A Question Of Time by Fred Saberhagen (best electronic book reader TXT) 📗

      Joe stared at her a moment more, 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 Five

      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 change 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 grandniece, 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 was alerted by a faint sound. Some thirty yards downslope 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 downslope 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,