BIGGLES GETS HIS MEN

by Captain W. E. Johns

IX. V - V - V (Pages 112 - 124)

Biggles and Ginger search the area and huts one by one. There are a number of Mongol troops around, most of them drunk, quarrelling and singing. Ginger trips over a crate of vodka by one in a drunken stupor on the ground. They find the black fighter aircraft which is mounted on a catapult facing a short clearing. In due course they find a log hut behind barbed wire where sentries are on duty. They see some men on a veranda and hear one speak in English. Biggles softly whistles the morse code signal for three Vees, three dots and a dash. The code is answered and a voice softly asks where are you? When contact is made, Biggles says he is "Bigglesworth of the Special Air Branch. Your messenger got through. The Yard sent me out to locate you and get you home". It is established that General Gorton has been shot whilst trying to escape but there is a Polish professor with them. At 11.00 pm, they are locked in their rooms. They keys are kept in the guard hut, the windows of their hut are barred and their shoes are taken from them at night to prevent them escaping. After Vale is locked in the hut, Biggles, dodging the patrolling guards, cuts through the barbed wire and gets to the hut. Speaking to Vale through the window, he gives him a file and instructs him to start work on cutting through the bars. Vale will have to wait until after a further night time inspection carried out by a man named Grosnow. Biggles and Ginger hear a distant gunshot. They then hear a voice shouting "Where are you Mayne?". They realise that Petroffsky has turned up at the enemy camp drunk and he is now causing a disturbance. Biggles and Ginger have to go and deal with it.