Chapter 6

A Miss Is As Good As A Mile

The following morning, after breakfast in their room, they came down to the foyer together to find the delegates sorting themselves out.

Biggles nudged Ginger. "Look," he murmured, indicating the man behind the reception desk, "there's Marcel. Wait here, I'm going to have a word with him."

As he went across to the desk, Mary-Lou came across and plumped herself down in a chair next to Ginger. In her usual brash manner she pumped him for as much information as she could, but he kept parrying her queries, cool but polite. In the end she looked at him hard. "I guess you British are just kinda reserved, ain't ya, honey?" she observed before moving off to inflict herself on one of the others.

Biggles came back. "What did she want?" he asked.

"To know everything there was to know about us," Ginger replied, thoughtfully. "I can't make up my mind if it's just natural nosiness or she thinks we're phoney. What did Marcel say?"

Unfortunately, he never had time to find out as the tour guide announced the departure of the coach and he was swept up in the general exodus.

Biggles joined the other delegates for the first paper of the session. Petersen filed into the conference room ahead of him, and Biggles took a seat at the end of the row, next to the window, where he could keep him in sight. The speaker may well have been excellent, Biggles felt he was in no position to judge, but the time hung heavy. He felt his eyes beginning to close. Struggling to keep awake, he looked at the other delegates. They seemed to be suffering from the same problem. The speaker's face seemed to be dark. He saw two men advancing down the centre aisle and their faces seemed to be dark, too.

Alarm bells rang in his head as he struggled to make his sluggish limbs obey him. Time seemed to stop. Everything happened in slow motion. Feeling he was walking through treacle he dragged himself to the window, thankful that it was only feet away, although it seemed more like a mile to his stupefied brain. 'If this doesn't open,' he thought, 'I might as well have stayed in London.' He struggled with the catch, the strength fading from his fingers. Just as he thought it would be too late, he felt it spring open and a rush of cold air struck him in the face. He gulped in draughts of refreshing clean air and felt his head clear.

Out of the corner of his eye as he hung over the windowsill, gasping, he glimpsed a figure being dragged out of the room. Still groggy, but with his strength returning by the minute, Biggles made after them. He passed Petersen slumped in his seat and experienced a moment's surprise. If not Petersen, he wondered, then who was being abducted? He wasted no time on idle speculation but plunged on. The door led to a long corridor. At the far end, a dumpy figure was being manhandled through the entrance to the street where a car was waiting. Biggles summoned all his reserves of energy to try to close the gap.

He almost made it. He reached the street just as the car door slammed and the Peugeot saloon shot off with a screech of tyres. Automatically he memorised the number plate. Not having any form of transport there was nothing he could do to follow them so he made his way back to reception to let Marcel know what had happened and ask him to get the commissariat to set up a search for the car.

He found Marcel surrounded by several groggy delegates, all talking at once. Biggles caught his arm and drew him to one side to give him the details of the getaway car the kidnappers had used. Marcel telephoned the commissariat immediately, but did not hold out much hope, expressing the opinion that it was probably stolen and would quickly be abandoned.

"Who is missing, have they found out yet?" asked Biggles.

The answer surprised him. "Professor Markham - the third," Marcel informed him with an emphasis on the ordinal. He looked at Biggles and waved his hand up and down in a typically French gesture. "Oh la, la, if they 'ave kidnap 'is wife, they 'ave my sympathy!"

Privately, Biggles thought Marcel's observation was a fair comment. He wondered how Ginger was faring and what method the kidnappers might use to secure the voluble Mary-Lou. He was worried that, like him, Ginger would not be expecting the American to be abducted and might be caught on the hop.