There echoed into my brain the woman's whisper in the parlor below, "I 'm not afraid, but I am beginning to believe we 're doing wrong." There was wrong somewhere surely--cowardly crime, murder! But were we connected with it?
Was it also part of the plot in which we were employed?
I could not understand, yet resolved one thing clearly--I would find out tomorrow, early, before she had to be told the ghastly discovery of the night.

With the first return of daylight I would seek out Coombs, tell him what I had seen, and compel him to confess the truth.

Then I should know how to act, how to approach her, and explain.

My nerves steadied as I sat there in the silence, and my mind drifted to the woman sleeping across the hall.
Then, my cigar smoked out, I also fell asleep in the chair.
The gray of dawn was on the windows when I awoke, my body aching from its unnatural position.

For the instant I imagined some unusual sound had aroused me, yet all was quiet, the only noise the twittering of birds from without.