BIGGLES
– SECRET AGENT
by Captain W.
E. Johns
IV. THE
JEW OF UNTERHAMSTADT (Pages
55 – 67)
The knock has an eerie sinister
sound. Biggles knocks again louder and
hears a curious whimpering sound. After a
rattling of chains and a scraping of bolts, the door opens and Biggles asks if
they are in Unterhamstadt. When told
yes, he asks if the man has any walking sticks for sale. He is told no. Biggles asks if he can come in and ask some
questions about accommodation in the village.
“You need have no fear of us,” continued Biggles, in a low voice. “We are English travellers – and friends of
the Jews”. They are invited in by the
man whom Ginger regards “with a mixture of disgust and sympathy” as he is old and
bent, with an unkempt beard and clothes, face and
hands dirty beyond description. Biggles
says to Ginger “Observe what persecution and the fear of death does to a man in
time – Poor devil. He is just an
animated piece of terror”. Taken into a
small room at the back, “filty beyond description” with a “heavy foetid smell”
hanging in the air. Biggles asks if they
treat Jews badly and when told “you have seen” he asks why the old man stays. The man says he has no money to leave, if he
did, the would go to his married daughter in
Switzerland. Biggles offers him two
thousand marks for some information.
Biggles asks about a learned doctor who died in a motor-accident not
long ago. “The Jew crouched back, an arm
over his face as if he feared a blow, No! he
gasped. “No – not that!” The man says he knows nothing. Biggles counts out and offers him twenty-five
hundred-mark notes. Biggles asks the man
if he buried the doctor’s body. The man
says he didn’t, but his son did, who is also in the same trade of
undertaker. Now his son has gone; He has
been taken away. Biggles drags more
information out of the man. “The Jew’s
agitation was pitiful to behold. It was
obvious that a battle between terror and avarice was raging in his brain. “I will tell you”, he gasped at last, holding
out his hand for the notes”. The man
tells the story he heard from his son’s wife, Greta. After the accident the doctor (Professor
Beklinder) was taken to the Kleishausen – the big hotel. The son was called by storm-troopers to room
17 of the hotel where he saw a body on the bed so wrapped up in bandages that
he could not see the face. He measured
the body and spent the night making a coffin.
The next day, helped by storm-troopers he took it across to the hotel
and never returned. Greta made enquiries
but was told not to or she would never see her husband again. She was also told
to speak to no one about it. There was a
secret funeral at dawn, witnessed from the woods by the son of the missing
undertaker, a little boy called Joachim, who was trying to see his missing
father. The coffin was put in a vault on
the western side of the church, near the tower.
As Biggles turns to leave he hears the slight
creak of a door and realises that someone is listening. Jerking the door open Biggles sees “a girl,
young, good-looking, dressed in a neat brown tweed costume” standing on the
threshold. Biggles asks if she, like
them, has lost her way and she says yes.
Biggles says they are just leaving and they depart. Ginger is anxious to know what the old man
has told Biggles as the conversation was all in German and Ginger doesn’t speak
German. Biggles suggests they go to the
hotel and he will tell him all about it.