Biggles at World's End

by W E Johns

  Biggles stared: ‘Who’s waiting?’

  ‘It seems that somebody on yon Russki whaler wants to speak to him.’

  ‘To Gontermann?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘There’s a mon been along two or three times asking for him. I said he was out, sailing down the Strait. He wanted to know how long it would be before he came back.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him I didn’t know. Then he wanted to know where he could find him. I said he might find him somewhere down the Strait. That was as much as I knew. His boat wasn’t at its usual mooring so he hadn’t come back.’

  ‘This man must have had urgent business with him.’

  ‘Aye. I’d think that.’

  ‘What’s that craft doing here, anyway?’

  ‘I couldna tell ye that, either. They don’t talk much. Having engine trouble, mebbe. They’ve as much right here as anyone. Na doot she’ll be on her way south, to the whaling grounds.’

  ‘How long has she been here?’

  ‘Came in yesterday, to lie snug out of the weather, as I thought, till they came asking for Gontermann.’

  ‘What could they want with him—the airport manager?’

  ‘He may be a friend of the skipper, who reckoned on taking him aboard as a pilot to see the ship through the Strait. He could do that as well as anyone.’

  ‘That could be the answer,’ acknowledged Biggles, turning away. ‘Thanks, Mr Scott.’ He went out.

  When they were all outside he said: ‘I don’t like this. Even as a whaler that craft has a particularly fishy smell about it. What on earth could the skipper possibly want with Gontermann? But that’s a silly question. We might make one guess and be right.’

  ‘What you mean is, that ship may be acting in the same way for him as the Petrel is for us,’ put in Algy.

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of. I can’t think of any other reason why they should have an interest in a man who, as we believe, has the low-down on what the Dresden did with her loot. If I’m right this show looks like developing into a race, and a race that’s likely to have a close finish. I’d feel happier if the Petrel was here. Should Gontermann come back and go aboard that ship it’ll have a start on us.’

  ‘Don’t forget the Air Commodore dropped us a hint that unwelcome visitors might be on the way,’ reminded Ginger. ‘Intelligence may have got wind of something. If so, why didn’t the chief give us the complete gen to set our clocks right?’

  ‘He wouldn’t dare, for fear other people rumbled what we were doing. Russia has spies everywhere, and that includes telegraph and radio services. Any communist, and Gontermann might well be one, automatically becomes a spy, as we know to our cost.’

  ‘What are we going to do about it?’

  ‘As far as I can see there’s nothing we can do about it. This is a free port. One thing’s certain, it’s no use trying to do anything in this filthy weather so we shall just have to wait to see what happens.’

  ‘Meanwhile, if Gontermann comes back and that whaler pulls out with him on board we look like missing the boat after all,’ observed Algy, gloomily.

  ‘We still hold one trump card,’ returned Biggles, cheerfully. ‘As far as we know Gontermann hasn’t succeeded in locating the gold. He may have worked out which island it’s on, but that’s not the same thing. Even if he knew where it was originally he isn’t to know that it has been moved. If he did know or suspect that, he couldn’t possibly know where it is now. It’d be a long job to dig up the whole blooming island, so we still have the edge on him there.’

  ‘Tell me this, old boy,’ requested Bertie. ‘What’s going to happen if that whaler and the Petrel find themselves lying off the island together—if you see what I mean?’

  ‘I’d rather not think about that,’ returned Biggles. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. We might as well go home and get out of this perishing wind.’

  ‘I shall soon be climbing up the wall if I have to stay in that room much longer,’ declared Ginger. ‘Why not run over to the airfield to ask Vendez if he’s heard any news of Gontermann? No machines are likely to come in while this weather lasts, but I imagine Vendez will be there if only to receive signals in Gontermann’s absence.’

  ‘Yes, we could do that,’ agreed Biggles. ‘It would make a break from staring out of the window.’

  He turned the car towards the aerodrome, keeping a lookout, as far as the weather made this possible, for the conspicuous orange sails of the Wespe. But they saw nothing of it.

  They found Vendez in his office. He greeted them in his usual friendly manner, but Ginger detected, or thought he detected, a certain embarrassment in the way he looked at them.

  After a few words about the weather Biggles asked: ‘Have you heard anything of Gontermann? It’s time he was back, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, I have heard nothing,’ replied the Chilean assistant-manager. ‘I imagine he’s lying up in a sheltered cove waiting for a change in the weather. He will come to no harm while he does that. He’s a good sailor, as you know. But to change the subject, I’m glad you’ve come. I was about to send a message to you.’

  ‘Oh, really,’ said Biggles, casually, little guessing what was coming.

  ‘Yes, I am afraid I have bad news for you.’

  Biggles’ eyebrows went up. ‘Bad news?’

  ‘You may think it so. You may not do any more flying from here.’

  Biggles looked amazed. ‘Do you mean that—literally?’ he asked, incredulously.

  ‘Those are the orders, and in the absence of the manager they become my responsibility. I am very sorry if this puts you to any inconvenience by interfering with your plans in any way.’

  ‘But—but how did this come about?’

  Vendez shrugged.

  ‘Have we done something wrong?’

  ‘Not so far as I know.’

  ‘We have scrupulously observed every regulation.’

  ‘That is true.’

  ‘Then what’s the trouble?’

  ‘I am not supposed to tell you this but I will. Gontermann sent a report about you to headquarters in Santiago.’

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘He suspected from your behaviour that you were foreign secret agents engaged in spying.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous!’ cried Biggles. ‘What is there to spy on here? As far as I know there’s nothing of a military nature within hundreds of miles.’

  ‘That is so, but Gontermann thought you were up to something. He was suspicious and thought it his duty to make a report. It may still be all right. No doubt you will be able to explain everything.’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘To the officers who are on their way from Santiago to ask you questions.’

  ‘When do you expect them?’

  Vendez held out his hands, palms upwards. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Are they flying down?’

  ‘But of course. In the ordinary way they would have been here by now, on the regular service. But with the weather as it is the plane will have stopped somewhere on the route until conditions make continuation here quite safe. Did you intend to do any more flying?’

  ‘One more trip, for a last look round. A matter of only a few hours. It would have been done by now, before your signal came in, had the weather held.’

  ‘A pity.’

  ‘What would have happened had we been in the air when the signal came in?’

  ‘I would have informed you when you landed that you had been grounded.’

  ‘Gontermann knows nothing about us being grounded?’

  ‘How could he? He hasn’t been here.’

  ‘How long is it since this signal came in?’

  ‘Half an hour.’

  ‘By radio.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Has anyone else seen it?’

  ‘Only the operator.’

  Biggles looked at the others. ‘So Gontermann’s managed to pull
a fast one on us,’ he said, softly. He turned back to Vendez. ‘Had we been down the Strait when that signal came through you could have done nothing about it.’

  ‘Not till you came back.’

  ‘Had we been caught out by this weather it might have been some time before we came back.’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘Now listen, Vendez,’ continued Biggles, seriously. ‘I don’t like asking a man to break orders, but there’s such a thing as looking the other way, or turning a blind eye, as we say, as a result of our Admiral Lord Nelson putting a telescope to his blind eye when he received a signal which he knew was wrong. You know we’re not spies. This is all a trick on the part of Gontermann to keep us grounded because he doesn’t like us. You know that, too. Had the weather been reasonable; we would have been in the air at this moment. I want to make one more short trip. Suppose you look the other way for a few minutes. We wouldn’t be away more than a couple of hours, and I promise that when we come back I won’t leave the ground again until I’ve been interviewed by these gentlemen from Santiago.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have taken off in this weather.’

  ‘That’s true. Because my last trip was not urgent I would have waited for it to improve. It’s doing that now, which is why I’ve come here. It’s no longer raining and the cloud is breaking up. We’ll be back before the gentlemen from Santiago get here so they need know nothing about it. Not that I think it would worry them if they did, as long as we were still here to be questioned about what we’re doing.’

  ‘If it was known I had allowed you to fly I might get into trouble.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to allow us to fly. I’m asking you to look the other way. You could then say, quite truthfully, that you hadn’t seen us take off. That might well have happened had we not looked into your office to see you.’

  Vendez hesitated.

  ‘If you prefer it,’ pressed Biggles, ‘I’ll confess that I took off against your instructions and accept the consequences.’

  ‘You give me the word of an Englishman that you’ll come back?’

  ‘I will come back.’

  Vendez sat at his desk and closed his eyes. ‘I know nothing. I see nothing.’

  ‘Thanks, Vendez. I hope to be able to do as much for you one day.’ Biggles beckoned to the others.

  ‘To fly in this weather you must be mad,’ said Vendez, as they walked to the door.

  ‘I’ll let you into a secret,’ returned Biggles, confidentially. ‘We are.’

  As soon as they were outside he turned briskly to Algy. ‘You take the car home and wait for us. Keep watch in case the Petrel should come in before we’re back. If that happens see Captain Anderson and explain the position. Say the business is now urgent because security officers are on their way here from the capital. Should the weather pin us down so that we can’t get back take him along to the gold dump. Are you sure you can find the island?’

  ‘I think so. I know roughly where it is.’

  ‘All right. Do your best. Don’t forget to warn Anderson that the whaler may be here on the same job as he is.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Algy limped off towards the car. He was still troubled by his ankle.

  ‘Come on,’ said Biggles to the others. ‘Let’s get weaving.’

  Ginger looked at the sky. As Biggles had said, it was no longer raining or sleeting, or doing anything violent, but it was still far from fair. With the lifting of the clouds visibility bad improved to about a quarter of a mile. There was still a fair amount of wind.

  ‘You really are going to get topsides?’ he questioned, a trifle anxiously, to Biggles.

  ‘It’s now or never. Visibility isn’t too bad and it seems to be getting better.’

  ‘You’ll fly over the top of the stuff?’

  ‘Not me. In these conditions I’d rather trust my eyes than instruments. I’ll keep in touch with the floor. Once you lose sight of it the snag is to find it again without bumping into something solid.’

  ‘The sea’s still rough.’

  ‘It won’t be so bad in the channels between the islands.’

  ‘What if you find the bay at gold island choked with ice?’

  ‘If we do I’ll come back home. I may be crazy, but not so crazy as to try to land on an iceberg.’

  ‘What if those two toughs are on gold island?’ Bertie asked the question.

  ‘That’ll be just too bad,’ returned Biggles evenly. ‘I’ll deal with that if it happens. I’m reckoning that the weather has kept them stuck on the island where we last saw them, by the wreck of the Seaspray, digging for gold that isn’t there.’

  ‘How about Gontermann?’ queried Ginger. ‘He’s probably down there somewhere.’

  ‘If he gets in our way it may come to a showdown.’

  ‘This all sounds pretty loony to me, old boy,’ remarked Bertie.

  Biggles smiled. ‘So it does to me. But I’m not going to be beaten at the post if I can prevent it. Let’s go before you think of any more unpleasant possibilities. What are you trying to do—give me the jitters?’

  ‘Okay,’ agreed Ginger, in a tone of resignation.

  ‘Would you rather stay here?’ asked Biggles, sharply.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well for goodness sake quit moaning and let’s get to work.’

  They took their places in the aircraft.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE WEATHER TAKES A HAND

  ‘SORRY if I appeared to take a dim view of this sortie,’ said Ginger, contritely, when they were in the air, flying down the Strait.

  ‘You were quite right,’ answered Biggles. ‘It’s always a good thing in any undertaking to consider the possible obstacles that may lie ahead. Only a fool would deliberately shut his eyes to them. But what you must remember is this, and if you read your history book you’ll see how often it happens. It isn’t so much the obvious snags that upset the apple cart. More often it’s the one thing you didn’t expect, didn’t think of, and therefore failed to allow for: and the man has yet to be born who was smart enough to think of everything. On this jaunt I could see the snags; they stuck out like a sore thumb; but my hand was forced by this trick of Gontermann to keep us on the ground. It illustrates the point I just made. In spite of all the hard thinking I’ve done since we came here it just didn’t occur to me that we might be grounded on official orders from Santiago. But this isn’t the moment for philosophy. Keep your eyes skinned for the Wespe’s orange sails. It would be a relief to know where Gontermann is, and what he’s doing.’

  ‘He must imagine he’s got us on the carpet. If he sees us he’ll wonder how we managed to get into the air.’

  ‘Let him guess. He’ll probably come to the conclusion that we were in the air before orders came through to stop us; although bear in mind that he can’t know that those orders have actually come in.’

  Ginger said no more. He was straining his eyes trying to probe the misty world around them. In one small circle below that moved at the same speed as themselves the restless water could be seen plainly; but there was little else. Occasionally on one side or the other the dark shadow of a cliff, or a towering island, loomed ominously; or the white streak of a glacier would appear like a ghost, quickly to fade into the colourless background. That was all.

  It was true that the rain and sleet had stopped, but water-logged clouds still threatened, and looked as if they might again at any moment spill their contents. In short, it was the kind of weather that every pilot hates, for he knows better than anyone the risks involved. Although he did not mention it Ginger’s greatest fear was that bugbear, ice; for he knew that if the temperature was not actually ice-forming it was close to it; wherefore he kept an anxious eye on those parts of the aircraft where it was most likely to appear.

  He perceived that Biggles was flying down the middle of the Strait, or as near the middle as could be judged, watching for landmarks he would have memorized—rocks, islets, icepacks and the like. What would happen when they reach
ed the group of islands that were the objective was something about which he preferred not to think. He was glad Biggles, and not he, was holding the control column. The one unmistakeable feature was the serpentine glacier that curled round the island from which Carter and Barlow had been rescued. If, and it was a big if, they could find that it would simplify matters considerably, because from it the direction of, and the distance to, gold island, was known. The danger then would be to grope a way down without coming into collision with one of the peaked or hogbacked islands in the vicinity.

  In the event this did not arise, for suddenly, as if raised by a giant invisible hand, the cloud-layer lifted, to give a fairly wide field of view.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Biggles.

  ‘What a slice of cake,’ returned Ginger.

  ‘It was time we had a bit of luck,’ asserted Biggles. ‘At this time of the year we might have expected better weather than we’ve had.’

  Ginger spotted the big glacier instantly. His eyes went to the beach, and on it he saw several things at once. Three men were there, looking up at them. Drawn up well clear of the water was the dinghy. Lying a little offshore was the Wespe. The beach itself was pitted with holes.

  Ginger grinned. ‘There they are. By gosh! They’ve been busy. They must have been digging ever since we were last here.’

  ‘By this time they must realize they’ve been fooled.’ So saying Biggles started to climb, swinging round towards the objective.

  ‘What happened to shift those clouds like that?’ asked Ginger.

  ‘Only a change of wind or a rising temperature could have done it.’

  ‘You saw who was on the beach?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘They’ll guess where we’re going and come over.’

  ‘No doubt.’

  ‘When they see us land we shall have told them on which island the gold really is.’

  ‘I’m not worried about that—now. By the time they get across we shall have done what we wanted to do and pushed off again. Anyway, if the wind is freshening Gontermann may think twice about trying to get across through those growlers.’

  ‘Growlers! I didn’t notice any.’