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.