Chapter 1
An Unexpected Visitor
When Biggles—Squadron Leader James Bigglesworth, D.S.O., D.F.C.,*1 to give him his proper name and rank—when Biggles was informed by ‘Toddy’, the Station Adjutant,*2 that Air Commodore Raymond of Air Intelligence had been on the telephone, requesting his presence forthwith at the Air Ministry to meet an old acquaintance, he hazarded several guesses as to who it might be. None was right. In fact, as he subsequently admitted to Algy Lacey, had he made as many guesses as an airscrew turns during a three-hour sortie, he would still have been wrong.
His arrival at Air Intelligence Headquarters was followed by a procedure so unusual as to mystify him further. Instead of being shown direct into the Air Commodore’s private office, as was customary, he was taken by a messenger to an ante-room where he was requested to wait, and where, presently, Air Commodore Raymond, Deputy Director of Air Intelligence, joined him. No time was wasted in idle conversation. As soon as greetings had been exchanged, seats taken and cigarettes lighted, the Air Commodore gave Biggles the answer to the question that had exercised his mind all the way from the station to the Ministry.
‘Did you ever, in your travels, meet a Chinaman named Li Chi?’ he inquired.
Biggles was so taken aback that he made no attempt to conceal his astonishment. He stared blankly at the Air Commodore for a full ten seconds before he answered. ‘Why—er—yes . . . as a matter of fact I did. It was a long time ago though.’
The Air Commodore nodded. ‘The Chinese have long memories.’
‘Evidently. I’d forgotten the existence of the fellow.’
‘He hasn’t forgotten you, apparently.’ The Air Commodore leaned forward, eyes questioning. ‘What do you know about him?’
‘Very little,’ replied Biggles cautiously. ‘He was educated in this country, finishing at Oxford. Speaks English as well as I do—better, maybe. Plenty of money. He told me on the one occasion that we met that his father was a wealthy merchant in Shanghai. Li Chi was not his real name; actually it’s the name of a Chinese fruit; but it was the name by which he was known from the China Sea to the Bay of Bengal. I won’t say he was a crook because crook is an ugly word; but he was a smuggler in a big way of business. His special line was running opium into India. He had a nice sense of humour, understood the meaning of gratitude, and must have known the seaboards and islands of the Indian Ocean better than any man on earth. That’s all.’
The Air Commodore gave Biggles a curious look. ‘How did you come to meet this unusual individual?’
Biggles smiled. ‘I don’t know that I care to tell you.’
‘Why not?’
‘No man need give evidence that may subsequently be used against him.’
‘Don’t be so infernally evasive. Just what do you mean?’
‘I was once an accessory—an innocent accessory, I must say in fairness to myself—to a crime.’
‘What was the crime?’
‘Helping a man to escape from the long arm of British law.’
‘A criminal!’
‘No. You can’t say that. He was never brought to trial, so was never convicted. Say alleged criminal, if you like.’
‘I imagine there wasn’t much doubt about it?’ said the Air Commodore drily.
Biggles’ smile broadened. ‘You’re quite right—there wasn’t.’
‘Tell me what happened,’ invited the Air Commodore.
Biggles hesitated. ‘It’s a longish story.’
‘No matter—tell me. I have good reasons for asking.’
‘Very well. Here, as brief as I can make it, is the yarn.*3 About 1934 or ’35—speaking from memory—I was flying home from the Far East in an amphibious aircraft*4 named the Vandal. Algy Lacey was with me. At that time we were freelance civil pilots and had been East on a private venture. Coming up the coast of Malaya, on the run from Penang to Rangoon, we saw a raft floating on the sea, with a body on it. We went down. The body turned out to be that of a Chinaman. He wasn’t dead, but he was all in. After we had brought him round he told us that his name was Ho Sing. His junk*5 had been sunk—so he said—by the notorious pirate Li Chi. I wanted to push on to Rangoon and suggested taking him there, but he offered me five thousand Malay dollars to take him first to Penang and then on to an island of the Mergui Archipelago, where his crew had been marooned. As you probably know, the Archipelago is strung out along the west coast of the Isthmus of Malaya and Lower Burma, so it wasn’t far out of my way. I accepted his offer, put him ashore on the island, collected my fee and went on to Rangoon, where I got a nasty shock. I learned that Li Chi had been captured a few days earlier by a British sloop, the Cormorant, Captain Starkey, R.N. But Starkey couldn’t hold his man. After dark Li Chi took a header into the sea and got away. He took a sporting chance with his life, for if the Vandal hadn’t come along he would have died.’
‘You mean —?’
‘The man I picked up was not Ho Sing. It was Li Chi himself—no less. I swallowed his fiction story about Ho Sing like a kid sucking an orange.’
‘Are you sure of this?’
‘Quite sure. You see, when I left Ho Sing—as he called himself—he gave me a packet, not to be opened until I reached Rangoon. When I opened it I found inside a pair of superb pink pearls, with a note thanking me for my kindness. It was signed Li Chi. Algy was there—he’ll confirm it. As a matter of detail we subsequently sold the pearls in Paris for £8,000, which provided us with some badly needed pocket money. We were within our rights. The pearls were a present. The fact that the donor was a wanted man made no difference. There was no indication that the pearls had been stolen. Li Chi’s legitimate business in the islands was pearling, so I was satisfied in my mind that they had come from the bed of the sea, and not from a stolen necklace. Anyway, I ascertained that Li Chi paid the Indian government for his pearling concession. There was no humbug about that. His smuggling activities were a sideline, and I’m inclined to think he did it as much for sport as for any other reason. He didn’t really need money. Now you know what I meant when I said he had a sense of humour and appreciated gratitude. He must have laughed up his sleeve at the way the two English simpletons accepted his yarn about Ho Sing.’
‘What did you do about this at the time?’
‘Frankly, nothing. For one thing it was no business of mine. I was not even a serving officer, much less a policeman. And secondly, you may be sure that I did not want to advertise the fact that I’d been sold a pup.*6 Had the story got out I should have been the laughing stock of every aero club between London and Singapore.’
‘Sounds like bribery and corruption to me.’
‘Nothing of the sort,’ protested Biggles. ‘The pearls were not a bribe. By the time I had received them the job had been done and he was clear away. He need not have given them to me. The fact that he did reveals a sense of genuine gratitude. If it comes to that he needn’t have given me the promised five thousand dollars for putting him on the island. His crew were there. There was nothing to prevent Li Chi from making his escape secure by murdering the pair of us and scuttling our aircraft. As it was he took a risk of our telling the authorities where he was hiding. Maybe that’s another reason why we kept our mouths shut about the affair. I never saw him again, nor heard of him. Well, now you know the whole story, what about Li Chi?’
‘He’s here.’
‘Here!’
‘In my office.’
‘Under arrest?’
‘Not exactly. He gave himself up at Calcutta two months ago—but not, you may be sure, from any feeling of remorse or desire to do penance. Whatever else he may or may not be, he’s a Chinaman, and to say that he hates the Japs for what they have done to China is to express his feelings mildly. He says—and it may be true—that the Japs in Shanghai decapitated his father for refusing to give them certain information. When you kill a parent in a country where ancestor worship is a religion, you start something, and I imagine that Li Chi’s one ambition in life now is to do a spot of decapitating himself. Actually, he came to us with an idea which he thinks will annoy the Japs and at the same time do us a bit of good.’
Biggles drew a deep breath, a light of understanding in his eyes. ‘Ah! I get it,’ he breathed. ‘What’s the big idea about?’
‘A certain war*7 commodity—one which at this moment is nearly worth its weight in gold—rubber. Come in and have a word with him yourself. He claimed that he knew you, and I was anxious to confirm that this was a fact before I brought you together. I know you have some odd friends scattered up and down the globe—’
‘While men are decent to me I try to be decent to them, regardless of race, colour, politics, creed, or anything else,’ asserted Biggles curtly. ‘I’ve travelled a bit, and taking the world by and large, it’s my experience that with a few exceptions there’s nothing wrong with the people on it, if only they were left alone to live as they want to live.’
‘All right—all right,’ said the Air Commodore soothingly as he got up. ‘Let’s go and see Li Chi.’
Biggles renewed acquaintanceship with the man who had so neatly beguiled him, with a smile that was friendly, but held a suspicion of reproach. The Chinaman, immaculately dressed in European style, was not in the least embarrassed. He too, smiled—the elusive, enigmatic smile of the Orient that might mean anything. Rising from the chair in which he had been seated he bowed from the waist.
‘That we should meet once was written in the Book of Fate,’ he said gravely, in smooth, polished English. ‘That our paths should cross again is an honour I do not deserve.’
‘I’ll reserve my opinion until I see the outcome of the meeting,’ returned Biggles cautiously. ‘Life has treated you kindly. You haven’t aged a day since I last saw you.’
‘We Chinese grow old slowly,’ answered Li Chi simply. ‘You too, have carried the years well, if I may say so without impertinence.’
‘When you’ve finished handing each other bouquets, suppose we get down to business,’ suggested the Air Commodore. ‘Be seated, gentlemen.’ He looked at Biggles. ‘Mr Li Chi has a plan. He has already talked with me about it. I will now ask him to repeat it, so that we may have your opinion of it.’
Biggles turned to Li Chi. ‘Please proceed. Knowing the East as you do, anything you say will be worth hearing.’
‘Thank you,’ acknowledged Li Chi. Sitting back, with his fingers together, he went on. ‘Britain needs rubber. Before the war most of the rubber of commerce came from Malaya.*8 Now Japan has captured Malaya*9 there is not as much rubber available for the Allies as they would wish.’
‘That is something all the world knows,’ assented Biggles.
‘My plan is to provide Britain with rubber from Malaya,’ said Li Chi blandly.
Biggles waited for a moment. ‘Go on.’
‘That is all.’
‘You have not forgotten that the Japanese occupy Malaya, that they, too, need rubber, and would object strongly to our sharing it with them?’
‘I have not forgotten. They will not miss what they do not know exists.’
‘You think Malayan rubber can be made to vanish into thin air?’
Li Chi smiled. ‘Thin air, or thick—it does not matter which, as long as an aeroplane can fly through it.’
‘I see,’ murmured Biggles thoughtfully. ‘You have a plan for collecting rubber in Malaya and transporting it by air to India, or some other convenient place?’
Li Chi bowed. ‘Precisely.’
‘Now, suppose you tell us just how this is to be accomplished,’ requested Biggles.