Fetters appeared. Shaw went back to the door and operated the bell again. He returned to the counter and banged on the wood. When this produced no result he went behind the counter and opened the inner door and he found P. J. Fetters stone cold dead on the floor of a shadowy room overfilled with stuffy Victoriana.
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 The weapon had been the same as before, only this time the steel shaft had been withdrawn before the killer had left.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