BIGGLES AND THE PENITENT THIEF

by Captain W. E. Johns

8. THE SNAG (Pages 69 – 77)

“It was still barely daylight the following morning when the party from England joined the C.M.P. officer at the airstrip. The landing ground was little more than that, but it served its purpose. They found him ready and waiting”. Biggles remarks to Fraser that they look like being lucky with the weather. Fraser hopes he is right, but “The weather can change inside an hour. The biggest curse is fog, due to warm currents from the south meeting cold currents coming down from the north”. Biggles asks if Fraser was able to contact his man at Cooper’s Creek. He was and the information he discovered was that Raulstein was there for some days waiting, he said, for some friend who were coming in a launch to pick him up. The launch was a motor cruiser called the Grey Goose and was flying a U.S. pennant. Biggles says of the friends “If they knew Raulstein they’d know he was a crook, and on the old adage that birds of a feather fly together, they’d probably be crooks, too”. They get in the four-seater helicopter “it was a bit of a squash to get everyone in, but for the short hop, Tommy, being slim managed to squeeze between Bertie and Ginger in the rear seat”. In five minutes they are circling over Marten Island. “It was obvious at once that there was only one possible place for an aircraft to land, and that – again as Tommy has tried to describe it – was the middle area, which appeared to be reasonably flat and covered with what looked like rough grass, although this might turn out to be moss or reeds covering a swamp”. “Ginger reflected it was not the sort of place where one would care to stay long. Luckily, this was not likely to arise – or so he thought, optimistically”. Fraser lands with caution and checks they are not sinking into the ground. Biggles gets out and finds the surface reasonably hard. “There’s a fair amount of moss, so I wouldn’t guarantee it after heavy rain. Water is bound to drain from the hills” he says. Biggles then says “Well, as we’re here we might as well collect what we came to fetch” and he agrees with Fraser’s suggestion of the helicopter returning at twelve noon. The machine lifts off and Biggles asks Tommy to lead on as he knows the way. Tommy is confident the jewels will be where he put them. Biggles says “When you’ve had as much experience of treasure hunting as I have, you’ll learn there’s always a snag. Something unexpected crops up”. They make their way firstly to the cabin, “a small but solidly built hut of unsquared logs much as Tommy had described it”. Tommy says someone has been there since he was there, due to all the mess. There is an untidy accumulation of cans, cartons and bottles strewn in front of the house. They go inside and “the room, to use the common expression, was a pigsty”. Tommy stopped with an exclamation. “Just look at this! Campbell didn’t do that! He kept the place so tidy you’d think a woman lived here". The shelves are empty as all the stores have gone. Biggles finds American cigarette butts and a cigar butt. Tommy says Raulstein smoked mostly cigars. “The launch that put in at Coopers Creek came on here,” surmised Bertie. Biggles nods. “The big question is, did they find what they were looking for?” He asks Tommy to show them where he put the stuff. Tommy goes to the door and strides out. He points to a spur of cliff where Raulstein first hid the jewels. He then walks on past and comes to a stop, staring, his lower jaw sagging with dismay. He points and says “That’s where I put the bag in a hole”. “The stuff wasn’t there then”. “The stuff referred to was a sloping bank of earth and rock from which protruded at all angles, the broken-off trunks of tress and a tangle of branches”. “There must have been a landslide,” stammered Tommy. “How was I to know this would happen?”. Biggles replies “You weren’t to know. One never does know what’s going wrong, but you can rely on something to happen. I seem to remember warning you to be prepared for that. Now we know”. Biggles lit a cigarette.