BIGGLES AND THE NOBLE LORD

by Captain W. E. Johns

6. BIGGLES MAKES A DECISION (Pages 52 – 59)

“Biggles said little on the way back to Headquarters, but in the office he revealed the lines on which his thoughts had been running. “This is a queer business,” he said, reaching for a cigarette. “It’s so queer that it would be dangerous to jump to conclusions. In the first place Lord Malboise struck me as a queer type. I don’t know what it was about him, but he gave me the impression of not being entirely normal”. Algy says “I would have said he was merely a bit of a twit”. (A twit is a silly or foolish person). Biggles asks Bertie if he is sure that Clarence was the man who attempted to bribe him and Bertie confirms he is absolutely positive. Algy had previously looked up Lord Malboise in “Burke’s Peerage” (a well-known publication, founded in 1826, devoted to the ancestry and heraldry of the peerage, baronetage, knightage and landed gentry of Great Britain and Ireland) but there was nothing about him having a brother. Algy, at Biggles’ suggestion, looks Clarence up in “Who’s Who” and discovers that Lord Malboise’s brother, The Honourable Clarence Edgar Brindon, served in the R.A.F. in the Second World War (1939 – 1945) and was a Squadron Leader and with the Special Air Service working with Intelligence operations in France. The entry also says that the family were “Formerly of Chateau Malboise, Normandy, France”. Biggles is determined to see inside the unusual building at Brindon Hall that night and decides he will take Ginger with him and have Algy drive them down. Bertie can’t go in case he is recognised. The plan is to arrive at the Hall by car just before dawn. Biggles is not going to tell the Air Commodore. “With a noble lord involved he’d throw a fit. He’s a bit old-fashioned where titles are concerned”. Biggles grinned. “Fortunately, we’re not”. A little before midnight they set off for Sussex in Biggles’ own car with Algy driving as he knew the way. They take a light telescopic ladder with them and two torches. They park up by the wall of the Hall and there is not a sole in sight. They use the ladder to go up the wall and down the other side. They then moved through the trees and undergrowth, hoping to avoid any wild animals. Ginger is alarmed by the howl of a hyena. They see a buffalo under the misty moon. As they advance, they come across an electric fence, a wire that is used to keep the buffalo within certain bounds. Beyond the wire is open grass and they make their way to the building. The ladder is put against the side and it is just long enough to reach the roof. Biggles goes up and Ginger holds the foot of the ladder. “Not a sound broke the eerie silence”.