Biggles and the Pirate Treasure Page 7

  ‘Let’s get along,’ said Biggles tersely. ‘I’ll think this over on the way.’

  They rejoined the others, and taking up the load continued on to the airfield. Not a word was spoken. Sweat streamed from their faces, for the idol was heavier than had been suggested.

  On arriving at the aircraft, which stood as they had left it, the two occupants got down to greet them. As the canvas-wrapped idol was lowered gently to the ground in its natural sitting position the cover slid off, revealing a flat face smiling an inscrutable smile, a round body and hands resting on knees. The eye sockets were empty holes.

  ‘Let’s get it on board and away,’ said Kling sharply. ‘This place is dangerous.’

  Biggles took a pace back. His hand went casually into a side pocket.

  ‘Just a minute,’ he said. ‘We’re taking an extra passenger with us.’

  The man who had called himself Prince Yuan started. ‘A passenger! Who is he?’

  ‘Fellow named Hobbs,’ answered Biggles evenly. ‘You told us about him. Remember?’

  Ginger could feel the atmosphere stiffening. He raised a hand, beckoning, then put it back in his pocket. Hobbs emerged from the jungle and walked forward.

  ‘So he stayed here,’ said the Prince in a thin, hard voice.

  ‘He had to, since you stole his machine,’ returned Biggles calmly.

  Hobbs came up, his eyes glinting dangerously as they went from one schemer to the other. They switched to the idol and then back. ‘Been busy with your knife as usual, I see,’ he sneered.

  ‘Take it easy, Hobbs,’ said Biggles, quietly.

  ‘Thanks to these two beauties I’ve been taking it easy long enough,’ rasped Hobbs. ‘Having set the country afire they’ve the brass face to come back and lift the one holy thing left in this unholy country. What’s inside it, I wonder?’ Before anyone could stop him he had seized the right arm of the idol and raised it high. Instantly a door in the back flew open disclosing a filling of what appeared to be brown bricks, some of which fell out. A peel of mirthless laughter broke from his lips. ‘Dope,’ he cried. ‘I ought to have guessed it. Enough opium to dope—’

  He jumped sideways as the ‘Prince’ whipped out an automatic. Two shots crashed as one.

  The Prince crumpled from the knees and slumped forward on his face. Kling was running for the jungle, but Hobbs turned the smoking muzzle of his revolver on him and fired three shots. The third found its mark. Kling pitched forward and lay still.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that, Hobbs,’ snapped Biggles.

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ answered Hobbs casually, pocketing his gun. ‘They had it coming. Never mind what they tried to do to me, Prince Yuan was a fine man, and a particular friend of mine. This is my best day’s work for a long time. You can do what you like about it now as far as I’m concerned.’

  There was silence while Biggles examined the fallen men.

  Returning, he announced that both were dead. ‘I wonder what they intended to do,’ he muttered.

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ answered Hobbs. ‘If you’d got into that plane you’d never have come out of it alive. You’d have been shot dead without knowing anything about it. Your passenger would have taken over the controls and gone to some place he had in mind with enough dope and wealth to last him the rest of his life.’

  ‘Wealth?’ queried Biggles.

  ‘Were you with Kling when he entered the vault?’

  ‘No. He went in alone to confirm the thing was still there.’

  Hobbs smiled cynically. ‘I’ll show you what he went in for.’ Walking over to Kling he went through his pockets. Returning, he handed to Biggles two enormous rubies.

  ‘I reckon that when a man sinks low enough to poke out the eyes of his god he can’t go much lower,’ he remarked coldly.

  ‘What beats me is this,’ said Biggles. ‘If the fellow was a pilot why did he come to me?’

  ‘He wanted a plane.’

  ‘He could have got one. He’d plenty of money.’

  ‘Who says so?’

  ‘He paid me a thousand pounds at the start.’

  ‘In notes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you looked at them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’d better.’

  Biggles fetched the wad, and looking chagrined peeled a single ten pound note from a mass of tissue paper. ‘So that was why he waited until the engines were ticking over before he coughed up. He gambled I wouldn’t stop to count it.’

  ‘What are you going to do with this?’ Hobbs inclined his head towards the idol.

  ‘Leave it where it is. I’m taking no chances by putting it back in the temple.’

  ‘If the natives caught you with it they’d skin you alive.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking. No doubt they’ll find it and put it back. We’ll take the dope with us and drop it in the jungle as we go home.’

  ‘What about the rubies?’

  ‘They’ll be safe in the Bank of England until a rightful authority claims them. No use leaving them lying about loose here. Let’s get along. The sooner I’m out of this the more comfortable I shall be.’

  Ten minutes later the Wellington was in the air on a course for home. On the abandoned airfield the ivory god, still smiling inscrutably, stared at the jungle with sightless eyes.

  [Back to Contents]

  BIGGLES BUYS A WATCH

  Detective Air-Inspector Bigglesworth, walking briskly down the Strand towards his office at Scotland Yard, pulled up as a hand fell on his arm.

  Turning, his eyes opened wide and a smile parted his lips as his gaze fell on a man resplendent in a purple and gold uniform. ‘Well, well,’ he exclaimed. ‘If it isn’t Flight-Sergeant Crane. Nice to see you again after all this time. How’s life treating you, Flight-Sergeant?’

  ‘Oh, not so bad, sir,’ was the cheerful reply. ‘Seems a long while since we sweated together under those bloomin’ palms in North Africa.’

  ‘It does indeed,’ answered Biggles. ‘I see you’re out of the Service. What are you doing now? That’s some nice bright plumage you’re wearing.’

  The ex-airman jerked a thumb. ‘I’m doorkeeper at the big stores down the road.’

  After chatting for a few minutes about old times Biggles was about to walk on when the N.C.O. said: ‘Oh, by the way, sir, I suppose you don’t happen to want to buy a watch?’

  Biggles’ face expressed surprise. ‘Not particularly. Why? Have you got more than you want?’

  Crane smiled sadly. ‘A smart guy worked one on me the other day.’ As the airman spoke he unstrapped from his wrist a nice-looking watch, obviously new. ‘It’s a good job,’ he declared. ‘Keeps right time, and all that, but I can’t afford watches at five pounds a go. You can have it for what it cost me.’

  Biggles examined the watch. ‘It looks all right.’

  ‘You couldn’t buy it for a fiver at the shop,’ asserted the Flight-Sergeant.

  ‘How did you get it?’

  ‘Well, sir, it was like this,’ explained Crane. ‘About a month ago, one Saturday evening just before closing time, I was on my job when who should come along but McDew — you remember, that flashy, red-headed corporal rigger at Karga Oasis in the war? You had him posted as a no-use scrounger.’

  Biggles nodded. ‘I remember the fellow. Bad type.’

  ‘Well, he told me the tale. Just got to London and had his pocket picked, he said. The banks were shut of course, and there he was, no pals and nothing to live on till Monday morning. Would I lend him a flyer? I ses not likely. So he ses I’ll leave you my watch for security. It cost ten pounds so you’re safe. I’ll be back for it on Monday, don’t you worry. I ses fair enough. I give him the fiver and he gives me the watch. Did he come back for it on Monday? No. Nor any other day. After about a week I ses to myself, you fool, you let him sell you a watch. It’s a good watch, mind you, but I don’t happen to want it.’

  Biggles laughed. ‘He took you to the cle
aners all right. Still, I won’t see you stuck with it. I’ll have it.’ He paid over the money, and after warning Crane to be more careful went on his way.

  Passing a jeweller’s shop an idea struck him. He went in and put the watch on the counter. ‘Would you mind telling me how much that watch would cost, new?’ he asked.

  The jeweller examined the watch. ‘It would cost between ten and twelve pounds, according to the class of shop,’ he stated.

  ‘How much would you give me for it?’ asked Biggles.

  The man picked up the watch. ‘I won’t keep you long,’ he said, and retired to a back room. It was some minutes before he returned. ‘Sorry,’ he said stiffly, ‘I wouldn’t touch that watch with a barge pole.’

  Biggles stared. ‘What’s the matter with it?’

  ‘You know what’s the matter with it,’ sneered the shopkeeper.

  A hand closed like a vice on Biggles’ arm. ‘Come on,’ said a brittle voice.

  Turning, Biggles met the accusing gaze of Inspector Gaskin, of C Division. Recognition was mutual. The inspector burst out laughing, presumably at the expression on Biggles’s face. ‘That’s a good ‘un,’ he declared. ‘Fancy me being fetched out to pick you up.’

  Biggles looked slightly dazed. ‘Fetched out? Who fetched you out?’

  The inspector indicated the jeweller with a jerk of his head. ‘While he kept you waiting he tipped me off on the phone. I was in such a hurry to get here in my car I was nearly picked up myself for dangerous driving. I thought I’d at last got my hands on a chap we’ve been looking for for some time.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the watch?’ inquired Biggles.

  ‘Plenty,’ answered the inspector. ‘If you’re going to the Yard I’ll give you a lift.’

  Ten minutes later, in his office, he was explaining. ‘That watch,’ said the detective, tapping the instrument, ‘in the country where it was made could be bought wholesale for about thirty bob. By the time it had paid export duty, transport, import duty and purchase tax, wholesaler’s and retailer’s profits, it would cost, over here, not less than ten pounds. So if all these expenses could be avoided a fellow handling the watch could make a nice profit on it. By making three or four pounds a time on them, a thousand watches of that sort would net a lot of money.’

  Biggles nodded. ‘I get it. So that watch was smuggled in?’

  ‘That’s it. Of course, there is a snag in this get-rich-quick game.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You couldn’t sell that watch in this country, not to a respectable shop, because, by arrangement with the manufacturers, all watches imported under official licence have to carry a special mark. Shopkeepers know where to look for it. No mark means that the watch was smuggled into this country from abroad.’

  Biggles lit a cigarette. ‘How would that affect an innocent person, over here, caught with such a watch?’

  The inspector shrugged. ‘Well, no one would be likely to know about it unless he tried to sell it, as you did. The trouble would arise if he went abroad. Coming back the Customs officers would assume that the chap had bought the watch abroad and was trying to smuggle it in; in which case it might be a police court job, with a fine and treble duty to pay at the end of it.’

  ‘That’s a bit hard.’

  ‘Not at all. That couldn’t happen to anyone buying a watch at a respectable shop. People who buy things nowadays from street traders they don’t know are asking for trouble.’

  ‘Well, well,’ sighed Biggles, and turned to the door.

  ‘Here, just a minute,’ requested the inspector. ‘Where did you get that watch? Don’t tell me that a sharper caught you?’

  Biggles grinned. ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘I’m going to catch him.’

  He found Air-Constable ‘Ginger’ Hebblethwaite at the office, the others being on duty in the Operations Room at the airfield.

  ‘What have you been doing?’ queried Ginger.

  ‘Buying a watch,’ replied Biggles whimsically. ‘I want you to buy me some more like it,’ he went on, showing his purchase. ‘Take some money out of the safe, go round the big stores, clubs and hotels, get in touch with the hall porters and find out if any of them have a watch to sell. Don’t pay more than five pounds. In each case get a description of the man from whom the fellow bought the watch.’

  Ginger looked astonished, as well he might. ‘What’s wrong with going to a shop if you want a watch?’

  ‘They’re not the sort I’m looking for.’

  ‘Since when did hall porters start to sell watches?’ inquired Ginger cynically.

  ‘That, my lad, is what I want you to find out,’ Biggles told him. ‘Get cracking.’

  In an hour Ginger was back. With exaggerated deliberation he laid five watches on Biggles’s desk, in each case naming the hotel where it had been bought. ‘Anyone would think it had been raining watches,’ he remarked. ‘Everyone in London seems to have a watch to sell. One fellow, who lives at Brighton, told me it’s the same down there. Where on earth have they all come from?’

  ‘That’s the little problem we’re going to solve,’ answered Biggles, smiling. ‘Get Marcel Brissac, at the Paris office of the International Police Commission, on the phone.’

  Ginger put through the call and presently handed the receiver to Biggles.

  ‘Marcel at the other end,’ he announced.

  ‘Hello, Marcel!’ called Biggles. ‘Nice to hear your voice again. No — no. I’m only interested in watches to-day.’

  What the French detective said Ginger could not hear, of course; but Biggles’s smile grew broader until, by the time he rang off, he was laughing. ‘Poor old Marcel is in a flap,’ he told Ginger. ‘He says there are enough smuggled watches in France for everyone to wear one round each wrist and ankle and still leave plenty over. He says they’re being flown into the country at night. The machine slips in and out before he can catch up with it. To guard every field in France would need the entire French Army.’

  ‘It’s hard to see how that sort of thing can be stopped,’ said Ginger moodily. ‘I imagine the same pilot is bringing the stuff into this country, too.’

  ‘No doubt. If we can catch him it should put an end to the traffic. What happens is plain enough to see. The machine slips across the coast and hands the watches to an agent. The agent daren’t try to sell them to the shops. It would be difficult to sell them direct to the public because not everyone wants a watch: so the trick is to get a loan on a watch and then forget to go back for it. It comes to the same thing as selling it, except that the man who gets the watch doesn’t realize for some time that he’s bought it. Well, I know the agent in this country. In passing off a watch to an old comrade he may have been just a bit too smart.’

  Ginger looked astonished. ‘You know the agent? All I could learn was, the fellow is a slick-looking type with red hair, who speaks with a slight Scotch accent.’

  Biggles nodded. ‘That’s the man. Do you remember a tricky corporal rigger in North Africa named McDew — Roderick McDew? I have a clear recollection of him because he’s that rare thing, a dishonest Scot.’

  ‘I remember him,’ said Ginger.

  ‘All right. Go round to the Air Ministry and ask them to get you his home address from R.A.F. Records. While you’re there, go and see Doyle, of Air Intelligence, and ask him if any radar stations have picked up an unidentified aircraft crossing the coast, and if so, where and when.’

  ‘Good enough.’ Ginger went off.

  When he returned, two hours later, he was able to provide the answers to Biggles’s questions. The home address of the ex-corporal was Balburnie, near Forres, Scotland, where his father was a crofter. There had been several cases of unidentified aircraft crossing the coast. These had been widely scattered except at one point. This was on the south side of the Moray Firth, where, for three consecutive months, on the occasion of the full moon, a slow-moving aircraft had come in from the North Sea, and after a short while, returned to the Continent.


  ‘Splendid,’ acknowledged Biggles. ‘It shouldn’t take us long to get this business buttoned up. The aircraft comes in over Moray, which is a county with plenty of wide open spaces. That can hardly be coincidence. We’ll soon see. Let’s go up and have a look round. Ring the Ops room and tell Algy to get the Proctor topped up. I’d like a weather report on North East Scotland. We’ll park at Inverness Airport, Dalcross, which is nice and handy. Get out the six inch Ordnance sheets of the Forres area. We may need them.’

  Ginger was looking at the calendar. ‘The moon will be full on Thursday. Rises at ten o’clock.’

  ‘Then we shouldn’t have long to wait,’ averred Biggles.

  And so it came about that Thursday morning found Ginger, with Biggles at the wheel of a hired car, cruising along one of the few, narrow roads, that wind for many lonely miles across the rolling heather-clad hills between the Moray Firth and Speyside. On this particular road was the croft known as Balburnie.

  An air reconnaissance on the previous day had yielded little of interest. For the most part the ground was a waste of heather, purple and brown with the sombre tints of autumn, wild and desolate in the extreme. Even crofts, with their tiny patches of cultivated ground, were few and far between. An occasional lochan, remote and mysterious, reflected the unbroken blue of the sky. Of country flat enough to permit the landing of an aircraft, there was little; and even that, as Biggles observed, would have to be surveyed from ground level before the risk was taken, for such places were often bogs.

  ‘This must be Balburnie,’ said Biggles presently as a small, stone-built dwelling appeared ahead. The eternal heather ran right to its walls, but there was a small field of oats on one side and some potatoes on the other. Among these a man was digging, with some scraggy-looking chickens scratching the upturned earth. He looked up, resting on his fork, as the visitors approached, when it could be observed that he was of late middle age, with the weary expression so often seen on the faces of those who spend their lives at war with nature in its hardest mood.

  ‘You’ll be Mr. McDew, I think?’ greeted Biggles.