Part of Series

Biggles

Series · 103 books

By Johns W E, W. E. Johns, Capt. W.E. Johns, and more

Assistant-Commissioner Air Commodore Raymond asks Biggles to investigate the theft of a collection of rubies from Lord Langdon. Langdon suspects the thief is his former footman, Richard Browning, who has disappeared after being warned for being too familiar with Langdon's daughter, Caroline. Interviewing Lady Caroline gets Biggles nowhere as she is clearly protecting Browning. Biggles discovers that Browning is writing to Lady Caroline via her former nanny, Mrs. Smith and the letters are coming from Africa. The stamp on the letter is smudged but four letters "W-I-N-D" can be made out. Clues lead Biggles to suspect the letter is from Windhoek on the edge of the Kalahari Desert in South West Africa. Biggles and Bertie fly to Africa in an attempt to find Browning. Searching the Kalahari, they are shot at and this leads them to land at an old abandoned fort, called Fort Schwarz. Here they find a chained up leopard (the picture on the dust cover, together with a picture of (presumably) Biggles, a spear and a bullet). They also meet Mick Connor, Browning's former partner who says he knows nothing of Browning's whereabouts and is most unhelpful. Returning to their plane they have a confrontation with a wounded rhinoceros. That night Biggles goes to investigate the fort under the cover of darkness, and a native shoots at him with a bow and poisoned arrow. The following morning, Connor leaves the fort giving Biggles and Bertie a chance to search it thoroughly. Here they find Browning, injured after a plane crash and he tells them his story. Browning is in fact, the long lost son of Lord Langdon who got the job as footman to find out what his father was like. Browning says the rubies belong to his sister Lady Caroline and he only took them to hide them so that Lord Langdon couldn't sell them off. Lady Caroline knows their whereabouts, he says. Connor returns, having only left the fort in order to trap Biggles and Bertie. He cuts up rough but is killed by a native with a bow and poisoned arrow because he has previously murdered a native. Biggles returns to England to confront Lord Langdon with the result of his enquiries and enable the family to bury the hatchet.

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Author

W. E. Johns

Author · 119 books

Invariably known as Captain W.E. Johns, William Earl Johns was born in Bengeo, Hertfordshire, England. He was the son of Richard Eastman Johns, a tailor, and Elizabeth Johns (née Earl), the daughter of a master butcher. He had a younger brother, Russell Ernest Johns, who was born on 24 October 1895. He went to Hertford Grammar School where he was no great scholar but he did develop into a crack shot with a rifle. This fired his early ambition to be a soldier. He also attended evening classes at the local art school. In the summer of 1907 he was apprenticed to a county municipal surveyor where he remained for four years and then in 1912 he became a sanitary inspector in Swaffham, Norfolk. Soon after taking up this appointment, his father died of tuberculosis at the age of 47. On 6 October 1914 he married Maude Penelope Hunt (1882–1961), the daughter of the Reverend John Hunt, the vicar at Little Dunham in Norfolk. The couple had one son, William Earl Carmichael Johns, who was born in March 1916. With war looming he joined the Territorial Army as a Private in the King's Own Royal Regiment (Norfolk Yeomanry), a cavalry regiment. In August 1914 his regiment was mobilised and was in training and on home defence duties until September 1915 when they received embarkation orders for duty overseas. He fought at Gallipoli and in the Suez Canal area and, after moving to the Machine gun Corps, he took part in the spring offensive in Salonika in April 1917. He contracted malaria and whilst in hospital he put in for a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps and on 26 September 1917, he was given a temporary commission as a Second Lieutenant and posted back to England to learn to fly, which he did at No. 1 School of Aeronautics at Reading, where he was taught by a Captain Ashton. He was posted to No. 25 Flying Training School at Thetford where he had a charmed existence, once writing off three planes in three days. He moved to Yorkshire and was then posted to France and while on a bombing raid to Mannheim his plane was shot down and he was wounded. Captured by the Germans, he later escaped before being reincarcerated where he remained until the war ended.