BIGGLES IN THE UNDERWORLD

by Captain W. E. Johns

17. HOW IT ALL ENDED (Pages 177 – 184)

“The sound which Ginger had described as hammering became louder as Biggles drew nearer the house. When he got to the door he found it shut and locked. He banged on it with his fist, shouting: “Thompson! Are you in there?” A voice inside uttered an inarticulate cry. Biggles did not hesitate. He charged the door, full weight on his shoulder. It flew open and he burst in, nearly to fall over Thompson who was on his knees just inside the hall”. Biggles asks what has happened. Thompson says Lazor was there and he coshed him, knocking him out, he has only just come round. “Finding I couldn’t get out, all I could do was hammer on the door hoping you’d hear me. Lazor must have been collecting some stuff when I disturbed him. There was a bag on the table. I don’t know what was in it. That’s gone, too, I see. Sorry about this”. Biggles examines Thompson’s wound and says it is not too bad, but they will get him to hospital. Biggles helps Thompson to the aeroplanes, where Ginger helps make him comfortable with a seat cushion form the Aiglet’s cockpit and with his back resting against an undercarriage wheel. They wait and hear the sound of an approaching car. Biggles thinks it must be Bertie, but Ginger says it doesn’t sound like Bertie’s car. There comes a scream of brakes followed instantly by an ominous crash. Leaving Ginger with Thompson, Biggles goes down to investigate what has happened. He sees two cars; the rear one had run into the back of the leading one. Four men are there. “One was lying in the road. Bertie was standing by him. The others were two police officers. Biggles recognised one as the sergeant he had seen previously at the farmhouse. He was making gestures and babbling incoherently over and over again: “It was his own fault. He ran straight into me. I couldn’t do anything about it. Not a thing. He ran smack into –” “All right, officer,” cut in Biggles. “You’ve told us. You needn’t keep telling us. Take it easy. Who did you knock down?” “It’s Lazor,” informed Bertie, adding “Looks as if he’s had it this time” without emotion. Bertie tells Biggles he had seen a policeman on a bike when taking the gamekeeper to hospital and told him to let his boss know something was going on at the farm. Bertie left the unconscious gamekeeper at the hospital and returned. The police car was in front of him, it stopped suddenly, without warning and Bertie ran into the back of it. One of the policemen has been examining Lazor. “He’s dead all right. I hadn’t a hope of stopping. I can’t understand it. He must have been tight. I could swear he deliberately charged into me. It was his own fault. The other officer confirmed this. “I’d say he was drunk. Must have been blind drunk the way he acted”. Biggles helps them load the body of Lazor into the police car and he notices blood on his hands. Biggles says “I’ve a notion Lazor had been wounded before you knocked him down”. “The man he shot, a gamekeeper, fired at him with his gun. We heard the shots”. The police car has to go to the top of the hill to turn and Bertie moves his car tight against the bank to give it room to pass. Bertie then drives up the hill “with Biggles standing on the running board”. They rejoin Ginger and tell him what has happened. Biggles says there is nothing more they can do except take Thompson to hospital, then go home. In the morning, they can return to collect the two aircraft. “There is not much more to be said; but a few details may need tidying up. Lazor, the Sheikh, was dead. If he wasn’t killed on the spot by the police car he was dead on arrival at the hospital. It was likely that he would have died anyway, for the post mortem examination revealed that he had severe gunshot wounds in the legs and stomach and had lost a lot of blood. So the gamekeeper had evidently been on the mark when he had emptied his gun at his unseen assailant. The gamekeeper was fine. “By one of those extraordinary chances which, as every soldier who has been in action knows can occur, his life had been saved by a metal object. In this case one of the brass buttons on his jacket”. Lazor’s bullet had been deflected, but even so, it had struck with the force of a sledge-hammer. In his statement he said he did not remember firing his shotgun. When he was struck by the bullet. His fingers had tightened convulsively on the trigger, causing it to go off. “It may well have happened this way”. He came round in the lane and tried to crawl home. Thompson, who had suffered only a superficial head wound, was kept one night at the hospital. Biggles had reported events to Air Commodore Raymond, handing over the stolen pearls. The next day, Biggles and Ginger met Thompson at the farm. Ginger flew the Auster home and Biggles flew Thompson back to Podbury, where he was later picked up by Bertie in an official car. Caine was still in hospital but was informed of what had happened. “His relief, when he heard that his razor-wielding associate was dead, was probably genuine”. “There was some discussion at Headquarters about what action should be taken with him and Thompson, for they had both been ‘sailing near the wind’, to use a common expression. At the end nothing was done. It was felt they had both had a lesson they were not likely to forget, and with Lazor out of their lives they would be more careful in the future. Lazor was undoubtedly the villain in the case and no good purpose would be served by taking them to court. That was Biggles’ view. As he pointed out, Caine, who would carry the scar of Lazor’s ‘mark’ on his face for the rest of his life, had been punished enough. Neither was a professional criminal, although under Lazor’s influence that is what they might have become. On the whole they may have been lucky. So ended a case, perhaps less spectacular than some in the Air Police records, that has started as a more or less routine exercise, but had finished in such dramatic circumstances – Biggles called it a sordid mess – at Twotrees Farm”.