SERGEANT BIGGLESWORTH C.I.D.

by Captain W. E. Johns

IX. GONTERMANN MAKES A PROPOSAL (Pages 86 - 96)

As Biggles takes his last pace from the sand to the grass a voice says "congratulations". It is the ex-Nazi chief, Julius Gontermann and Biggles is taken completely by surprise. With him are Scaroni, Grindler and Baumer. There was also another person, Von Zoyton, a Luftwaffe ace whom Biggles had fought over the Western Desert (see Biggles Sweeps the Desert). Biggles hands over his gun - "Resistance, in the circumstances, was useless". Biggles is taken to a camouflaged hut and Gontermann asks him to join them. He tells Biggles there is money in it for him and shows him the stolen jewels. All Biggles has to do is give them his word that he won't double-cross them. Gontermann tells him "The word of a British military or civil servant is one of the few stable things left in a tottering world. Nevertheless it is one of the weak spots in the British character, for it enable others, like myself, who have a more flexible code, to make our plans with a good deal of certainty. With men of your type, for instance, your word is a sort of fetish; you would suffer untold hardships, even die perhaps, rather than break it. Conditions in the world to-day, my dear fellow, do not justify such conceit. Give me your word that you accept my offer and you shall be as free as the vultures that otherwise will have the pleasure of dining on you". They are interrupted by the sound of the Wolf taking off. It is going to shot up the Mosquito. Biggles says his co-pilot is still in it and rushes out, but is too late, the Mosquito is destroyed. Biggles confronts the various villains with the murders they have committed but they don't care. "What had been a mere desire to bring these men to justice as a matter of duty, was now an obsession. The matter had become personal". Biggles is given until dawn to make up his mind as to whether he wishes to join them or not. Grindler makes an unguarded reference to going back to the "goldarned sanseviera". Biggles is left to sleep on a camp bed. He is warned not to go anywhere because of the mines so there is no need to tie him up.