Osmun Creede gathered himself for a leap upon the half-swooning man. With a final vestige of perception Clive noted this. Summoning all he could of his lost strength, he sought to save his newly imperiled life by leveling the pistol before it should be too late and by pulling the trigger. The laboratory echoed and reëchoed deafeningly to the report. And with the explosion sounded the multiple tinkle of falling glass. Clive’s bullet had had less than seven yards to travel. Yet it had missed his brother by at least two feet. It had flown high above the crouching Osmun’s head and had crashed through one of the vessels on the shelf. The receptacle shivered by the heavy-caliber ball was a huge Dewar Bulb, silvery of surface. In other words a double container with a vacuum between the outer and inner glass surfaces. Through both layers of thick glass the bullet smashed its way. The contents of the inner bulb were thus permitted to burst forth and to cascade down upon the luckless man who was crouching for a leap directly below the shelf. These contents were liquid air. Among the favorite recreations of the twins in their laboratory had been their constant experiments with liquid air. They had amused themselves by watching it boil violently at a temperature of 150 degrees below zero--of seeing it turn milk into a glowingly phosphorescent mass, of making it change an egg into an oval of brilliant blue light, an elastic rubber band into a brittle stick, and the like. Because of their constant experiments they always kept an unusually large quantity of the magic chemical in stock, the Dewar Bulb having been made especially for their use at quadruple the customary size. In its normal state liquid air has a mean temperature of 300 degrees below zero. And now at this temperature it bathed the man on whom it avalanched. In less than ten seconds Osmun Creede was not only dead but was frozen stiff. In through the laboratory’s open window gushed the torrid heat of the day, combating and partly quelling the miraculous chill. 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.