BIGGLES – SECRET AGENT

by Captain W. E. Johns

VII. STRANGE BIRDS IN THE FOREST (Pages 106 – 126)

Ginger is awoken by a gentle tapping sound and so is Biggles. Someone is in the next room. Biggles uncovers the hole he made between the rooms and looks. After several minutes he tells Ginger to take a look. Ginger sees a small electric lamp on a bedside table and a human form in a nightdress pursuing a close scrutiny of the polished floor boards. Ginger recognises the girl whose mysterious movements had already aroused they curiosity. The girl examines the floor inch by inch and occasionally sounds it with her knuckles, this was the tapping they had heard. Suddenly the tapping changes its note and the girl opens a section of the floor disclosing a black hole some two and a half feet square. Ginger calls Biggles to look. A short time later the girl leaves. Biggles says the girl is working on parallel lines to themselves and wonders if he ought to speak with her. There is clearly a secret passage that they need to explore. It can’t be a subterranean passage as they are on the first floor. Biggles is anxious to release the pigeon but it is too early for normal tourists. Ginger lies back and thinks about the girl, she seems familiar to him. He suddenly jumps up and says it’s Beklinder! She looks like Beklinder. They know nothing about Beklinder having a daughter. It is seven in the morning by the time they go down for breakfast. On the way they see the chambermaid with a dirty sheet, it clearly has a footmark on it. Biggles establishes it is from the girl’s room and he is convinced it was used by her to play the spook in the churchyard. Biggles has an opportunity to search the girl’s room and he finds a book entitled ‘A History of Unterhamstadt from the Earliest Times’ and a passage is marked about underground passages connecting the castle, the hostelry and the monastery of San Stefan. After coffee, they set off to the wood where the pigeon is concealed. Biggles finds it odd that they continually hear bird calls but never see one. Finding a dell fringed with thick holly, Biggles stops to sketch something and wait. They see a dog, an Alsation, then two men and then a figure in the sinister uniform of a storm-trooper. Are these men following them? Carefully making their way to the holly bush, but never in a direct route, they again see an Alsation, this time with a storm-trooper who has a bird song whistle. They remain out of sight but the Alsation finds the pigeon basket in the holly bush. Biggles realises they have got to get away “it will be all up if they find us near that bird”. Things take an unexpected turn when “running like a deer out of the heart of the forest, panting with exertion and wide-eyed with alarm, came the girl in brown”. Ignoring shouts to stop, she ran on and the storm-trooper opened fire at her. (The storm-trooper snatched out his revolver and fired three shots - is the illustration on page 123). Biggles and Ginger use the distraction as an opportunity to run in the other direction. Stopping and not being followed, Biggles hopes they credit the girl with the pigeon affair. “This business is too serious for gallantry”. He speculates that perhaps she had followed them. After losing their pigeon, Biggles decides to send a carefully worded message about the box being empty on a postcard to Raymond back in London, but they will have to walk to the next village, Garenwald, to do so. It will also give them an alibi as to where they have been. They set off.