by W E Johns
‘So I understand.’ Evans smiled, at the same time looking a trifle puzzled. ‘How many of you are there on this job?’ he asked.
Biggles looked slightly taken aback. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘I’ve already had a man here making the same inquiries. Frankly, he did not impress me very favourably.’
‘Would you mind describing him?’
‘Not at all.’
Ginger was not very surprised when Evans gave a fair description of von Stalhein.
‘I can only tell you what I told him,’ went on the naval officer. ‘Although we had several conversations, some of them long ones, I never really got to know Hagen. He was friendly enough in a way, but you couldn’t get inside him, so to speak. Retiring sort of fellow. Not that I was anxious to strike up too close a friendship, which might have interfered with my own particular study, which as you can see, is ornithology.’ Evans indicated the walls of the room. ‘Hagen never told me anything about himself,’ he went on. ‘If he any relations he never mentioned them to me. Naturally, I wouldn’t raise the subject. No reason to. Indeed, my interest in him may have been inspired by selfish motives, for he was sometimes able to help me with hobby.’
‘In what way?’ asked Biggles.
Evans, like most enthusiastic collectors, was only too willing to talk about the subject nearest his heart.
‘He brought me information about birds, their haunts, movements and migrations. In fact, he collected one or two specimens for me when he was off cruising. He had a small yacht.’
‘So I believe.’
‘Actually, he didn’t use it a lot, when he did decide to go for a trip he must have gone a fair distance, for he was away some time.’
Biggles nodded.
‘His death was in the nature of a personal tragedy for me,’ continued Evans sadly.
‘Really? How was that?’ prompted Biggies quietly.
Evans threw them a sort of sheepish smile. ‘I shouldn’t really tell you this because, it’s almost a confession of law-breaking. Nothing very serious. I console my conscience by pleading justification. You see, there once existed all over the West Indies that most wonderful and spectacular of birds — Phoenicopteriba ruber.’ He laughed at the expression on Ginger’s face. ‘It is more commonly known as the scarlet flamingo,’ he explained. ‘Now, by ruthless hunting for its plumage, and the eggs, which the natives eat, its numbers have so diminished that there are only two colonies left — possibly three. There are certainly two, both in the Bahamas. One is on the island of Inagua, and the other on Andros1, which is far away to the north. The birds are now protected by law. Indeed, under pressure from bird-watching societies in England and America the government has appointed a guardian to keep an eye on the nests. That was some time ago.’ Evans made a gesture. ‘Whether the man is still on Inagua, I don’t know. Nobody seems to know. Of course, it is seldom that anyone goes there. As an ardent collector I was naturally very anxious to have an egg for my museum. Hagen kindly offered to get me one, and also some snapshots of the birds, on their nest, at the same time. The nests are very curious. They are really turrets of mud raised above the shallow water of the lagoons. An egg is laid on the top of each turret.’
Biggles raised his eyebrows. ‘Was Hagen going to get you this egg from Inagua?’
‘No. He said he knew of another, smaller colony, on an uninhabited island. Now, of course, I shall never get an egg, or any photographs.’
‘What is the egg like?’ asked Biggles.
‘It’s about three times the size of a hen’s egg, with a chalky white shell.’
‘Very interesting,’ answered Biggles smoothly. ‘Do you by any chance know the name of the island on which this secondary colony is located?’
‘No. Hagen never told me. I had a feeling that for some reason of his own he wanted it kept a secret. But I fancy it must be near Inagua, the birds obviously being an offshoot from the main body.’
‘What sort of ground do these birds choose for their nesting-place?’
‘They build on the mud flats far out in the lagoons, no doubt as a precautionary measure against their enemies. Actually, this is very foolish of them, because after heavy rains, when the water rises, the nests are of inundated and the eggs lost. True, the birds seem to know the risk, for as I told you, they make piles of mud and lay their eggs on top. But that doesn’t always save them.’
‘I see,’ said Biggles slowly, catching Ginger’s eye. ‘Have you been into Hagen’s house lately?’ he asked Evans.
‘No. Not for some time.’
‘Then you must be unaware that Hagen got the egg for you.’
‘I hadn’t seen him for some time when I was shocked to learn of his death. In some ways he was a strange man.’ Evans started as if he suddenly realized what Biggles had said. ‘Did you say he’d got the egg?’ he almost shouted.
‘I imagine so,’ replied Biggles smiling. ‘At least, there’s an egg, just as you’ve described, on the mantelpiece.’
‘Wonderful! Wonderful!’ cried. Evans. ‘May I have it?’
‘Certainly, as far as I’m concerned,’ Biggles told him. ‘It has no intrinsic value, I suppose; and if, as you say, the eggs are hard to come by, this specimen might as well go into a good collection. There’s no point in wasting it.’
‘When can I have it?’ asked Evans, as excited as a schoolboy.
‘Well, as a matter of fact, I’ve just locked the house, and didn’t intend going back today. But I’ll tell you what. May I leave the keys with you? That would suit me very well because it would save me carrying them about and they would always be available should I want them. You could then fetch the egg at any time. It’s in the study, on the mantelpiece.’
‘Certainly, I’ll take care of the keys for you,’ promised Evans readily. ‘Keep an eye on the place, too, if you like.’
‘Capital,’ acknowledged Biggles, handing over the keys. ‘We’ve some way to go so we’ll be getting along.’
‘When will you be back?’ asked Evans, as he walked with them towards the door.
‘I don’t know,’ replied Biggies. ‘I haven’t made up my mind about that. Thank you for your co-operation. Oh, and by the way; if that other fellow should come back asking more questions — the foreigner you mentioned — send him packing. He’s an imposter, trying to pull off something on his own account.” Biggles hesitated as if a thought had struck him. ‘Did you by any chance say anything to him about the flamingos?’
Evans puckered his forehead in an effort to remember. ‘I don’t think so. Yes, the birds were mentioned. The fellow asked me if I knew where Hagen went in his yacht. I said I didn’t know, but I have a vague recollection of saying that I wished I did know, on account of the flamingos that were there. Something of that sort.’
‘Ah!’ breathed Biggles.
On the threshold he stopped. ‘One last question to satisfy my young friend here. Do you happen to have any snakes about here?’
‘Snakes!’ Evans looked surprised, and slightly amused. ‘Good lord, no. At any rate I’ve never seen any. There’s an exceptionally nasty reptile on some of islands, though, the fer-de-lance. It’s particularly bad on Trinidad, and I know it occurs on Martinique, St. Lucia and Tobago, where the workers in the sugar plantations go in terror of it — and no wonder.’
‘Queer name, fer-de-lance,’ put in Ginger.
‘It gets its name from its triangular or lance-shaped head. Also, I believe, it comes at you like a lance. The brutes are about six feet long, greyish-brown in colour with dark cross-bands edged with yellowish-green. Why did you ask about it?’
‘I just wondered,’ murmured Biggles vaguely.
Evans laughed. ‘I don’t think you need worry about them. Good-bye, for the present. Let me know if there is anything else I can do for you.’
* * *
1 Commander Evans was evidently unaware that, although in 1940 there was a colony of about 10,000 flamingos on Andros, by 1952 it had vanished, the loss being
due chiefly to local people taking the eggs and young. A Society for the Preservation of Flamingo in the Bahamas has recently been formed, and a Warden appointed. According to the Fauna Preservation Society there are now (1953) about 7,500 flamingos on Inagua.
CHAPTER 4
EVANS WAS WRONG
The heat was fast going out of the sun and the shades of evening were dimming the brilliance of the scene as Biggles and, Ginger slowly made their way back to the car.
‘I think it was a sound idea, leaving the keys with Evans,’ opined Biggles. ‘Any of us may want them at any time and they’ll be on the spot.’
‘What about von Stalhein having the nerve to call upon him?’
‘Yes. I wasn’t prepared for that, although it might have been expected. I’m not very happy about it either. I mean, Evans mentioning those birds, which seem to be an obsession with him. Hagen said he would get an egg and some photos. We know he got the egg. If he got the one, he would almost certainly get the other, because to get the egg, he would have to go to the breeding ground, anyway. Yet where are the photos? I didn’t see them. I didn’t see the camera if it comes to that. Hagen must have had one or he wouldn’t have offered to take a photograph.’
‘You think von Stalhein might have got the photos — and the camera?’
‘It rather looks like that. If he has got them he knows what we know. He may know more. Photos of nests would show a background beyond, a part of the landscape, and that might easily reveal the identity of the island. But there’s nothing we can do about that now.’
‘We could ask Evans if he knows where Hagen usually took his photographs to be developed, and then ask the photographer if he has developed any flamingo pictures.’
‘Yes that’s a possibility. We’ll bear it in mind,’ replied Biggles.
They leached the car and took their seats; but Biggles did not drive off at once. Deep in thought he wound the window down and lit a cigarette. ‘We haven’t done too badly,’ he observed. ‘At least we now have something to work on.’
‘And my egg came into the picture after all,’ reminded Ginger.
‘It did,’ conceded Biggles. ‘Amazing how things work out, isn’t it? Little did Hagen imagine that having an ornithologist for a neighbour was likely to lead to the exposure of what he had been at such pains to conceal. He’d turn in his grave if he knew that he had been given away by a bird’s egg — of all things. For, unless I’m unduly optimistic, that egg is going to narrow our search, and maybe in the end lead us to what we’re here to find. I see it like this; Hagen wouldn’t go out of his way to collect that egg. He wouldn’t have known where to find it had he not seen the flamingo colony, which means that he must have landed on the island where the birds have settled. Why did he land there? One guess should be enough.. It wasn’t merely to stretch his legs, you may be sure. You notice that he didn’t give the name of the island to Evans. Why not? I think I know. He didn’t want anyone to know he’d been there. Nor did he want bird watchers prowling about the place. Anyway, before I do anything else I’m going to find this flamingo island and check up for a feature that conforms to the shape of the sketch. When we find that we shan’t be far from the things we’re looking for.’
‘Evans spoke of two main islands.’
‘Inagua and Andros. We can forget them. Andros is hundreds of miles away. There are a lot of people on it, so it would hardly suit Hagen’s purpose. I don’t know about Inagua. It’s this secondary colony that we’ve got to find. According to Evans, and he should know, the new breeding ground can’t be far from the old one on Inagua. That shrinks our search to a comparatively small area. We’ll get back to Columbus Bay and cast an eye over our maps. Then maybe, we’ll do a spot of flying for a close look. We’ll press on, I think, before it gets dark.’
‘You think it safe to leave the house with no one in it?’
‘I think so. Von Stalhein may suppose that we’ve taken up residence there, as I hinted. Anyway, we shall have to risk it. To ask the police to put a guard on the place again might start people asking questions. We can’t be in two places at once and I’m anxious to follow up on this flamingo clue. If that fails we shall have to come back to the house and try something else.’
Biggles was reaching for the starter when from somewhere near at hand the solemn hush of evening was shattered by a scream so full of terror that Ginger’s muscles went taut. Biggles gave him one startled look was and out of the door in a flash. ‘Come on!” he snapped, and dashed up Evan’s drive.
‘It wasn’t there! It was over here!’ shouted Ginger, pointing at Rumkeg Haven. He’d been sitting on that side of the car.
Biggles retraced his steps and together they raced up the road to Hagen’s house. Nearing it, Biggles pulled up short. ‘Hark!’
From close at hand came groans.
‘I didn’t leave that window open,’ rapped out Biggles, pointing at the french window that opened into the garden.
With Ginger at his heels he made a rush for it. He took the three stone steps leading up at a bound, crossed the threshold, and then, with a brittle ‘Look out!’ twisted sideways so abruptly that he crashed into a chair and sent it flying. Only collision with the wall prevented him from going down himself. Recovering, he snatched one of the short fishing-rods and lashed at something on the ground.
By this time Ginger was in the room and he saw at once what Biggles had seen. Skidding to a stop, he, too, jumped sideways.
The next few minutes were a pandemonium in the nature of a nightmare that he is not likely to forget easily.
Evans lay huddled on the floor, one knee drawn up, one arm over his face. Coiled beside him, a swaying, triangular-shaped head turned menacingly towards the newcomers, was a snake, brown with dark markings edged with greenish-yellow.
To get near the man on the floor without being bitten by the snake was obviously impossible, and it was to deal with the situation that Biggles had grabbed the first weapon within reach — the fishing rod. And it was not a bad instrument for the purpose to which he now put it. He aimed a smashing blow at the reptile, and he did, in fact, hit it, but not hard enough to put it out of action, due to the top of the rod snapping off short. What was left in his hand was shorter and therefore handier, and he raised it to strike again. However, before the blow could fall, the snake showed its resentment of such treatment by lunging at Ginger at a speed that shocked him, and sent him vaulting on the writing-table. The snake, hissing like escaping steam, shot under a big armchair, a position in which it could not of course be struck.
‘You’d better stay where you are,’ Biggles told Ginger grimly, and then tried to poke the snake from its retreat. In this he succeeded only too well. The snake shot out straight towards him, and in an instant was too close for him to get in an effective blow. Whereupon he, too, had to seek safety in flight. The snake struck at him, but he sprang sideways and then jumped on to a chair; and from that elevated position he tried without success to get in a telling stroke. The difficulty was to hit the snake without hitting Evans. In his desperate efforts Biggles finally overturned the chair. He flung it at the writhing reptile and then jumped on another.
So far Ginger had done nothing but stare at this alarming contest. Now, seeing that the affair was going badly, he decided to take a hand. A second fishing-rod stood in a corner. He made a long jump for it, seized it, and whirling round made a stroke at the snake which, if it had succeeded, would have broken its back. Unfortunately the point of the rod caught in a hanging lamp. There was a resounding crash and glass flew in all directions.
The blow, its force gone, struck the reptile harmlessly across the tail, and merely seemed to drive it into a fury in which it tore about giving neither him nor Biggles a chance to end the matter. Finally the creature shot under the sofa and remained there. The result of this was a pause in which the only sounds were the heavy breathing of Biggles and Ginger as they stared at place where the snake had disappeared.
‘I can see its head,’ pa
nted Ginger.
‘Then heave something at it and let’s make an end of madhouse,’ rasped Biggles. ‘Evans is likely to die while we’re fooling about like this.’
Ginger picked up a brass candlestick and threw it. It missed. But it was a close miss and achieved its object. Out came the snake. Biggles bashed at it in passing but failed to hit it. Ginger made a swipe from a bad angle that did no more than sweep the reptile across the floor to the open window, through which it promptly squirmed to disappear in the jungle of weeds.
‘All right, let it go,’ muttered Biggies irritably.
‘I’m not likely to go after it,’ returned Ginger warmly. ‘Mind there isn’t another.’
‘We’ll risk that,’ answered Biggles, dropping on his knees beside Evans, who appeared to be unconscious.
Ginger joined him. ‘It looks as if he’s had it,’ he observed.
‘Knife. Give me your knife, quick!’ snapped Biggles, examining the prostrate man with feverish speed. He pulled up the legs of his trousers. ‘Here we are.’ He took the penknife which Ginger handed to him, blade open, and swiftly made two incisions, one across the other. ‘Try to find some brandy or whisky,’ he ordered, and then began sucking the wound he had made, spitting out the venom thus extracted.
Ginger found a decanter in the dining-room.
‘Try to get a little through his lips,’ said Biggles, carrying on with what he was doing.
‘What about a doctor?’ asked Ginger, as he stooped to comply.
‘No use. There’s no phone here. By the time a doctor got here it would be too late. We can do better ourselves for the moment. If we can get him moving he’s got chance.’
Not without difficulty Ginger got some of the spirit through the pallid lips, spilling plenty in the process. Biggles enlarged the wound so that the poisoned blood ran freely. The leg was beginning to swell. Then he dragged Evans into a sitting position and shook him. ‘Evans!’ he cried. ‘Wake up. Do you hear me? Wake up.’
