The Amateur Inn

by Albert Payson Terhune

Clive had reeled backward by instinct into the hot passageway, shutting the laboratory door behind him. Too well he realized what had happened. The horror and the thrill of it seemed to dispel his dizzy weakness as a glass of raw spirits might have done. But, as in the case of the liquor, that same collapse was due to return with double acuteness as soon as the false stimulation of excitement should ebb.

Presently he ventured back into the terrifyingly cold space where lay the body of the man who had been his brother.

His own mind still confused, Clive could think of but one thing to do.

As he had approached the house he had noted that the bricks of the walk were so hot from the unshaded glare of the sun that their heat had struck through his thin shoe-soles and had all but scorched his feet. If Osmun could be placed out there in the sun there might be a chance that he would thaw to life.

Creede was too much of a chemist to have imagined so idiotic a possibility in his normal mental state. But the shock had turned his reasoning faculties momentarily into those of a scared child.

With ever-increasing difficulty he dragged his brother’s thin body out of the laboratory and out of the house onto the stretch of brick-paved walk. The exertion was almost too much for him. It used up nearly all the fictitious strength bred of shock.

He stood panting over the body and striving not to topple to earth beside it. Then he heard the rattling approach of an automobile.

Through the tangle of boxwood boughs he could see the car stop at the gate. In ungovernable panic he staggered back into the house. There, shutting the front door softly behind him, he sank down on a settle in the hall, fighting for self-control.

In a few minutes he had conquered the unreasoning fright which had made him shun meeting any interlopers.

He had caused the death of his brother. He had done it to save his own life. He was not ashamed. He was not sorry. He was not minded to slink behind closed doors when it was his duty as a white man to confess what he had done.