ANOTHER JOB FOR BIGGLES

 

by Captain W. E. Johns

 

 

XV.                 FINAL DETAILS  (Pages 186 - 191)

 

Back at aerodrome 137, L.A.C. Blakey is waiting for them having freed their aircraft from the collapsed hangar.  Abandoning the Moth, but taking the bag of hashish, our heroes divide themselves between the two aircraft now available - Biggles machine and Bertie's machine.  Biggles takes Ginger and Zahar.  Bertie takes Blakey.  Biggles flies over El Moab and finds it looking like a battlefield.  The area previously under cultivation has been washed clean to the bedrock.  Some natives are rounding up stray animals.  Zahar says they are searching for loot before returning to their homes.  Biggles wonders what happened to Ambrimos.  If he was alive he won't dare show his face in Aden again, or anywhere else in the Middle East.  That means he has lost his business even if he hasn't lost his life.  They return to Aden.  "Immediately on landing, Zahar was suitably rewarded for his services with a sum of money that brought a smile to his taciturn face".  "As a matter of detail, later on, in view of the recommendation contained in Biggles's report, he was taken into Government service and with a caravan of camels now supplies the needs of outlying airstrips in Southern Arabia".  After recommending Blakey for leave, the two Proctor aircraft set off on the first leg of the journey back to London.  Within an hour, Biggles is telling the tale to Air Commodore Raymond.  In due course, a letter from Captain Norman confirms that Ambrimos had ended his career at El Moab, either by drowning or by suffocation under the collapsing walls of the wadi.  He never returned to Aden and was never see at any of the ports that he conducted his questionable enterprises.  Bertie remarks "As the worthy Zahar would say, it must have been the will of God."