would suppose that the machines had been pinched by some bloke for purposes of his own, possibly for sale abroad. That has been done. But why pinch an aircraft and then throw it away? That’s the nut we’ve got to crack.”