BIGGLES FOREIGN LEGIONNAIRE

by Captain W. E. Johns

VI. “EVERYTHING HAS BEEN ARRANGED?” (Pages 63 – 75)

“When Biggles told Marcel that Voudron might want them to go fairly soon if they accepted his proposition, he was thinking of days, and possibly weeks, rather than hours. He assumed that it would take some time to complete the arrangements”. Biggles writes a note to Algy and a concise letter to Air-Commodore Raymond, reporting progress, putting both in the same envelope “and addressing it in an illiterate hand-writing to their London apartment”. He posts it in the general post office in town. Biggles and Ginger then go and meet Sergeant Voudron at the ruined mosque. They are told that their pay will start now and Voudron’s friend will pay them. A sleek American car drives up to them. “Ginger recognised the big negro who had locked the gate at the Villa Mimosa” as the driver. “Aren’t you coming with us?” asked Biggles, genuinely surprised, but Voudron says he is not needed. Ginger suspects they are going to the Villa Mimosa, which cannot be more than three minutes drive away, but the drive takes twenty minutes and the windows are shuttered. They still arrive at the Villa Mimosa, but clearly there was an effort “to mislead them into thinking they had travelled about twenty miles instead of one”. Raban receives them in a spacious library. He says he shouldn’t really be helping them as he could get into serious trouble and makes them both promise never to repeat this conversation to anyone. “Biggles and Ginger gave their assurance”. Raban says he has a financial stake in an air-line operating company, “and we are always on the look-out for good pilots” who will undertake operations with no questions asked. The pay is a hundred thousand francs a month, with full board, lodging and expenses. Biggles asks if the operations are within the law and he is told “Certainly they are. We are not criminals”. They are told that the business owns vast estates in various parts of the world and recalcitrant tribesmen raid their outposts and “aeroplanes do the necessary chastisement faster and more efficiently”. Biggles asks when will they start and is surprised to be told “tonight, of course”. Their kit back at the camp could be replaced. “Biggles didn’t want to be cut off without a final word with Marcel. It was equally obvious to Ginger that Raban had no intention of letting them out of his sight now he had revealed his treachery”. Raban tells them “Everything is arranged” and he then calls into the room Voss, the man who had bombed the Abyssinian village. Voss takes them for a meal in a room next to the kitchen and then after midnight they go and get into the car with the same black driver. Ginger is concerned that “he and Biggles were about to vanish as completely as a stone dropped in an ocean”. They are dropped off on the edge of an aerodrome. A sign tells them it is a military aerodrome of the French Armie de l’Air, specifically the home of the Escadrille 77, from which at least one aircraft had already been stolen. Biggles and Ginger both remember being told about the extra guards being laid on, but they say nothing. Voss speaks to a corporal and they quietly go to a light-bomber type aircraft outside a hangar. Ginger is astonished that there are no guards around. Voss takes the pilot’s seat and Biggles sits next to him. Ginger is in the navigator’s compartment and the corporal waves them off. The twin engines whirl and start and then a whistle shrills and dark figures come running and converge on the aircraft. The corporal runs but falls when he is shot. Bullets smack into the fuselage and a search-light is shone on them. Voss takes off under fire and the Breguet becomes airborne but a reek of petrol in Ginger’s nostrils “told its own story”. Ginger hears Biggles shouting and gets up and staggers forward.