Skyprobe by Philip McCutchan Page B

brought up both guns and he had hardly done this when Thixey and Moss and Kortweiler came round the corner, quietly but apparently without any suspicions at all—and then stopped dead.
    Shaw fired point-blank with both guns.
    The three men pressed back in a panic. Moss wasn’t quite quick enough to get clear and he died with a bullet in his chest, coughing up a good deal of lung before the end came. The other two vanished temporarily. Shaw moved along, carefully, not too fast, waiting for someone to show. The one that moved and showed was Thixey, behind a heavy Luger, but he hadn’t a chance to use it before Shaw’s bullet took him in the throat and he keeled over in a gush of blood. Kortweiler didn’t wait to carry on the battle. He turned and ran into the hall, dodging Shaw’s fire, and made for the front door. Here he turned and aimed his gun at Shaw, but Shaw got him with his next shot, through the chest like Moss.
    Shaw lowered his guns.
    It was a pity about Thixey, who could have been made to talk, but it couldn’t be helped now. At least the way out was clear—but first Shaw had to make a close check right through the house. Among other things he rather hoped to find Rencke, who had been totally absent throughout all the persuasion proceedings earlier; but in the event the check produced nothing whatever, except Beatty, who was still out cold. It was only too obvious that Beatty would never have been put in possession of any hard facts and Shaw was far from keen to have his getaway lumbered by an unconscious girl. . . the Special Branch could clean up this place and they could put Beatty into hospital, under a security guard if they felt she was worth it. . . .
    Shaw used some of the rope from the gallows to tie Beatty up securely and then, once he was satisfied he had missed nothing, he left the house and headed through the night for Purfleet. He made the journey on foot. Somebody, probably Rencke who must have pushed off earlier, had already taken the car.
THIRTEEN
    “Right,” Latymer said into the telephone. He’d been fast asleep but there had been no sleep in his voice or in his reactions when Shaw had come on the line from a police station. “Get round here at once. There have been other developments—I’ll tell you when you get here.” He reached out and adjusted the shade of the bedside lamp. “Meanwhile I’ll contact the Special Branch and have ’em take over the Purfleet set-up, and I’ll also have another call put out for Rencke—and I’ll see if I can get the Polish ship intercepted.” He rang off, lay back for a moment with his eyes closed, then got busy on the phone again. When some while later Shaw arrived he found Latymer wearing a blue silk dressing-gown and drinking old brandy out of a balloon glass that reminded him irresistibly of Beatty.
    Latymer stared. “You look a little frayed, but I’m glad to see you’re in one piece,” he said. “I dare say you can do with a drink. Help yourself.”
    “Thank you, sir.” Shaw went over to a tray and poured a stiff whisky.
    Latymer said, “I take it you won’t have heard about the spacecraft.”
    “What’s new?” Shaw turned, with his glass in his hand. “Washington ordered them to ditch . . . but the retro-rockets failed. Schuster and Morris spent the next two orbits checking right through and they found no fault whatever anywhere—and I gather it has no connection with the slight fuel cell trouble they ran into earlier. They tried to go into retro-sequence again on the third orbit after, and the same thing happened.”
    Shaw whistled. “Anything else known, sir?”
    “Nothing. Which is not to say you won’t be able to read all about it by tomorrow evening, or I should say this evening . . . in all the world’s known languages! This is going to be a Pressman’s dream of paradise, and there’s going to be any amount of speculation flying around.” He lit a cigarette.
    Shaw asked, “What’s the official