41 Biggles Takes The Case

by Captain W E Johns

  "What's your name ? " snapped Biggles.

  " Lowenski," came a nervous voice, tinged with a slight accent.

  " Nationality ? "

  " British."

  "Since when ? "

  "A year ago."

  "And before that ? "

  " Polish."

  "Did you come to this country as a soldier or as a displaced person ? "

  "I came in the War and flew with the R.A.F." "Where do you live now ? "

  "Perth. I was stationed in Scotland. I've got a shop there. What's the matter ? I can come here if I like. This isn't private ground."

  Biggles ignored the questions. "Did you know the man who was flying this machine ? "

  A brief pause. "I think so."

  "A friend of yours ? "

  "I hope I'm wrong, but if I'm right—yes." "Another Pole ? "

  4 4

  When Biggles went on his tone was less harsh. "Now listen carefully, Lowenski. We know what you're doing here, so we needn't waste time arguing about that. What you came for isn't here. Just how far you are implicated, I don't know. I shall find out, so on what you say much will depend. Now then. Answer my questions and you'll find that we'

  re not unreasonable. Try being awkward and you'll find we can be awkward too."

  "You can't do anything to me," came back Lowenski. But the confident tone in which the words were said didn't ring true.

  "You are still on probation," said Biggles curtly. "I could have you sent back to Poland. How would that suit you ? "

  The hesitation that followed told Ginger that the shot had gone home.

  "You—you wouldn't do that," almost pleaded Lowenski. "What about my wife

  ? "

  "What about her ? "

  "I married a Scotch girl."

  "Then she looks like being out of luck unless you come clean. Now, what about it ? "

  "All right. What do you want to know ? " asked Lowenski desperately.

  "Are you in this business on your own account or are you working for somebody ? "

  demanded Biggles.

  "Own account ? Not likely ! Where would I get the money to finance a game of this size

  ? "

  "But you're in it for money."

  "That's where you're wrong. I can earn my living without scrambling up and down mountains all night. It happens I've got a father and mother in Poland. They've been interned on a trumped-up political charge. If I don't do what I'm told, they've had it."

  " Oh ! So that's it," murmured Biggles. "The Government bosses who are running your country have got the screws on you, eh ? "

  "That's the truth."

  "Have they made you do this sort of thing before ? " " No."

  "'Where did this machine start from ? "

  "America, I think."

  "Where was it going ? "

  "Warsaw, I believe."

  "Why are you in doubt about it ? "

  "I can only tell you what I think," protested Lowenski. "I'm not supposed to know anything about it. But it happens that a Polish friend of mine, another old War pilot, is in the same fix as I am, only in his case it's his wife they've got in Poland. The other day I had a letter from him to say he was being sent to America to fetch a machine and fly it to Warsaw.

  They'd chosen him, they said, because he had been a night bomber and he knows his way across Europe in the dark. He was hoping to see his wife when he got over. How he came to be so far off his track I don't know, but when I heard about this mysterious crash I put two and two together.

  We did our raids from an aerodrome not far from here. Maybe Stefan, if it was him, came this way to pick up the old bearings."

  "And how were you brought into this ? "

  "This afternoon I had a phone call from London ordering me to go to the crash and collect some bars of heavy metal I'd find in it. I reckon I was chosen because Perth is not a great distance away. I could get here quicker than anyone coming from London."

  "Who phoned you ? "

  "I don't know. I've never seen the man or heard his name ; but I'd been warned by him to obey orders —or else If

  "How did you get here ? "

  "I've got a car."

  "And having got the metal, what were you to do with it ? Speak up ! This is your chance to get your own back on these twisters."

  Lowenski seemed to take a new interest. "Yes, that's right enough. My orders were to take the stuff to the big.marsh near Nethy. At four o'clock, just before daybreak, a plane would land and collect it. All I had to do was hand the stuff over and then send a telegram first thing in the morning to a Box Number at the General Post Office, London, saying that the job had been done."

  "I'll have that Box Number from you," said Biggles. "Meantime, I'm going to keep the appointment with that plane. I shall have to borrow your car.

  You can come with us and go home afterwards, or you can make your own way home, leaving me your address, because I shall have to get in touch with you later."

  "I'll come with you," decided Lowenski.

  At five minutes to four, having left the car on the road, Biggles led his party into the big desolate marsh, now dried by the summer sun, that was Lowenski's rendezvous with the enemy agent.

  As Biggles admitted to Ginger, it was an ideal place for a sinister assignation. On one side the land lay flat and deserted to Strathspey, a haunt for wild fowl. To the south rose the mountains. To the north, the rising ground that fringed the marsh was occupied by a forest of Scots pines. So much could be discerned in the waning light of a dying moon.

  Going on to the shadows of the trees they sat down to wait.

  As a matter of detail the aircraft was a little overdue ; and they were unaware of its presence until it suddenly came gliding low over them—the result, as Ginger realised, of the pilot coming over very high with his power cut off. A black, twin-engined, low-wing monoplane, landed almost without a sound. Only the engines, whispering as they idled, revealed its presence. It came to a standstill about a hundred yards away.

  Biggles was already running towards it, followed by the others, when a man jumped down and looked about him. For a moment or two he did not see Biggles's party but when he did, apparently scenting danger, he moved fast. Thereafter things happened in less time than they take to tell.

  The man shouted something in a foreign language, obviously a warning to somebody in the machine—the first indication that he was not alone. And had he concentrated his efforts entirely on getting back into the plane he might have got away with it. Instead, quite

  unnecessarily, on the way he turned ; his hand went to a pocket and an automatic spat twice, one of the shots whistling unpleasantly close to Ginger's head. Biggles fired back, missed the man but hit the machine.

  The man made a dash for safety, but in his haste forgot to look where he was going. Biggles, perceiving what was likely to happen, shouted a warning ; but it was too late. The man ran too close to one of the low-set airscrews. There was a vicious smack and a shower of splinters as one of the whirling blades struck his skull. He went down as if he had been shot through the heart.

  By this time, the man in the aircraft—the pilot, it is to be supposed—had of course realised that he was in a trap. He may have seen his partner fall, apparently to Biggles'

  shot, which would account for, and perhaps justify, the course he took.

  But the fact remains, that he was prepared to abandon his companion in order to save himself was made clear when the engines roared, as the first move in taking off. What he could not have realised was, one airscrew was shattered. The result may be imagined.

  Biggles and his party flung themselves clear as the aircraft charged past them and raced on with swiftly increasing speed; but being unbalanced it immediately started a wild swerve. A cry of horror broke from Ginger's lips as the machine, continuing its swerve, rushed headlong at the pine wood.

  Whether the pilot lost his head, or whether he still hoped to get airborne, will never be known. At the
last moment the machine did manage to get off the ground, but there was never the slightest chance of it clearing the trees. At the last moment the pilot must have known this, for the engines died abruptly, as if the ignition had been cut to minimise the risk of fire when the inevitable crash occurred. There came the horrible, tearing, splintering noise of a crashing aircraft. It was followed by a silence just as awful. The only sound was the drip of petrol escaping from a fractured tank.

  Biggles rapped out an order to Bertie to attend to the man who had collided with the airscrew, and then raced to the crash. Ginger went with him, and at the sight that met his eyes something inside him seemed to go cold. A couple of minutes answered their unspoken question. The pilot was dead. They could only leave him lying beside the wrecked machine while they went back to Bertie.

  "He's had it," reported Bertie briefly." The blade took the top of his head off, poor devil."

  "All right," said Biggles, in an expressionless voice. "We'll get to the phone and put a police guard over this mess until I've had a word with the Chief."

  Little remains to be told. At the subsequent enquiry, held behind locked doors, it was revealed that the plane that had crashed on the mountain, a new secret prototype, and its cargo, had been stolen in America. The pilot, presumably in the hope of escaping pursuit, had made a wide sweep to the north before heading for a European destination. What this was to have been was suggested by the type of machine that had crashed in the trees, and the nationality of its occupants.

  Perhaps the most important outcome of the affair was what followed the arrival at the London Post Office of the foreign agent who had given Lowenski orders to recover the uranium. A telegram was waiting for him, ostensibly from Lowenski, but, in fact, one that had been planted by the police. The man collected it and was afterwards followed to what turned out to be the London headquarters of a nest of international spies. A police raid on the building yielded information that had been sought for a long time.

  For security reasons, not a word of the story appeared in the newspapers, so it is unlikely that those who sent the machine to fetch the uranium ever knew what became of it and its crew. To save Lowenski from possible reprisals, he was officially sent to prison. Unofficially, he was compensated for the loss of his business and given facilities to emigrate to a British colony, where, some time later, his parents, whose release had been secured by political negotiation, joined him. So, on the whole, he came out of the business better than he could have hoped. As far as Biggles was concerned, it was just another job of work buttoned up.

  THE RENEGADE

  " I'VE a sticky job here I shall have to ask you to look at. Air Commodore Raymond pushed the cigarette box on his desk to within Biggles'

  reach. "Strictly speaking," he went on, "it's not our affair—but you know how these things happen. The docket has been passed to me and I shall have to deal with it."

  Biggles lit a cigarette. "Who's being a nuisance now ? "

  "A fellow by the name of Vandor. Captain Langley Vandor. The captain part of it, I may say, he supplied himself. It flatters his vanity to pretend that he's been in military service.

  He lives in Malaya, where, as you know, the administration is having trouble in large doses."

  "What's this fellow Vandor done ? "

  It isn't so much what he's done as what he's doing." The Air Commodore's voice became tinctured with acid. "This rascal has been under suspicion for some time, but we now have definite information that he's supplying the bandits with arms and ammunition."

  "What nationality is this unpleasant piece of work ? "

  "By registration, and in appearance, British. By blood he's a Eurasian—or at any rate, a quarter Asiatic. His grandfather was a Merchant Navy skipper, a good type of the old school. When he retired from the sea he married, in Singapore, a girl of mixed breed, became a planter, and made a fortune in the rubber boom. With his money he established a big estate

  at a place called Marapang, in the north-east corner of Malaya. He had a son, apparently quite a decent fellow, who married an Irish girl, and when the old man died, inherited everything. Captain Langley Vandor was the result of that union, and he soon revealed himself to be a throwback of the worst possible type. His parents are dead now and he has the estate." The Air Commodore stubbed his cigarette.

  "When this boy was old enough," he continued, " he was sent to a public school in England, and it was there that his crooked streak first showed itself—at least, as far as we know. We don't know what his behaviour was like at home, but he had obviously been thoroughly spoiled. He was expelled from school for theft. Apparently he was a thief by nature because he didn't need the money : his people gave him an ample allowance. When the father heard of this he ordered the boy home. Not a bit of it.

  Instead, the young rascal drifted to the Port of London where he got in with the worst types of Oriental seamen. He was often in trouble. We know now that he was in an opium-smuggling racket. There is also reason to suppose that he killed a Chinese sailor by stabbing him. When he was twenty-one his father died, officially from snakebite, although native rumour has it that this young devil actually bribed a Malay seaman to put a cobra in his father's bed. His mother was already dead. She died of heartbreak, they say.

  However that may be, Vandor went back to Malaya and took over the estate, to which he was of course entitled. We were glad to see him go. If he didn't like us, and he made it clear that he didn't, we certainly didn't like him.

  "We heard little of him for a couple of years because Marapang lies away back in the jungle. Moreover, he let it be known that British visitors were not welcome. According to native report he boasted of his white blood but behaved like a coloured tyrant. He came to Singapore occasionally. He learned to fly at the club at Kuala Lumpur, bought his own light plane, and laid down an airstrip through the paddy fields at Marapang.

  Nobody at Singapore wanted to know him which probably infuriated him, and his visits became less frequent. That's how matters stood when the war broke out."

  Biggles tapped the ash off his cigarette. "One so-called Britisher of that sort can undo all the good work of a decent administration."

  "Exactly. What Vandor did during the Japanese occupation we don't know, but we can imagine he was a useful collaborator. Anyway, he stayed in the country. When the Japs went he was still at Marapang, and that brings us to the present trouble.

  "When the bandits started their murder campaign they used a variety of weapons, which was only to be expected ; but among them was a large sprinkling of German Spandau rifles. These, we can suppose, were supplied to the Japs by their German allies during the war. We thought the ammunition for these rifles would soon run out. It didn't. The supply seemed inexhaustible. We tried to find out where these cartridges were coming from. I should explain that when we returned to Malaya after the occupation we ordered all these firearms and ammunition to be brought in.

  Some were, some were not. The Japs had left a lot of stuff behind, grenades and war material of all sorts ; much of it just disappeared.

  We know now that Vandor had sent out word that he was prepared to buy this stuff ; and a good many natives, instead of turning in what they found, did sell it to Vandor."

  "And now the murder gangs are at work I suppose Vandor is selling the stuff to them ? "

  "That's it—at an enormous profit, of course." "This murder business must have suited him ? " "So well that if he didn't set it going he was soon supporting it."

  "How did you get this information ? " asked Biggles curiously.

  "In a roundabout way, and as a result of Vandor's own disgraceful behaviour. In one of his frequent fits of passion he had beaten to death one of his plantation managers, a Chinaman by the name of Mr. Wong Loo, who had behaved very decently to our fellows who were taken prisoner in the war. Wong Loo had a son, an educated boy who didn't lack for courage.

  He had a pretty good idea of what Vandor was doing, and for a time he actually worked in Vandor's
big house to confirm it. He had seen his father killed and was out for revenge. Having got all the gen on the place he bolted and made his way to British Headquarters in Singapore, where he told his story. Vandor, he says, still has a big stock of stuff, stored in what used to be a coach-house at the east end of the house. It seems that not content with making a fortune he hopes to see the British pushed out so that he can become the big noise in Malaya."

  "And this is still going on ? "

  "Presumably. We've only just heard about it."

  "Why not winkle this scoundrel out of his lair ? "

  The Air Commodore shook his head. "An obvious question, and the answer is just as obvious. It couldn't be done. Marapang always was a difficult place to get to ; with the country swarming with bandits it would be a stiff job for an army. Vandor would hear about such an expedition long before it got there and retire into the jungle, taking his stuff with him. You've seen the Malay jungle so there's no need for me to tell you what it'