by W E Johns
Then a strange thing happened. The escape hatch of the transport opened and a man’s figure dropped earthward. An instant later a parachute mushroomed.
“Gontermann. He can’t take it,” said Biggles, and went on after the transport, which was now barely under control. It went into a dive that became steeper and steeper, and Ginger could hear the scream of its airscrews above the roar of their own. He bit his lip, knowing what was going to happen. He had seen it happen before. Biggles was no longer firing.
The dive of the stricken machine steepened until it was going down vertically. Ginger flinched when the crash came. With the languid deliberation of a slow-motion screen picture the aircraft seemed to disintegrate, and spread itself over the desert. He knew that no one inside the machine could have survived such a fearful impact.
Biggles circled once or twice, losing height, and then, flying a few feet above the sand, went on after Gontermann who, still carrying his bag, was running towards the swamp.
“To the last, all he thought about was himself,” said Biggles grimly. “He hadn’t the guts to see it through. What a skunk the fellow must be.”
He landed the Spur between the swamp and the running man, jumped down, and after walking a few paces, took out his pistol and waited.
Gontermann also stopped, snatching a glance at the desert behind him.
“Go that way if you like,” sneered Biggles. “Your carcass should poison the vultures, when they find you.” Gontermann hesitated.
“Come on—come on; you’ve got a gun,” invited Biggles. “Use it or drop it, I don’t care which.”
Gontermann advanced a few paces. “Listen, Bigglesworth,” he called in a high-pitched voice. “What I’ve got in this bag will make us the two richest men on earth. I’m willing to split two ways. All I ask is, you give me a lift—”
“Shut up,” snapped Biggles. “You make me sick. Drop that bag and get your hands up.”
Gontermann stood the bag on the desert sand. All the arrogance had gone out of him. “Don’t shoot,” he pleaded.
“Put your hands up and keep walking,” said Biggles coldly.
The Nazi walked forward, slowly, nervously. “All right. I’ll come quietly,” he said. “I know when I’m beaten.”
“Okay.” Biggles returned the pistol to his pocket, or had started to do so, when Gontermann moved with the speed of light. His hand flashed to his side and came up holding a heavy calibre Mauser.
Biggles’s gun spat, and the Nazi seemed to stiffen. Yet he managed to get his pistol up and fire. But Biggles had side-stepped. Again his gun cracked. Again Gontermann stiffened convulsively. The muzzle of the Mauser sagged; it exploded into the ground, making the sand spurt; then the weapon dropped with a gentle thud. The man who had held it sank to his knees, and then slid forward, like a swimmer in smooth water.
Biggles stood still for a moment, watching, before walking forward to look at the fallen man.
“Pity,” he said quietly to Ginger, who now came running up. “I would rather have taken him alive—but perhaps it’s better this way. I daren’t take a chance with him in a place like this. He was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg; even at the finish he tried to spring one on me. Well, it’s spared the country the expense of a trial, and saved the hangman a job. Let’s see what’s happened over here.” He walked on to the crash. Now that Gontermann was dead his anger seemed to have burnt itself out like a wisp of paper.
As they expected, there was only one man in the wreck —Baumer. He was dead.
“I still don’t understand why they left Renkell in the sanseviera,” said Biggles. “He may still be alive. When we go back to Khartoum to see how Bertie’s getting on we’ll see if we can find him.”
“What I should like to know,” said Ginger, “is how we’re going to get out of this devil’s dustbin with empty tanks.”
“Not quite empty,” reminded Biggles. “We’ve still a drop in hand, and I reckon we’re not many miles south of the French Air Force landing-ground at Touggourt. There’s another one, Ouargla, a little to the south. As a matter of fact, there are quite a bunch of desert aerodromes in front of us—Colomb Bechar, Beni Abbes.... Hallo! What’s this coming?” He broke off, gazing into the darkening eastern sky, whence came the drone of an aircraft.
“Mosquito,” said Ginger. “That’ll be Algy. He must have had a word with the manager bloke at Castel Benito, and ascertained the course we took. He can’t miss seeing us on this blistering billiard table.”
The Mosquito came on, roaring at full throttle a few hundred feet above the sand.
“Poor old Algy,” said Biggles, smiling. “He still hopes to be in at the finish. Ah-ah! He’s seen us.”
The Mosquito had altered course and was now standing directly towards them. The bellow of its engines died away; its wheels came down, and very soon it was on the sand, taxiing towards the Spur. Algy leapt out.
“What’s happened?” he asked quickly.
“It’s all over,” answered Biggles. “Baumer stuck to his ship and went into the deck fast enough to break every bone in his body. Gontermann baled out. He tried to plug me, so I had to let him have it. I aimed at his arm, but hit him in the chest. My shooting must be getting shaky.”
“After the flying you’ve done to-day I’m not surprised at that,” asserted Algy. “What are we going to do?”
Biggles thought for a moment. “We shall have to leave things here as they are. I don’t see what else we can do—unless you feel like turning your kite into a hearse. We’ll make for Algiers—that’s the nearest airport—and send a cable to Raymond from there. No doubt he’ll ask the French authorities to take care of this mess. In the morning I’ll push on to London in the Mosquito, taking Gontermann’s collection of sparklers with me. They should cure Raymond’s headache. You two can drift back to Khartoum in the Spur, in your own time, to see how Bertie’s getting on. We’d better be moving, before it’s quite dark.”
He walked over to Gontermann’s bag, and opening it, gazed for a moment at its scintillating contents. “While this sort of rubbish clutters up civilisation I suppose there will always be crooks,” he remarked. Then a smile spread slowly over his face. “Still, ten per cent of that little lot should keep us in cigarettes for a day or two.” He closed the bag, stood up, and passed his hand wearily over his face. “Strewth! I’m tired. Let’s get along.”
* * * * *
The story of a chase should end with the death or capture of the quarry, but in this case one or two points remain to be cleared up.
By noon of the day following the final affair in the desert Biggles was at Scotland Yard. As a matter of detail he had slept at Gibraltar, from where he had been able to send a signal through service channels to Air Commodore Raymond, who was at Croydon Airport to meet him. At the Yard, an inventory was made of the contents of Gontermann’s bag, which, besides the rajah’s regalia, included the best of the pearls of the Persian Gulf affair, and the South African diamonds.
“Ten per cent, sir, I think you said?” murmured Biggles blandly.
The Air Commodore looked up with a twinkle in his eye. “I doubt if any policeman earned so much in so short a time. You’d better stay in the Force and make your fortune.”
“It has to be shared four ways, don’t forget,” reminded Biggles. “Still, I’ll think about your suggestion,” he added.
After writing a detailed report on the whole operation, he had a bath, changed, and later dined with the Commissioner of Police, and his assistant, Air Commodore Raymond. That night he had his first unbroken sleep for some time.
In the morning he started back for Khartoum to see how Bertie was faring. He found him out of danger, although the doctor predicted that the injured leg might shorten a trifle, so that he would probably limp for the rest of his life.
“I asked him to cut a piece off the other, to get ‘em the same length again—if you see what I mean?” complained Bertie. “But the silly ass wouldn’t do it. Said he might slice off too mu
ch, and then I should go into a permanent bank the other way—or some such rot.”
Algy and Ginger had flown on to the sanseviera. They came back some time after Biggles’s arrival, bringing with them Herr Renkell, whom they had spotted wandering in the swamp. The aircraft designer declared that far from having any hand in the disappearance of his prototypes, he had been abducted by the bandits and forced to act as mechanic on his own machines, the idea being, presumably, that, as the designer, he was the only man who thoroughly understood them. Biggles believed him. Indeed, his appearance did much to confirm his story, for he looked thin and ill. He declared, and Algy verified, that the whole area occupied by the secret landing-ground had been burnt out, as well as the equipment, oil, and petrol.
Biggles inquired after von Zoyton, but being told that he was still on the danger list, and not allowed visitors, he did not see him. This had a curious sequel. Weeks later, when Biggles and his comrades were back in London, they learned that not only had von Zoyton recovered from his injuries, but had taken advantage of a haboob—one of the local violent sand-storms—to make his escape from hospital. The Egyptian police were looking for him, but so far had been unsuccessful.
“I’m not altogether sorry,” said Biggles, when he heard this news. “He wasn’t a bad chap at heart. Probably it all came from getting mixed up with the wrong crowd when he was a kid. His mother should have warned him.”
THE END
