BIGGLES IN THE UNDERWORLD

by Captain W. E. Johns

4. PROBLEMS FOR BERTIE (Pages 42 – 53)

“Bertie had started early, in one of the official police cars, a Humber, on his mission to locate, and reconnoitre as far as was possible without calling attention to himself, Caine’s alleged farm in Hampshire. The word ‘alleged’ was still being used in connection with it because so far there was no proof that it existed”. Bertie finds the farm difficult to find. Asking at a wayside inn, where he has lunch, if the landlord can direct him to Carthanger, the landlord asks if he means Clayhanger. “I was told Carthanger,” Bertie answered. Continuing his journey “He stopped to make inquiries as often as opportunity occurred. He spoke to a roadman, a farm labourer, and the driver of a baker’s van, but none of them had heard of the village he sought. He saw nothing that could be called a village. Even houses, always cottages, were few and far between. He had not thought there was such a rural area left in the country”. Eventually a postman, who says he has lived in the area all his life, tells him there is no Carthanger in the area, but he has heard of Twotrees farm in the district of Clayhanger and is able to direct him. Bertie arrives at the end of a track to see a plain red-brick building with sundry outhouses. “Close at hand were two wind-bent elms that had probably given the place its name”. Parking up at the end of lane, Bertie gets out to investigate. There are no animals, horses, cows or sheep, which strikes him as odd. Bertie wants to know if a plane is being kept there, so he goes behind a hedge to go as close to the farm buildings as he can get. “Naturally, he was anxious not to be seen, for it would be hard to find a reasonable excuse for trespassing should he be discovered and questioned about his purpose. This, he decided, was a chance he would have to take”. It is now evening and as it is November, daylight is closing in. A slight drizzle makes things more uncomfortable. Bertie sees a big Dutch barn, “Which as the reader probably knows is a semi-circular domed roof supported by iron uprights, the sides being left open”. It is filled to the top with hay. There are chicken houses but no chickens. There is a pigsty but no pig, a cowshed but no cows and a stable but no horse. The breeze brings a familiar smell to Bertie’s nostrils. “An aeroplane has a unique aroma of its own, consisting of a mixture of petrol, oil, and more particularly, the sweet, sickly, smell of dope; this is, the waterproof cellulose varnish sprayed on any fabric to shrink it on its frame and hold it in place. To a pilot, or anyone who has worked on aircraft, it is unmistakable and never forgotten, wherever it may be encountered”. Bertie hears a man cough, but he can see no one. Then he hears metal on metal as if a small tool has been dropped. A car comes into the yard and goes to the house, then the driver whistles and another man appears from near Bertie, although where he came from Bertie does not know. Both men go in the house. In due course he hears voices raised in furious argument and one man rushes out of the house, dashes to the car and drives off. The man who remains in the house then lets a dog out. “It was a big dog. An Alsatian, he thought. Evidently a guard dog”. The dog senses Bertie is there and starts to growl, so to avoid being attacked, Bertie climbs up one of the iron girders supporting the roof of the barn. In this he is helped by the hay stacked in trusses. “In this way, after a struggle he managed to clamber up the side of the rick, his efforts being expedited by the furious behaviour of the dog, now below him, obviously having located him. At the top, Bertie backs away from the edge and he feels the truss wobble as if insecure. “A moment later he was clutching wildly for support as it overturned and he felt himself plunging into a well of darkness. His groping hands found nothing to arrest his fall, and he crashed on sold ground. His head struck something hard and the world exploded in a cloud of stars that faded swiftly to utter blackness”.