He was heavy with the dead weight of inanimate objects.

With a last effort Byrne landed him face downwards on the edge of the bed, rolled him over, snatched from under this stiff passive thing a sheet with which he covered it over.

Then he spread the curtains at head and foot so that joining together as he shook their folds they hid the bed altogether from his sight.
He stumbled towards a chair, and fell on it.

The perspiration poured from his face for a moment, and then his veins seemed to carry for a while a thin stream of half, frozen blood.

Complete terror had possession of him now, a nameless terror which had turned his heart to ashes.
He sat upright in the straight-backed chair, the lamp burning at his feet, his pistols and his hanger at his left elbow on the end of the table, his eyes turning incessantly in their sockets round the walls, over the ceiling, over the floor, in the expectation of a mysterious and appalling vision.