BIGGLES OF THE INTERPOL

by Captain W. E. Johns

10. THE MAN WHO CAME BY NIGHT (Pages 160 – 170)

This story was originally published in THE DAILY MAIL BOYS ANNUAL (1956) by Associated Newspapers Ltd and ran from pages 34 to 41 in that book.

“It was a phone call from Inspector Gaskin of Scotland Yard, that took Air Detective-Inspector Bigglesworth and his police pilot Ginger Hebblethwaite to the (fictional) North Hampshire village of Shotsey. They met the Inspector, with the local police sergeant at the churchyard gate”. The Inspector leads the way to a small isolated building, a mortuary, and shows Biggles “the body of a slim, good-looking lad of not more than seventeen or eighteen. On a side-table lay the clothes he had presumably been wearing when he had met his death. Conspicuous were a flying jacket, cap and goggles. Water dripping from them had formed a puddle. On the floor lay a mass of wet rag that was clearly an unfurled parachute”. The body was found when the lake in the park opposite, owned by a Colonel Linder, was drained. Gaskin believes he is not British. “At least, no one’s missing in this country”. A French fifty franc piece, with a hole punched through it, was found in a pocket. The body had a haversack filled with two or three hundred expensive Swiss watches with it. “Probably helped to drown him” says Gaskin. “Poor little beggar. He’s only a kid. I wonder what skunk got him into the smuggling rachet. How long has he been dead?” asks Biggles. The answer is three days. Biggles asks Gaskin to “Try and keep it out of the newspapers for a few days. The inquest can be postponed pending inquiries. That will keep the pilot of the plane guessing and give me a chance to find him. That shouldn’t be too difficult”. Biggles, having noted the parachute is a French type, rings Algy Lacey and tells him to “Get me out a detailed met. report for last Sunday night. Wind velocity southern region is important. Tell Bertie to check all airports for continental, particularly French, privately owned aircraft, landing during the hours of darkness on the same night. You might also check with radar for unidentified aircraft. That’s all. I’m on my way home”.

“When Biggles and Ginger arrived at headquarters two hours later Algy and Bertie had completed their respective tasks”. The weather had been clear and fine but the wind had gone from dead calm to 30 m.p.h. There was a record of only one private aircraft landing at an authorized Customs airport. A French Cigale light plane, with the registration F-XXZL, had landed at Gatwick shortly after midnight. The pilot, flying solo, was a French business man who dealt in antique clocks and watches. His name was Monsieur Claude Vauvine and he had a branch shop in Mayfair. Biggles briefs Algy and Bertie about the purpose of the inquiries and adds “I’d say it was the wind that did the mischief”. Biggles marks on a map where the boy with the watches intended to touch down and asks Algy to take the Auster and photograph that area. Bertie is sent to the shop in Mayfair. Biggles says he will fly to France to have a word with Marcel Brissac of the Surete and asks Ginger to ring Marcel and ask for particulars of Claude Vauvine who owns a Cigale, registration F-XXZL. By three o’clock, Biggles and Ginger are at the Paris airport of Le Bourget. Biggles asks Marcel “Did you put the spotlight on Monsieur Vauvine?” Marcel replies “But of course. Is he a naughty boy?” “He might be” Biggles tells him. Marcel says the man is a member of the Flying Club of Tornay and has several shops in Europe. They all fly in the Proctor aircraft to Tornay and speak with Louis Boulenger, the manager and chief instructor, who happens to be a friend of Marcel’s. Boulenger says that his mechanic, Lucien Mallon is missing, having been last seen Sunday afternoon. Biggles asks “This Lucien Mallon. Would he be about seventeen, with black hair, a spot under his left eye and a little scar on his chin?” “That is Lucien,” declared the instructor. “In strict confidence, he is dead” Biggles tells him. Marcel adds that “he jumped by parachute over England but fell in a lake and was drowned”. Marcel tells Boulenger that he must not say a word about this “or we may never catch the man who was responsible for Lucien’s death” and he asks him to contact him at the Surete the next time Monsieur Vauvine fills his tanks for a business trip. Biggles drops Marcel back at Le Bourget and then flies back to England, to find a set of photographs taken by Algy on his desk. They show an area ideal for a parachute landing by a single second-class road. Biggles says it is safe to assume that someone was waiting on that road with a car. “We shall be there too, next time, I hope”. Bertie reports on the Mayfair establishment. It was a double-fronted shop with one side devoted to antiques and other a selection of expensive new watches. “All we can do now,” said Biggles, “is to wait till we hear from Marcel”.

It was a fortnight before the expected phone call came. They are told Vauvine was clearing customs for a flight from Le Bourget to London. Marcel has some further news. He has had Vauvine under police surveillance and two days earlier he had gone by road to Pontade, on the Swiss frontier and stayed the night. After dark he had gone for a walk and an aircraft, flying low, passed over. Marcel is convinced a ‘droppage’ of contraband was made. In ten minutes, the police car with Biggles and his comrades was on its way to the suspected Hampshire dropping ground. As they drive down the boundary road, Ginger spots a stationary car in their headlamps, with no lights, backed into the grass entrance of a field. Biggles says he and Ginger will get as near to the car as possible. Bertie is to get up on the hedge and try to see where the parachute lands when he hears the machine. Algy is to stay at the wheel, ready to move fast and block the road if the car up the road tries to bolt for it. Within ten minutes they hear the hum of a light plane. Then engine dies for ten seconds, then comes on again and begins to recede. The engine and the lights of the waiting car come on. Biggles and Ginger see a man with a haversack on his shoulder and carrying his parachute in a loose bundle run up to the car. As the driver of the car takes the haversack, Biggles steps in and says “I’m a police officer”. The man swings the heavy bag at his head, then jumps in the car and drives off. Biggles mounts the running board of the car and blows his whistle shrilly. The parachutist, a youth, makes no effort to get away and he is handcuffed by Ginger. Ginger takes his prisoner down the road where he can see the road blocked by the police car and the driver being arrested. Biggles speaks to the youth in French, who tells him he does not know what is in the bag and he was to give it to the man with the car. He said he had only done it for adventure. He would then be taken to Monsieur Vauvine and flown back to France. Biggles tells Ginger to send a signal to the chief that Vauvine can be picked up at Gatwick.

“So ended another smuggling scheme that may have looked safe to the man who organised it, but reckoned without the Air Police. He, and the driver of the car, who turned out to be the manager of the shop in Mayfair, are now serving long prison sentences, apart from losing some hundreds of valuable watches and paying triple duty on them. The parachutist, whose desire for adventure may have blinded him to the seriousness of what he was doing, his age and a clean record being taken into account, was soon back in France, a badly shaken, and, it is to be hoped, wiser young man”.