BIGGLES
TAKES THE CASE
by Captain W.
E. Johns
II. THE
CASE OF THE UNKNOWN AIRCRAFT (Pages 37 –
56)
This story was originally written in 1949 for the Mark & Spencer
book “Biggles – Air Detective” (published May 1950) but it was then sold
to the BBC for dramatization. On 12th
September 1949, the BBC broadcast this story on the radio and they changed
Johns’ original title to “The Case of the Lump of Metal”. As a result, Marks & Spencer didn’t want
it for their book, as they only wanted original, unknown Biggles stories in
their collection. It was collected in “Biggles
Takes the Case” in 1952 and then subsequently published in ADVENTURE
STORIES FOR BOYS (1956) by Odhams Books Ltd, where it ran from pages 177 to 195
in that book.
“It was unusual for Air Commodore
Raymond to walk unannounced into the Operations’ Room of the Air Police
Service; for which reason Biggles, who was at work on his records, raised his
eyebrows and stood up when the Air Commodore strode in. Air Constables Ginger Hebblethwaite and
Bertie Lissie also sprang to their feet, Bertie dropping his eye-glass in his
agitation but catching it deftly”.
Raymond tells everyone that he has a job that is top priority. It will be a long walk to where he wants them
to go, as there is no aerodrome within 20 miles. The objective is in the Cairngorms, on the
slope of Ben Macdhui (which, at 1309 metres or 4294 feet, is the second
highest mountain in Britain after Ben Nevis). (At the time, Johns was living only 18
miles away from Ben Macdhui in Scotland.
In June 1947, he has taken out a six year lease on Pitchroy Lodge,
Grantown-on-Spey, Morayshire and he remained there until 1953). An aircraft has crashed about half way
up. The mystery is that no aircraft is
missing. Every private aircraft owner
has been contacted and accounted for.
The plane was a single-seater, so there was only one body in it, “burnt,
as usual, beyond recognition”. The plane
is of no type known and even the engine has no mark or number on it. In the wreckage has been found a lump of
metal, melted by the heat to an irregular mass, which has been identified as
uranium. It must have been “stolen from
an official source somewhere as it is virtually impossible for a civilian to get
hold of any”. The only clue they have is
that the pilot was carrying a luger pistol.
Biggles asks for Raymond to ensure the newspapers give details of where
the crash has taken place and that a body had been removed and the guard at the
site withdrawn. Algy is already duty
officer on stand-by at their airfield, so Ginger rings him up to tell him to
get the Proctor ready for flight, with three parachutes. Biggles has a plan, as he suspects that
someone will come looking for the uranium.
Flying over “Inverness-shire”, they soon see the blackened heather of
the crash site. Biggles, Ginger and
Bertie bail out with a fourth parachute holding their large bundle of
stores. The site is guarded by air force
men and Biggles tells them to pack up and go home. “Ginger stopped to look at the spot where the
unknown pilot must have been hurled from life to death in an instant of time
without knowing anything about it”. They
all move to a bivouac made by the previous party, a flattened pile of heather
with a primitive fireplace of stones, to wait.
Ginger is awoken by Biggles at half past one in the morning and Biggles
says “Ssh! Someone’s coming”. A man arrives and begins searching for
something. Biggles, Ginger and Bertie
surround him and Biggles tells him to come out.
(This is the pen and ink illustration at the beginning of the story
on page 38). “We’re security
police. Who are you?” The man says his name is Lowenski and that he
is Polish. He lives in Perth. Biggles says the man can be sent back to Poland
if he doesn’t co-operate. Lowenski says
he has a mother and father in Poland, who have been interned on trumped-up
political charges and if he doesn’t do what he is told, they’ve had it. He says he thinks the unknown aircraft was
travelling from America to Warsaw in Poland.
His Polish friend had been sent to fetch the aircraft and his friend had
to obey as he was “in the same fix” as Lowenski, “only in his case it's his
wife they’ve got in Poland”. That
afternoon, Lowenski had received a phone call from London telling him to get to
the crash site and collect some bars of heavy metal that he would find in the
wreckage. His orders are to take the
metal to the big marsh near Nethy at four in the morning, when a plane will
land and collect it. He is then to send
a telegram to a Box Number at the General Post Office, London, saying the job
had been done. Taking Lowenski with
them, Biggles uses the Pole’s car to travel to the rendezvous. A black, twin-engined, low-wing monoplane,
lands. A man gets out and when Biggles’s
party approaches, the man senses danger and draws his automatic and fires
twice. The man then runs, but he runs
straight into the fast rotating air-screws (propeller). “There was a vicious smack and a shower of
splinters as one of the whirling blades struck his skull. He went down as if he had been shot through
the heart”. The pilot tries to take off,
not realising that his air-screw has been shattered and is unable to clear the
trees and he crashes. An examination
confirms both men are dead. At a
subsequent secret enquiry, it is revealed that the plane that crashed on Ben
Macdhui was a new secret prototype. It
and its cargo had been stolen in America and the pilot was making a wide sweep
north before heading for its destination.
A telegram is sent to the Box Number at the General Post Office, London
and the police follow the man who collects it back to what turns out to be the
London headquarters of a nest of international spies. “A police raid on the building yielded
information that had been sought for a long time”. To save any reprisals, Lowenski was
officially sent to prison. Unofficially,
he was compensation and allowed to emigrate to a British colony, where his
parents were able to join him after political negotiation. “As far as Biggles was concerned, it was just
another job of work buttoned up”.