THE BOY BIGGLES

by Captain W. E. Johns

NB - IN THIS BOOK BIGGLES IS REFERRED TO AS “JAMES” BUT FOR THE SAKE OF THE STORY SUMMARIES; I HAVE REFERRED TO HIM AS BIGGLES.

IX THE THUGS (Pages 101 - 119)

“The word “thug” has come into the English language to mean a particularly nasty villain, a thief, a rogue, a man who commits robbery with violence, even murder. A man without scruple. The word came to us from India. The original Thugs were wandering bands of fanatics who infested Central and Northern India and made a definite business of murder”. “Their usual method of killing was by slow strangulation. They did not attack a proposed victim openly as one would expect of ordinary savages. Therein lay their danger. They posed as quiet, inoffensive people, and in this manner worked their way into the confidence of the unsuspecting person selected for death”. On this particular occasion, Biggles’ father has gone to Lucknow. Biggles walks up to the tea plantation to see his friend Sula Dowla. He comes upon an old man sitting beside the road with a heavy pack. The man has an ugly scar on his chin. “From his rather dark skin he took him to be a Gond. (One of the original tribes of India. They have dark skins and black, curly hair)”. The man “said something, but James did not catch what it was. That was why he stopped; to ask the man to repeat what he had said. He spoke, naturally, in Hindi. The man answered in the same language, but haltingly, and with a strange accent, as if the tongue was unfamiliar. James next tried him in Urdu, another common language, of which he had some knowledge, but this was worse. However somehow they managed to make themselves understood”. The old man is on his way home to the mountains and is waiting for a friend to join him. Sula Dowla arrives and offers to carry the old man’s pack. As time is getting on, Biggles has to return home leaving Sula to go with the old man. At home a mounted policeman “runner” has come to warn them there might be a Thug in the district. A woman has been murdered in the valley. “Had he been asked when the first glimmering of a suspicion entered his head he would not have been able to answer. He was not even thinking – at any rate, not consciously – of the stranger he had seen on the hill track. But suddenly he found himself pondering. Could it be possible that he had seen and spoken to the murderer?” Biggles speaks to Lalu Din, one of his father’s employees, and asks if he had spoken to the police runner about the Thug. All Lalu Din can say is that “he looked like any other beggar, except that he had very dark skin, and it was known that he had the scar of an old knife wound on his chin”. James decides to go after his friend, Sula Dowla to make sure he is alright. “If it is thought that James was unduly upset it must be remembered that for a boy he led a rather lonely life. There was no other British boy of his age near his home, so it was almost inevitable that for a companion he should sometimes turn to one of the Indian boys he knew”. Biggles goes to the gunroom and gets his light rifle and cartridges. Without telling the servants where he is going, for fear of looking foolish, he goes to Sula’s bungalow but his mother says he had not yet returned. On the road, Biggles speaks to a woman who knows Sula and she says that she saw him with two men. Biggles travels up the hill into the jungle as twilight falls. Biggles goes as far as a dak bungalow (a rest house). Inside there is firelight and faint voices. Biggles peeps through the window and sees Sula sitting cross-legged and talking with two men. With his rifle at the ready, Biggles pushes open the door with his foot and everyone looks at him. “Sula, come with me,” he ordered. Sula asks why and Biggles tells him he has reason to suspect the two men are Thugs and have killed a woman in the valley. The men deny this. Biggles tells Sula to open one of the men’s packs and in it he finds a bloodstained sari and three fine gold wire bracelets, such as Indian women wear. “The younger of the two Thugs sprang, one arm raised high, holding a curved dagger which he had snatched from his rags. James’ rifle blazed”. The man shot is wounded in the shoulder. The other man gropes for his knife. “James jerked another cartridge into the breech. “Draw that knife and you die,” he warned with iron in his voice”. Biggles tells Sula to run home and fetch his father and men with ropes to tie up the Thugs. For Biggles “the next hour seemed the longest he had ever had to endure. The strain of standing there, watching for the slightest movement, muscles braced, became almost unbearable”. Eventually Sula’s father and workers from the plantation arrive and tie up the Thugs and drag them away to await the arrival of the police. “James never saw them again”.