Orchids for Biggles Read online

  CONTENTS

  SYNOPSIS

  PREFACE

  CHAPTER 1: THE ORCHID MAN

  CHAPTER 2: THE TRAITOR

  CHAPTER 3: CRUZUADO

  CHAPTER 4: THE BAR FRANCISCO

  CHAPTER 5: THE HOUSE IN THE FOREST

  CHAPTER 6: BIGGLES HAS A FRIGHT

  CHAPTER 7: JOSÉ COMES IN USEFUL

  CHAPTER 8: DEATH INTERVENES

  CHAPTER 9: BOGOSOFF SHOWS HIS HAND

  CHAPTER 10: COMPLICATIONS

  CHAPTER 11: BERTIE MAKES A BLUNDER

  CHAPTER 12: FRUSTRATED

  CHAPTER 13: ONE LAST CHANCE

  ORCHIDS FOR BIGGLES

  Top secret documents missing and with them a nuclear research scientist demanding one million dollars for the return of the papers which in enemy hands could only mean annihilation. Trying to track down Harald Neckel in the depths of the Peruvian jungle, Biggles agreed with Bertie that they were indeed ‘Up the creek without a paddle’, and Bertie’s argument with a giant anaconda was by no means their closest brush with death.

  PREFACE

  To save breaking into the narrative with explanatory notes here are some details of the family of plants known as Orchidaceae, or Orchids.

  The orchid family is a peculiar race of plants, most of which, in nature, occur in tropical countries, although a few of no account do grow in temperate zones, including the British Isles. There are about five hundred altogether, divided into two groups: Terrestrial, i.e. those which have roots in the ground, and Epiphytic, meaning a plant which grows on another, often with air roots, deriving moisture from the atmosphere. These usually spring from thick bulbous roots called pseudo-bulbs. Some are useless for any purpose, but others, by virtue of the beauty of their flowers, have a high commercial value. One or two have other properties, such as vanilla, the seed pods of which yield the well-known flavouring substance of that name.

  The culture of exotic orchids in temperate climates necessitates a hothouse, but even so, as many types demand their own highly specialized conditions of temperature, moisture, light and shade, to grow them successfully calls for understanding, skill and patience; which is why they are so expensive. Another reason for this is, the seeds are microscopic and delicate, and to produce a flowering plant from seed generally takes several years of exceptionally careful cultivation.

  Bulbs are sometimes imported from the country of origin, either to the order of professional growers or for sale at public auctions.

  W.E.J.

  CHAPTER 1

  THE ORCHID MAN

  THE rain was not particularly heavy, but it dropped straight down from an unbroken layer of cloud, the colour of lead, with relentless persistence, getting no heavier yet giving no indication of ending. It splashed with a constant hiss on the black water of the Rio Jurara and bounced off the plane surfaces of the Air Police amphibious aircraft ‘Gadfly’ which, with engines idling, rested on the river, drifting a little under the weight of storm water already pouring into the main stream from a thousand minor tributaries.

  There was no wind; no movement of air. The great trees of the Amazonian forest that lined the banks appeared, on the near side, as a cliff of dark grey rock, and the other as a vague shadow that merged into the sky.

  Biggles eyed the rising water with misgivings. Already it was bringing down from the upper reaches the usual miscellaneous debris, broad masses of weed, dead trees and the like. On one such precarious raft a monkey chattered with rage at finding itself so trapped.

  A dugout canoe went past, a blanket-shrouded figure hunched in the stern trailing a paddle.

  Biggles opened the streaming cabin window a little way to inspect more easily a large, palm-thatched house, that stood on stilts beyond a beach of coal-black mud up which the rising flood was creeping.

  ‘This could be it,’ he said, to his only companion in the aircraft, Air-Constable Bertie Lissie. ‘I hope to goodness it is, because we can’t go on like this. If we take off, with visibility as it is we might have a job to get down again; and if we stay where we are we’re liable to get a hole punched in our hull by one of these logs I see being washed down.’

  Bertie took a look at the house through the open window. ‘I’d hardly call that place a villa, old boy,’ he observed seriously.

  ‘We’re not in the South of France,’ Biggles reminded him. ‘What did you expect to find — a row of marble pillars and a flight of steps sweeping up to the front door?’

  ‘I certainly didn’t expect to strike this sort of weather,’ complained Bertie. ‘I thought we were coming to the tropics. Dash it all, I’ve brought my Bombay bowler1.’

  ‘You may need it yet. It has to rain sometimes even in the tropics. The sky isn’t blue all the time.’

  ‘So I notice,’ returned Bertie. ‘What can we do about it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘How long it this bally downpour likely to last?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I wouldn’t know. But I do know this. Sitting here goofing at it won’t get us anywhere. I’m going ashore to ask if this is Fotherham’s place. If it isn’t, someone might be able to tell us where it is. My information was, Fotherham lived up a creek about four miles downstream from Cruzuado, and that, as near as I can judge in the foul murk, is where we are. Here, take the stick and run me in close. Go steady. I imagine the bottom will be mud, but I’m taking no chances of tearing our keel off on an odd rock or a sunken tree.’

  Bertie complied, and the aircraft nosed its way cautiously to the beach until the keel scraped gently on a soft bottom.

  Biggles stepped out into several inches of evil-smelling sludge and walked on, with his feet sinking in sticky mud, towards the house. Before he reached it he observed that he was being watched by several pairs of eyes, mostly Indian; but a man who must have been sitting on the veranda, and now came forward to meet him, was obviously a half-caste.

  As a specimen of the human race he was far from perfect. Bearded and indescribably filthy, he wore only three articles of clothing; a battered slouch hat, a shirt in tatters open to the waist, and a pair of baggy canvas trousers supported by a leather belt through which had been thrust, without any protection, a heavy knife. However, he answered Biggles cheerfully enough when he greeted him with the usual ‘Buenos dias, señor,’ adding ‘Que mal tiempo.’ (What bad weather.)

  ‘El tiempo esta muy insequro,’ (the weather is very unsettled) the man announced, somewhat unnecessarily.

  Ignoring what seemed a nice piece of understatement Biggles walked on with the man to the shelter under the house, where a pile of rough balls of crude rubber suggested the man was a trader in that commodity, and proceeded with the question he had come to ask. It turned out that the man had had an English father, or so he claimed, and as he spoke English fairly well it could have been true. This made conversation easier.

  No, the man told him, this was not the Villa Vanda of Señor Fotherham, whom he knew well, often doing business with him in orchids which his men found in the forest when tapping the wild rubber trees. The villa was on the same bank about a mile higher up the river. It would be easy to find because it lay back in a little creek. As soon as the creek was entered the house of Don Pedro would be seen on the right.

  Biggles, having got the information he wanted, declined with thanks an invitation to enter the house for a meal and returned to the beach and so into the aircraft.

  ‘We’re only about a mile short of Fotherham’s place so we haven’t done too badly,’ he told Bertie. ‘It’s up a creek. We’re on the right side of the river so let’s press on.’

  ‘Do you want me to take off?’

  ‘No. It isn’t worth it. We might as well stay on the water. Take it slowly and keep an eye open for timber floatin
g down. I’ll watch for the creek.’

  Bertie turned the bows of the Gadfly into the current and the machine forged its way forward with Biggles peering through the open window for the creek described by the amiable rubber trader.

  A few minutes later they came to it, finding it without difficulty as the man had promised, for the gap in the bank was fairly wide and gave entrance to a sheet of placid water in the manner of a long, narrow lake. A house came into view on the right-hand side. It still fell far short of the establishment which the name, Villa Vanda, suggested. Indeed, it appeared to be little better than the house just visited. It was a little larger and could boast some extensive outbuildings; but its general appearance was just as untidy. A pier, or landing stage, of rough timber, ran out a short distance into the water. Tied up to it were two exceptionally large canoes and a balsa — a raft of very light wood used largely in the Amazon Basin. Some Indians who had been working on these craft stopped what they were doing to watch the aircraft as it drew near.

  ‘You’re not going to tell me that an Englishman, with a university education behind him, lives in that miserable-looking barn,’ remarked Bertie.

  ‘Englishmen have lived in worse places than that,’ returned Biggles. ‘Where people choose to live is a matter of taste, and considering how long he’s been here Fotherham must like it.’

  ‘I’ll bet the place is crawling with fleas.’

  ‘I shall be surprised if there aren’t worse pests than fleas living in that thatch,’ rejoined Biggles cheerfully. ‘It’s ready made for all sorts of little beasts that bite and sting. However, we don’t have to live in it. I imagine we shall find the hotel in the town not too bad.’

  ‘I hope you’re right, old boy,’ answered Bertie fervently. ‘Pity we couldn’t have gone straight to it. I’m all for hot and cold laid on. One needs a bath three times a day in this climate.’

  ‘You know why we couldn’t do that. The machine would have attracted too much attention. I want to arrive with as little fuss as possible. I’m hoping Fotherham, or Don Pedro as they call him, will allow us to park the aircraft here. He’ll have servants to keep an eye on it. That would enable us to proceed on foot. There’s bound to be a track to Cruzuado, if not a road.’

  ‘What if he invites us to stay here with him?’

  ‘I’m keeping an open mind about that. It may suit us for a day or two until we see how the land lies. I’m not particular about what the house is like inside as long as there’s a roof over our heads to keep off this infernal rain.’

  ‘If I know anything about jungle paths it’s not going to be fun padding the hoof between here and Cruzuado in this sort of weather. I don’t know about you, but I’m not finding it any too warm in tropical kit. I should have kept on my woollies.’

  ‘You’ll find it hot enough when the sun breaks through,’ promised Biggles. ‘This rain is coming from the west, which means the clouds have been in touch with the snow and ice on the high tops of the Andes. That’s why it’s a bit chilly. It’ll improve.’

  ‘It can’t get much worse, there is that about it,’ observed Bertie.

  By this time the aircraft had touched its nose against an unoccupied part of the pier so Biggles got out and made fast. Bertie, having switched off, joined him, observing that a man, a white man, was walking quickly from the house to meet them; they went on and presently came face to face with him.

  ‘Mr Peter Fotherham?’ questioned Biggles.

  ‘At your service,’ was the reply.

  Biggles’ eyes made a quick survey of the speaker, and what he saw he found embarrassing if not disconcerting. From his own experience he knew that while British residents in the tropics did not necessarily ‘dress for dinner,’ as has sometimes been claimed, they seldom allowed themselves to ‘go native’. To say that Fotherham had gone as far as that would be to exaggerate, but if his appearance was anything to go by he was on the way to it.

  It would have been difficult to guess his age, but making allowances for his physical condition Biggles judged him to be in the region of forty. He was tall, and thin to the point of emaciation. His skin, the colour of old parchment from recurrent fever or jaundice, appeared to be stretched over a framework of bones. His face was long and narrow with a high forehead and a prominent jaw. But blue eyes, and reddish unkempt hair beginning to turn grey, left no doubt about European descent. The hand that he offered to them in turn was not that of a man accustomed to manual labour.

  He did not wear much in the way of clothes, although he could have claimed with truth that in the usual sultry heat of his chosen place of residence he needed no more than was necessary to cover his nakedness. He wore a much-worn khaki cotton shirt, drill shorts of the same colour and a pair of mud-caked plimsolls. When he spoke it was with the voice of a man of culture.

  ‘Welcome to Vanda,’ he said. ‘I seldom have visitors so you must be Bigglesworth and Lissie. I was informed you were coming. Did you have much difficulty in finding me?’

  ‘I had a job to find the right river, never mind your house,’ answered Biggles, smiling. ‘It was easy to Manicore, and for some way afterwards, because we followed the local air service to Porto Velho; but when we struck the tangle of rivers you have about here it wasn’t easy to follow the right one. However, after landing once or twice to ask the way we’ve managed to get here.’

  ‘Good. That’s the main thing. Come up to the house and have a drink. You might like to take a bath and change your clothes. My men will bring your luggage along.’

  ‘Will my aircraft be all right?’

  ‘As right as rain, as we might say, not inappropriately. There’s no current to speak of in the creek and my men wouldn’t interfere with it.’

  The little party walked towards the house, across the front of which, as could now be seen, had been nailed a board carrying the words, in faded letters: ‘Peter Fotherham. Orchids.’ As if to emphasize the point, from it hung a big wire basket carrying a magnificent orchid, ablaze with blue and lilac flowers.

  Fotherham pointed to it. ‘Do you know what that is?’

  Biggles answered. ‘No, beyond the fact that it’s an orchid.’

  ‘Quite right. It’s one of the family Vanda — hence the name of my house. It’s a type that doesn’t occur here. I raised it myself from seed. I raise quite a few hybrids, apart from what are collected in the forest.’

  They were now splashing through a yard where, in a strong smell of chemicals, several Indians, negroes and mixed breeds, were busy with piles of orchid bulbs, some bearing exquisite flowers which were being torn off and thrown down in the mud before the bulbs were tossed into a large vat.

  ‘Sorry to bring you through all this mess but some of my collectors have just brought in their loads,’ said Fotherham apologetically.

  ‘Then you don’t go out looking for them yourself,’ said Bertie.

  ‘I used to, but not now,’ replied Fotherham. ‘I only go out when I receive a report of something special that might require careful handling. I’m not as young as I was and you have to be a Tarzan to climb the trees and bring down the bulbs. Like everything else, the value of orchids is determined by rarity, and the business of handling them is not as simple as you might imagine. It isn’t just a matter of finding, collecting, and packing the stuff off home. Few countries will permit the import of orchid roots in the rough state for fear of introducing some dangerous pest. They have to be cleaned and treated with chemicals to rid them of worms and bugs, even small snakes and tarantulas, that make their homes in them. That’s what those fellows in the yard are doing now.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why it’s necessary to import bulbs at all,’ said Biggles. ‘Can’t enough be raised in hothouses at home to satisfy the demand?’

  ‘You can do that for so long,’ informed the specialist. ‘Bred in captivity, so to speak, after a while the stock loses its stamina and the flowers their perfume, so it’s necessary from time to time to bring in new blood to renew their streng
th by the introduction of healthy stock direct from the forest.’

  ‘What started you off in this unusual line of business?’ inquired Biggles. ‘You’ve been at it for a long time, I believe.’

  ‘I collect orchids chiefly for myself, and supply other people, not because I need the money, but because I love the flowers for themselves and am in the fortunate position of being able to indulge in a hobby which most people would find too expensive. It’s not uncommon for a person to be struck with a passion for collecting. It may be postage stamps, or fossils, or even matchbox tops. With me it is orchids. Many years ago, when I came down from Oxford, my father gave me the money for a world tour, and it was in Burma that I saw my first wild orchid, Vanda Caerulescens — one of the parents of the one you saw outside. I had always been a naturalist and I thought I had never seen anything as lovely as that blue orchid. My father died shortly after I returned home, so finding myself well off I was able to indulge in the luxury of building up a collection of orchids. Then came the war. One frosty night a bomb shattered my glasshouses and by morning my collection had ceased to exist. It had died from cold. Determined to see that should never happen again, as soon as the war was over I came here, where no artificial heat is necessary; and here I’ve been ever since.’

  They had now entered what was obviously the living room, a long apartment simply but comfortably furnished, mostly in bamboo, presumably of local manufacture. There were some metal cabinets against one wall. The decorations consisted chiefly of glass cases containing specimens of gorgeous birds and butterflies.

  ‘What would you like to drink?’ inquired Fotherham, going to a table on which stood bottles and glasses. ‘Whisky — gin ? Or would you rather have something soft?’

  ‘I see you have some lime juice there,’ answered Biggles. ‘I keep off alcohol in hot climates.’

  ‘Very wise,’ agreed the orchid man. ‘I’m sorry about the stink. One soon gets used to it. I have to use a strong insect repellant to protect my collection of butterflies and moths.’