BIGGLES AND THE LITTLE GREEN GOD

by Captain W. E. Johns

5. A THANKLESS ASSIGNMENT (Pages 45 – 53)

Biggles telephones the Hotel Grande and asks to be put through to Don Pallimo’s apartment. “This is Inspector Bigglesworth here, sir. There is a question I forgot to ask when I was with you just now. I’d rather not talk over the telephone. Can you give me a minute if I come round? It won’t take longer than that … Thank you, sir”. In a quarter of an hour, he was at the hotel and was taken to the room of the man he wanted to see. Biggles then says he has two questions. “Did you know there was another passenger on the plane taking O’Higgins and your parcel to Santiago?” Pallimo’s expression changed abruptly. He didn’t know. “Do you know a man named Barrendo?” asks Biggles adding “He was the other passenger on the plane”. Pallimo knows a man of that name, but is not saying much more. He does ask if Barrendo was still on the plane when it disappeared, but Biggles says he got off at Buenos Aires (correct spelling this time!). “Of course,” breathed Pallimo. “Of course”. Biggles ask why he says that but the reply is “It’s nothing … nothing”. Biggles asks if Barrendo had a personal interest in the god. “His interest was as great, if not greater, than mine” says Pallimo. “Could he have been the man who bid against you at the auction?” asks Biggles. “It is possible, and that is as much as I’m prepared to say”. “You’re not forgetting that I’m working on your behalf, trying to recover what you’ve lost,” reminded Biggles with a hint of reproach but Pallimo has nothing more to say. Biggles asks Pallimo if he wants him to recover “this god you call Atu-Hua?” Pallimo tells him “I don’t care if it is lost for ever; but I’m anxious that no one else should gain possession of it”. Biggles returns to Scotland Yard and goes to see Air Commodore Raymond telling him Pallimo “knows what’s behind this affair, but for some reason he intends to keep it to himself” adding “I’m beginning to think that somewhere in the background there’s a political wangle (yes, not wrangle) going on, and this little green gent with a bloodshot eye named Atu-Hua is the king-pin in it”. Raymond says the name “Barrendo” came up that morning as he had a visit from one of the secretaries of the Chilean Embassy, who wanted to know if Barrendo was still in England and if the police could locate him. Biggles suggests they leave it to Pallimo to work it out and that any insurance claim might be invalid on the grounds that Pallimo failed to inform the insurance company of certain exceptional risks. Raymond says “British insurance companies have a world-wide reputation for paying claims and they wouldn’t risk losing it”. The only way to avoid it is by recovering and producing the article. Raymond has in mind Biggles making a serious attempt to find the idol. Raymond asks if Pallimo was a hundred per cent white and he says that the Chilean secretary who was there that morning said that Barrendo was a half-breed. His mother was Indian. “That may account for his outstanding knowledge of local history and native lore. It struck me that there might be common ground there with Pallimo”. Raymond tells Biggles he would be glad if he went to Chile. Biggles says Bertie and Ginger are on leave and he will see how Algy feels about it. After a line break a new paragraph reads:- “The reader will now understand exactly what the British Air Police Merlin was doing at 24,000 feet in Western Argentina, bound for Santiago, Chile, with the formidable chain of snow-capped giants, the Andes, looming across its course like the end of the world. We can now proceed with the story”. After a day’s rest at Ezeiza and some discreet enquiries about the missing plane and its crew yield nothing not already known, the Merlin, with full tanks, takes off on the last leg of its journey. “For the early part the course lay over lush forests, acres of sugar cane, orange groves, lakes and rivers. Later these gave way to the famous pampas, the central plains of shimmering grass with their vast herds of cattle which supply the United Kingdom with much of its beef, this to merge eventually into the dry, dusty, rocky foothills already described”.