Biggles Sees Too Much by Captain W E Johns

Author:Captain W E Johns [Johns, Captain W E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adventure
Published: 2012-06-19T18:50:55+00:00

CHAPTER 10

ACTION IS PLANNED

BERTTE drove the car some distance from the village until, coming to a lay-by in the usual high banks to allow vehicles to pass, Biggles ordered him to stop. ‘This’ll do,’ he said. ‘Now we can talk. It’s time we compared notes. Bertie, you go first. What’s your news? Make it short because things are moving fast and we’ve no time to lose.’

‘Right you are. Fasten your safety belt, old boy, because you’re going to need it,’ began Bertie.

‘Get on with it, you’re wasting time,’ Biggles said curtly.

‘Okay — okay. Don’t rush me,’ complained Bertie. ‘I’ll start from where I left you last night to fetch your pyjamas so that you could spend the night at Penlock. When I got to our pub in Polcarron I found that Tom the barman was no longer there. There was a new man behind the bar. He told me Tom had walked out. That was a lie. He was sacked at a moment’s notice.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘He told me so himself. He stopped me when I was on my way back to Penlock with your kit. When I got to Penlock you weren’t there. I waited for hours. You didn’t show up. What could I do?’

‘What did you do?’

‘I parked the haversack at your lodging and went back to “The Fishermen’s Arms” for the night. I didn’t feel like sitting in the bally car all night, in the village, where I might have been spotted by somebody from the Grange. This morning I got up early feeling sure I’d find you at Fernside Cottage. When I went down to snatch a bite of breakfast there was a rumpus going on in the hall. It was the police.’

‘What police?’

‘The local lads, of course.’

‘It’ll complicate things if they’re going to barge in. What did they want?’

‘They were asking questions about Tom.’

‘What had he done?’

‘Nothing. He couldn’t do anything. He was dead.’

Biggles stared. ‘Dead!’

‘His body had been found on the beach at the foot of the cliff.’

‘Are you saying he’d killed himself?’

‘No. I don’t believe that. He was as right as rain when he’d spoken to me a few hours earlier. He told me he’d been sacked, so he’d taken a room in the village until he could get another job. He said he’d been sacked because there was something crooked going on at the pub and he’d tried to find out what it was. It looks to me as if they weren’t satisfied with sacking him, but they bumped him off to prevent him doing any more talking.’

‘Talking to whom?’

‘To me, perhaps. I know someone was watching us when we were talking in the car.’

‘So you think he was murdered?’

‘I’m convinced of it. He didn’t talk to me like a man who was contemplating suicide. He was cold sober, so I don’t see how it could have been an accident. He left me to go to his new quarters, nowhere near the cliff.’

Biggles was silent for a moment, his lips in a hard fine.

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