A Question Of Time

by Fred Saberhagen

  As soon as they had finished eating, both John and Maria proclaimed themselves ready to get back into action. Joe, silently praising the resilience of youth, grunted approval. In a few minutes the two younger people had left the hotel and were descending in clouded winter daylight to search the slope immediately below the Tyrrell House. They were going to look for some clue to Bill’s fate, or, failing that, anything that might help explain last night’s strange events.

  Maria and John had hardly left the hotel when another tap sounded at Joe’s door. He opened it to discover Brainard, gazing anxiously back over his shoulder in the direction of the lobby, then almost pushing over his aunt’s chief investigator in his eagerness to get into the room.

  “Somebody after you?” Joe inquired.

  Brainard affected not to hear that. Staring as Keogh hobbled back to his chair after closing the door, he commented disapprovingly: “That looks fairly serious.”

  “I’ll manage.” Joe eased himself back into his chair. “I’ve got some young people to handle whatever legwork needs to be done. Who are they and what do they want?”

  “Who?”

  “The people who are after you. I’m assuming there’s more than one. I’m assuming also that you’re the one who shot off a gun last night.”

  G. C. Brainard sat down and closed his eyes. “A federal offense here in the Park, I know.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But there are other things that worry me more.” Digging into a jacket pocket, Brainard produced a heavy-caliber, stubby-barreled revolver. “I want your advice on what to do with this.”

  “Do the other things that worry you more have any connection with your missing daughter?”

  Brainard blinked at him. He seemed saddened and even injured by the suggestion. “No, nothing directly to do with her. Why?”

  “Because the job your Aunt Sarah originally wanted me to do was to get her back. Now everyone, my client, and you, the girl’s father, are trying to edge me away from that. Tell me, Mr. Brainard, how did you come to adopt Cathy?”

  “I’m concerned about my daughter. I want her to be all right,” said Brainard, in an injured tone. His eyes looked hurt.

  “So tell me about the adoption.”

  “All right, if you think it’ll help. My late wife and I adopted Cathy in 1978, when she was—four. We were childless, so…”

  Joe probed for more details. As far as he could learn, the Brainards had adopted Cathy largely at Aunt Sarah’s urging. Sarah had apparently encountered the girl through some kind of charitable work with which she was then involved, and had been drawn to her. But at that time the old lady had been already in her sixties, too old to be approved as an adoptive parent.

  Brainard suddenly blurted, “I can’t believe I’m actually carrying a gun.”

  “Can I take a look at your weapon?” Joe asked.

  When Brainard gingerly handed over the gun, Joe broke it open and inspected the loading.

  “What’re you looking for?”

  “I was wondering,” said Joe, “if your bullets might be made of wood.”

  “What?” No comprehension showed in Brainard’s face.

  “Never mind.”

  The stocky man shook his head. “It was dumb of me to carry that thing, I hardly know one end from the other. I’m liable to kill someone I’m not aiming at. If you’re willing to help me out, maybe you can get rid of it for me?”

  Joe put the pistol down carefully on the arm of his chair. Later, he thought, he would probably disassemble it, and pack the pieces away in separate pieces of his own luggage.

  Then he faced Brainard. “If you expect me to help you,” he said to him, “you’d better tell me why you’re carrying a gun. Who are you afraid of, and why?”

  The other closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. A pulse beat visibly in the side of his throat, just below his unshaven jaw. “I owe some people a lot of money. Jesus, how did I ever get myself into such a mess.”

  “What kind of people?” Though to Joe it seemed fairly obvious from the way Brainard was behaving.

  Brainard’s eyes came open, and he lifted his head slowly. “Mainly a man named Tuller. Ever hear of him? But why should you, I suppose there are a thousand like him. I think he’s in with some branch of the New York mafia. Loans out money at a nice clean fifty per cent per month. I thought I had a chance to make a killing, clean up a lot of old debts…”

  “How much?”

  “I borrowed eighty thousand. He wanted a hundred and twenty back by the middle of December, about two weeks ago. I couldn’t pay, I couldn’t come close to paying, and so here I am. Aunt Sarah won’t hand out that kind of money, and I don’t blame her.”

  “Maybe you’re here hoping to get something from her, or from Tyrrell, that you can sell.”

  “Hoping to stay alive until I can do something like that.” Brainard tried to smile. “But no such luck. Now I’m on the edge of dead.” He did smile. “Get me out of here, somehow, Keogh. Get me away from this bottleneck and give me a running start somewhere. There won’t be any conflict with what you’re doing for my aunt. You’ll be well paid, I’ve got enough cash stashed away for that.”

  “No thought of going to the police?”

  The other made a sound somewhere between a moan and a laugh. His soft hand bounced on the chair-arm as if he were testing the hardness of the wood. “That would really put the seal on it. They’d really kill me, then. So far, I don’t think they’re actually quite ready to do that. It’s just that I have this prejudice against having my balls smashed, or my kneecaps broken.”

  Joe nodded thoughtfully. “If you help me out a little first, then I’ll see what I can do for you.”

  “Help you how?”

  “To begin with, tell me all you can about Tyrrell.”

  “There’s not a hell of a lot I can tell you.” Brainard shivered slightly. “We do business, we don’t have long, chatty visits. He never talks about himself. And he’s definitely not looking for publicity.”

  “I don’t suppose this Tuller knows about Tyrrell? That the old man is still alive and doing business?”

  “No way. He’s never heard about it from me … and Tyrrell is not a man I’d want to appeal to for help.”

  “I see.” Joe thought for a minute. “Does your aunt know about this Tuller and his people being after you?”

  “She knows I’m some trouble of that kind. I don’t think she realizes how bad it is. I’ve told her that people are actually here looking for me, but I don’t know if Sarah believes that.”

  “All right. Stay here in my room for the time being. Make sure who’s at the door before you open it.”

  * * *

  Joe’s next move was to dispatch a hotel bellhop to bring him a cane, or failing that, a crutch. Both items, the youth assured him, were available in the general store near the park’s Visitor Center, and he would deliver a cane shortly.

  Joe thought the next knock on his door, a few minutes later, might be the bellhop returning, having established some kind of a land speed record; but a cautious opening of the door revealed Sarah Tyrrell.

  A few moments later, old Sarah, her nervous nephew, and Joe were all seated at the small conference table.

  Sarah wasted little time in preliminaries. “Mr. Keogh, the disturbance at the house last night was caused, at least in part, by my husband. I did see him.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me then? And why do you tell me now?”

  “Others were present then. Besides, I wanted to think the matter over—I am convinced now that Cathy is in no danger from my husband. I wish that I could say I believe her to be in no danger.”

  Brainard was staring at his aunt. “I hope to God you’re right, about Edgar. But look, what I saw—what I shot at last night—that wasn’t Edgar Tyrrell.”

  “There was another visitor to the house last night,” Sarah confirmed. “Another presence. Something—came with Edgar.”

  Joe looked from one o
f his visitors to the other. “I wasn’t in a position to see what was happening. Is that all either of you can tell me? ‘Something’ came to the house?”

  “At first,” said Brainard, “I thought it was one of the people trying to collect from me, somehow outside the window. But all I could really see was a—pattern of lights. My nerves were ready to crack, and I took a shot at it.” He shuddered faintly.

  “Mr. Keogh.” Sarah was doing her best to be businesslike. “In the light of what happened last night, of everything that we know now, I would like you to tell me, with complete honesty, whether you think you really have any chance of finding Cathy and helping her.”

  Brainard nodded, and looked hopefully at Joe.

  Again Joe looked from one of them to the other. “I don’t know that what happened last night really changes anything, except that now one of my people is missing. I hope to be able to tell you in a few days, what I think our chances are of helping Cathy. Meanwhile you don’t have to put us on the payroll.”

  Brainard continued to look the part of the anxious father. “What will you know in a few days that you don’t know now?”

  Joe was trying to frame an answer, when his little two-way radio buzzed. The device was lying where he’d left it, on a small table across the room. “Excuse me.”

  He got to his feet and hobbled. A moment later, Maria’s voice was speaking from the instrument in his hand: “Boss? We’ve just heard from Bill.”

  Joe’s two visitors were listening as attentively as he was. “Where is he?” Joe demanded.

  Maria sounded enormously relieved. “Don’t know exactly, but we were talking to him, and he sounded good. He says he’s now definitely on the right track home. He’ll be coming up Bright Angel within an hour.”

  * * *

  It was almost noon when Bill Burdon, looking somewhat dazed, finally emerged physically from the depths. John and Maria both went about a hundred yards down Bright Angel to meet him, as he appeared against the solemn background of a Canyon almost fully visible, a panorama grand enough to distract any newcomer at least briefly from any task.

  “What the hell happened to you?” demanded John, getting angry now that it seemed the missing man was safe.

  “You won’t believe it.” Bill stared at him, then at Maria, shook his head and started past them up the trail. They fell in beside him. When he was a little below the Tyrrell House he stopped again, to gaze up at the odd structure as if expecting some kind of a revelation.

  Maria hardly noticed Bill’s behavior. She was looking downhill, past an antlike mule-train of tourists on a switchback far below. She was frowning, as if considering something in the distance.

  Neither of the men was paying her any attention. John, regarding Bill intently, abruptly remarked: “You didn’t have a beard last night.” That got Maria’s attention back.

  Bill only shook his head again. Then he reached out and took each of his discoverers briefly by the arm, as if to assure himself that they were real. He smiled at their solidity.

  “Where’s the Boss?” he demanded. “I’ve got a report to make.”

  * * *

  An hour or so later, Bill was seated with Joe at a table on the balcony overlooking the lobby of El Tovar, and its massive genuine Christmas tree. Holiday music was playing somewhere, tourists by the hundreds were enjoying themselves, or trying to. And Bill was halfway through the second version of his report. Joe had bought him a drink, and was getting him to start over, because the first version of the report had been notably lacking in coherence. Joe’s newly purchased cane stood leaning against the table at his side.

  Bill’s beard was drawing curious glances. He had started to shave it off, then decided he had better let it be for the time being, as providing some kind of corroboration of the story he had to tell.

  “—and she was just there, camping out to be alone, was the impression I got. Trying to get her head together, like we used to say.”

  Briefly Bill balanced a couple of Polaroid photos in his strong right hand. Then, with the air of a gambler playing cards which he did not really expect to win, he tossed them face-up on the table in front of Joe.

  Joe picked up the photos and examined them. “That does look like the girl who was described to us.”

  Bill gestured at the pictures. “Oh, that’s Cathy Brainard, all right. I don’t have the least bit of doubt. She seemed unhappy with her family, and she didn’t want to come back to them. At least she didn’t want to come back with me. She was very firm on that point, and there was no way I could drag her.”

  “No, I can see that. So what did you do then?”

  “She pointed me in what turned out—I guess—to be the right direction, and I—walked out.” Bill paused for a long time. He swallowed half his drink, and grimaced. “Now comes the part you’re not going to believe.”

  Joe sipped from his own glass. “You might be surprised. Try me.”

  “All right. I found my way—or I thought I found my way—back to the Tyrrell House. Except it wasn’t this Tyrrell House. Not the one that’s sitting over there on the rim right now.”

  “Go on,” said Joe encouragingly.

  Bill said defiantly: “It was the Tyrrell House in the thirties, before it became a museum. And Tyrrell himself was still living there, with his family.”

  “Wait a minute. You’ve talked to Tyrrell?”

  “No.”

  “What, then?”

  “His family. Including—including Mrs. Tyrrell.”

  Joe was silent for a moment. “You mean the same Mrs. Tyrrell we’re working for?”

  Bill nodded slowly. “I think it’s the same woman, boss. Only the Mrs. Tyrrell who hired us is about sixty years older. And then…”

  “Then what?”

  “There was a little girl, too, with young Mrs. Tyrrell. Her daughter, I assume. Maybe four years old.”

  “And?”

  “And this little girl had what I’d call a strong family resemblance with Cathy.”

  Joe smiled faintly at Bill’s anxious gaze. “Let’s go talk to the old lady,” he said.

  * * *

  Leaving the hotel, going west once more along the rim walk, Bill paced slowly beside Joe, who hobbled with his cane. They found old Sarah warming her hands before a fire in the main room of her house.

  “Mrs. Tyrrell? I was wondering—can you remember ever meeting Bill, here, before you were introduced last night?”

  The old woman looked from one man to the other. “I feared there might be complications,” she said at last. “Is there trouble with time now, gentlemen?”

  “I don’t know,” said Joe. Bill, his mouth slightly open, stood looking from one of them to the other.

  “Young man,” said Sarah, looking at Bill. “I thought last night that we might possibly have met before. But a great many strange things happened to me in the comparatively brief time that I lived with Edgar Tyrrell.”

  Haltingly, at Joe’s urging, Bill told the story of his recent wanderings.

  Sarah heard him out. “I suppose that what you say is not impossible, young man. The house as you describe it sounds correct. Perhaps a young man, who seemed out of place, did once drop in when I lived there. Perhaps I was able to advise him as to which way to walk, to get home—before the sun went down.”

  “And the little girl?” Joe asked.

  “I have told you that I had a daughter.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know. Tell me of my grandniece. That’s what I’m paying you for.”

  Old Sarah’s reaction to what the young man had to say of Cathy was definitely positive. Her eyes greedily devoured Bill’s pair of Polaroids.

  “Oh yes, yes, that’s her,” she murmured. “And living freely, by herself? Then there may be hope.”

  * * *

  A few minutes later Joe and Bill returned to Joe’s rooms in the hotel, where they had left John acting as bodyguard for Brainard.

  John, opened the door f
or them. “We had a transatlantic call while you were out. From Mr. Strangeways.”

  Joe paused in the act of pulling off his coat. “What’d he want?”

  “He suggested we call our home office, and start Angie looking into other vanishings that have taken place in this area. He thought, and I agree, that over the years there have probably been a fair number.”

  “Okay.” Joe grunted with relief as he settled himself in a chair. “Then ring her up.”

  In a minute Joe himself was talking to Angie, John’s young wife. He asked her to find out how many people disappearing in or near the Canyon had any known connection with the Tyrrell House and its inhabitants.

  He added, “Of course even those with no known connection might possibly be Tyrrell’s responsibility.”

  * * *

  When Joe hung up the phone, Brainard, who had been peering cautiously out the window, turned and called in a low voice: “Keogh?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s one of them out there now. One of the men who are after me. Just standing there on the walk, as if he wants to make sure I see him.”

  Joe picked up his cane and got back on his feet. He looked out cautiously, past the curtain that Brainard was holding back a little. “The big guy with the fur collar.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. After what these people have said to me I’m not likely to forget what they look like.”

  “Got a name for this one?”

  “This one introduced himself as Preston. Mr. Smith and Mr. Preston is what they told me. Of course I have no idea if those names are really…” Brainard, with a fatalistic shrug, let his words trail off.