"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."