BIGGLES FOREIGN LEGIONNAIRE

by Captain W. E. Johns

XI. STILL FURTHER EAST (Pages 128 – 136)

“Leffers’ eyes went to Klutz, lying horribly still on the floor. Then with a sort of slow deliberation, they examined the faces of the others in turn. They came to rest on Lindsay. “So you’ve been talking,” he said, in a dry brittle voice. Leffers goes for his gun but Lindsay has his gun in his hand already and shoots Leffers dead. Biggles was angry. “I’ve got no time for Leffers but you shouldn’t have done that,” he snapped. “What else was there to do?” asks Lindsay. Biggles sends Lindsay on his way. Biggles tells Ginger to “Keep cave” (meaning to act as a lookout) whilst Biggles searches the pockets of the two dead men. Leaving the hotel, Biggles and Ginger go to see if Algy and Bertie are still outside. “We heard shooting and thought we’d better hang on for a bit,” explained Algy. (That seems strange. Surely they would have gone inside the hotel to see if Biggles and Ginger needed help?). Biggles tells them what has happened and says he has told Lindsay to go to London and see Raymond. “I’d have given him a second gun and told him to carry on” is Algy’s take on the situation. Biggles and Ginger decide to get rooms at the Napoli, where Algy and Bertie are staying. They don’t sleep though; they all spend the night in Algy’s room discussing the situation and going through the things taken from the pockets of Klutz and Leffers. “The only item of practical use was a flimsy tracing of the route from Egypt to the Valley of Tartars, which presumably Leffers had prepared for his own guidance. A compass course had been jotted on one corner, but the objective had not been named, so the map would have meant nothing to anyone who did not know the facts of the case”. At five o’clock, Biggles says they need to sort out transport to the aircraft. There has been no police activity at the Continentale, so it would appear the bodies had not yet been discovered. Biggles and Ginger go to the business quarter of the city and get a cab to the airport. “The Beechcraft Bonanza, wearing civil American registration marks, was standing just outside Number Three hangar just as Leffers had said it would be”. An official sees their badges and just nods at them. They find a mechanic leaning against the aircraft and he asks “Where’s twenty-nine?”. “He’s not coming,” replied Biggles. “We’re going on alone”. “Not coming,” echoed the man suspiciously. “Why not?” “Because he’s dead,” said Biggles shortly.

(The edge on this was removed when the scene was illustrated in the 13^th October 1954 edition of “Junior Mirror” where the book was being serialised in an abridged form as “Biggles Joins the Legion”. “Why isn’t no. 29 coming?” asked the mechanic. “Because he was shot,” said Biggles in the caption). “I was talking to him last night” says the man. “So was I, but that doesn’t make him alive this morning”, replies Biggles. Biggles tells the man that number twenty-nine was shot and the man guesses it was Lindsay who did it. “They say it was him who killed Janescu”. Biggles wants to take off but the mechanic says a fourth man is expected, a German, called von Stalhein. “Not a muscle of Biggles’s face moved”. “Well, he isn’t here so we’ll get off”. Biggles says Klutz was shot last night at the Continentale “same time as Leffers” and the police are bound to watch ever exit from the city so he, Biggles, is anxious to get away. A Rolls draws up and three men get out, one walking with a slight limp. “It was their old enemy, Erich von Stalhein, one time of the Wilhelmstrasse but more recently employed by operators of the Cold War behind the Iron Curtain”. Ginger tells Biggles to “Get cracking” and Biggles takes off. Biggles is worried in case Alexandria is in touch with the Valley of Tartars by radio. Biggles tells Ginger that with von Stalhein were Pantenelli and Festwolder. He recognised them from Lindsay’s description of them. “It looks as if he was right when he said they’d have to do their own dirty work, and get cracking with it too”.