by John Pearson
He glanced out of the corner of his eye for Algernon, and was delighted — and surprised — to see him still glued in position twenty yards behind his wing-tip. Then they were in the thick of it again, with all four remaining German pilots out for blood. Biggles had no time to see how Algernon was faring. A second Fokker fell before his guns, and for a moment he glimpsed Algernon diving to evade a persistent German on his tail.
Then Biggles realised that he was on his own — and trapped. The three remaining enemy aircraft had encircled him. Two had climbed above him and were waiting to dive down for the kill, taking it in turns until he was destroyed. He realised that there was no way out.
He shrugged his shoulders. He couldn’t think of a better way to go, and was glad that Algernon had escaped. The leading Fokker was now at the beginning of its dive, and heading straight towards him, Spandaus blazing, when suddenly another Sopwith Camel flashed towards it. It had come out of nowhere, and the Fokker zoomed aside to avoid disaster. So did the next plane, and the next, as the Camel rocketed across the sky then roared alongside Biggles. He recognised the pilot then — Algernon Montgomery.
By now the remaining Fokkers were in disarray. Biggles was almost out of ammunition, and before they had a chance to regroup for the attack, the time had come to make for home. He raised his hand above his head, signalling a return to Base, and the two British aircraft turned in unison and dived towards the British Lines.
Biggles landed first, and jumped down from the cockpit to meet Algernon as his plane rolled to a halt.
‘Just what do you think you were doing?’ he said as Algernon removed his helmet. ‘Flying like a flaming lunatic! That’s not the way to stay alive.’
‘Well sir,’ said Algernon a trifle sheepishly, ‘you said the only way to fight was to go in with everything you’ve got. That’s what I was doing.’
Biggles nodded. ‘I was very glad to see you, but why didn’t you fire? I didn’t see your guns in action once.’
Algernon looked still more uncomfortable at this.
‘I’m sorry sir, I couldn’t. You see, my guns were jammed. Dud cartridge and I simply couldn’t clear it.’
Biggles stared a moment in amazement.
‘You mean to tell me that you came back into that dogfight with your guns jammed?’
‘Well, you had said I was to stick with you whatever happened. I’m sorry if ...’ But before he could finish, Biggles had thrust out his hand.
‘You’ll do, Algernon, ‘he said. ‘Thanks for what you did. And you can call me Biggles.’
This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship, for the two cousins really had a lot in common. Superficially they made an ill-assorted pair, for Algy — the ‘Algernon’ was swiftly dropped — was a gangling six foot two, whose freckled face and slightly vague expression formed an instant contrast to the compact frame and solidly determined face of Biggles. But the contrast in their appearance was to become part of their appeal, and soon they formed a sort of double act in 266.
Algy followed up the exploits of his debut with the Squadron by proving himself a virtuoso pilot. He lacked the killer’s instinct and the sheer aggressiveness of Biggles, but was in fact a far more stylish flier. Also, his somewhat goofy manner was something of a disguise for a very shrewd head, and in battle he was absolutely fearless. He picked up the elements of combat flying as swiftly as Biggles had done, and before long the two of them were quite inseparable — both in the air and on the ground. Soon they were practising tactics together, and they worked out a routine which ultimately accounted for the lives of many of the enemy. On the ground they became like two devoted brothers — Biggles the dominant one, and Algy his devoted confidant and crony. Algy was the perfect foil to Biggles, for where Biggles was quick-tempered, and impatient to a degree, Algy was the gentlest and most easy-going of souls, cautious where Biggles was hot-headed, and essentially a loyal and devoted character, who never quite recovered from his earliest hero-worshipping of Biggles.
‘In those days,’ he explained, ‘Biggles was extraordinary. The first thing that struck you about him was his energy. He was a sort of human dynamo — he never seemed to tire and the tougher things became, the more he liked it. Also, he had incredible enthusiasm. Nothing appeared to get him down, and once he had started on a mission, nothing on earth would stop him. Of course he could put people’s backs up, and always called a spade a spade, but I hate to think what would have happened to 266 without him. Then, of course, there was his Secret Service work. People forget that underneath that rough-and-ready manner he adopted, he was in fact a very clever operator and as cunning as they come. Colonel Raymond was the first to spot this and he relied on him increasingly during those last months of the war.’
One of the strangest — and the most far-reaching — of these Intelligence operations which Biggles carried out for Colonel Raymond cropped up fairly soon after Algy joined 266. This was the Marie Janis business which always has been one of the great conundrums of the Biggles’ saga. For, apart from being his first full-scale operation on behalf of British Intelligence, it also involved Biggles in his first real love-affair. No one will ever know quite how much suffering it caused him, nor how much the shadowy, romantic figure of this beautiful and ruthless woman continued to dog him in the years ahead. This was the one subject on which Biggles himself invariably clammed up, but according to Algy, Marie was the key to the whole controversial subject of Biggles’ romantic life. Strangely enough, Biggles did permit Captain Johns to give a brief but incomplete account of the affair in one of his earliest books on his exploits in this period, his invaluable Biggles, Pioneer Air Fighter, but the Official Secrets Act — and Biggles’ reticence over what was clearly a most painful subject — served to prevent the full story being told. There will always be an element of mystery to the whole affair, but things can now be said and certain all-important facts included in this fascinating story.
It all began by chance, the sort that every pilot fears — a sudden engine failure in the Sopwith Camel that Biggles was ferrying back to Maranique from the Supply Depot at St Omer. Twenty miles or so from Base the new engine suddenly cut out, and Biggles made an immaculate forced landing on the edge of the large forest of Clarmes. It was a perfect day, and he walked to a nearby house for help, where the door was opened to him by what Captain Johns described later as ‘a vision of blonde loveliness’. As Biggles presumably approved of this description, we can take it that this was the first impression Marie Janis made on him. She was then in her early twenties and a photograph taken of her later more than confirms her beauty — enormous eyes, a heart-shaped face, and an expression that was hard, sensual and coquettish. Biggles was attracted from the start. Marie’s reactions must seem more debatable.
She asked him in and made a fuss of him. Her parents were away, and she was living on her own with two servants. Biggles soon telephoned to Maranique for help with his aircraft, and while he waited, Marie offered lunch, which he accepted. Biggles was nineteen, and his experience of women all but non-existent. His mother’s original desertion had left him shy and wary of the female sex in general; but beneath the shyness he was uncomfortably romantic, far more so than his closest friends suspected. Just as he had dreamed for years of rediscovering his beautiful lost mother, so he now dreamed of finding his perfect woman. Marie Janis filled the bill, for everything about her seemed romantic — the old farmhouse with its beams and stone floors and delicious smell of cooking, her being totally alone in this peaceful countryside in the midst of war, and also, of course, the element of chance that had brought them so romantically together.
For more than a year now, Biggles had been facing daily death, and this golden-haired young girl was offering a glimpse of happiness beyond the horror and the threat of war. Mahoney would have seen it all in very basic terms, but there was something touching in the way this fearless veteran of the skies was so vulnerable and trusting when it came to love. Marie spoke English (although Biggles’ French was e
xcellently now) and she explained she had an English mother and a Belgian father. Where were her parents? Biggles asked. Her mother, she replied, was dead, and her beloved father had been trapped behind the German Lines and was condemned to live in Belgium, much against his will.
Biggles was sympathetic. Did she ever hear from him? She shook her head. Poor girl! He took her hand. She made it clear that she was grateful for his sympathy, and kissed him tenderly to show her gratitude. They walked through the orchard arm in arm — and by the time the car arrived from Maranique to take him back, Biggles was in love.
His whole life changed abruptly. Previously he lived for flying, but now his Sopwith Camel had a rival — Marie Janis. Instead of having dinner in the Mess and then retiring early after a rubber or two of bridge, Biggles would borrow the uncomplaining Algy’s motorcycle, and go roaring off to visit her. The second time they met, he took her out to dinner at the nearby village, but usually he ate at home with her, and before long they were meeting every day. They were undisturbed, the food and wines delicious, and soon the inevitable occurred.
Biggles reproached himself for this. ‘I was a swine, Algy,’ he confessed to him years later. ‘I should have had more self-control, and more respect for her.’ But as one looks at the photograph of Marie Janis, one rather wonders if either would have saved him. The lovely Marie obviously knew what she was doing when she admitted Biggles to her bed. Whether Biggles did, one doubts.
Nobody knows much about Biggles as a lover. No letters that he wrote survive, and all his friends are too discreet to tell the truth — even if they know it. He was certainly extremely sentimental. He was good-looking and had stamina above the average. Those brief dramatic rages he expended on the enemy when his blood was up show that beneath the Boy Scout manner he was emotional and even passionate. And as he was taught the arts of love by this gifted Belgian girl, several years his senior, it would seem probable that the picture we have of Biggles as the sexless man of action is inaccurate.
All this is supposition. What is undeniable is that for several weeks Biggles and Marie were lovers. Then the first shadows started to obscure their happiness. To start with they were nothing very much — the vaguest questions and most generalised inquiries. ‘Where did you fly this morning, mon chéri?’ and ‘Where was the Squadron yesterday that you were twenty minutes late in visiting your Marie?’ Biggles was as aware of the demands of strict security as the next man, but in his slightly fuddled state he put these questions down as part of her adorable concern for him. Then even he began to grow suspicious.
By now she had started asking him quite detailed questions in which no ordinary young Belgian girl in her right mind could have been interested — ‘Biggles, darling, what is the operational ceiling of the Sopwith Camel with a supercharged Bentley rotary engine?’ or ‘My beloved, when will you be receiving this new combat plane, what is it called, the Sopwith Snipe?’ Biggles tried to put the dreadful thought behind him, but soon it could be ignored no longer. Either Marie was preternaturally concerned with aeronautics — or she was a spy.
It shows how deeply Biggles was in love — or at any rate infatuated with her dimpled body — that even then he did his best to dodge the truth. He would give non-committal answers, bring her tender gifts, and hope that this growing nightmare in his private life would go away. Of course it didn’t, and when things had reached the point where Marie would actually refuse to make love unless she received the information she required, Biggles decided he must act.
Several times their conversation had got round to the question of her father — how much she missed him, how sad it was he couldn’t cross the Lines, and where he was living now. Finally, Marie explained that as far as she knew he was still in his old family home, the Château Boreau, near a small village called Vinard.
‘A pity that you can’t communicate with him,’ said Biggles. Tears filled her lovely eyes.
‘Perhaps I could help,’ he said. ‘We often fly that way. It shouldn’t be too difficult to drop him a message.’
‘But wouldn’t it be dangerous, dearest one?’
‘A little — but if it made my darling happy, it would be worth it.’
‘You would do that for me?’ she whispered.
‘Anything at all,’ he answered with a sigh.
And so it was all arranged. Marie would write a letter to her father, and Biggles on his next patrol would drop it on the Château Boreau. He could have been forgiven even now if he had dropped the letter without telling anyone and made the most of Marie’s gentle gratitude when he returned.
But when it was a choice between his country and the woman he loved, Biggles was not a man to take the easy way. His duty was self-evident. That same night Marie gave him a letter for her father, written in her forward-sloping hand on purple paper, Biggles returned to Maranique, then telephoned Colonel Raymond at Wing Headquarters.
It was late, well past one o’clock, but the Colonel rarely slept, and within the hour had driven all the way to Maranique. Biggles explained the situation — not without embarrassment — but the Colonel was an understanding man at heart, and something of a man of the world himself.
‘Dashed tricky situation for you, Bigglesworth,’ he said. ‘But you have acted as I hope that I would myself. Let’s see the letter.’
As Biggles took it from his pocket his heart was beating. Colonel Raymond deftly steamed it open, then studied it for several minutes with his magnifying glass. Finally he nodded.
‘As I thought,’ he said. ‘The bitch has used invisible ink — the oldest trick in the business.’
‘Sir,’ said Biggles, ‘I would rather that you didn’t speak of her like that.’
The Colonel was about to mutter something, but thought better of it.
“Sorry Bigglesworth,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t have said that to a brother officer. All the same, this Mademoiselle Janis is obviously a spy. To tell the truth, we’ve had our eye on her for quite some time, but never have been able to prove a thing. You realise of course what this Château Boreau is?’
Biggles shook his head.
‘Headquarters of German Field Intelligence. Now listen carefully. I think our backroom boys should do a little work on this letter to the so-called Monsieur Janis. Change things around a bit, and then you can deliver it exactly as arranged.’
‘And what about Marie?’ said Biggles, suddenly concerned. ‘You’d not do anything to her?’
‘Course not, Bigglesworth. We’re not like the Huns. We don’t shoot women spies – at least, not if we can help it.’
But even as he spoke, there was something steely in the Colonel’s glance that made Biggles realise the dreadful danger that was threatening Marie. For whatever she had done, whatever she had planned to do, he loved her still.
Next morning Biggles was off extra early on his dawn patrol. Algy flew with him for a while, but at a signal the two fliers parted, and Biggles turned north, towards the frontier and the little village of Vinard. He had no difficulty locating the Château Boreau. It was a red-brick building with a pointed, high slate roof. Biggles flew round it once at little more than 200 feet. At first there was no sign of life, then an old man tottered out across the lawn and waved. Biggles zoomed down towards him, then took the letter from his pocket, kissed it tenderly, and threw it from the cockpit with a weight attached to bring it down to earth. He saw it flutter down and the old man picked it up.
All the way back to Base Biggles was in a state of turmoil. What on earth should he do?
As a stern patriot, he should clearly let the woman that he loved go off to face the punishment she had richly earned. But, even as he thought of this, he pictured the grim smile on Colonel Raymond’s face — and a firing squad at dawn. It was unthinkable, and yet he knew for certain now that this would happen to Marie unless he acted. He also knew that if she died he would be responsible, and that he could never live with such remorse.
He was back in Maranique in time for a late and somewhat dism
al breakfast. Algy had landed ahead of him, and Mahoney was already telling him about his previous night’s exploits with some girl he had picked up in town. By an uncomfortable coincidence, she too was called Marie. It was a very common name, but it was enough to make Biggles’ mind up for him, and without waiting for his toast and marmalade he dashed back to his quarters, and five minutes later was once more in the air, and flying north. He had not far to go, and within ten minutes he was flying over the all too painfully familiar roof of Marie’s house. There was the orchard where he had kissed her, the white front door, the bedroom window which had witnessed the happiest moments of his life. He circled low around the house, and suddenly the front door opened. Marie appeared. She was wearing the dress he loved — a blue and white creation that showed of her splendid bosom to perfection. Recognising Biggles’ aircraft, she waved happily, but instead of waving back, he dropped a note. An hour later, when two men from Colonel Raymond’s secretariat arrived to pick her up for questioning, Marie Janis had already left.
If Colonel Raymond had his own suspicions over what had happened, he kept them to himself. ‘First rate, Bigglesworth,’ he said, ‘I realise how difficult it was for you, but the spy ring’s broken up, and a lot of useless information has been fed to German Field Intelligence in that letter you delivered to the Château Boreau. Rather a pity that the bird herself had flown by the time we went to pick her up. Still, possibly it was just as well. Always a nasty business, having to deal with women.’ And Biggles, who could still imagine that beloved face, eyes bandaged, facing twelve British rifles in a prison yard at dawn, silently agreed.
A few days later, Biggles received a letter. There was no address, and the postmark was obscure. Inside was a sheet of purple paper, and he recognised the writing instantly.
‘Thank you my darling Biggles. What a pity that this beastly war has come between us, but we will meet again, never fear. All my love, Marie.’