BIGGLES FOREIGN LEGIONNAIRE

by Captain W. E. Johns

X. ONE MAN’S WAR (Pages 113 – 127)

On leaving the club, Biggles and Ginger are followed by Algy and they speak and agree to meet together with Bertie in the black shadows of the palms not quite opposite their hotel. Biggles tells them what they have learnt so far. Algy says they are staying at the Napoli, next door but one to the Continentale. The had tried to get into the Continentale but were told it was full. Bertie says a Rolls dropped somebody at the Continentale about an hour ago and he hasn’t seen them come out. Algy says Marcel was found locked in a top room at the Villa Mimosa. “They had threatened him with all sorts of things to try to make him talk; but he kept his mouth shut knowing that they’d do him in as soon as they got the information they wanted”. Joudrier had got Raban and his servants but Klutz had left. They intend to get Voudron the next time he goes there. Marcel was with Joudrier but may follow on. Biggles says he hopes to join the secret squadron as they may never get another chance to find their hide-out. Biggles suggests Algy and Bertie follow Klutz as he “must be in touch with the big men”. Biggles and Ginger return to their hotel but find the doors shut and the Continentale in darkness. In the glow of Biggles lighter they find the proprietor dead on the floor. Biggles says they will have to go as they don’t want to be involved, but they have to get their kit first from their room. They get to their rooms but then hear a gunshot. Biggles comes out of his room and in the darkness bumps into a fleeing man. They struggle and Ginger goes to Biggles aid. Ginger kneels on the man’s arm to get the gun off him. It goes off but Ginger succeeds. With a violent wrench the man pulls free and reels backwards through the door into the suite he had been in. Biggles gets the gun off Ginger and covers the man with it. Biggles tells the man they are as anxious to get out as he is. But the man suspects them with their badges. He is beside himself with fury. Ginger sees a body on the floor and recognises Klutz. He has been shot. The man says he did it and that “oily Armenian crook downstairs”. Biggles asks him if he killed Janescu and he says he did “And I’ll get the rest of the whole dirty bunch if I live long enough. You too. You wear their flaming badge”. “I don’t know who you are or why you’re doing this; but since I’m trying to do the same thing, in a legal way, I’m more than interested,” said Biggles. Biggles tells the man they are detectives from London. The man says he is Cy Lindsay and he is an American. He used to be a chauffeur-mechanic in New York for Fabiano Pantenelli, the rubber market boss, for some two years. That’s how he got to know Janescu and Festwolder. Hugo Festwolder is an arms dealer. Klutz was the organiser for ‘The Committee of Three’. “That’s what he called his bosses, Janescu, Festwolder and Pantenelli. Now it’s a Committee of Two, and they’ll need a new general manager to fix the next war”. Lindsay’s kid brother has been killed in Korea. Then he saw red. “I’d been working for the smart guys who were piling up dollars by sending kids to their deaths. I swore I’d get even with ‘em”. Lindsay saw the yacht Silvanus in the news and swam out hoping to kill them all. Only Janescu was there. He then came to this hotel as this was where Klutz hung out when in this part of the world. “The gang was his, really. The Committee paid the bills”. Lindsay describes Festwolder as a big feller with red hair and big red whiskers. Pantenelli is a little slick type. Looks like he might be a Mexican dance band conductor”. Lindsay thinks they are both in Alex now. Biggles says they are hoping to find the gang’s secret squadron and they are meeting number twenty-nine tomorrow. Lindsay says if he has a little scar on his cheek-bone, then that is Leffers, formerly of the Luftwaffe. He killed a man in the States after the war and bolted and joined the Legion. Lindsay says the secret squadron is in the Valley of the Tartars, where the borders of Iraq, Persia and Turkey meet. “Leffers called it Kurdistan”. “The landmark is an old castle. Amazing place, I believe, as old as the hills”. Lindsay says “According to some fellers the place isn’t hard to find. You simply cross Syria and Iraq by following the oil pipe-line to Kirkuk. Then you turn north on a course for a place called Gelia Dagh. That takes you over it”. Lindsay asks Biggles what he thinks he should do. Biggles gives him money and asks him to catch a plane to London. He tells him to go straight to Scotland Yard and see Air-Commodore Raymond. Biggles says to tell him Bigglesworth has sent him and he has gone to the Valley of the Tartars. Lindsay is also told to tell him that Lacey is staying at the Hotel Napoli. Biggles tells Lindsay to get off as he wants to search Klutz’s pocketsbut Lindsay’s eyes are now on the door. Biggles and Ginger turn around and see number twenty-nine, Leffers, standing in the doorway, with his lips compressed in a thin line.