BIGGLES’ CHINESE PUZZLE

AND OTHER BIGGLES’ ADVENTURES

by Captain W. E. Johns

VIII. OPERATION STARLIGHT (Pages 168 – 188)

I am informed that an edited version of this story was published in “Chuckler’s Weekly” (an Australian Comic) in Volume 1, issue 23, dated 22^nd October 1954, but that date and issue number may not be correct. I believe the first issue of “Chuckler’s Weekly” was 30^th April 1954, in which case, if weekly, that date should be issue 26?

“At ten thousand feet the Air Police Auster droned a lonely course across the indigo bowl that was the earth. Above, the midnight sky was spangled with a million stars”. Biggles, Algy, Bertie and Ginger are on a mission trying to intercept an aircraft. “H.M. Customs and Excise complained of illegal movements of diamonds, furs and drugs. The Currency Control Commission alleged the unauthorized transfer of money to and from the Continent. Security Intelligence suspected that secret agents were coming and going without passport examination. Radar stations were reporting unidentified aircraft, mostly by night”. Biggles reflects on how a vehicle on a road or a ship can be stopped and searched, but an aircraft cannot be stopped “without employing methods which, common in war, would be held inexcusable in peace time”. Biggles had employed unorthodox methods and for a week had drawn a blank. “This was his last chance, for ground forces protested they could not stand by indefinitely”. Now they are after an unauthorised aircraft. “Looks like a helicopter” says Biggles. It looks like it is landing on Brandon Heath and a signal is sent to Air Commodore Raymond on the ground. Biggles, Ginger and Bertie all parachute out. They rush to the landed helicopter where a man in the cockpit is handing out parcels to two men on the ground. “Stand still,” ordered Biggles crisply. “We’re police –”. A gun is fired at them and Biggles fires back: A man falls. The helicopter tries to take off but Ginger shoots at the rotor blades and splinters fly. The pilot makes a relevant comment when he says “I reckon Alex tipped you off about –” but he stops and says no more. Half an hour later two police cars arrive. The men have been smuggling watches. The helicopter pilot was an ex-officer who had been recruited by the smugglers after being dismissed from the service for personal smuggling. They had approached him immediately after his Court-martial. This gives Biggles the idea of baiting a trap. “Algy, under the assumed name of Mason, had just been cashiered for improper conduct – or so a notice, with a photo, in the press announced”. A week passed and “Algy loafed about the West End, keeping away from Scotland Yard”. On the morning of the eighth day, Biggles gets a phone call from Algy informing him that Algy has been offered a hundred pounds to fly a Push Moth to France that night. All he knows is he’s to land a passenger and bring a parcel home. Algy intends to make a forced landing on the Downs north-west of Brighton, where Biggles will flash a torch at him to indicate where to land. In due course, at two a.m., this happens, and Algy lands the light plane on the fairway of a golf course. With Algy stands a man with a bag. Biggles, Bertie and Ginger approach and after a struggle the man is handcuffed. In the bag is found a mixed collection of jewellery. “Looks like the swag of the Grosvenor Square raid last week,” observed Biggles. Biggles ask the man how much did he pay for the trip. “Five hundred,” grated the man. “He told me it was safe. I’ll get him for this”. “Tell us who he was and we’ll get him,” suggested Biggles. Inspector Gaskin arrives and identifies the man as “Carlo the Cat” and takes him away. Algy explains that he was picked up by a Rolls at ten o’clock outside the Aero Club and driven to a farm on the south side of Ashdown Forest. He was spoken to by a man in a mask and his orders were to fly the passenger to Beauvais, where a car would be waiting to make a flare path with its headlights. Biggles tells Algy to drive with Bertie and take the car home. He is to stop at the first ‘phone box and ring the Air Commodore, who will then call Marcel Brissac of the French Surete. They French can rush a car to Beauvais. “On his side of the Channel it’s his pigeon”. Biggles plans to fly to France, then “if all goes well there” fly back to the Ashdown Forest landing ground. Algy will take the Chief there and wait for Biggles to land to raid that place. Biggles and Ginger then fly to Beauvais in France, which is “a well-known landmark”. Beside it, the headlights of a stationary car, at right-angles to the road, could be seen from a long way off – the only lights in the sleeping countryside. In due course, Biggles sees another approaching car far to the south and guesses “that should be Marcel”. Biggles lands and taxes up to the waiting car where three men stand waiting. Biggles faces the muzzle of an automatic and the bag he is carrying is snatched off him. “Get the stuff, Alex” says one of the men. The bag is opened and found to be empty. “Looks as if we’ve both been double-crossed,” answered Biggles evenly. Ginger, playing for time, cut in. “Leave me out of this. There’s a parcel to go back. Hand it over and I’ll leave you to it”. He is handed a brown paper bundle. Suddenly a car pulls up, disgorging gendarmes and the smugglers are seized. Marcel Brissac greets Biggles. “Voila! Beegles, old fox, we arrive on the dots”. Ginger’s parcel is opened and bundles of bank-notes fall out. “These must stay in France,” declared Marcel. Biggles and Ginger then fly back to the Sussex depot of the secret air operators. Biggles tells Ginger that the double-cross of the jewel thief confused the issue. “The transportation of international jewel thieves was understandable; but once word leaked out in the underworld that the air service was a racket to relieve them of their ill-gotten gains, not only would that source of revenue dry up but retribution would follow”. Arriving over Sussex, Biggles blips his engine three times and instantly four orange lights, in the form of a letter L, mark the landing strip. As Biggles comes in to land, he points to twin red lights moving slowly along a road a mile away. “There’s the Air Commodore,” he remarked. Biggles tells Ginger that when Biggles gets out, Ginger is to “lie doggo ready to take a hand should anyone reach for a gun”. Biggles lands and a masked man is there to meet him. Seeing Biggles, he goes for his gun. “Don’t do anything silly,” advised Biggles calmly. “I’m not alone”. The man turns and sees Ginger aiming a gun at him. Biggles tells the man to take his mask off and when he does so, Biggles, to his astonishment, recognises him as Group Captain Brail. Brail remembers Bigglesworth as well. “I heard you were something to do with the police”. Brail says they were having trouble with an American concern run by an American tough named Alex and he thought Biggles was him. Biggles says Alex was arrested in France after handing over a parcel of notes to bring back. Brail says “If Alex gave you notes they’d be duds, with a time bomb in one of the packets. He’s already killed one of our pilots that way”. Biggles tells Ginger to use the house telephone to ring the Yard and get them to put the call through to the Surete and warn them about a possible bomb in that parcel. Brail says he is ready to talk as Air Commodore Raymond arrives. “Here’s my Chief,” said Biggles. “Talk to him”. Ten minutes later, Ginger reports back that there was a bomb in the parcel but when Alex found himself in the same car with it, he had to open up about it. “Group Captain Brail, arrested while in charge of the unauthorized landing strip in Sussex, angry at being duped and no doubt hoping to get off lightly by turning Queen’s Evidence (which, his service record being taken into account, he did), had plenty to say”. He was working for a man called Luftmann, with headquarters in Switzerland. His business was smuggling, light-weight, high-duty merchandise, and currency”. Alex had been one of his men, but having been sacked for pilfering, he had started on his own account, working from Paris. “Brail stated that outside these two smuggling enterprises there was reason to believe that a more sinister service was at work moving personnel; for Luftmann’s pilots, night-flying without lights, had reported near-collisions with another unlighted aircraft. In fact, one of these pilots had been shot at when he nearly rammed an aircraft standing on the sands of The Wash at low tide – for which reason Luftmann no longer used that particular landing ground”. (The Wash is a rectangular bay and multiple estuary at the north-west corner of East Anglia on the east coast of England, where Norfolk meets Lincolnshire and both border the North Sea). Brail took his instructions over the ‘phone, but if he had anything to report he had to send a cable to Geneva. All conversations began with an exchange of passwords, which Brail revealed. Luftmann rarely came to England and when he did it was on the regular service and he motored down from London. Biggles, Ginger and Bertie take up residence in the now empty house by the landing strip as Algy has been detailed to reconnoitre the sands of the Wash for wheel tracks. When Luftmann calls, passwords are exchanged and Biggles imitates Brail’s voice as well as he could. Luftmann agrees to come over to-morrow. At eleven-fifty the next day, a Rolls arrives and three men get out. Luftmann asks Biggles who he is and Biggles arrests him. Luftmann’s companions draw pistols. “Drop those guns,” ordered Biggles sternly. “Shoot a policeman in this country and you’ll hang. I promise you”. Policemen surge through in through every door and Luftmann faints. “For a week Algy and Bertie had taken turns to patrol at dawn the wide sands of The Wash” to ascertain if the sands were still being used as a landing ground by unregistered aircraft”. In due course, Algy finds tracks, but of no type that he recognises, with double tyres and no treads to prevent the tyre maker being identified. Ginger wonders what the machine is doing and Biggles says “Putting down somebody who prefers not to come into the country through a normal point of entry”. For three nights they watch the sands and on the fourth night a plane lands. Biggles lands behind them and both aircraft fire at each other. The pilot of the mystery plane tries to take off, but cart-wheels and his machine goes up in flames. The identify of the aircraft and its occupants remain unrevealed. After that, “The sands were watched for weeks, but there were no more visitors”.