“What’s the matter?” grumbled someone, and he turned to see Dr. Reinach’s vast skull protruding nakedly from the room next to his.
“Don’t know. I heard Thorne cry out,” and Ellery pounded down the stairs and flung open the front door.
He stopped within the doorway, gaping.
Thorne, fully dressed, was standing ten yards in front of the house, facing Ellery obliquely, staring at something outside the range of Ellery’s vision with the most acute expression of terror on his gaunt face Ellery had ever seen on a human countenance. Beside him crouched Nicholas Keith, only half-dressed; the young man’s jaws gaped foolishly and his eyes were enormous glaring discs.
Dr. Reinach shoved Ellery roughly aside and growled: “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” The fat man’s feet were encased in carpet slippers and he had pulled a raccoon coat over his night-shirt, so that he looked like a particularly obese bear.
Thome’s Adam’s-apple bobbed nervously. The ground, the trees, the world were blanketed with snow of a peculiarly unreal texture; and the air was saturated with warm woolen flakes, falling softly. Deep drifts curved upwards to clamp the boles of trees.
“Don’t move,” croaked Thorne as Ellery and the fat man stirred. “Don’t move, for the love of God. Stay where you are.” Ellery’s grip tightened on the revolver and he tried perversely to get past the doctor; but he might have been trying to budge a stone wall. Thorne stumbled through the snow to the porch, paler than his background, leaving two deep ruts behind him. “Look at me,” he shouted. “ Look at me. Do I seem all right? Have I gone mad?”
“Pull yourself together, Thorne,” said Ellery sharply. “What’s the matter with you? I don’t see anything wrong.”
“Nick!” bellowed Dr. Reinach. “Have you gone crazy, too?”
The young man covered his sunburnt face suddenly with his hands; then he dropped his hands and looked again.