BIGGLES WORKS IT OUT

by Captain W. E. Johns

III. MODERN DAYS, MODERN WAYS (Pages 33 – 41)

“The Air Police Wellington roared a challenge to Nature in the rough as the engines kicked the air behind them five thousand feet above a patchwork quilt of light and shade, or rock and sand, or withered salt-bush and purple scrub, that comprises most of the landscape where the Great Sandy Desert of Australia rubs shoulders with the Northern Territory”. A fortnight has elapsed and Biggles has flown down, with Ginger and Bertie, to Australia to investigate the gold robbery. “Biggles made no secret of the fact that he did not expect to find anything where Australia’s celebrated black trackers had failed; but, as he averred, there was nothing to work on at home, so there could be no harm in trying”. He lands at the Barula Creek gold workings and meets John Brand, the manager, and George Symonds, his assistant. Biggles wants to see the place where the hold-up occurred, which is close on a hundred miles away, in a district called Sandy Bottoms. They are told there were two jeeps carrying the gold, with three men in the first and two in the second. The first jeep hit a land-mine killing the occupants, then hidden gunmen shot the others. The ambushers “all wore shoes soled with ribbed crepe rubber, which made them look alike. That may have been to confuse the trackers, but you can’t fool a black boy. One was a tall man with a slight limp and his right leg. One was shorter and more heavily built, and the third was a little chap”. The tracks faded out in the desert. Biggles wonders how the villains knew about the movement of the gold. He asks if they have had any visitors recently. Brand said a newspaper man had flown out in a brownish green plane. He was a British man and his name was Dick Canton. A description is given of this man who was aged about thirty-five, with a little black moustache and his hair brushed straight back without a parting. He “said he did it to hide a wound in the head he got in the war. He was always fiddling with it”. They fly to the scene of the ambush where Biggles gets Ginger to take twelve aerial photos as they can show a lot more than just looking from the ground. Then, without landing, they return to the mine. Ginger and Bertie develop the plates.