37 Biggles Gets His Men Read online

  RAYMOND STATES THE CASE

  FOR some time the only sound heard in the drab headquarters of the Special Air Service, New Scotland Yard, was the sombre ticking of a white-faced clock as it numbered the seconds with dreary monotony and dropped them into the past. Sergeant Bigglesworth, one time Squadron-Leader Bigglesworth, D.S.O., R.A.F., better known as

  "Biggles", leaned back in a tilted chair reading the current issue of Flight. Air-Constable

  "Ginger" Hebblethwaite, hands in pockets, stared moodily across the depressing panorama of wet roofs which the window overlooked. Air-Constables Algy Lacey and Bertie Lissie, in attitudes of bored indifference, idly turned the pages of the daily papers.

  At length Ginger yawned audibly, and turning, remarked: "You know, this place gets more and more like a dentist's waiting-room."

  No one answered.

  Ginger tried another angle. Looking at his chief, he inquired: "Have you no idea at all of what's in the wind?"

  "None whatever," answered Biggles, without looking up. "But," he added as an afterthought, "if Air-Commodore Raymond's face is anything to go by it's something unusually grim."

  "He's had something on his mind for a week," put in Algy. "I've met him two or three times and he couldn't even say good morning. In fact, I don't think he noticed me."

  "There have been a lot of people in and out of his office," volunteered Bertie. "Foreign Office messengers and official-looking blokes with their little black bags, and all that sort of thing—if you see what I mean?"

  Biggles closed his magazine, tossed it on the desk and looked at his watch. "Well, I fancy we shall soon know what it's all about," he averred. "

  My orders were to report to the conference-room at eleven o'clock. It's nearly that now."

  "What about us?" inquired Ginger.

  "The Air-Commodore said I'd better take you down as it would save me the trouble of telling you all about it afterwards," replied Biggles, stubbing his cigarette in the ashtray.

  "We may as well be drifting along." He got up, and leaving the others to follow went out into the corridor.

  After a walk of some distance he stopped before a door conspicuously marked Private, and knocked. A voice called, "Come in." Followed by the others, he obeyed.

  There were five men in the long, plainly furnished room, standing together by the fireplace talking in low tones. One was Air-Commodore Raymond, Assistant-Commissioner of Police, and official head of the Air Section. Three were elderly men of similar type. They were unknown to Biggles, although the faces of two were vaguely familiar.

  The fifth man was different, being a good deal younger, and thinner, as if he had led a more active life.

  "Come in, Bigglesworth," requested the Air-Commodore quietly. "Let me introduce you.

  This is Lord Rutterton of the Foreign Office. . . this is Mr. Lucas Wetherton of the Diplomatic Service . . . Colonel George Grimster, of the Canadian Army, and"—here he indicated the youngest member of the party—"Captain Roderick Mayne?' Turning to the first-named, the Air-Commodore concluded: "This is Bigglesworth sir, the officer I spoke to you about."

  "I've heard that name," answered Lord Rutterton, in a deep sonorous voice that made Ginger jump. His eyes were on Biggles' face. "Well, now that we're all here, let's get on,"

  he added curtly. "We may as well sit down."

  "Will you state the case, sir?" inquired the Air-Commodore, as chairs were being taken round the central table.

  "No—no," was the quick answer. "You start, Raymond.

  I may have a few words to say later."

  Biggles' eyes went to the map case that occupied the entire side of one wall. He observed that the area exposed was Eastern Asia.

  Lord Rutterton must have guessed what was passing in Biggles' mind, for he remarked, dryly. "Yes, that's the part of the world with which we are concerned—very concerned.

  Carry on, Raymond."

  The Air-Commodore cleared his throat, and looking at Biggles began in a voice pitched so low, and with such earnestness, that the gravity of the situation—whatever it might be—was at once apparent. "Often, in asking you to undertake a mission, I have prefaced my narration by asserting that the particular case under review was of an importance that could hardly be exaggerated. All these, however, were trivial when compared with the one now before us."

  "And it's top secret," boomed Lord Rutterton. "You understand that?"

  "Of course, sir," answered Biggles.

  "Good. Go on, Raymond," requested the peer.

  The Air-Commodore continued. "Our case, although we did not know it at the time, began in March of this year. At that date, and for some years previous to it, there had been in the service of the Government a scientist named Professor Felix Lampeter. It is unlikely that you would have heard of him because, like so many men engaged in his class of work, he detested publicity." The Air-Commodore dropped his voice a tone. "As a matter of fact, Professor Lampeter was one of our leading experts on atomic research.

  He lived, very quietly, at Oxford. It was his habit after dinner to take a short walk for exercise along the river bank. On the evening of March 7th he went for his walk as usual.

  He did not come back. He never has come back. But we know that when he went out he had every intention of coming back because he gave instructions to his housekeeper that coffee and sandwiches were to be taken to his laboratory at eleven-thirty because he would be working late. It was only when these refreshments were taken to the laboratory that his absence was discovered. A good deal of rain had fallen and the river was high; it was a dark night, so the natural assumption, as suicide could be ruled out, was that he had fallen in the river and so met his death. There was no reason to suspect foul play. His loss

  was a serious blow to the department for which he was working. So much for Professor Lampeter." The Air-Commodore paused for a moment.

  "Working for us in a similar capacity," he continued. "but specialising in remote control of rocket missiles, was a Doctor Otto Kern, an Austrian refugee who had taken out naturalisation papers and made his home in this country during the Nazi regime in Central Europe. He lived, apparently quite happily, at one of our research stations on the coast, journeying from time to time to London to make his report to the Defence Council.

  His only recreation was the sailing of a small boat which he kept in a cove near his home.

  On April 22nd he went out for a sail—to clear his brain with some fresh air, as he told his servant. He did not return. Neither he, nor his boat, has been seen since, although a few days later his cap was washed up some miles farther along the shore. Apparently he had met with a misadventure, although as he was an experienced sailor, and the sea was fairly calm at the time, it was not easy to understand how an accident could happen.

  Anyway, that was blow number two. Then, to cap this sequence of tragedies, in May, Squadron-Leader Kerr-Watson, our supersonic aircraft designer, disappeared in somewhat similar circumstances. He was a married man who lived with his family in a small house not far from the Experimental Establishment at Farnborough. He left his home as usual after breakfast, and took, as was his habit, a short cut across the fields to the aerodrome. His wife saw him go. He was in good spirits because he had just completed an experimental job on which he had been working for months, and was confident of its success. He never arrived at the airfield. What happened to him we don't know, but whatever it was, it was something for which he was not prepared when he left his home. Naturally, in the light of this third disappearance we had to take a different view of the earlier tragedies. What was happening to these men? Could this be a coincidence? It seemed unlikely. It began to look as if a sinister plot was afoot. Who were the instigators? What wa
s their object? If it was to deprive us of our leading technical experts, why did they not murder these men and have done with it? The alternative theory, that they had in fact been abducted and were still alive, was just as alarming. You see my point? If they were dead—well, they would be prevented from doing any further work for us; but if they were still alive they might be forced to work for someone opposed to British interests. You follow?"

  Biggles nodded. No one spoke.

  The Air-Commodore resumed. "At this juncture we decided to warn our friends across the Atlantic in case anything of the sort should start there. It had, we discovered, already started, although there had been no suspicion of foul play. In short, we learned that Canada had lost in curious circumstances the man responsible for the defence of its northern outposts—General John Gorton, who, incidentally, was a leading light in anti-atomic warfare. Which explains Colonel Grimster's presence here to-day. General Gorton went out to visit one of the northern stations. He did not arrive; he did not return, and search has failed to find him, dead or alive.

  "In view of all this you will have no difficulty in believing that the Committee of Imperial Defence became very worried. The thing had to be stopped, for if it went on it was obviously only a matter of time before we lost every good man in our service. How were we to stop it? To furnish every research worker in the country with an armed guard would be a tremendous undertaking, and hardly practicable, anyway. Moreover, it would tell those responsible for the abductions—as there was now reason to think they were—

  that we had realised what was going on. You must understand that no word of this has been allowed to get into the newspapers. The tragedy of the missing men has been attributed to accident. Naturally, Scotland Yard was called in. It was not easy to know what to do or where to start. The position was a delicate one. It wouldn't do to make a mistake. We dare not, without definite proof of what we suspected, impair our relations with other countries—but you will have grasped the significance of the diplomatic angle.

  Our first steps, therefore, were directed to find out who was behind the thing. It might have been the work of a crank, or a foreign country that was anxious to retard our atomic development. Well, this is what we did. One of our men here, a smart young sergeant of the new school named Tom Gale, was selected for an experiment. What he did was, I may say, his own idea." The Air-Commodore smiled wanly.

  "In a few weeks, by what the newspapers call a build-up, we converted Gale into a top-grade atomic specialist. This was achieved by carefully prepared press and radio reports, and the like. In brief, Gale, under an assumed name, soon became known to the man in the street as our leading atomic expert. He worked at the research depot, and as far as he could he lived up to the part. Of course, he knew he was playing a dangerous game, but he was at least forewarned, which the missing men were not. He hoped, of course, that an attempt would be made to murder him, or abduct him, in which case—assuming that the attempt failed—he would be able to provide us with a clue to put us on the right track. The name Gale adopted for his plan was Vernon Victor Vale, and the reason he chose that name was on account of the simplicity of the initials. They were unusual, and they could be written quickly without appearing to be initials. They could, for instance, be a mere scrawl, such as a child might make. Should he be abducted, it would, we thought, be possible for him to leave his mark—the three Vees—somewhere. And in this he succeeded, or else we are in the realm of incredible coincidence.

  "You must understand," went on the Air-Commodore, "that all this happened some time ago. In fact, it is five months since Gale—or Vale, as we must now call him—

  disappeared."

  "So they got him?" Biggles did no more than breathe the words.

  "Yes, they got him," confirmed the Air-Commodore. "At any rate, Vale disappeared as completely, and as mysteriously, as those who had gone before him. You can imagine with what anxiety we waited for some word from him—if only the three Vees. None came. Weeks passed, and we had given up hope of hearing from him when, a fortnight ago, into the British Embassy at Nanking, in China, there walked a native in the last stages of emacia tion. He made sips with his hands, and at first he was taken for a poor creature who was out of his mind. He did not speak. The reason was, he was unable to do so because his tongue had been cut out, very neatly, obviously by a skilled surgeon.

  Being quite illiterate, he couldn't write, either. But, as I have said, he could make signs, and these were at length interpreted to mean that he was a messenger, that his head was to be shaved, and that he was to be given a large sum of money." The Air-Commodore smiled again, bleakly.

  "Well, his head was shaved, or part of it, for it was soon discovered that a small portion of it had been shaved in the not too distant past. And there, sure enough, on his scalp had been tattooed a queer-looking device, apparently with a needle and an indelible pencil.

  First, there was the symbol that stands for a dollar, followed by the number one thousand. This, it transpired, was the sum that had been promised to the man for his services. Below was a map as primitive as could be imagined, although in the circumstances it could hardly be anything else. Beneath this was a row of three Vees."

  "Amazing," muttered Biggles.

  The Air-Commodore continued. "Of course, our people in China knew nothing about what had been going on here, so they might well have been pardoned had they ignored a message so fantastic. Fortunately this did not happen. The man was detained. A tracing was made of the design on his scalp and sent home to see if we knew anything about it.

  So, unless an extraordinary coincidence has occurred, Vale has got his initials to us, as he promised. We wasted no time following up this unexpected clue, and this, briefly, is what has so far been ascertained. I will now ask Captain Mayne, our expert on internal Chinese affairs, who has spent most of his life in the Far East, to carry on with the story."

  Captain Mayne took up the narrative. His tone was clear and his manner concise. "I saw this Chinese messenger and recognised him as an Orochon—that is, a member of a tribe that inhabits the practically unexplored territory in the region of the Manchurian and eastern Siberian frontiers.

  The fellow couldn't speak, but he could hear, and he made signs that he understood me when I spoke in the language used in that district. I was there myself on one occasion, and my knowledge of the country, meagre though it is. combined with the sketch map, enables me to locate the territory roughly, although not with as much detail as I would like. The key really lies in a curiously shaped lake—but I'll return to this presently. Let us deal first with the messenger, who has now gone home to his people. I tried to persuade him to act as a guide, but nothing would induce him to go anywhere near the area where apparently he had been mutilated; so as we couldn't hold him against his will we had no choice but to give him his reward and let him go. Not that he would have been of very much use, probably. Apart from not being able to speak, he was a sick man.

  "You must understand that my only method of culling information from him was of the simplest possible character. I asked questions to which he could only respond by indications of yes or no, or by making signs that were not always easy to follow. As far as I can make out he was on a hunting expedition when he was seized by a party of men and taken to a district he had never seen before. There. presumably to prevent him from revealing to anyone what he had seen, should he escape, his tongue was cut out. Then, with a large number of other prisoners he was made to work like a slave, first clearing a large area of forest, and later squaring the timber, which was used for the building of huts. The place, I gather, is near the narrowest end of the lake shown on the sketch map.

  Actually, the whole country is strewn with lakes of all shapes and sizes, but I think I know the one. There were, according to the messenger, several white men at this place.

  Others came from time to time by aeroplane. Our man has no idea of what they were doing, or their nationality. Naturally, living in a barbed wire compound, where th
e wretched slaves died like flies, he didn't care. An interesting point is, in a perpetual hunt to get more slaves the country has been almost depopulated, survivors having fled from such a dangerous locality. The man in charge of the slaving operations is an enormous cross-eyed Mongolian who carries a whip which he uses freely on the workers. Anyone caught attempting to escape is beaten to death, yet so desperate was the plight of the slaves that several tried it, with what success is not known. Our man had an added inducement to get away. He was told by one of the white men that if he could get to a British officer in China and reveal a message tattooed on his head, he would be given a thousand dollars. That, I think, is about all."

  "What an extraordinary story," murmured Biggles.

  The Air-Commodore came back into the conversation. "Well, Bigglesworth, I think enough has been said to give you a pretty good idea of the situation," he observed. "Vale was abducted and taken to the remote heart of what is perhaps the most difficult country of access left in the world. We may assume that where he is, the other missing men will also be found. Vale got his message home and is now waiting for us to act Rescue isn't going to be easy. The map. such as it is, is vane. Only by great good fortune have we a man who has actually been over the country, otherwise our task would be almost hopeless. Not only have we appalling physical obstacles to overcome, but we shall in a way be trespassers in a foreign country. If we were sure that the lake is situated in China, or Manchuria, then it wouldn't matter overmuch; but if it happens to be in eastern Siberia, which is Russian territory—well, that might be a horse of a very different colour.

  And it isn't as though the point could be settled with any degree of certainty, because the boundaries are still a matter of dispute—not that there are any boundary posts, or anything like that. No one can say where Chinese, Russian, or Mongolian spheres of influence begin and end. Apart from the people we are up against, the whole country is infested by gangs of armed bandits to whom throat-cutting is the easiest and most natural way of disposing of anyone who crosses their path. But something will have to be done.