A Question of Time

Chapter 2

1991

Bill Burdon and Maria Torres, who both worked for a big agency in Phoenix, had driven up to the Grand Canyon together. Neither of the two young people had ever been to the Canyon before, so they had both initially welcomed the assignment as offering the chance of doing a little sightseeing.

Recreational possibilities faded from their thoughts as they learned a little more about the case. The problem, as Bill's and Maria's boss in Phoenix had explained to them before they left, was a missing girl. Seventeen-year-old Cathy Brainard had vanished into the Canyon almost a month ago. No ransom demand had ever been presented, kidnapping was no longer regarded as a good possibility, and the feds had retired from the investigation. A wealthy relative of the girl was taking a strong interest, and private investigators were now on the job.

Missing teenagers were common enough, but there seemed to be something about this case that had caused the wealthy relative to bring in a specialist from out of state. Either the boss in Phoenix didn't know what the exotic details were, or he had chosen to be reticent about them. He had told Torres and Burdon they would be given all the details they needed by Mr. Joseph Keogh, who ran his own investigative agency out of Chicago and had been hired to take charge of the case. They were to report to Keogh as soon as they reached El Tovar hotel, which was situated just a few yards from the South Rim, inside Grand Canyon National Park.

Someone high up in the administration of the big Phoenix agency evidently owed Keogh a favor. Anyway, Bill's and Maria's boss was ready to loan out a couple of his best young people.

The job specs called for a man and a woman, both athletic as well as intelligent, able to deal diplomatically with clients, and also capable of functioning at a high level in a non-urban environment, as the boss had put it.

The week between Christmas and the New Year was a time of high tourist activity at the Canyon. Getting the two newly assigned operatives a room, let alone two rooms, in any of the park lodges presented a problem, so Bill and Maria had been instructed to bring their sleeping bags. Most likely they would be able to sack out, when either of them had time to sleep, in Keogh's room or suite in El Tovar, a lodging presumably also shared by anyone else who might have come out from Chicago. Well, Bill had graduated from the marines and Maria from the army, where among her other duties she had taught survival for a while. Sacking out on a couch or floor inside a luxury hotel did not seem likely to give either one of them a problem.

Maria and Bill had yet to work together, and were no more than vaguely acquainted colleagues when they began the five-hour drive up from Phoenix. But by the time they turned off Interstate 40 at Flagstaff, and were heading straight north on a smaller highway, they had begun to be on good terms, at least professionally. On a number of subjects they thought alike.

Morning sunlight and springlike warmth had been left behind hours ago, in the low-altitude desert of southern Arizona. Passing Flagstaff in Bill Burdon's car, they were at seven thousand feet above sea level, on a dull, cloudy, winter afternoon. Patches of snow were visible among the trunks of the pine forest surrounding the small city, and, to judge from the leaden sky, more snow might well be on the way.

The Grand Canyon and its surrounding thousand square miles of national park lay still some eighty miles farther north, reachable by good but narrow roads through partially wooded flatland.

The eighty miles were uneventful. Once Bill had paid their way into the park, the traffic, both foot and vehicular, on the winding narrow roads quickly became even brisker than he had expected, notwithstanding the warnings about tourist crowds. The two-lane road and its traffic wound on for a mile or so, flanked by rustic signs indicating the way to Pima Point, the Tusayan Museum, and widely scattered tourist lodges called Yavapai, Maswik, Thunderbird, and Kachina.

Among some lesser buildings largely concealed by trees, El Tovar Hotel soon loomed up, stone and shingles and dark brown siding, a generous three stories high. El Tovar's several wings extended widely enough to accommodate more than a hundred guest rooms. According to a map in the brochure handed to the new arrivals at the gate, the brink of the South Rim ought to be only a stone's toss to the north. But the intervening slice of ground sloped upward just enough to keep the Canyon itself totally invisible from roads and parking lot.

Bill, who was taking the last shift behind the wheel, carefully negotiated the small parking lot nearest El Tovar, where several other vehicles were simultaneously seeking space. Maria swore under her breath when someone beat them to a slot; she was dark-haired, attractive, and compactly built, looking younger than her twenty-five years. Bill was two years older, lighter of complexion and considerably larger. The jockeying and delays of parking did not interfere with his whistling softly a small cheerful tune.

At last a space became available.

Getting out of the car in their ski jackets and hiking boots, standard tourist garb for here and now, Bill and Maria stretched their bodies after the long ride, worked their shoulders into backpack harnesses, and checked their watches. They had a few minutes to spare before Mr. Joseph Keogh would actually begin to expect them.

"Shall we take a look at the view?" Maria asked. "Looks foggy, but we can give it a try."

"I guess it would be a shame not to. Familiarize ourselves with the location, and all that."

From where they were standing in the parking lot, there was a subtle oddity about the view, having really nothing to do with fog. Just a few yards past the massive old hotel, the world came to an end. Or at least Bill and Maria were given that impression, because at that distance to the north the landscape abruptly terminated, the boundary being delineated by a stone parapet not three feet high. Beyond that modest fence there existed no horizon, and thus apparently no earth, only a lowering continuation of the leaden sky.

Walking past the hotel, Bill and Maria steadily approached the parapet, which was already defended on the near side by a handful of Japanese tourists, garbed for cold and armed with cameras. Standing among these foreign visitors, the two Americans looked out with them. Vision plunged out and down, losing itself in an infinite depth of colorlessness—with one exception. In one place, more downward than outward, at a slant range of a hundred yards or so, a dim rocky promontory rose from unguessable depths to become intermittently visible through slowly marching mist. Around that one fragment of solidity, decorated with a couple of small evergreens, nothing but drifting grayness was perceptible. Right now even the finest cameras were not going to be of much use.

Maria Torres was ahead of Bill in observing that someone else had joined them.

While Bill, momentarily lost in contemplation, was still assessing the view, a moderately tall man, dark-haired and bearded, had come up just behind him, moving in total silence. The newcomer, as Maria observed, stood waiting at Bill's elbow for many seconds, an embarrassingly long time for an investigator, before Bill became aware of his presence.

Alerted at last by a certain tenseness in Maria's attitude, Bill turned his head sharply. The bearded man, standing close enough to touch him, was only gazing at him mildly.

There followed an interval in which the three of them stood regarding one another. They were ignored by the Japanese, and by other tourists who, despite the poor viewing conditions at the moment, kept drifting to and fro along the rim, singly and in small groups.

"Can I help you?" Bill finally asked the man.

The newcomer spoke up smoothly, as if he had only been waiting to be prompted. "Let me introduce myself," he said in a deep quiet voice. "My name is Strangeways, and it seems that we are likely to be working together for the next day or two."

"I think you must have the wrong—"

"No, I think not."

Bill looked blank. He did an excellent job of it, thought Maria, who felt sure that she herself was having no trouble appearing puzzled.

"Sorry," Bill told the man, firmly, at last. "You must be mixing us up with two other people."

Strangeways permitted himself a faint smile, as of mild approval. "In that case I trust you will pardon my impertinence," he murmured. Turning half away, he gazed out into the murk that filled the Canyon, as if he might indeed be capable of seeing something through it. Maria noticed vaguely, without giving the matter any particular thought, that his breath, unlike her own and Bill's, was not steaming in the chill air.

After they had all three stood there for another half-minute, Bill nudged Maria, and the two of them turned away from the brink and moved toward the hotel. Glancing back when they had gone a few yards, Maria saw Mr. Strangeways still intent on his viewing, apparently taking no interest in where they went.

"What the hell do you suppose that was all about?" she whispered to Bill when she judged that they were safely out of earshot.

"Either he's a stray loony or we're being checked out. Whether by friend or foe…"

The sprawling, three-story hotel, all shingles and age-darkened logs and stone, was looming over them. In another moment Bill and Maria were striding up onto a deep wooden porch which led to the front entrance. Seen at close range, the building had even more of a settled, established look. Carved in wood over the entrance Maria read an unpunctuated fragment of a sentence, or perhaps of verse:

DREAMS OF MOUNTAINS AS IN THEIR SLEEP THEY BROOD ON THINGS ETERNAL

The images evoked in Maria's mind by those words were incomplete but somehow disturbing. She wondered vaguely where the phrase had come from. Her brief sojourn in college had been as an English major; sometimes she was bothered by hearing or reading a quotation and being unable to trace its source.

With Bill leading the way, they entered the lobby through a double door, a spacious airlock whose purpose was no doubt to minimize the effect of wintry blasts.

The lobby of El Tovar was a large room—actually two large rooms, Maria saw—each two stories high. The peaked ceiling of the first room was supported by log beams and posts, rough-hewn but smoothed by some mellowing effect of age. Despite the modern gift shops on both sides of the lobby, and the modern lighting, the walls and ceiling had a dark settled solidity that confirmed their tenure here for very nearly a century. Holiday poinsettias on shelves and tables everywhere in the lobby outnumbered the thronging, ski-jacketed, pack- and camera-carrying people. Wreaths and chains of real evergreen twigs and branches, some dotted with miniature lights, festooned the rugged beams and posts. Stuffed animal heads, some antlered, some snarling to expose dead fangs, looked down from the high walls with an air of disapproval.

A two-story Christmas tree occupied the center of the inner lobby, its upper branches surrounded by a log-railed mezzanine where people sat at tables. The hotel desk was on the tree's left as the travelers approached.

While Bill paused at the desk to ask a question, Maria turned swiftly to scan the crowd, on the chance that Mr. Strangeways had followed them inside. But she could discover no sign of him.

Playing tourist, Maria grabbed up a brochure before she left the desk. A moment later she was following Bill down one of the ground-floor hallways that branched from the lobby. Glancing at her brochure, she read something about the hotel having been built in 1905. Having seen the dark log walls of the lobby from inside, she could readily believe that date, though obviously the heating and lighting—and, she hoped and presumed, the plumbing—were quite acceptably modern.

Having passed the doors of half a dozen rooms, Bill stopped at the next one and knocked.

A cautious voice within called something. When Bill responded, the door was opened from inside, by a wiry, middle-sized, fortyish man wearing a ski sweater. His sandy hair was beginning to be flecked with gray. He sized up his visitors quickly and said, "Come in, I'm Joe Keogh."

Keogh's room was actually a suite including a small bedroom and sitting room, casually furnished in a kind of pseudo-Victorian style. In the sitting room four unmatching chairs had been drawn up around a table. A man was sitting in one of them.

The new arrivals were quickly introduced to Keogh's brother-in-law John Southerland, who had come with him from Chicago. Southerland was about twenty-eight, the same height as his boss—a little under six feet—and solidly built. His light brown hair still retained a tendency to curl. At the moment he was either starting a beard or badly in need of a shave.

Maria, studying Joe Keogh's impressively tough-looking face, decided that his looks did him no harm in his business. She'd already learned that he had been a Chicago cop before marrying Southerland money.

"Have a seat." Keogh indicated the chairs around the table. His voice was mild, almost nondescript. "Glad you guys made it up here. They tell me the weather might be getting worse any time now."

An exchange of comments on the weather was interrupted by a tap at the door. John Southerland opened it to admit, as a trusted colleague, Mr. Strangeways.

Brief introductions were performed. Another small chair was brought from somewhere, and presently five were seated around the table.

A pause ensued. It seemed to Maria as if Keogh, now that he had his two reinforcements from Phoenix, wasn't sure of how to go about explaining the job to them.

"What we've got here is—has the possibility of being—a strange case," he said at last, and paused, frowning, shooting a quick glance at Strangeways, who gazed back at him impassively.

Wind, beginning to pick up velocity in late afternoon, moaned at the window.

Bill cleared his throat. "Who's the client?" he asked Keogh directly.

When Keogh seemed to hesitate, Maria put in: "They told us down in Phoenix that this was a missing person, a seventeen-year-old girl—and that the case had what they described as possibly interesting complications."

Strangeways sat with his arms folded, attentive but unmoving.

Keogh looked at Southerland. "You tell 'em."

The younger man cleared his throat and began, "Client's name is Mrs. Sarah Tyrrell. She's about eighty years old, give or take a few. Her late husband, Edgar Tyrrell, was a fairly well-known sculptor back in the early nineteen-hundreds. He was born in England, but spent his most productive years here. His stuff is enjoying something of a revival now, I understand, and the old lady is well off financially.

"The missing girl is Sarah Tyrrell's niece, or rather grandniece, if that's the proper word."

"It is," said Strangeways shortly. Everyone glanced at him.

John resumed: "Cathy's father—adoptive father, whatever that might signify—is Mr. G. C. Brainard, a lawyer who deals in art. I don't know that he's too happy about our being called in at this late date to investigate his daughter's disappearance—anyway something's bothering him. Anyway someone recommended us to the old lady, and she insisted on calling us in, and he tends to humor her, as I suppose is usual among people with wealthy aunts. Is that a fair way to put the situation, Joe?"

Keogh only squinted, in a way that Maria Torres took to mean he wasn't entirely sure. He glanced at Strangeways, who gave him a moody look in return, but no comment.

"Mrs. Tyrrell is staying here?" Bill asked, when no one else seemed eager to talk.

"Not in any of the hotels," Joe Keogh explained. "There's a building called the Tyrrell House, a little bit west of here, right on the rim. It was her husband's studio in the early thirties, and it's the house where the two of them lived together. It belongs to the Park Service now, of course, but part of the agreement when the government took it over was that Mrs. Tyrrell would have the right to use the place whenever she wanted during her lifetime. She and Brainard are staying there."

"Was Cathy staying in that house," asked Maria, "when she disappeared?"

"No," Keogh shook his head. "It's more complicated than that. She was in one of the regular lodges—not this one—with a small group of her friends from boarding school. Everyone agrees that Cathy had never been anywhere near the Grand Canyon before her visit at Thanksgiving.

"The kids did some of the usual tourist things, hiked around, took pictures. They had camping equipment with them, and they debated whether to take a mule ride down to Phantom Ranch—that's an overnight trip to the bottom of the Canyon and back—but decided not to. Then, on the second day of their visit, for some reason, Cathy began acting strangely. Or so her companions thought later. She left them suddenly, saying something about going for a walk. They assumed she meant that she was going to the Visitor Center or the general store. But a few minutes later, a disinterested witness saw a girl who looked like Cathy Brainard, and was dressed like her, carrying a pack and equipment as if for an overnight hike, starting down Bright Angel Trail alone.

"As far as we know, that witness was the last person to see Cathy Brainard anywhere."

Bill said slowly: "I'm no expert, but that doesn't sound to me like a planned kidnapping. Maybe some lunatic encountered her and—"

Joe nodded. "I agree. There've been no demands. Kidnapping's a federal offense, of course, and the feds did come here and look around. But they pretty quickly decided that the girl had most likely just walked off on her own, a deliberate runaway. And a fatal accident wouldn't be too surprising; that kind of thing happens to someone in the Park practically every year. By all reports she's a good hiker, or an energetic walker anyway, and in a few hours she could have gone all the way down to the river at the bottom of the canyon, and drowned. The Colorado's deep and swift, and very cold. It wouldn't be surprising if a body was never found.

"Or she could have simply got off the trails, perhaps got herself lost, and fallen into a hole or off a cliff somewhere—you'll see how very possible that is, once you get a close look at the terrain. Have either of you had a chance to do that, by the way?"

Bill and Maria shook their heads. "Never been here before," Bill said. "We tried today, but it was too foggy."

Maria said: "I presume none of the girl's schoolmates are here at the Canyon now?"

"No reason to think they are. I haven't had the chance to talk to any of them yet, and it's one of the things I want to do, of course, eventually."

Bill asked: "And the witness at the head of Bright Angel Trail? Who was that?"

"Good question. A middle-aged lady schoolteacher, long since gone home to Ohio. No reason to doubt her story."

"How'd she happen to notice Cathy, among what I suppose was the usual throng of tourists?"

"Cathy came up to her and asked her where it might be possible to get a map of the trails in the Canyon. The teacher remembered the girl who spoke to her, because she thought the youngster seemed worried or disturbed. Later she could describe what Cathy looked like, how she was dressed. I don't doubt it was our girl."

Maria nodded, eyes gleaming faintly. "I wonder what disturbed her suddenly?"

Strangeways gave her a sidelong glance of interest, but did not comment.

Joe Keogh continued the briefing. "Some more information, possibly relevant. I get the feeling that young Cathy is likely to inherit old Aunt Sarah's money one day—if Cathy is still alive. There seem to be no other close relatives, except Cathy's father, of course. Old Sarah gives nephew Brainard a hard time, from what I've seen. And sometimes vice versa. They have a business relationship now but that's about it. Whereas the old lady was—is—much attached to Cathy."

"A possible conflict of interest," commented Strangeways, "between this Brainard and his adopted daughter."

Maria decided that this unexplained colleague had a commanding air about him, despite the fact that he seldom spoke. He might be thirty-five at the most, she thought. His dark hair and beard were full and short, and he wore a dark turtleneck shirt or sweater under a brown jacket that in the arrangement of its pockets suggested to her vaguely that it had been designed for a hunter rather than a skier to wear. The more she looked at Strangeways the more certainly she felt him to be in some way truly out of the ordinary. It wasn't easy, try as she might, to pin the feeling down any more specifically than that.

"You think he made her vanish?" Joe Keogh asked him, somewhat deferentially.

"Stranger things have happened, Joseph."

"That's for damn sure." Keogh sighed, ran fingers through his sandy hair, and looked as if he wanted to ask Strangeways another question or two. But perhaps the presence of his new recruits constrained him. Turning to them, he began questioning them on mundane matters. Maria and Bill quickly ran through their qualifications and experience.

Apparently satisfied on that score, for the time being at least, Joe returned to the main business at hand. "There are reasons, reasons I'm not going into right now, to think this case is likely to have unusual aspects. And I want the people who work for me to be able to deal with the unusual in a level-headed way." He stopped, waiting for a reaction from the recruits.

"Unusual how?" Bill Burdon asked.

"How would you react if I told you there could be—psychic factors, involved in this case?"

Having asked that question, Keogh paused again, waiting for a reaction from his two loaners. "Neither of you look especially surprised," he commented, as if that fact surprised him.

"We're not getting paid to be surprised," Maria said.

"Psychic?" asked Bill. "Meaning like in spiritualism? I don't believe in that stuff."

"I'm not asking you to believe in anything," said Keogh. "As long as you follow orders."

Bill shrugged. "That's what I'm being paid for."

Maria agreed in a businesslike way. "A missing person is a missing person. Whether the causes are psychic or whatever. So our job is to get this girl back, or at least find out what happened to her." She added: "Actually, my own grandmother was fleeced by a fake medium out in LA. I'd like to get my hands on one of those people."

"Yes, naturally." Keogh sighed faintly. "Well, I doubt there's any fake medium involved in this."

"What do you suspect?" Maria asked.

"I don't want to suspect anything, until I've talked to the client face to face. So far I've only spoken to her briefly, on the phone." He looked toward Strangeways, as if in a silent appeal for help.

"I concur," said Mr. Strangeways, in a voice that despite its softness had nothing tentative or deferential about it. Maria, still trying to place him, suddenly wondered if he was supposed to be some kind of a medium or psychic. The trouble was he didn't at all match her notion of what one of those people, genuine or fake, ought to look like.

There were still a few items that needed to be carried in from Bill's car, including some small two-way radios and some cameras he and Maria had brought with themfrom Phoenix. Also Joe Keogh wanted someone to check at the desk on the chance that another room in the hotel might have become available.

As soon as the two young investigators had been sent out of the room to accomplish these errands, conversation among the three men who remained became somewhat less guarded.

"Mr. Strangeways," said Keogh, in a speculative tone. It was a comment, almost a question.

Strangeways leaned back in his chair and raised an eyebrow. "Do you see any reason, Joseph, why I should not use that name?"

"No. No, none at all. A change of names doesn't surprise me. It's just your being here that does. When you walked in on us this afternoon I was—surprised." He hesitated. "So, is it a fair guess that some of your people are involved in Cathy Brainard's disappearance? And how did you know John and I were here?"

The man who was now calling himself Strangeways nodded slowly. His answer ignored the second question. "At least one of my people, as you call them, is concerned. I fear not innocently. I mean Tyrrell."

"Tyrrell? Edgar Tyrrell, the one who—?"

"The artist, who disappeared approximately half a century ago. Yes, he is nosferatu. Oh, there are indeed complications." Strangeways stood up slowly, staring in the direction of the window, where clouded daylight had not yet entirely died. "A thought occurs to me. I am going outside, Joseph. I take it you are soon going to visit the Tyrrell House?"

"That's my plan."

"Then I shall probably meet you on the way." Strangeways turned to leave. Joe was vaguely relieved to see that he opened the door and passed out of the room in mundane breather's fashion. Of course the day's clouded sun was not yet down.

"Vampires," John Southerland said meditatively, as soon as the door had closed behind one of them. "Okay, Joe. Where are we now? What are our two new helpers going to say if we start briefing them about vampires?"

Joe turned to him. "I don't really want to undertake that chore. How about you?"

"No thanks."

"So, we're not going to tell Burdon and Torres any more than absolutely necessary about the nature of Mr. Tyrrell and Mr. Strangeways. That means we have to be careful how we use them."

"And how will we?"

"They can certainly help us search the Canyon. If I understood Mrs. Tyrrell properly on the phone, that's basically what she wants. Okay. Maybe she has reason to think we can do better than the hundred or so people who searched a month ago—I'll know better after I've talked to her face to face."

" 'Strangeways'?" John managed to sound the quotation marks.

"God, John, I don't know any more than you do about why he's here. But evidently our client isn't exactly a widow after all."

"I wonder if she knows?"

"Well. If old Sarah's husband is still around as a vampire, I wouldn't be surprised if she knew about it. That's why she wanted Keogh and Company, the famous discreet psychic specialists. As for her nephew, he gives me the impression of a man who has never heard of vampires in his life. Not even fictional ones. Outside of that, he's somewhat haggard and worn, as you might expect of a man whose only daughter has been missing for a month. The police have been no help to him."

John tilted his chair back so it balanced on its hind legs. "Is there a Mrs. Brainard around? The girl's adoptive mother?"

"There was, but she died three or four years ago. Since then Cathy's been spending a lot of time in boarding schools."

There came a tap at the door, and John got up to answer. The two young helpers were returning together, laden with the hardware from the car, and bringing confirmation of the fact that no additional hotel rooms were available.

When all four were seated at the table again, Joe began to share with Maria and Bill his meager stock of information on Cathy Brainard. John got out several photographs of the missing girl and passed them around, along with a terse typed description. When last seen she had been dressed for hiking, carrying a pack and camping gear.

While his assistants were contemplating this material, Joe looked at his watch. Getting up from the table, he went to peer out around the edge of the window curtain, into the slowly darkening afternoon. The next step would be to introduce his crew—with, he thought, the probable exception of Mr. Strangeways—to Mrs. Tyrrell and her nephew.

He decided it was time to set out for the Tyrrell House.

Before ushering his colleagues out of his hotel room he opened the last suitcase Bill had brought in from his car, and handed out two-way radios to everyone. Each radio was small enough to fit easily into a winter jacket pocket.

There was some other hardware in the suitcase, tools loaned by the Phoenix agency at Joe's request. After a moment's hesitation Joe decided to let it stay where it was for the time being.

Thus equipped, Joe and his colleagues put on their coats and left El Tovar by the west entrance, bypassing the lobby. Gathering darkness had begun to diminish the number of tourists on the broad, paved walk that closely followed the rim through most of Canyon Village. Joe led his people west, past Kachina Lodge, Thunderbird Lodge, and Bright Angel Lodge; all of these auxiliary hotels were decades more modern than El Tovar, built of more conventional twentieth-century materials, lower to the ground and on a less ambitious scale.

Before the crew of investigators had gone very far, they found Mr. Strangeways waiting for them, standing in the gathering gloom with the hood of his jacket pulled up. He joined them wordlessly.

Modest streetlights, widely spaced, now suddenly came to life along the esplanade, giving the area the look almost of a city park. Late daylight was fading steadily behind persistent clouds, though still the sun was not quite down.

As the investigators walked west along the esplanade, the low stone barrier was on their right. Beyond that, the Canyon fell away from a brink as abrupt as the shoreline of an ocean. Still fog-filled and all but totally invisible, this gigantic vacancy began to dominate Maria's awareness as a brooding presence, surreal as a dream.

"They say," said Bill conversationally at her side, "that it's a mile deep and about ten miles wide. Wish we could see it—what's this building, now?"

Maria was able to pass on information gleaned from her brochure: this had to be the Lookout Studio, constructed (in 1914, by the Fred Harvey Company) of unfinished limestone that blended with the cliff on which it stood.

A few paces farther west they passed the Kolb Studio. According to the brochures, Maria recalled, this structure had been put up early in the century, by a pair of brothers who were both explorers and photographers. Their studio stood empty now, preserved by the Park Service.

And then, a little past Bright Angel trailhead and its mule corral, which stood a few yards in from the brink, the four at last came in sight of the Tyrrell House.

Mr. Strangeways excused himself at this point. After a few murmured words to Joe Keogh, he seemed to fade away along the dim walk leading back toward the corral. Maria, quietly curious, watched him go.

And now the remaining four investigators had very nearly reached their goal. Actually little more than the roof of the Tyrrell House was visible from where they were now standing on the broad paved walk. Most of the Tyrrell House, like most of Kolb's Studio, was down out of sight below the rim.

Joe led his colleagues to the door of the Tyrrell House, where he knocked briskly.

Almost at once the door was opened, by an elderly lady who, Maria thought, could only be Mrs. Tyrrell herself. It was as if she had been waiting expectantly just inside. She was slender and silver-haired, her body beginning to be bowed under the weight of eighty years and more, her movements slow but still authoritative. She wore a Navajo necklace of turquoise and silver, over a purple dress.

"Mr. Keogh?" The old woman's voice, at least, was still strong.

"That's me, ma'am. These are some people who are going to be working with me. And you must be Mrs. Tyrrell." Even as Joe spoke, he could recognize his client's nephew, Gerald Brainard, hovering just inside the house. Old Sarah's nephew was fiftyish, of stocky build and pale complexion, with a neatly trimmed dark mustache. He was wearing a Pendleton wool sweater over a shirt and tie.

"Come in, then," said the old lady, with a kind of tired eagerness. She looked with interest at the people who had come with Joe. "Come in, all of you."

The entryway, of logs and stone, reminded Maria strongly of the lobby of El Tovar, though naturally on a vastly reduced scale.

Joe performed quick, businesslike introductions. The old lady shook hands with the people she had not already met; Brainard contented himself with a nod in their general direction.

The old lady's eyes rested briefly on Bill Burdon, moved on and then came back to him. It was, Bill thought, as if he might have been recognized, or perhaps was in danger of being mistaken for someone else.

The old woman turned her attention back to Joe. "Mr. Keogh, you are almost too late. I heard our Cathy's voice just now."