by W E Johns
‘Suppose we cut out this romancing and get down to brass tacks?’ broke in Algy. ‘We’ve got to get Henri a doctor, and we shan’t get one here. We’ve also to get ourselves home, and that – forgive me if I appear pessimistic – doesn’t look easy. Start thinking, somebody, and think fast.’
‘Here’s Mario – let’s have some breakfast first,’ proposed Biggles, as Mario and the princess appeared with dishes, plates and cups.
‘This war gets curiouser and curiouser – if you get my meaning?’ remarked Bertie. ‘A couple of days ago Mario tried to bump me into a gorge; now he’s feeding me with soup. I’m all for getting back into the air where I can see where I’m going.’
‘What about Biggles being saved by an enemy princess?’ queried Ginger. ‘That takes a bit of swallowing.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ disputed Biggles. ‘Princess Marietta isn’t an enemy. She isn’t even Italian. She’s Sicilian – so is Mario. Apparently there is a difference. Anyway, you wouldn’t expect a princess to take orders from a puffed-up scallywag of the Romagna – that’s what the princess calls Mussolini – who murdered her father. But shut up – here she is.’
Breakfast over, the dishes were collected by Mario, who disappeared with them up the stairs. A moment later, as the others were about to settle down to talk, he reappeared, beckoning excitedly.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘Many aeroplanes.’
They all hastened up the steps and followed the waiter into the open. It was now broad day. But Ginger was not concerned with that. His nerves thrilled as he heard the familiar drone of aircraft.
‘There they are, coming up from Italy,’ said Biggles, pointing to the south-east. ‘One, two, three . . . twelve of them. Savoia flying-boats. Must be a squadron on the move. Wonder where they’re bound for?’
‘Part of the new occupation outfit, I reckon,’ suggested Ginger.
‘They’re losing height,’ observed Biggles. ‘They’re already over Mentone so they’re not going there. I should say it’s Monaco, Nice, or possibly Cannes – there’s a harbour at each place.’
For a few minutes they watched in silence, watched while the drone of the engines died away and the gliding angle of the aircraft steepened.
‘Monaco,’ said Biggles. ‘Now if only we could get hold of one of those babies . . .’
‘Why not?’ murmured Ginger.
‘Upon my life, the boy’s getting positively reckless,’ asserted Bertie.
‘If we don’t fly it means we’ve either got to walk or swim, and it’s a long trip, either way,’ declared Ginger. ‘Apart from which, we’re getting such a big party that we could hardly hope to stroll away without being noticed.’
‘Flying would suit me nicely,’ interposed Algy. ‘You grab one of those machines and you can reckon on me as a passenger.’
‘That’s enough fooling,’ put in Biggles quietly. ‘Ginger was right when he said we are a long way from the nearest friendly frontier. We can’t sit here indefinitely; on the other hand, none of us is really in a fit state to tackle a six- or seven-hundred-mile jaunt. Henri’s condition rules that out, anyway. We’ve got to get transport of some sort. Admittedly, Mario has an ambulance, and it might get us a little way, but as soon as we ran out of petrol, which is almost impossible to get here, we should be cheesed. An aircraft would suit us admirably, but experience has shown that it isn’t as easy to snatch a machine in enemy country as some people seem to think. All the same, the possibilities are worth exploring.’
‘I should have thought,’ resumed Ginger, ‘that the risks of trying to get a plane were no greater than trying to get across the frontier into Spain or Switzerland, the only neutral countries within reach without crossing water. Suppose I go down to Monaco to find out just what the chances of pinching a plane look like?’
‘Wait a minute, that’s my pigeon,’ protested Bertie.
‘Why yours?’
‘Because I’ve got a useful pal on the spot – my old boatman, François Budette.’
‘All right, let’s both go,’ agreed Ginger. ‘I want to go to Monaco, anyway.’
Bertie groaned. ‘It’s that girl again.’
‘Not at all,’ argued Ginger. ‘As far as Henri’s mother is concerned, Henri is in jail at Nice, waiting to be shot. She helped me in the preparations for the rescue, so the least we can do is let her know that Henri is safe, so far. Of course, if I saw Jeanette at the same time I should speak to her – out of common politeness.’
‘Why this sudden passion for good behaviour?’ sneered Algy.
‘I think Ginger’s right about madame,’ put in Biggles. We must let her know about Henri. But are you in a fit state, Ginger, to walk to Monaco? Don’t forget the police are waiting for you.’
‘I never felt better in my life,’ declared Ginger. ‘And as far as the police are concerned – well, that goes for all of us. I’ve got Lucille to ride on, don’t forget.’
‘Like you, she needs a rest,’ Biggles pointed out.
‘To save much trouble, suppose Mario went and fetched his ambulance?’ suggested the princess. ‘Then you could both ride down. And if you went inside you would be out of sight.’
‘That sounds better,’ assented Biggles. ‘If there’s going to be transport, I’ll go down and have a look at things myself. How does Mario feel about it?’
The princess consulted Mario in rippling Italian.
‘He says he thinks it might be done,’ she informed the others. ‘He’s willing to try. But unless he is able to get a lift into Monaco it will be late in the afternoon before he can get back.’
‘Now we’re getting somewhere,’ breathed Ginger enthusiastically.
‘Actually, I should be the one to go with Biggles and Bertie,’ said Algy.
‘Not on your life,’ denied Ginger. ‘You don’t even know where Madame Ducoste lives – I do.’
‘Okay, Romeo,’ submitted Algy, grinning.
‘I think it’s a deplorable thing that a fellow can’t have a platonic friendship without these lousy insinuations,’ snorted Ginger bitterly.
‘All right, laddie, put your hackles down,’ consoled Biggles. ‘Mario had better get off right away. When he comes back he will have to stop at the nearest point on the Sospel road. We’ll be on the watch for him.’
Mario went off, and the others settled down to discuss their adventures in more detail. Princess Marietta sat by Henri’s bed and gave him water from time to time. It was obvious that his head wound was troubling him.
At noon they started to look out for Mario, not that they expected him back so soon, but Biggles was leaving nothing to chance; and as it transpired he was right, for a few minutes after Algy – who had volunteered for the first watch – had taken up his position, he saw a covered vehicle, bearing the red and white colours of the Principality of Monaco, coming up the slope. He hurried back to the cellar and informed the others of its arrival.
Biggles, dressed only in his boiler suit, at once prepared to depart. With Bertie and Ginger he went down to the car, which had already been turned, to find Mario at the wheel looking very smart in his uniform. At his suggestion they lay inside on the stretchers. As he closed the door he explained that his quick return was due to his having got a lift on a military lorry from Mentone to Monaco. The flying-boats, he stated, were in the harbour.
The journey to Monaco was made without incident beyond occasional hold-ups due to the congested state of the road. It may have been as a result of the heavy traffic, which kept the police busy, that the ambulance was allowed to pass without question. Mario stopped at the end of the Boulevard des Moulins rather than risk running down the hill to the Condamine where he could be seen by the palace guards, who might ask him why he had brought the ambulance out.
‘Now I put da ambulance in my garage,’ said Mario. ‘I pick you up here to take you back – in one hour, yes?’
‘That should be ample time for what we want to do,’ agreed Biggles, and Mario drove on.
They were proceeding on their way to the harbour when their attention was attracted by a little group of people standing in front of the official notice board at the bottom of the casino gardens.
‘Let’s see what it’s all about,’ suggested Ginger.
‘Probably the names of the winners in the latest lottery,’ predicted Bertie.
‘We’ll just have a glance in case it affects us,’ decided Biggles, glancing round. There were one or two police about, but they were swamped in the tide of Italian troops. Convoys had parked beside the road and soldiers were everywhere, talking and smoking.
They all walked over to read the notice, which they found had been printed in both French and Italian, under the Italian flag.
As Ginger read it his body seemed to go cold, and his nerves to contract. For the notice concerned them very closely. In the first paragraph it promised a reward of ten thousand francs to anyone submitting information which would lead to the arrest of Henri Ducoste, described as a rebel and a de Gaulleist. But it was not that which shook Ginger, and gave him a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was the last paragraph. This asserted that if the reward was not claimed, and if Henri had not delivered himself up within twenty-four hours, his mother and sister, Madame and Mademoiselle Ducoste, of Monaco, would be arrested as hostages, and summarily shot. The signature at the bottom was Signor Gregori Gordino, prefect of the special police.
Biggles nudged Ginger’s arm. ‘Don’t speak a word,’ he cautioned. ‘Let’s get out of the crowd.’
CHAPTER 16
BIGGLES TAKES OVER
GINGER WALKED ON down the hill behind Biggles. His face was white with passion.
‘The swine,’ he muttered incoherently. ‘The unutterable swine. Can you beat that? They’d shoot two women because . . .’
‘Take it easy, or you’ll have people looking at you,’ warned Biggles. ‘Let’s stop here for a moment and calm down.’ He halted by the sea wall which, from a hundred feet above, looked down on the little harbour.
Bertie joined them. He, too, was pale and his eyes glittered frostily. ‘That’s a bit steep,’ he muttered. ‘Absolutely vertical, in fact.’
Ginger nearly choked. ‘Oh, for a Lancaster,’ he grated. ‘I’d fan this place flat.’
‘And kill a lot of perfectly innocent people,’ said Biggles bitingly. ‘You’re out of control, get back on your course.’
‘If Henri hears about this he’ll give himself up,’ averred Bertie.
‘Let us hope that he doesn’t hear about it.’
‘In which case,’ rejoined Ginger harshly, ‘Jeanette and her mother will be shot by this viper Gordino.’
‘Oh, stop bleating,’ snapped Biggles. ‘They aren’t shot yet, and we’ve ample time to do something.’
‘Do what? What can we do? Now that notice has been posted, the Rue Marinière will be watched by the police to make sure that Jeanette and her mother don’t try to get away.’
Biggles lit a cigarette and flicked the match over the balustrade. ‘You’re working yourself into a sweat and the mascara is running out of your hair down your face,’ he observed. ‘Wipe it off – unless you’re trying to camouflage yourself as a zebra.’
‘Okay – okay. But what are we going to do?’ implored Ginger.
Biggles jerked his thumb towards the old village of Monaco, on the far side of the harbour. ‘You see that rock over there?’
‘Yes.’
‘You see the castle on it?’
‘Of course.’
Biggles turned and pointed to the east, where, at no great distance, the coast of Italy jutted out into the sea. ‘There’s a town there called Ventimiglia,’ he said casually. ‘About seven hundred years ago a lad named Francis Grimaldi lived there. One day he woke up feeling very much as you do now. You see, the bloke who lived at the castle here at Monaco, a skunk named Spinola, had pinched his girl and locked her in the tower. Grimaldi didn’t stand and swear – or if he did there’s no record of it. As soon as it was dark he put his knife in his belt, coiled a rope round his waist, and rowing up to the rock, he scaled the cliff. Slitting the throats of people who were foolish enough to ask him where he was going, he went along to the castle, where, in the main hall, Spinola was guzzling wine with a party of pals. Grimaldi locked the door and set the place on fire. With his rope he rescued his girl, lowered her into the boat and returned home. So they lived happily ever after. You may have noticed that the street through the Condamine is named Rue Grimaldi. Now, the point of my story is this. If Grimaldi could do a show like that and get away with it, in comparison our job of fetching Mrs and Miss Ducoste from the Rue Marinière looks easy – don’t you agree?’
‘Ginger grinned sheepishly. ‘Sorry. Go ahead.’
‘Of course, we can’t just drop what we came here to do, so we shall have to try to do both,’ resumed Biggles. ‘Let’s get organised. It means breaking up the party. Bertie, I shall have to ask you to get all the gen about the aircraft. Go and see François and find out what he knows. I shall want you to tell me how long the machines are here for, how they are moored, if they are guarded, and so on. You’ve got an hour to do it in. In one hour from now be at the corner of the Bou des Moulins, where Mario dropped us just now. We’ll pick you up there. If we’re delayed, wait. Got that?’
Bertie nodded. ‘Absolutely.’
‘Fine. Get cracking.’
Bertie turned away. ‘See you later.’
‘And now what do we do?’ asked Ginger anxiously.
‘For a start, instead of looking like a couple of tramps, we’ve got to get ourselves up to look like important people – Italian officers, for instance. Yes – that should be easy. I can see quite a lot of troops bathing in the harbour, and more are going down. Let’s join them.’
Ginger stared. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘Possibly, but I hope not,’ answered Biggles. ‘We’re not actually going to bathe, of course; pleasant though it would be, we’ve hardly time for that. But the idea gives us a perfectly good reason for taking off our clothes. See those two officers going down with towels? They’re just about our weight. They’ll probably be in the water for half an hour. When they dive in the drink, we’ll dive into their uniforms.’
‘And then?’
‘We’ll go up to the Chez Rossi, get Mario to turn out his blood-wagon, proceed to the Rue Marinière, and arrest Madame and Mademoiselle Ducoste. We shall then return to Castillon, taking the ladies with us, collecting Bertie on the way. Of course, it may not work out quite as smoothly as that, but that’s the general idea.’
‘Okay, let’s get going.’
As they walked down the hill Ginger asked, ‘If we can get these uniforms, what happens if anyone speaks to us in Italian?’
‘We just act as if we didn’t hear ’em,’ answered Biggles calmly.
The first part of the programme worked out so easily that Ginger found it hard not to smile. The two Italian officers joined the crowd of bathers on the quay and started to undress. Biggles and Ginger, taking up a position near them, followed suit. The Italians dived into the sea. Biggles and Ginger walked forward and dressed in their clothes. There were not fewer than a hundred Italians dressing and undressing at the time, and in such a crowd it was a simple matter to effect the change without comment. It was all done in less than five minutes. Without undue haste they turned away and walked up the hill.
‘Whatever happens, it should take those fellows quite a while to work out that their togs have really been pinched,’ remarked Biggles. ‘It will probably be the last thing they think of. They’ll suppose their kit has got mixed up with other people’s.’ Biggles returned the salute of two more Italian soldiers going down to bathe.
Nobody spoke to them. Nobody appeared to take the slightest notice of them, which, as Biggles pointed out, since nobody knew them was a reasonable expectation. It would be sheer bad luck if they were accosted by an officer senior to themselves, although they were only lieutenants. They reached the
Chez Rossi without trouble, and found Mario in the kitchen, washing dishes. He nearly dropped one when Biggles and Ginger walked in through the side door.
‘It’s all right, Mario, don’t get excited,’ said Biggles quietly. ‘Madame Ducoste and her daughter are to be arrested as hostages if Henri doesn’t give himself up. We’ve got to get them away before that can happen. The only place we can take them is Castillon, and the only way we can get them there is in your ambulance. Get it out. Then all you have to do is drive us straight to the Rue Marinière – that is, if you want to get your princess out of the country.’
‘Si – si, signor.’ Mario nearly fell over himself in his haste to get into his uniform tunic, which he had only just taken off. It was hanging behind the door. From time to time he muttered and shrugged his shoulders as though he found it hard to keep pace with events.
Biggles and Ginger went with him to the garage and sat with him on the front seat. Without speaking, but with a slightly dazed expression on his face, he drove to the Rue Marinière. Two soldiers were standing at the end of the street, smoking. They straightened themselves and saluted the officers as the ambulance went past without stopping. A Monégasque policeman was sitting in a chair at the door of number six. He stood up.
‘Tell him,’ said Biggles to Mario, ‘that we have orders to arrest the occupants of this house.’
The gendarme did not question this. Possibly he expected it. After all, the Italians had taken charge of the principality. In fact, he looked relieved that responsibility was being taken off his shoulders.
Ginger knocked at the door. It was opened by Madame Ducoste. Ginger went in, followed by Biggles. As soon as they were inside he closed the door. Madame Ducoste clutched at her throat and uttered a little cry when, looking at Ginger’s face, she suddenly recognized him.
‘Where is Jeanette?’ asked Ginger tersely.
‘She is upstairs.’