Biggles Forms a Syndicate

  CONTENTS

  GEOGRAPHICAL NOTE

  CHAPTER I: A PILOT TELLS A TALE

  CHAPTER II: DIZZY ENDS HIS STORY

  CHAPTER III: BIGGLES MAKES A SUGGESTION

  CHAPTER IV: TRAGEDY LOOMS

  CHAPTER V: MOSTLY SURMISE

  CHAPTER VI: TRAPPED

  CHAPTER VII: HEARTBREAKING WORK

  CHAPTER VIII: FRESH TROUBLE

  CHAPTER IX: AWKWARD MOMENTS

  CHAPTER X: UP THE HILL AND DOWN

  CHAPTER XI: GINGER’S DILEMMA

  CHAPTER XII: “THE WILL OF GOD”

  CHAPTER XIII: THE SHEIKH LENDS A HAND

  CHAPTER XIV: BIGGLES SITS BACK

  CHAPTER XV: THE LAST WORD

  GEOGRAPHICAL NOTE

  ARABIA IS the great peninsular that forms the extreme south west of Asia. Bounded on the east by the Persian Gulf and the south by the Indian Ocean it is separated from Africa on the west by the Red Sea. Its greatest length from north to south is about 1,500 miles, and its width, 1,250 miles. Its area is in the order of 1,200,000 square miles. About one third of this is sheer desert, and much of the remainder is arid and uncultivated. The atmosphere is extremely hot and dry. Clouds are seldom seen and rain rarely falls. The temperature can exceed 115º in the shade—where there is any shade.

  The central and southern regions of this harsh land were among the last places on earth to be seen by a white man. Even today only a handful of explorers have penetrated its burning heart, for which reason much of it still remains a blank on the map. This is not only because of the inhospitable nature of the land itself but on account of the fanatical hostility of the independent Arab tribes which for centuries waged war between themselves, so that life was a hazardous business even for an Arab. For a Christian it was much more dangerous. Well into the present century Arabia clung to its tradition of the Forbidden Land.

  Yet Arabia was well-known to the ancient writers, and in olden days the climate must have been more salubrious or it would not have been known as Arabia Felix (Happy). We read of fields, streams and orchards. The other parts were Arabia Deserta (Desert) and Arabia Petraea (Stony).

  South of the Rub’ al Khali, the great sandy desert known as the Empty Quarter, where the Red Sea meets the Arabian Sea of the Indian Ocean, is the port and British Crown Colony of Aden, from where is administered a long narrow coastal strip known as the Aden Protectorate. From west to east it is about six hundred miles long. Behind it for a hundred miles or so, between the actual coast and the Great Sandy Desert, is the Hadhramaut—the Valley of Death.

  The Protectorate is divided into a number of sultanates, the chiefs of which are in protective treaty relationship with the British Government. It is their duty to keep order, but that does not always prevent the incursion of raiding parties from the north. The boundaries are always in dispute.

  It is generally believed that somewhere on or near this southern coast of Arabia stood the fabulously wealthy town of Ophir, associated with King Solomon and the celebrated Queen of Sheba, to which reference is made in the Bible and by several ancient writers. That it existed is beyond doubt, but just where it was situated has long been a matter for speculation. It has disappeared and all trace of it lost.

  The reason for its disappearance is thought by many to be the same as the one which has caused such a change over almost the whole of the Middle East; and that is the gradual encroachment of sand, carried by the prevailing wind from the great deserts of Central Asia. This, eventually, not only killed the vegetation, the roots of which helped to hold moisture in the soil, but has hidden under a deep blanket of sand most of the cities of the old world mentioned in the Bible. And there were many, for this, you must remember, was where civilization began.

  Now, any rain that falls, with nothing to hold it, rushes to the sea through a thousand watercourses which at all other times, and that means most of the year, are dry. Again, long ago it was the cool forests that induced the clouds to precipitate their contents. Today there are no forests, so the few clouds pass on, leaving the thirsty land dry and sterile.

  It was with this lonely and dangerous corner of the earth, as a result of an accident that occurred to an R.A.F. officer stationed at Aden, that Biggles—not from choice—found himself involved.

  CHAPTER I

  A PILOT TELLS A TALE

  IN THE Air Police headquarters office at Scotland Yard the intercom telephone buzzed at the elbow of Air Detective-Inspector Bigglesworth, known to his friends as “Biggles,” who was engaged in reading and sorting a pile of world aviation press cuttings that covered his desk.

  He reached for the receiver. “Bigglesworth here.... Yes... please bring him up. Right away.”

  Glancing across at his staff pilots who were working in the same room he remarked: “Tighten your safety belts. If I know anything here comes trouble.”

  “In the shape of what?” inquired Algy Lacey.

  “Do you remember Digswell, of four-two-four squadron?”

  “Remember him! Dizzy Digswell! Who could ever forget him. Crazy as a dingbat. I’m only astonished that he’s still walking the earth. Don’t say...”

  “He’s on his way up.”

  “Stiffen the crows! What sort of gremlin has thrown him off course to put his wheels down here?”

  “Nothing he did would surprise me so let’s not try to guess what he wants. Stout lad all the same.”

  “I don’t seem to know this chap,” put in Ginger.

  “I think he must have been a bit before your time.”

  “In which case, dear boy, you missed some lively entertainment,” observed Bertie Lissie, smiling as he polished his eyeglass.

  “If he managed to get the nickname of Dizzy in the Service he must have been pretty wild,” returned Ginger.

  “It all depends on how you look at it,” resumed Biggles. “Actually, he was by no means as crazy as some people tried to make out. He was a natural pilot. He could make an aircraft do anything. Some people love horses. Some love dogs. Dizzy loved planes. To him his machine was always ‘old girl’. He used to pat her.”

  “Sounds daft to me.”

  “As a matter of fact Dizzy was the sort of chap aviation in the early days couldn’t very well do without.”

  “In what way? What had he got that other people hadn’t got?”

  “I wouldn’t know what to call it. Confidence in his own judgment, if you like. He certainly had brains, although not everyone would agree with that. It was the way he used them that shook people.”

  “Remember the Flash?” inquired Algy, looking at Biggles.

  “What was that?” asked Ginger, curiously.

  Biggles went on. “The Flash was one of those unlucky aircraft which, early in its career, got a bad name, for which reason it never went into production. You know what that means. Never mind about giving a dog a bad name and hanging it. If an aircraft gets a bad name it’s almost impossible to live it down. Nobody wants to fly it. That’s no use. That was the fate of more than one machine years ago.”

  “What was wrong with the Flash?”

  “As far as I know, nothing, except that it may have been a bit nose heavy. But it wasn’t that that killed it. Only three were built. They were sent to us for a try-out. The first one to be taken up went into a spin. It never came out. A chap named Crane, a good pilot, took up the second one. It did exactly the same thing. As you can imagine, there was no mad rush to fly the third. Dizzy walked round it, having a good look. Then he climbed in and took it up. Most people had by this time decided there was a weakness somewhere. No inherent stability was the general verdict. Well, Dizzy went up to two thousand, flew round once or twice, and then, what everyone was expecting, happened. He went into a spin
. We shut our eyes and waited for the crash. When I opened mine it was to see the Flash out of its spin. Only just in time. It was under fifty feet when it flattened out.”

  “Dizzy must have been shaken,” interposed Ginger.

  “Not in the least. I asked him what caused the machine to spin. He said: ‘It didn’t spin. I spun it.’ I said: ‘You mean, after seeing what happened to the others, you deliberately put her in a spin?’ He said: ‘Why not. I had a good look at her and could see no earthly reason why she shouldn’t behave normally. She was a bit slow coming out, that’s all.’”

  “I begin to understand why you called him Dizzy,” asserted Ginger.

  “He argued there was only one way of finding out if there really was anything wrong. That was his way of doing it.”

  “Not for me.”

  “Nor for most people. But then, Dizzy was no ordinary pilot. Another time, I remember, we had a prototype to test. People decided it hadn’t enough weather-cock stability, which made it awkward to handle. The fin was too small. Dizzy said that was all absolute rot. There was nothing wrong with the machine. It was the way people were handling it. No use being afraid of it, he said. To prove he was right he cut the fin off altogether, took the machine up and threw it all over the sky.”

  “He was asking for it.”

  “He didn’t think so. Anyhow, that’s the sort of chap he was, and probably still is.”

  Following a tap on the door it was opened by a uniformed constable. “Squadron Leader Digswell,” he announced.

  Biggles stood up with a hand outstretched to greet a small, wiry, smiling man of early middle age in civilian clothes. He wore glasses, behind which danced mischievous bright blue eyes. His upper lip was decorated by an absurdly long moustache fluffed out at the ends. Almost as conspicuous was a rather dreadful scar that ran diagonally across the full length of his right cheek, a souvenir, as everyone in the room knew, of a crash.

  “Whatcher, chaps! Grand to see you all again,” he cried, shaking hands all round.

  Biggles pushed forward a chair. “Take the weight off your legs,” he invited. “Why the bowler hat? Have they at last slung you out of the Service?”

  “No, surprisingly enough, although I was more or less invalided.”

  “What happened, old boy?” inquired Bertie Lissie. “Get your whiskers caught up in an airscrew, or something of that sort?”

  “Nothing so complicated. I had a spot of eye trouble and couldn’t pass my medical for flying duties.”

  “That was tough, after the number of different ways you’ve tried to kill yourself.”

  “They offered me a chair at the Air Ministry but I couldn’t face the idea of flying a desk for the rest of my life.”

  “You’d probably live longer doing that than flying an aircraft the way you do.”

  “Oh, come off it. There’s nothing wrong with my flying.”

  “I hope,” rejoined Biggles, suspiciously, “you haven’t come here in the hope of borrowing one of my aeroplanes to knock to pieces.”

  The ex-pilot brushed aside the notion. “Nothing like that. Matter of fact I’ve come to offer you the chance of a lifetime.”

  “How?”

  “Can you use money?”

  “More than so far I’ve been able to get my hands on.”

  “Same as you. Well, I’m going to make your fortune.”

  Biggles smiled sceptically. “Why make mine? Why not make your own, for a start?”

  “There’s enough in this for all of us.”

  “Why share it with me? Don’t say you can lay your hands on more boodle than you can spend yourself.”

  Dizzy grinned cheerfully. “That’d be impossible.”

  “That’s what I thought. If I remember rightly you’ve mastered the art of making money fly even faster than the machines you flew.”

  “I’ve had to give that up,” admitted Dizzy, soberly. “Now listen, chaps. I don’t believe in beating about the bush so I’ll come straight to the point. You have an aircraft at your disposal and I haven’t. Moreover, I haven’t enough money to buy one and it’s unlikely I ever shall have.”

  “From which I gather that if you had you wouldn’t be looking for a partner in this get-rich-quick operation.”

  “True enough. I’ve come to you because I can’t see how I can go it alone. Apart from an aircraft you have facilities for getting about which are denied to blokes like me.”

  “Could be,” conceded Biggles, cautiously. “Where’s this pile of easy money and who does it belong to?”

  “It doesn’t belong to anyone. What do you take me for—a crook?”

  “No.”

  “Thanks. The last person to use this money I’m talking about was probably around the time Julius Caesar was unloading his landing craft on the south coast. Maybe long before that.”

  Biggles looked at the speaker with suspicious, half-closed eyes. “You’re not by any chance talking about a treasure?”

  “That’s exactly what I am talking about. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Everything. I’ve something better to do than rush around digging holes at some place where X marks the spot.”

  “In this case we don’t need a map with an X marking the spot.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “Seen what?”

  “The treasure. I know exactly where it is.”

  Biggles looked incredulous. “Are you serious?”

  “Of course I’m serious. Why do you think I’ve come here?”

  “You have actually seen this treasure with your own eyes?”

  “I wouldn’t be likely to see it with anyone else’s.”

  “All right. Don’t quibble. If you’ve seen it why didn’t you collect the stuff while you were there?”

  “It took me all my time to collect myself. I was in no shape to load up a sack of gold.”

  “Then all I can say is you must have been in pretty poor shape.”

  “I was. Moreover, I was in too much of a hurry.”

  “A devil of a hurry, I’d think, to pass up a chance like that.”

  “You’d think right. At the time I was afraid Old Man Death had got his claws on me at last.”

  “All right. Let’s get down to brass tacks. Where is this hoard somebody carelessly left lying about?”

  “Did you ever hear of a place called Ophir?”

  “Of course. I’ve read my Bible.”

  “Do you know where Ophir is, or was?”

  “No, and neither do you.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. Of course, I couldn’t swear to it, but unless I’m right off the beam I’ve stood on the spot where Ophir used to be, and probably still is, under the sand.”

  “Archaeologists have been looking for Ophir for hundreds of years but they still haven’t found it.”

  “Because they’ve always looked in the wrong place, that’s why.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Had they looked in the right place they’d have seen it, or bits of it. Or, shall we say, what’s left of it.”

  “According to the records Ophir was a seaport, so it must have been on the coast.”

  “Quite right. So, no doubt, it was, three thousand years ago. But not now. That’s why the looking has been off course. Before we go any farther tell me what you know about Ophir and I’ll tell you if you’ve got it right.”

  “How do you know so much about it?”

  “I’ve got all the gen from the British Museum.”

  Biggles tapped the ash off his cigarette. “All I know is what I’ve read from time to time. In Biblical days Ophir was world-renowned for its riches, fabulous even in those days. It was the traditional market for gold, ivory and peacock feathers. There’s reason to believe it was the seaport from which King Solomon obtained his treasures of gold, silver and precious stones, to say nothing of carved stonework for his palace. It was also the place, if I remember rightly, from which the ancient Egyptians bough
t their frankincense in which to embalm their dead Pharaohs.”

  “Quite right. Frankincense is still a business in Aden.”

  “The town, thought to be on the south coast of Arabia, disappeared, presumably under the sand, ages ago.”

  “Correct. According to the Old Testament it was a lovely land of luxuriant forests, babbling brooks and verdant valleys. That’s confirmed by the Romans, who knew all about it. They called it Arabia Felix. Happy Arabia. Well, I can tell you there’s nothing happy about it now. It’s just a heap of sun-blistered rock and sand where the chief recreation is murder. I should know. I’ve been there. If I’ve found Ophir there isn’t much left of it, at all events above ground. People have been looking along the coast. Maybe it was there at one time, but it isn’t now. For centuries the sand has been drifting down and pushing out into the sea, with the result that the beach is miles from where it used to be. According to an expert I spoke to, the beach is still extending southward at the rate of several feet a year.”

  Bertie stepped in. “I say, you know, it’s hard to believe that a place of that size could absolutely disappear without trace—if you see what I mean.”

  Dizzy asked: “Did you ever serve in Iraq when you were in the Service?”

  “No.”

  “If you had you’d understand. I was once stationed at Mosul, which is the site of the Nineveh of the Old Testament. What about that? There’s plenty of evidence that Nineveh, which was the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Assyria, was a vast place built entirely of stone, with walls so thick that three chariots could race round abreast. It took an army three days to march round ‘em. Eighteen canals fed the reservoirs with water. Where’s it all gone? All you can see today is a couple of humps, one thought to be the tomb of Jonah, who prophesied that the place would vanish and become dry like a wilderness. He was dead right; it has.”

  “Let’s get back to Ophir,” suggested Biggles, bluntly. “How did you happen to be there?”

  “It wasn’t from choice, you can bet your sweet life on that. I’ll tell you about it.”

  “Before you start, have you told anyone else what you’re telling us?”