40 Biggles Works It Out
Page 16
If it's all the same to you I think I'll be moving off now. You know where to find me if you want me."
"What about the Count and von Stalhein?" asked Algy.
"I'm hoping that von Stalhein and Groot, who was with him, will have landed at the Plaine de la Crau, in which case they would find Joudrier's men waiting to receive them. As for the Count—well, he might be anywhere by now, and I'm not going to spend the rest of my life looking for him. We shall hear of him again, no doubt. For the time being I'm satisfied that the gang has been broken up."
Bertie chose this moment to chuckle. "The Count paid me jolly well for the short time I worked for him," he averred, cheerfully.
"Oh. And what did he pay you?" inquired Biggles.
"He gave me a hundred thousand franc notes." Bertie's hand dived into his pocket, and he displayed the wad with a flourish.
Joudrier held out a hand. "Let me look at those," he requested. He looked. "Forgeries,"
he said calmly, and put them in his own pocket. "They can go on the fire."
Everyone burst out laughing at the expression on Bertie's face.
"Here, I say, that's a bit tough!" he. cried indignantly.
Raising a warning finger, Joudrier went on. " Attendez, monsieur. There is reason to think that this man who calls himself Count von Horndorf is Jacob Theller, the master printer, who in the war forged notes for Hitler for use in the countries he occupied. We found many of these notes on the people we arrested at the Villa Hirondelle. Always we have had these bad notes in France to make the changing of money difficult. We did not know where they came from. In the safe at the Villa Hirondelle there were old letters addressed to Jacob Theller. By description the man is the same."
"Well, all I can say is, after all my honest sweat, I call that a pretty low trick," said Bertie disgustedly. "Is nobody honest in this world?"
There was more laughter as the party broke up. Marcel elected to remain at the oasis with Joudrier
until everything had been dealt with, but promised to run over to Gatwick at the first opportunity. Soon afterwards, taking Ginger with him, Biggles got into the Mosquito and headed north for home, leaving Algy and Bertie to follow in the Dakota when it returned to pick up Joudrier and his men. Biggles told them they could take a day or two off in the South of France, where Algy had some business to clear up; they could then fly home in the Auster that was still at Nice.
The final records of the strange case of the White Prophets were only completed over a period of time.
In the matter of von Stalhein, Biggles was disappointed to learn, when he reached France, that the calculating German had managed to evade capture by employing the same callous methods that had got him out of trouble on more than one occasion. The Mosquito, as Biggles expected, had gone straight to the Plaine de la Crau, and had actually landed there. Joudrier's men were waiting. It so happened that, either by accident or by the design of his wily companion, Groot had got out first. Not realizing that anyone else was in the machine, the gendarmes had made a rush at him. Groot had pulled a gun and tried to fight his way back to the machine, and in this he might have succeeded had von Stalhein waited for him. But the aircraft had taken off again. Groot, in his fury, had shot and wounded a gendarme, and was thereupon shot dead. The Mosquito was never seen again. What happened to it became a matter for surmise, but in view of what Algy had overheard about the headquarters of the gang being moved to behind the Iron Curtain, Biggles was of the opinion that von Stalhein had found refuge there.
The Count may have headed for the same sanctuary, but his fate, revealed afterwards, was definite. Weeks later some climbers in the Swiss Alps came upon the wreckage of an aircraft that had flown into the side of a mountain, either as a result of inefficient pilotage or bad weather. There were two bodies. Lying beside them was a valise that concussion had burst open. One of the bodies was identified as that of Jacob Theller, long wanted by the police for his war-time activities. His pilot, from the papers he carried, was one Luis Leguez, a Mexican ex-gangster of Chicago, who had been "put on the spot" by his associates there. What was more important than the bodies were the contents of the valise. It had been packed with new currency notes of several nationalities; more important still, the plates from which they had been engraved were there. These were, of course, destroyed, and a menace that had long embarrassed European banks was removed for all time. On closer examination by the police the valise was found to have a false bottom. In this was a wonderful collection of precious stones which, on being identified, disclosed the robberies that the Count and his gang had engineered.
As Biggles remarked when he heard this news, with so much wealth available it was no matter for wonder that the Count was able to finance an air organization on such an ambitious scale. He must have known there was a limit to how far he could go in the distribution of spurious notes, so he had engaged himself in turning them into the universally recognized units of wealth—gold and precious stones.
Emile, by his behaviour at El Asile, had already in effect turned King's Evidence, so no charge was preferred against him. He had to rejoin his regiment, but the influence of Captain Joudrier, backed by Biggles, soon secured for him what, as a result of his brief association with aircraft, he now wanted, which was to be a military pilot. On the completion of his training he was posted to North Africa, a location for which his desert experience made him eminently suitable.
One final curious fact emerged from the case, as Biggles pointed out when the matter was discussed at leisure. Monsieur Bourdau, who had spent a fortune in a genuine attempt to save the ibex, had, although fortunately he did not know it, provided the means of their extinction.
Not one survived the occupation of the oasis. Some, after persistent persecution, may have wandered away to safer pastures; but the majority must have fallen to the rifles of the meat-hungry adventurers who called themselves the White Prophets.
THE END
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