"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.
Chapter 5
Bill Burdon was standing just where he had been posted, close beside a gnarled juniper, just a few yards down into the Canyon from the lowest level of the Tyrrell House. In his carefully chosen position the small tree shadowed him from the moon as well as from the nearer lights up on the Rim, while a long section of the nearby trail lay exposed in moonlight for his inspection. He doubted very much that anyone approaching the Tyrrell House from below by any route would be able to see him, or get past him without being seen.
Bill, who considered himself good at this kind of thing, had no trouble remaining patient and keeping quiet. At intervals he changed position. When he went so far as to sit down, very carefully, on the ground, he congratulated himself on managing the movement without making a sound.
It looked like he was in for a long, dull night, with no reason to really expect any action. Joe had told him he'd be relieved in a few hours, but Bill was already beginning to wonder if he was going to find it a problem to keep awake.
To keep alert, Bill turned over in his mind the distinguishing features of the case. He had to admit that perhaps number one was that here was an old lady with lots of money, one of her relatives missing and another one nervous, and if she wanted to spend some of her wealth hiring detectives, it wasn't the detectives' business to discourage her.
Distinguishing feature number two might be that old Sarah Tyrrell really seemed to think that some kind of psychic connection existed between her and her grand-niece, and that young Cathy stood in some kind of occult peril. That led Bill to wonder why anyone should accept ordinary-looking Joe Keogh from Chicago as an expert in the field of solving psychic mysteries. It was more than Bill could understand. Joe didn't seem at all the type—
Bill heard a faint sound. Some thirty yards down-slope from where he sat, something of roughly human size was moving. Bill's right arm raised his dark flashlight, thumb resting on the switch that would turn it on. Presently a middle-sized mule deer came far enough out into the moonlight to let Bill see its big ears cupped in his direction. A moment later, the animal was gone down-slope again, even more quietly than it had come.
Bill lowered the light, still unused. All right, back to the case. Another of its peculiarities, at least in Bill Burdon's admittedly inexperienced opinion, was Mr. Strangeways, who certainly had something odd about him. This peculiarity was hard to define, but Bill wouldn't have especially related it to the occult. Well, Keogh had given his temporary employees fair warning that he wasn't necessarily going to tell them everything about how he ran his business. And in the business of security and investigations, Bill had already learned, you had to expect to meet odd people.
There was another faint sound, this time from the direction of the house. A moment later, Bill saw and heard Joe reemerge from his conference, descending the wooden ladder. After waving silently in the direction of Bill, whose shadowed and motionless form was probably invisible to him, Joe Keogh returned to his own post on the other side of the faint descending path.
A minute later, another faint noise came, downslope somewhere—to Bill this one sounded like an owl. Trying to pierce the darkness with his vision, Bill noticed that the fog had now sunk deeper into the Canyon, so that an eerie moonlit landscape fell away from him on a steep overall descent. The moonlight was just bright enough to suggest the overall outline of the fantastic terrain, while leaving almost everything but the largest features to the imagination. Bill had identified the deer at a distance of thirty yards, but much beyond that he thought it would be impossible to distinguish animal from human.
He hoped that the remaining high clouds were going to let the moon—tonight not quite half full—show him a good deal more of the Canyon. But so far the visibility hadn't yet improved enough to give grounds for real hope along those lines.
Time passed.
Bill was wearing a watch, but he couldn't see the dial in the dark, and he wasn't about to use his flashlight for that purpose. The movement of the moon across the sky would let him estimate time's passage accurately enough to satisfy his own curiosity.
Another hour or so had passed, and it was beginning to seem to Bill, at least, that things were likely to remain quiet all night, when the next sound came. This time it came from the direction of the house, and this time there was no doubt that it meant trouble.
A crash of glass was blended with yells in several different voices. Then Bill heard heavier impacts, like a hammer pounding on boards or logs. Additional shouts and bangings followed.
In the midst of the uproar there sounded a single gunshot.
Looking toward the house, shrouded as it was in gloom except for faint lamplight at a couple of windows, Bill could see nothing out of the ordinary.
For the moment, not seeing anything else to do, he stood his ground.
Maria, who had been still faithfully keeping the client company, saw a moving light behind the window curtain. Then in the next moment the light—it had to be only some kind of strange reflection—was actually in the room with her.
Old Sarah, who a moment ago had been asleep, was sitting bolt upright in her bed.
Maria saw—and then forgot that she had seen—the figure of a man, standing close in front of her. And then, for the time being, she saw and heard no more.