SIX
P. J. Fetters had been an old man with silver hair. That hair was covered now by a black skull cap, a fitting tribute to the dead. Shaw knew all he needed to know about him. He had been a White Russian, and one of the founder-members of the NTS in London. His name at birth had been Serge Neruyin, and his father had been an officer of the Czar’s court at St. Petersburgh. Shaw looked quickly round the room. On either side of an empty fireplace were armchairs, dilapidated and overstuffed with bulging horsehair. The small space was burdened with a proliferation of P. J. Fetters’s wares — stamps mounted on sheets of squared paper, coins in frames and in specially fitted velvet-lined presentation boxes, curios ranging from stuffed baby crocodiles and the coloured shells of sea urchins to fearsome-looking weapons from all over the world. In a cage in the grimy window a dispirited canary sat glumly on its perch, staring at P. J. Fetters’s body with beady-eyed unhopefulness of ever again being fed. The floor and the general clutter of stock in the area below the suspended cage were liberally sprinkled with discarded birdseed husks.
Shaw bent down by the body, which was lying face downwards on the floor amid the clutter it had owned in life and debris from ransacked desk drawers and cupboards. There was a small hole in the back of the shabby jacket and when Shaw rolled the body over he saw the blood on the shirt-front around another tiny tear. The weapon had been the same as before, only this time the steel shaft had been withdrawn before the killer had left.
Shaw laid the body gently back. There was nothing he could do for P. J. Fetters now, but there was just a chance that the old man’s possessions might still yield up a few secrets — if the killer hadn’t done his job properly, that was; an unlikely enough thought.
Shaw began a quick but methodical search of the room. When he was about half way through and had found nothing the telephone bell rang. He reached for the instrument, pushed his handkerchief over the mouthpiece, and said in a brilliant imitation of an old man’s high, shaky voice, “Ya?”
There was a pause then a girl’s voice said in a foreign accent, “I am speaking to Mr. Fetters?”
Shaw said, “Ya… Mr. Fetters.”
“Ingrid Lange, Mr Fetters.” The voice was cool and competent. “It is about the translations. You understand?”
“I onderstand, ya.”
Again there was a pause, then the voice went on, “Savoy Hotel, in one hour. Please come to my room. This is convenient?” He assented and the girl rang off. He put back the instrument, frowning. This sounded interesting. He completed his search; it took him another twenty minutes and he still drew a blank. He looked down once again at P. J. Fetters, shrugged, and went out into the shop, closing the door of the private room behind him. As he went out into the street the shop bell gave its tinny knell. Shaw walked back to Tower Hill, not hurrying, keeping a sharp watch for anything likely to be a tail. He couldn’t identify one, though in fact it was only too possible that Spalinski’s and Fetters’s killer would assume he would be contacting the agencies of the NTS.
On the way through he stopped at a telephone box and rang Scotland Yard. This done he got into the Wankel and drove off, using a roundabout route, for the Strand and the Savoy Hotel.
By this time the men in the capsule had reached a high degree of weariness and apathy. They had had all the sleep they wanted and their condition was due more to the fight against their weightless state and to the sheer boredom of prolonged space travel. Schuster and Morris talked together a good deal — Danvers-Marshall seemed the odd man out. He hadn’t the shared link of an Air Force background, and up here in space the difference of nationality also seemed in some curious way accentuated. In the early stages he had found plenty to do and he had in fact been fully occupied; now, with much of his data collected and ready to be fed into the computers, he had time on his hands; and time, in space, hung heavily. The eyes of all three men were now red-rimmed and shadowed, and eyelids dropped constantly. All three, even though they had each other’s company, were feeling the effects of the utter alone-ness of space; to them this was perhaps their biggest enemy as they half-drowsed their way through the universe, passing time and again over the friendly voices of the ground stations so many miles below, making their routine checks, obeying medical orders and taking their ration of xylose tablets as necessary. At times they had all suffered from space-sickness, a feeling like sea-sickness brought on by the effects of weightlessness. It did curious things to their equilibrium, and Danvers-Marshall had had odd sensations of hanging upside down, or of being crouched like an animal on the floor.
As they passed yet again over Kennedy their families came on the air once more. The wives and children were well, but for the wives at any rate, as for the astronauts themselves, time was passing slowly and they would be relieved and happy once their menfolk were safe aboard the carrier that would be standing by in the Caribbean.
There was still no word from mission control of the threatened trouble.
SEVEN
In the Savoy Hotel Shaw told reception, “I’d like to see Miss Ingrid Lange.” Somehow, the ‘Miss’ fitted; the girl hadn’t sounded married. “She’s expecting me.”
“Yes, sir. What name is it?”
“Fetters. P. J. Fetters.”
“Very good, sir.” The clerk got on the phone and after a brief conversation said, “The lady would like you to go up, sir. Suite 604.“ He signalled a bell-hop. Shaw was whisked upwards in a lift and followed behind the bell-hop along a corridor, discreet, well-carpeted, quiet. The bell-hop knocked at Suite 604 and the girl’s voice came through faintly, “Please wait. I am just coming,” and a few moments later the door was opened and Shaw walked past the bell-hop into the lobby of the suite with his hand on the butt of the Beretta in his shoulder-holster.
The girl was around twenty-seven and as attractive as her voice. Her eyes widened but she stood demurely, with her hands behind her back. The bell-hop closed the door and left them to it. The girl said, “What is this? You are not Fetters?”
“No, I’m not. You’ve met him, Miss Lange?”
“No, but I know he is an old man.” She didn’t look scared and one reason for that became obvious when she brought her hands to the front. In the right was a tiny revolver aimed at Shaw’s guts. It wouldn’t hurt much at any range worth mentioning but right here in the small lobby it would make a lethal enough hole. “Who are you, please?”
Shaw said easily, “Let’s just say I’m Smith. As a matter of fact it was I who talked to you on the phone, believe it or not, an hour ago… from Fetters’s back room. You won’t need that gun, Miss Lange, I promise you. Can’t we go into your sitting-room and talk this thing out comfortably? My intentions are strictly honourable, I might add, though I fear it’s going to be quite a strain keeping them that way.”
Her eyes — blue eyes, reliable eyes — were steady as a rock over the top of the gun-hand, and that was steady too, but there was the faintest glimmer of amused appreciation in them. “Where,” she asked peremptorily, “is P. J. Fetters?”
“Fetters, I’m sorry to say, is dead.”
“You killed him?”
He shook his head. “Certainly not. He was dead when I arrived. I’d hoped to find him very much alive.”
“Why?”
Shaw grinned. “For one thing because I hate to think of anybody on my side not being alive. For another, and more important currently, I wanted some information from him.”
“And you are here because I happened to telephone, and you think I may be able to give you some information in his place?”