A Question of Time

Chapter 4

Standing just inside the front door of the Tyrrell House, Joe asked the old woman quietly: "You say you heard Cathy's voice just now, Mrs. Tyrrell?"

She nodded. "I did." Her tone was challenging, ready to deal with skepticism.

"But you didn't see her?"

"No. I heard her, though. Almost as if in a dream—but I was wide awake."

Joe nodded, noncommittally. Brainard, standing a little behind his aunt, smiled nervously. Maria thought there was hostility, strangely mingled with relief, in the glance he directed at the strangers crowding the stone entryway.

Joe looked around, and asked: "What room were you in when you heard Cathy speaking to you, Mrs. Tyrrell?"

"I was lying down, in my bedroom—I presume all these people are experienced?" Mrs. Tyrrell had obviously decided to change the subject.

"They are." Joe let the matter of Cathy's voice drop for the time being.

In the course of the introductions, everyone had moved into the living room from the entryway. Maria noticed that Brainard kept glancing at the windows.

Following his gaze, she noted that the very sky looked bitterly cold out there as the daylight faded steadily, and the temperature in the house was certainly low enough to justify a good sweater. The only heat, in this room at least, seemed to be coming from a small blaze in the fireplace beside the entry.

"Have you planned your search for my daughter?" Brainard was asking Joe.

"Not yet, sir; not really."

Brainard shook his head and would have had more to say, but the actual client had no intention of letting her nephew take over. Sarah interrupted briskly, inviting Joe into another room to have a private talk. Maria got the impression that the old lady and her nephew were at odds over something, perhaps over a number of things. Perhaps chronically. It also seemed evident that Brainard didn't quite dare to argue openly with his aunt.

Joe paused before following his client into the next room. He said to his colleagues: "Why don't you three wait outside—take a little look around while you have the chance."

As if on impulse, Sarah interrupted, speaking to Maria: "Why don't you wait in here, my dear? Not outside." Maria thought the sharpness of the old woman's gaze mellowed as it came to rest on her.

Maria looked at her boss, who nodded. John and Bill nodded in turn, and retreated out through the front door.

"Do you speak Spanish, my dear?" Aunt Sarah asked, as soon as the door was closed. "I used to try to practice that language, a great many years ago."

Maria decided that now would not be the best time to put that practice to the test. Staying with English for the moment, she munnured something intended to be noncommital.

With a vague, distracted smile, Sarah turned away. "If you would come this way, Mr. Keogh?"

"Certainly." Joe followed Aunt Sarah into an adjoining room—Maria caught a glimpse of mellow lamplight, and booklined shelves—and the old lady closed the door.

The entrance at the level of the rim walk had brought the visitors into the house on its highest floor. What little Maria had seen of the interior so far seemed fitting for the dwelling's location. The log walls and stone fireplace were decked by a number of animal trophies, fossils, and what appeared to be Indian artifacts, along with a few small sculptures. In this large room, a couple of electric table lamps were dim enough to allow the firelight to make a pleasant show. Under other circumstances, Maria thought, the room would have been quite cheerful.

At the moment Maria found herself left alone with Brainard, who was watching her suspiciously, as if he thought she might pocket a souvenir as soon as his attention flagged.

Not easily perturbed by what she considered boorish behavior, she might have rather enjoyed a stare-down. But in the interests of peace Maria decided on the diplomatic course instead, and turned away to stroll about and study the interesting furnishings without touching them. And promptly discovered that the furnishings, or some of them at least, really were of interest. The sculptures she had noted earlier, little carven stone animals, perched on some of the rough wood shelves and tables, reminded her of something similar she had seen very recently—yes, in the window of a gift shop in El Tovar.

Turning to Brainard, she gestured—from a safe distance—at a carving. "This must be a Tyrrell?"

He seemed somewhat mollified. "Yes. A reproduction, of course. The insurance company wouldn't let us keep any of the originals in here. The house is unoccupied most of the time."

"I saw some others in the gift shop."

Brainard nodded, his mind obviously already drifting elsewhere. He took out a cigarette and lit it absently, neither offering Maria the pack nor asking if smoke bothered her. Well, it was his house—at least it certainly wasn't hers.

Maria didn't ask, either, for permission to pick up the next carving, the shape of a beaverish-looking animal, which sat waiting invitingly on a small table. Something about it seemed to draw her, and it felt—right—in her hands.

Brainard didn't object. Perhaps he didn't notice. He was staring at the windows again, listening to the wind, paying Maria little or no attention.

So, this gray, authentic-feeling and -looking object was actually only a reproduction…

In the next room, Mrs. Tyrrell had turned from closing the door to say to Joe: "Mr. Keogh, I have been given to understand that you have—some considerable experience investigating matters that lie beyond—shall we say, beyond the normal?"

Joe, who approved of getting right down to business, looked at her attentively. "Who gave you to understand that, ma'am?"

"Someone you have helped. Does it matter?"

"Maybe not. To answer your question, yes, in the course of business, over the last few years, I have been asked to look at some peculiar things. I'm convinced that not everyone who reports an experience beyond the normal is a crackpot. Because I'd have to count myself as crazy if I said that."

The old lady considered him. Evidently she saw something comforting. "I am reassured, Mr. Keogh. Please, sit down."

They both took chairs. Then Joe said: "Let's get back to a moment ago, when you say you heard young Cathy's voice. Did it just seem to come out of the air, or what?"

Aunt Sarah's smile was almost sheepish. "I might possibly have been mistaken about her voice."

"Oh?"

"Mr. Keogh, I shall pay you the compliment of speaking openly. The point I do want to make is that I am sure she is near to us as we speak. Very well, I heard no voice. Yet I feel I must convince you that Cathy is somewhere near, though not accessible to any ordinary search."

"Where is she, then?"

"That is a long story. I will tell it, but the telling will take time. Can you, for the time being, accept as a fact that she is near?"

Joe thought, then answered carefully. "All right, I can accept, at least provisionally, that you have reason to think she is somewhere nearby. Is she being held against her will, do you think?"

Old Sarah nodded solemnly. "I fear she may be. I want her found, and brought back to me safely. The police had no chance of even finding her, let alone—enabling her to return. I would like to think that your chances are much better."

"Let's hope so. Cathy's father seems to have less confidence in me than you do."

The old lady sighed faintly. "My nephew is fond, in his way, of his adopted daughter. And he is really frightened lest harm should come to her. But—I fear that Gerald is currently even more afraid of other things."

"Other things such as what?"

"Mr. Keogh, I fear we are digressing." Old Sarah paused, ruminating. Then she asked: "What do you know of my late husband?"

Joe took his time, then spoke carefully. "Did you say 'late,' Mrs. Tyrrell?"

The old lady, with wariness and hope blended in her expression, had already been gazing almost steadily at Joe's face. But now the scrutiny became even more intense. The silence in the room stretched out. Only the voice of wind sounded, whining in the fireplace, and around some exterior angle of the rough log walls.

At last the eyes of the old woman gleamed. "Then you do know. You understand."

He nodded slightly. "I know of the nosferatu. Yes. And I understand a little of their ways. And that your husband is still very much alive, as one of them."

The keen eyes closed, briefly. "Thank God," the old woman whispered. "Thank God, for sending me someone I can talk to in this matter. This matter of the undead." Sarah's eyes opened. "There has been almost no one to talk to, on this subject, for more than fifty years."

Joe said, almost lightly: "Sometimes they find it amusing, when you call them that. Undead." Wind whined again, making him glance at the windows. "The sun is setting, Mrs. Tyrrell. Are you expecting your husband to visit this house tonight?"

She shook her head. "How often he may come here, stand in this room, or in his old studio downstairs, I do not know. But I doubt very much that he will pay a visit while I am present. I have not seen Edgar for many years, nor do I think that he wants to see me. But I do fear that he may be involved in Cathy's disappearance."

"Why do you fear that?"

Aunt Sarah drew a shawl more firmly around her shoulders. "I know my husband, Mr. Keogh. He is near us as we speak, even as Cathy is—and I warn you that he is deadly dangerous—no doubt, if you understand as much as you say you do, you have some appreciation of how dangerous one of them can be. And even of his kind, he is not ordinary."

"I can believe that."

"Can you? Then are you ready to try to deal with him?" When Joe was slow in answering, she demanded fiercely: "You are a simple, mortal, human being, like me.Tell me, what help have you to count on, besides those innocent young people who came with you to my door? What powers?"

Joe did not answer directly. "First I'd like you to tell me more about your husband, Mrs. Tyrrell. When did you last see him?"

"Mr. Keogh, I have not seen or spoken with my husband in more than half a century." She looked up at the exposed logs that braced the roof. "Not since I lived withhim, here. And in another house—nearby."

"You separated over fifty years ago. And you've never tried to contact him in all that time?"

"I have not. We parted under conditions of bitter recrimination."

"And has he ever tried to make contact with you, during the past half century?"

"My husband is a vampire, Mr. Keogh."

"I understand that."

"Then surely, you must understand that I could not have hidden from him had he really wanted to find me. Therefore he has never tried."

Joe shook his head. "Vampires, thank God, are not all powerful, any more than the rest of us are. Thank God also for our limitations. Now tell me—the absolute truth this time—about your last contact with Cathy."

Again old Sarah sighed. "I had a postcard from her, when she was here at Thanksgiving. A routine message, mailed the day before she disappeared. There was nothing in it, no hint, to suggest that she was about to vanish voluntarily."

"And where were you when she disappeared?"

"In the hospital, back in Boston. Only recently have I recovered sufficiently to come here and begin a real search for her. None of those who searched earlier had the vaguest idea of how to go about it."

Joe nodded. Then he said: "I understand that Cathy and several of her friends from school were staying here at the Park. But not in this house."

"That is correct. Gerald stays overnight in this building from time to time, when he comes here to the Park on business having to do with my husband's estate—of course Edgar was declared legally dead a great many years ago."

"I see—or maybe I don't, exactly. What kind of business brings Gerald here?"

Sarah chose the words of her explanation carefully. "In the art world, Mr. Keogh, it is rumored and commonly believed that Gerald and I have hidden a number of original works by my husband, works executed decades ago, and that we place one or two of these on the market every year. I believe opinion is divided as to whether the hiding place of this treasure trove is really here—somewhere in the vicinity of this house—or whether my nephew's occasional visits are only misdirection.

"Actually, of course, he comes here to meet Edgar." The old lady paused, looking at Joe as if defying him to prove himself after all incapable of understanding.

Joe only nodded. "Your nephew periodically meets your husband. Go on, please."

Sarah relaxed somewhat. "Generally, in the course of the meeting, Gerald receives from Edgar a new carving or two—you'll have to speak to Gerald if you want to know the details of their arrangement. He may, of course, try to deny the whole thing as preposterous, and insist that Edgar has been dead for fifty years."

"I'll have to talk to him. Gerald, I mean."

A log cracked in the fireplace; Joe tried to keep himself from starting at the noise. He knew too much about the nosferatu to stay calm when he dealt with them.

"A question on another subject, Mrs. Tyrrell."

"Yes?"

"What are the terms of your will?"

"There's no secret about that. The bulk of my wealth will go to Cathy when I die."

"Not to her father."

"No. Gerald is—not a responsible person when it comes to money. And I am fond of the girl."

"Of course. And if Cathy should die, or be declared dead, before you die?"

"At the moment, Gerald would inherit everything. Mr. Keogh, I am now seriously thinking of altering that provision of my will."

"Does Gerald know that?"

"He probably suspects it. Mr. Keogh, my nephew is not an evil man, and I cannot imagine that he would harm his own daughter—though she is, as I believe I have mentioned, adopted. But Gerald is under great pressure at the moment. Will it be possible for you to guard this house tonight?"

"Guard it? Mrs. Tyrrell, if your husband should decide to visit, there's nothing I can do to prevent him. Not tonight, anyway—you understand that?"

She shook her head impatiently. "I understand that. The people Gerald fears are much more common creatures than my Edgar. My nephew will feel better if the house is watched."

"Certainly, we can keep an eye on things, if that's what you want. Who is he afraid of?"

"He has not told me exactly. But I believe it is a matter of gambling debts."

"I see."

"Then I suggest you make your arrangements now, to have some people watch the house. First things first. Later you and I can talk about my husband. And about Cathy."

"All right." Joe got up from his chair and went back into the living room, where with a nod he indicated to Maria that she should now attach herself to the client.

Brainard was standing on the far side of the living room, chewing absently on an unlit cigar.

Joe asked him: "Want to give me a guided tour? Your aunt would like us to keep watch over the place tonight."

The stocky man relaxed a trifle. "Gladly."

The house was of a unique design, partially due to its situation on and beyond the very brink, and partially by what had evidently been the builder's whim. The design was part Western and part fantastic, three stories high. Two bedrooms occupied most of the middle level. The two upper stories were of log construction. Steep interior stairways connected all three floors. The lowest level, mainly of stone, was partially supported by a rocky ledge a few yards below the rim. Here Joe and his guide looked into a large room, lighted by large northern windows, which Brainard said had served as Tyrrell's studio.

Back in the main part of the house, Brainard kicked aside an Indian rug, revealing a trapdoor. Unlatching and raising this door exposed darkness underfoot, and timber piers on which the building was supported. Attached to one of these log columns, a wooden ladder went down twelve or fifteen feet to a worn spot on the rocky ground, from which a barely visible trail descended the steep slope.

"It'd be easy," Brainard muttered, "for someone to come up this way, and set fire to the place."

"I'll put at least one man down here," Joe assured him. "Don't worry."

In five minutes, Joe had some people posted. John Southerland was out on the paved and civilized walk along the rim. Expecting that diplomacy would be at least as important as athletic ability in dealing with anyone who approached the house openly, from this direction, Joe put his most experienced and trusted man here. John was standing in a strategically chosen place where he remained shadowed from the streetlights, and from which he could see anyone who approached the house from the front.

Joe himself went down with Bill to the slope just below the house. "Let's figure," said Joe in a low voice, "that the hour after sunset may be the most dangerous."

"Why?" asked Bill, with interest.

Joe ignored the question. "So we'll set a double guard for an hour or so. You on one side of the path, me on the other."

Bill quietly told Joe that he wished he had had a chance to scout the terrain out in daylight. But there just hadn't been time.

Joe, earlier in the day, had had the opportunity to look over the steep slope. Now he did what he could to describe the lay of the land to Bill.

"Main thing to remember is that it's a long way down, and that it's steep. The trails going down all switchback, and there are some really sheer dropoffs."

"I can believe all that," Bill responded. What little he could see now of the terrain strongly suggested that the spot of level ground where they were standing was only a small ledge.

Neither man had used his flashlight yet. With the lingering traces of daylight baffled by persistent clouds of mist, the awesome dimensions of the Canyon remained concealed—though the mist was now beginning to sink into the depths.

Joe pointed. "I'll be right over there, about thirty yards. The tree with a long branch that looks like an arm?"

"Right."

"Got your radio?"

"Check."

"Flashlight?"

"Check. Also camera, though I don't know what good that's going to do."

Hardly had Joe taken up his own position on the fast-darkening mountainside below the house, on the other side of the almost non-existent trail, when he gave a nervous start, and then relaxed. The man calling himself Strangeways had suddenly materialized, almost at Joe's side and seemingly out of nothing but the dusk itself.

By way of greeting, Joe said in a low voice: "I thought you'd want me to invite you into the Tyrrell House. Just in case you feel you have to get in there later."

The other shook his head. There was tension, and an uncharacteristic suggestion of unease in the way he stood, first with arms folded, then with hands clasped behind his back.

"My presence on the scene just now would be disruptive, Joseph. And once in the house, I would leave traces of my presence there, a spoor some unfriendly agent could detect… were you given a warm welcome by the family?"

"I'd say a mixed welcome. If you can call those two people a family." Tersely Joe recounted the main points of his conversation with Sarah Tyrrell and his impressions of her and her nephew.

Strangeways heard him out with interest. Then he said: "I am in general agreement with what the lady told you about her husband. And after a preliminary investigation I think it highly probable that the missing girl is still alive—somewhere. But where I do not know. Perhaps nearby, as the great-aunt says. I very much doubt whether the young lady is capable of returning to her relatives at will."

"I have grave doubts of that myself."

"Then can we agree on this as well: that perhaps others besides the girl are in grave, though probably not immediate, danger?"

"You mean besides Brainard with his gambling debts?" Joe asked. "No, I don't have any reason to think so. But if you do…"

"I do. And I am beginning to think," Strangeways added after a pause, "that the search for a true solution must begin far away from the Grand Canyon—yes, far indeed."

"How far?" Joe asked in surprise.

"In England."

Joe scowled into the thickening dusk, wishing again that it had been possible to give all his people a look at the real Canyon in the daylight before they went on guard. Even he himself felt unprepared, though at least he had been here once before, as an innocent tourist, many years ago.

Then, almost unwillingly, he looked back at his companion. "What does England have to do with this?"

"For one thing, it is the birthplace of Edgar Tyrrell. According to my informants, his birthplace in each phase of his life, if you take my meaning. There he drew his first breath, I believe some time around the middle of the nineteenth century—and it was in the same land, some two or three decades later, that he drew his last. I hope to be able to tell you much more on that subject, Joseph, when I return."

"Wait a minute—" Joe paused. He had been about to say You can't just leave—but he had caught himself in time; he really didn't want to give this man the impression that he, Joe, was trying to forbid him to do anything.

"What do you expect is going to happen here tonight?" Joe finally asked instead.

Strangeways shrugged, as if he did not consider the question of paramount importance. "Probably nothing that is beyond your competence to deal with." Then, with an elegant gesture, he added: "I can assure you that no one of those now present in the house is nosferatu. But you have undoubtedly been able to see that for yourself."

Joe nodded. "But it seems that old Tyrrell definitely is." Whistling silently between his teeth, Joe tried to ponder the implications. He wasn't sure that he could see all of them.

His companion nodded. "But I doubt that he is going to visit the house tonight… so far, I have deliberately avoided contact with his wife. Most likely I will talk to her when I return from England."

Joe went on: "You think young Catherine may have somehow become the victim of her great-uncle? Her great-uncle by adoption. A pretty distant relationship."

The other let out a faintly reptilian sigh. "I fear the girl may indeed be a victim. But under what circumstances I do not know."

"Has she been… will she be nosferatu too?"

Strangeways shook his head. "When we find her, we will know what she is. What she may have become. And Joseph…"

"Yeah."

"I sense that somewhere, not far from where we stand, at least one presence even more intriguing than Mr. Tyrrell is waiting to be discovered… however, my instincts warn me to approach this whole problem cautiously. This is a time for subtlety."

On that note Strangeways turned to leave, then turned back with an afterthought. "Joseph, I am not abandoning you."

Joe raised his eyebrows. "I didn't think you were," he answered truthfully. "But you are leaving me in a hell of a state of ignorance."

Strangeways shrugged, a businesslike gesture. "Regrettably I must, being still in that state myself. But I foresee no disaster here tonight. No problem, as I say, beyond your considerable competence to handle. I do advise you to exercise restraint and caution until I return, which will be in as few days as I can manage it. In the meantime, commit no rash acts. In particular I advise against your attempting to track this particular vampire to his earth—not that I really think you mean to do so, or that you would find it possible."

Joe nodded. Then he blinked. The path beside him was suddenly empty of any human presence, emptied in a way that had nothing directly to do with gathering darkness, or with fog. He had seen nosferatu come and go in similar fashion often enough so that it was no longer really a surprise; but even so it was always something of a shock.

Meanwhile, up in the house, Maria was telling Mrs. Tyrrell, truthfully, what a lovely place she thought the house was, how wonderful it must have been to be able to live here.

Old Sarah smiled understandingly, and thanked Maria, but it was plain that the old lady did not completely agree. Although she admitted it was a lovely house, and had cost Edgar a great amount of work to build.

"Each room has its own fireplace, and these are still the only means of heating. The Park Service has made a few changes; they put in basic plumbing decades ago."

According to Mrs. Tyrrell, much of the furniture in the house dated from the thirties. Some of the simple chairs, tables, and benches were fairly valuable, she told Maria, because Tyrrell had built them with his own hands.

A minute or two after his extraordinary colleague had disappeared—Joe thought it highly likely that the man calling himself Strangeways was already on his way, by one mode of transportation or another, to England—Joe cautiously made his way over to where Bill Burdon was posted, just to see how Bill was doing.

"Everything under control, chief. Did I hear you talking to someone else just now?"

"Strangeways. He's gone now."

Bill shook his head, impressed. "He can sure move quietly."

Joe let that pass without comment. "I'm going back into the house now. Someone will be out to relieve you in an hour or so."

"Check."

Moving as quietly as he could, Joe climbed the trail leading up under the house. He had more questions to ask, and Bill had so far given every indication of being steady and reliable.

As Joe approached the house from below, he murmured into his radio. Moments later, looking up from the foot of the ladder, he saw Maria open the trapdoor for him. On the level above her a door was standing slightly open inside the house, letting enough light through from the upper floors for Joe to see to climb.

"Anything new?" he asked Maria, as she closed and latched the trapdoor behind him.

"Only that this house contains about a thousand fossils, and a million Indian arrowheads and things. When you look at it closely, it's quite a museum, though I guess none of the stuff that's left here is really valuable."

"Must have been here for decades."

"Joe?"

"Yeah?"

Maria looked around as if to make sure that they were quite alone. "About your brother-in-law?"

"What about him?"

"Just that I noticed both of his little fingers are missing."

"You're observant."

"Well, it's none of my business, of course, but I was just wondering how that happened."

Joe gave the young woman a level, thoughtful look. "A vampire pulled them off," he told her at last. "When John was sixteen."

Maria's lip curled slightly. "All right, Boss, just asking. I admitted it was none of my business."

"Ask John if you don't believe me."

Following a silent Maria back upstairs, Joe noticed a few trophy heads of big game, deer and mountain lion primarily, like those decorating the lobby at El Tovar.

In a small room on the middle level of the house they encountered another scattering of Indian artifacts, pottery and arrowheads and little figures woven of twists of bark.

Sarah joined them here. "Well, Mr. Keogh?"

"We're watching the house, front and rear, Mrs. Tyrrell."

"My nephew will be relieved. Now, I think, we can begin to discuss the matter of my grandniece."

"Yes, I think we'd better." Joe leaned against a log wall, watching the old lady carefully. "Mrs. Tyrrell, did you leave your husband or did he leave you, back in the thirties?"

"I left him," Sarah answered after a moment.

"Why?"

"You should ask, rather, why I stayed with him so long."

"All right, why did you?"

"I loved him, I suppose. Do you know, Mr. Keogh, the age of the oldest rocks in the bottom of the Canyon?"

"I have no idea."

Maria, obviously not understanding any of this, was still watching and listening carefully.

Sarah Tyrrell said: "Some of the oldest exposed rocks on earth are down there—notably the Vishnu schist, almost two billion years old, metamorphosed from ocean sediments. That intrigued Edgar from the start, you see; something that had been made an infinity of ages before there ever was a Canyon."

"Mrs. Tyrrell, does this have something to do with—?"

"Yes, it does, Mr. Keogh. The whole matter is a question of time, you see, and of the efforts people make to deal with time and to control it. In that Edgar is far more successful than most."

Maria was squinting at the old woman in total incomprehension.

Sarah went on: "Down there is also something called the Great Unconformity—not a layer of rock, but rather an absence of layers, somewhat more than half a billion years old, that might be expected to be present. In among those absent strata, somehow, is where Edgar built another house—and in that house I refused to live."

Joe was nodding, as if he understood at least partially. "Did you have any children?"

"What does that matter now?"

Joe stared at her a moment, and then gave up. "I don't know. Just curious. Let's get back to Cathy. You told me you think she's in a place nearby."

Sarah nodded.

"Where is that place, Mrs. Tyrrell?"

"To reach it, Mr. Keogh, I think you must be capable of finding it for yourself. I cannot tell you how—nor can I any longer show you. I am too old, and my heart too tired and my legs too weak for canyon trails."

Several hours after sunset, all was quiet in the Tyrrell House and its immediate vicinity. Maria, established in a comfortable chair near one of the bedroom fireplaces, found herself having to fight to keep from nodding off after a long day.

Sarah had made no objection to Maria's sitting in that chair. From there Maria found it easy to keep an eye on Sarah while the old lady, in the next room with the door open, tried to get some sleep.

"Shall I stay in the room with you, Mrs. Tyrrell?"

"There's no need for that, girl. I'm not the one in danger."

And Maria, on the verge of sleep, saw, or at last thought she saw, in firelight or candlelight, movement from one of Tyrrell's carvings.

The impression became a dream, a dream in which the horror was still too remote to cause her to awaken…

Joe, downstairs in the studio and looking out of a window, observed that night had by now almost completely darkened the mist-filled Canyon.

He thought to himself: No use in a breather trying to look for someone, anyone, down there tonight.

Not that he had any intention of doing that.