A Question Of Time Page 3

Jake squinted at the layout before him. All was quiet, not even a dog barking. “Where is he now?”

  “Resting. He usually works at night. Digging out the kind of rocks he likes, carving them…”

  “Can’t blame him for resting, in this heat.”

  The path leading to the cottage brought them closer to the grotto. Jake, getting a better look as he passed, saw that it was really a cave, considerably deeper than it had first appeared. The hole was too dark inside for him to see much more.

  Camilla observed his interest. “Want to go in and take a look? We can, Edgar won’t mind.”

  “I don’t care,” said Jake. But he followed Camilla when she went in.

  The relative coolness was welcome. Once Jake’s eyes were out of the glare of sunlight he could see the interior fairly well. A ghost of the glow of sunset was reflecting in from the light limestone wall on the other side of the amphitheater.

  “It’s sunset now,” said Camilla. “Now’s the time when—”

  Then she fell abruptly silent.

  It took Jake another minute to realize that the two of them were no longer alone. The figure of a man was now standing at the dark mouth of the lightless inner regions of the cave. Just standing there and looking out at Jake.

  Peering as best he could into the zone of greater dimness, Jake beheld a spare figure that might have been almost as tall as Jake if it hadn’t been hunched over. The man was dressed in overalls, some kind of boots, and a work shirt, and his hair and skin and clothing were all gray with what looked like rock-dust. He was holding an inhumanly motionless pose, so that he might almost have been a statue.

  In the gnarled fingers of one evidently powerful hand, the man was clutching a sizable chunk of rock. After a moment he opened his hand and let the chunk fall, to strike the rock floor with a dull sound.

  In the next moment the same hand reached out to a large switch bolted to the rocky wall, and a battery of electric lights sprang into life. The half-dozen fixtures, mounted on tall metal stands around the cave, were streamlined, looking very modern. In fact they looked somehow more than modern, they looked like no lights that Jake had ever seen before.

  Under their radiance the whole inner cave, which had been deeply shadowed, burst into full visibility. The lights were positioned on every side, some high, some low, and they almost abolished shadow. The glowing, peculiar bulbs revealed that the floor and walls of the cave were pockmarked with holes, like places where sizable blocks might have been dug out. A long workbench, crudely built but sturdy, littered with tools and chunks of pale stone, ran along one wall. The walls and floor and overhead of the cave were mostly dark, formed of a material Jake had heard the rock-and-blasting experts call Vishnu schist. It was commonly found in the lowest layer of the Canyon’s walls just below the mysterious Great Unconformity. The whitish intrusions here and there in the cave’s walls were new to Jake.

  But none of this, interesting as it was, could hold Jake’s attention for more than a moment or two. Not in the presence of the man who now stood before him.

  The dust-covered figure suddenly turned his gaze on Camilla, and rasped a comment. “So, you’ve caught another one.”

  She answered timidly. “Don’t say that, Edgar. He’s a friend of mine.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt that. Most men would be delighted to be your friend. But have you told him yet?”

  Camilla, looking from one man to the other, seemed to be afraid to say anything more.

  “Told me what?” Jake demanded.

  Suddenly Edgar caught sight of the lunchbox, which Camilla had just put down on a ledge of rock. With some muttering that sounded vaguely like a curse, he snatched up the little container, at the same time raising his other hand as if he were about to strike the girl.

  Jake, shouting something angry, took a step forward. But Camilla, cowering back from the blow that never fell, yelled at Jake to stop. It was a scream of such sudden heartfelt terror that he unthinkingly obeyed.

  Then he looked back at Edgar. “Told me what?” he repeated, harshly.

  “Nothing of real importance.” Wicked eyes gleamed at him out of the old man’s dusty face. “Just that, today, the silly business that you have called your life is over.”

  Chapter Two

  1991

  Bill Burdon and Maria Torres, who both worked for a big agency in Phoenix, had driven up to 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 possibly 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 going 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 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 always 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 what was described as 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 which surrounded the small city, and, to judge from the leaden sky, more snow might well be on the way.

  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 somehow 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 any presence there.

  Alerted at last by a certain tenseness in Maria’s attitude, Bill turned his head sharply. The bearded man, standing close enough to touch, 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 obtaining 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 smoothly. 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 where they were 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 place was old. 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 minature 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 fr
om 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. He 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.

  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.