BIGGLES SEES IT THROUGH

 

by Captain W. E. Johns

 

 

XIII.                        VON STALHEIN AGAIN  (Pages 184 – 197)

 

Biggles thinks for a long while.  He says they can forget trying to fix and fly Ginger’s Gladiator even if it hadn’t been discovered.  That means they have to walk home.  They have got to get the papers and in the darkness should be able to do so.  Biggles and Ginger set off to get the papers, leaving Algy with instructions to go and warn the Finns about the Russian troops if they fail.  Biggles and Ginger make their way to the tree where the plans are hidden.  “Nobody saw them – or if they did they took no notice.  Yet within hailing distance were several hundred enemy troops; the babble of their voices drowned all other sound.  Biggles smiled grimly at this example of slack discipline, but he was not surprised, for he had heard something of Russian military methods from the Finns”.  Ginger goes to the relevant tree and stops abruptly, realising that the stone he has put over the hole has been removed.  Looking around, they see the stone is being used to flank a cooking fire.  Ginger reaches into the hole and finds that the papers have gone!  As Biggles stares at the empty hole, he hears a laugh from a nearby tent.  Biggles recognises the laugh.  Von Stalhein is in the tent and Biggles can guess why he is laughing.  Disturbed by a Russian soldier, Biggles has to club him over the head with the butt of his pistol.  “I hate doing that sort of thing, it’s so primitive,” he said disgustedly.  Biggles uses his knife to make a small viewing hole in the back of von Stalhein’s tent.  He sees von Stalhein and a Russian General and the missing papers on a table between them.  Biggles just walks straight round the tent and in through the entrance, holding a gun on the German and the Russian.  (The two men looked up sharply at the intrusion – is the illustration on page 191).  Biggles tells them to “keep still” and warns them that one squeak from either of them will cause him to start shooting.  He takes the papers and calls Ginger.  Biggles gives the papers to Ginger and tells him to get moving.  Ginger takes them and disappears.  Biggles back out of the tent and loosens all the guy ropes, slashing the last two.  The heavy canvas drops on the two men inside.  Biggles runs to where he left Algy and finds both Algy and Ginger waiting for him.  Ginger gives Biggles the papers.  The three men then run in a westerly direction for the frontier.  “Up hill and down dale, through woods, splashing through swamps formed by the melting snow, round unclimbable masses of rock, and sometimes making detours to avoid lakes”.  They reach the house of a charcoal burner and steal a boat, a rough home-made dug out one.  Biggles rows with the primitive oars and hopes there isn’t another boat around in which the Russians can follow them.  “By the time we get home we shall have employed pretty nearly all the methods of locomotion known to mankind,” grinned Ginger.  “If we could finish up on roller skates we ought to be able to claim the record”.  Water starts coming into the boat and Algy uses his flying cap to bail it out.  The boat forged on.