BIGGLES OF THE INTERPOL

by Captain W. E. Johns

11. THE BIRD THAT DIED OF DIAMONDS (Pages 171 – 181)

“If,” said Air Commodore Raymond, of the Special Air Police, “if only crooks would turn their fertile imaginations to legal operations they would fare far better than they do by crime”. Biggles’ eyes went to three diamonds that sparkled on his chief’s desk. “Very nice, too,” he remarked, smiling. “Where did you find those?” “I won’t waste time by asking you to guess because you never would,” returned the Air Commodore. “The large one came from the breast of a pheasant. Of the smaller ones, one came from its wing and other from its leg”. “Are you talking about a live pheasant?” asks Biggles. “It was alive until it got in the way of these stones”. “Sit down and I’ll tell you a tale that would have made Hans Andersen blush”. Raymond explains that he has a friend, a retired Army Colonel named Colin McGill, who has an estate called Tomlecht in Scotland. To meet taxation he’s been forced to take paying guests for the shooting season. He gets them by advertising in high-class sporting papers. He received a reply for a Baron Zorrall, writing from Monte Carlo where he was for the pigeon shooting competitions. The Baron was due to arrive at Tomlecht on October 15 for the pheasant shooting. In due course, his guns arrived, in one of those cases which has a cartridge magazine attached. The Baron never arrived. The Colonel wrote to him at his Monte Carlo address, which was a hotel, asking him what he wanted done with the guns. “To which the hotel replied saying the Baron wasn’t there” interrupted Biggles. The Air Commodore frowned. “Don’t spoil my story by anticipating. The hotel said more than that. No person by the name of Baron Zorrall had ever stayed there. The Colonel promptly opened the gun case to make sure it contained guns. It did, and two boxes of cartridges, one of No. 7 shot and the other of No. 4. The guns and cartridges, incidentally, were of French make”. Towards the end of the season, the Colonel wanted a pheasant for the table, but he had run out of number four cartridges, so he borrowed a few from the Baron’s box. With one of these he shot a pheasant which in due course appeared on the dinner table. The Colonel found the diamond when he bit on it whilst eating the bird. He then dissected the carcass and found two more diamonds. The cartridge that had killed the bird had been loaded with them. The Colonel cut open another cartridge and found it loaded with rubies. Others contained matching pearls. The number seven cartridges were all loaded with lead shot but the number fours were all loaded with precious stones. In the box of number sevens was an advice note from the French suppliers, addressed to a Prince Boris Devronik, presumably an alias of Baron Zorrall, for, among other things, a box of empty cases which presumable he intended to load himself. “With sparklers” added Biggles. Raymond speculates the stones were stolen and this was a way of getting them past the Customs Officers. Raymond then says that Zorrall followed, breaking his journey in London where he stayed at the Crestata Hotel. During the night someone slipped a stiletto into his heart. It wasn’t revealed to the press that the dead man’s name was Zorrall, an international jewel thief. “We suspected he had been stabbed by an accomplice whom he had double-crossed. The only clue we had to the murderer was fingerprints; there were plenty of those but they were unknown to us. They were small enough to have been made by a woman. This, and the fact that there were fingerprints at all, suggests an amateur did the job. Apart from us having no record a professional crook would have been more careful”. Biggles asks if the stones have been traced. Raymond says they were part of the fruits of a robbery at the Villa of the Countess Castelan, on the French Riviera. Biggles is asked by Raymond if he has any ideas about the murderer. Biggles says that if Zorrall took part in the pigeon shooting in Monte Carlo, his accomplice would know he had guns. Having killed him and not found any jewels in London, he would guess they are in the gun case, and as the recovery of the jewels has not been announced, he will assume they are still there. “Any mention of a pair of guns belonging to Baron Zorrall, therefore, should prove an irresistible bait to the murderer”. Biggles suggests they run an advertisement in the English and French sporting magazines, particularly those read in the South of France to the effect that Baron Zorrall is requested to collect his guns from Colonel McGill, Tomlecht, Morayshire, Scotland (Johns lived in Morayshire between 1944 and 1953) otherwise they will be sold to defray expenses. If the killer sees that, he will apply for the guns or go and collect them. Raymond says “a pair of high class guns are to-day worth from three to five hundred pounds”. Biggles says “If he’s a professional crook, as we suppose, not having the money shouldn’t stop him. Knowing what the jewels are worth he’d take any risk to get them”. Biggles offers to take the guns back to Scotland and “hang around for a bit to see it anyone shows up”.

Biggles thought it was far more likely the murderer would make a written application for the guns to confirm that they were really the ones he sought. He would then employ other means to get them. “It need hardly be said that to guard against accident the cartridges in which the gems had been hidden had been replaced by ordinary lead shot”. The gun case was put on the cleaning bench in the gun-room, which was a separate building in the courtyard, just outside the back door. Biggles had elected to sleep in an unused ghillie’s bothy that was an extension of the gun-room. There was no connecting door. Ten days passed without incident. No letter arrived. No visitor called. Biggles had gone to bed just before midnight, when he was awoken by the sound of metal on metal from the gun-room next door. Getting up and slipping a dressing-gown over his pyjamas, he went out and round to the gun-room. “Against the glow of an electric touch, near the bench, a figure was moving”. Biggles turned on the electric light in the room and a youth of about sixteen, wearing a black beret, spun round with a gasp of alarm. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” demanded Biggles sternly. The boy is French and Biggles sits him down to hear what he has to say. “For twenty years his mother, a widow, had worked for the Contessa Castelano. He, Pierre Pastor, a schoolboy at the time of the robbery, also lived in the villa”. A man named Baron Zorrall had arrived and taken his mother out and later asked her to marry him. Pierre had never trusted the man and one day saw him take his guns to the station addressed to a place in Scotland. The next day he saw his luggage addressed to the Crestata Hotel in London. The jewels had been stolen on an afternoon the Contessa went to a party. Pierre had no doubt who had taken them. He followed Zorrall to London to make him give up the jewels. He found Zorrall there opening letters with a knife. “I asked for the jewels, saying if he did not give them to me I would tell the police. He hit me on the face many times. Then he took me by the neck and shook me. What could I do? He was a big man. I snatched up the knife and struck back at him. He fell on the floor. Swiftly I search his luggage. The jewels are not there. Then I know they have gone to Scotland with the guns”. Pierre did not know that Zorrall died from his blow. Biggles says that tomorrow, Pierre must go with hm to London and later the Contessa will have her jewels returned. “At Pierre’s trial, all the circumstances being known, it was held that he struck Zorrall in self-defence and was discharged”.