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.