BIGGLES AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA

by Captain W. E. Johns

14. DEATH STRIKES AGAIN (Pages 149 – 157)

“Biggles did not know where Ali had gone with the man who had got ashore from the dhow, but as he was not at the huts, he could only be at the far end of the island, either at the place where the hemp had been grown, in the hollow where the mine was situated, or the palm-frond shelter which Collingwood had said he had built for himself near the coconuts”. “How Ali would react to his accusation of murder when he did find him was a matter for speculation”. “Indeed, he almost hoped Ali would make an attempt to kill him and so furnish him with the excuse of self-defence to shoot him out of hand. Cold-blooded murder he had always abhorred; but that a man should deprive another of his life, and in this case a man who had befriended him, for no other reason than to gain possession of his property, filled him with such loathing that he was almost prepared to take the law into his own hands”. “No doubt, pondered Biggles, the murderer had hoped to be aboard the dhow by now”. Biggles goes to the hollow and hails, but there is no answer. He goes to where the hemp was grown but there is nobody there. Biggles then goes to where the coconut trees are. “Hitherto he had kept clear of them for fear of a nut falling on his head. Sure that any that were ready to fall must have been brought down by the hurricane, he went on to investigate”. Biggles finds a beehive-shaped structure, which is Ali’s hut and he calls out “Ali. Come out. I want to talk to you”. There is no answer and no movement. Biggles, “using his left hand, for the gun was in the other” (so Biggles is right-handed) throws open the flap of the door and sees a heap of rags on the floor, roughly the shape of a body. It is Ali. “He was lying on his back with one leg drawn up. His eyes were open. Without blinking they stared up at the roof”. Ali is dead. “There is blood on his shirt-like robe. There was a pool of congealed blood on the sand”. Biggles looks round swiftly for the man who must have killed Ali, the second Arab, the one who had just come ashore, but he is not there. “Biggles strove for composure. The shock of Collingwood’s death had shaken his severely, coming as it did so suddenly and unexpectedly. This, coming closely on top of it, before he had fully recovered, seemed for a few moments to have stunned his faculty for lucid thought. He tried to light a cigarette, and accustomed as he was to the sight of sudden death, he was annoyed to find his hands shaking. Such can be the effect of shock”. Biggles wonders why Ali was killed. Had it been to do with the destruction of the hemp? But any dispute about that would have happened on discovery. The two Arabs had both gone back to Ali’s hut. “It must have been something else. He could think of only one possibility. It came as a glimmer of light in a fog. The opal. The wealth for which Ali had murdered Collingwood”. Biggles makes a thorough search of Ali’s hut, even scraping up the sandy floor. The opal is not there. “Now he was sure of it. He smiled grimly. The opals seemed to be living up to their evil reputation”. Biggles suddenly has a thought. He had seen natives hide articles in their thick cut hair and he checks Ali’s hair and finds the piece of opal that had not been with the rest in the box. “It was in fact the piece of milk-white opal which he himself had found; the piece that Collingwood has said he would polish for him. One half has been polished”. “In a curious fit of repulsion Biggles went out and flung the stone as far as he could into the foaming surf”. Biggles set off to return to Algy urgently. The sea has now gone down considerably. The dhow was now much closer to the shore. Biggles sees Algy working on the aircraft in the distance. “Afraid that if the Arab saw him alone he might try to do him, or the machine, a mischief, he broke into a run, determined if possible to get there first. He still had some distance to go”.