BIGGLES AND THE PENITENT THIEF

by Captain W. E. Johns

16. A DESPERATE REMEDY (Pages 134 – 141)

“Biggles was asleep when it happened”. Angus was on guard duty. Seeing the time was four-thirty, Angus opened the door to inspect the weather and “a fire-arm crashed”. A bullet ripped a splinter from the door-post and went across the room to bury itself with a vicious thud in the wall on the far side, missing Biggles by inches. Biggles sprang straight from sleep, thinking someone in the room had accidently fired his gun. Angus, having already slammed the door, explained the shot was fired by someone outside. Biggles swears the shot that woke him was a rifle and wonders where that could have come from. “There might have been one on the launch,” suggested Ginger. “In which case it would now be at the bottom of the deep blue sea,” answered Bertie. (Johns must have liked that phrase as he entitled his next Biggles book BIGGLES AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA). “The darkie I sent ashore hadn’t got one” Bertie continued. Biggles says they need to think about things and from the angle of the shoot, Biggles soon works out the shooter must be in the clump of dwarf-birch outside. Biggles thinks one man is covering the door whilst the rest work on the landslide, in which case, he concludes, it would not be Raulstein outside. Angus thinks he can open the door and get clear before anyone can raise a gun. Biggles says “If you could do that, we from inside here could plaster the bushes with such a fusillade that anyone there wouldn’t be able to get out of ‘em fast enough”. This they do, with Bertie at the door post, Ginger crouching low and Biggles lying on the floor. Pouring shots into the bushes, they soon have a man on the run. “So that’s who it was, the poor silly ass,” observed Bertie. Running and jumping over obstacles was the Negro cook”. “Okay, let him go,” ordered Biggles, beating the bushes to make sure there was no one else there. “He’s only a tool of those supposed-to-be civilized rats. Raulstein will probably give him hell for leaving his post”. Biggles finds a rifle in the bushes. Bertie identifies it as an obsolete cavalry carbine. Biggles gives it to Angus saying “Here, you might find this useful for killing vermin”. They hear the sound of an approaching helicopter. Ginger says he will set off to the landing ground but Biggles stops him as the helicopter is coming to the cabin. “They watched, ignoring the fleeing Negro, who was soon out of sight”. The ‘chopper’ swung into view above them and dropped something with a handkerchief as a streamer. Ginger fetches it and Biggles reads “Watch out. Raulstein and his friends have guns. Am landing same place”. Biggles sends Ginger off to meet Fraser landing in the helicopter and says “I’m going along to the landslide to see what’s going on there. The Negro went in that direction, so that’s where they’ll be”. “Come on,” Biggles said to the others. “I’m not letting those crooks get away with the swag”. They set off. “The sun was climbing out of the sea into a cloudless sky, to banish the last traces of fog, which here and there clung like tattered muslin to the tallest trees”.