With another glance at the motionless figure, he stole from the room and reached his own.
The unnatural calm which had supported him during the last few minutes had deserted him by this time, and, in closing the door, he did so clumsily enough to make a sound; the sound, slight as it was, struck him with renewed terror, and, in crossing the room, he stumbled against a chair and overthrew it; and let the two keys slip from his fingers.

The sound of the falling chair was loud and distinct enough to fill him with apprehension, and he stood breathless and listened, as if he expected the whole household to awake.
There was a movement in Miriam's room, and he heard her voice calling to him softly.
"Was that you, Percy ?" she asked, in the tone of one just awakened from sleep.
He was silent for a moment; it seemed hours to him--then he slipped into the bed, and, with a yawn, as if she had roused him from sleep, he replied, "What is it ?" "I don't know," she said.

"I thought I heard a noise." "Oh, that!" he said, with another yawn.

"I knocked over the chair by the bed, reaching for a glass of water.

For goodness' sake, go to sleep and don't bother!" Mentally cursing his wife, Heyton closed his eyes and tried to think.
Strangely enough, his lack of imagination helped him; the imaginative man, in Heyton's position, would have conjured up all the terrible possibilities which environed him; but Heyton's mind was dull and narrow, and so he was able to concentrate on actual facts and actual chances.
Up to the present, he told himself, there was absolutely nothing to connect him with the robbery and the--murder, if murder it was.