WORRALS FLIES AGAIN
First Published in September 1942 - 220 pages
Although
this was in fact the second Worrals book published (in date order) it contains
the third Worrals story. This is because the story in the third book published
in October 1942, Worrals
Carries On first appeared as a serialisation in the Girl's Own Paper
between October 1941 and September 1942. The second Worrals book published in
September 1942, Worrals
Flies Again, contained a story that had been serialised in Girl's Own
Paper between October 1942 and December 1943 and from the content, it is
clear that it was written after Worrals Carries On.
The original first edition dust jacket showing
the original book price of 5 shillings.
WORRALS FLIES AGAIN
CHAPTERS
Click on any chapter for a summary of the events in that chapter or
see the general story summary below
Worrals
is summoned to meet Squadron Leader Marcus Yorke. He wants Worrals to hide an
aircraft at the Chateau Delarose in France, so that
it can be used to fly urgent messages from French spies back to England. A
pilot will also be required to stay with the machine. Worrals and Frecks fly to the Chateau in France only to find out that
it has now be taken over by German troops. Meeting with the custodians,
Monsieur and Madame Mundier, together with their
insane son Lucien, Worrals is still able to hide her small aircraft in the vast
cellars of the Chateau without being discovered. Worrals and Frecks then pose as visiting nieces. Meeting with the
German Officers, who boast they have captured a spy, Worrals is shown the
suspicious item the spy was carrying. It is Page 137 out of a book, L'Histoire de la Revolution. The German in
charge is Oberleutnant Schaffer and he is astonished to be told that his
captured spy has escaped from a locked room. Worrals resolves to steal the
message from Schaffer's tunic when he is sleeping and replace it with another
page from the same book. She finds a copy of the same book in the Chateau as it
is a very popular book in France, but Page 137 is missing. Worrals takes Page
139 but is thwarted in her attempt to steal the original from Schaffer when a
shadowy figure beats her to it. She leaves Page 139 nearby in the hope that
Schaffer will think he had dropped it and got the page number wrong. The
following day the Chateau is visited by a sinister nun who decides to leaf
through the book, L'Histoire de la Revolution.
To everyone's surprise all the pages are complete! After the nun leaves,
Worrals tells everybody that she had realised from a prior description and
photograph, that the nun was in fact a man, Wilhelm von Brandisch
of the Gestapo. Worrals is left a message, this time contained in Page 421 of
the same book as before and she decides to fly what must be an important
message home, while the weather is bad enough to cover her departure. After she
has left, Frecks is shocked to discover the Germans
wiring the field they have used. When Worrals' plane returns it crashes and
bursts into flame! Frecks rushes to her room, only to
be later confronted by von Brandisch of the Gestapo!
Meanwhile, we learn that Worrals was not in the plane having had cause to stop
on her return journey to deliver homing pigeons to another French agent. The
Germans had captured her plane and one of them had flown it back to the
Chateau. Worrals returns to the Chateau just in time to see von Brandisch confronting Frecks.
Expecting to be confronted as spies, the girls are surprised when von Brandisch asks them to spy for him. The next day Worrals
decides to release a homing pigeon from the roof of the Chateau to take word of
the loss of their plane back to England. On the roof the other German Officer, Lowenhardt catches them. Lucien and a mysterious man kill
him. This person, called Raoul, is the spy who escaped and the same man who
took the message from Schaffer. Lucien is not mad at all,
it is merely his cover for his work with the French Resistance. Worrals wonders
what Lowenhardt was doing on the roof and realises
that he was installing a microphone to 'bug' their room. Worrals goes to von Brandisch's office to report a find of a German Officer's
uniform by the side of the river - in an attempt to cover the disappearance of Lowenhardt. At the Gestapo office she bumps into her old
friend Bill Ashton who has been captured. The Gestapo have also arrested
Monsieur Mundier. He and his wife are really the
Count and Countess de la Rose and the Chateau is their home and Lucien their
son. With a clever plan, Worrals helps both Bill and the Count escape back to
the Chateau. Von Brandisch takes Worrals back to the
Chateau but she is able to disappear into one of the many secret
hidden passages that the Chateau has. Our heroes are smuggled out of the
Chateau and out of France, back to England.
Click here to see the story illustrations from this book
The original artwork for this book is currently in my private
collection both the cover and the colour frontispiece.
This was the first artwork Leslie
Stead ever did for a W. E. Johns book.
French edition Published by Les Presses
De La Cite in 1951 Worrals Courrier Secret (Worrals Secret Courier)
Frontispiece
Click on
the pictures above to see them in more detail.
On the left is the original proof copy, hand amended by Johns himself to
change the text. On the right is the first
edition after amendment by Johns
Worrals Flies Again
Subtitle - none
Publication Details - published by Hodder and Stoughton
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The front boards of the first four editions - September 1942 -
November 1942 June 1948 and November 1949 used Steads illustration of
Worrals as a vignette