As he reached it, he glanced over his shoulder at the silent,
blood-stained form lying on the floor; he wondered whether his father
were dead or only stunned. For a moment, he wished that the blow had
been fatal: he, Heyton, would be the Marquess; there would be plenty of
money ready to his hand, there would be no need to steal his own jewels,
he thought, with an hysterical giggle. But he could leave nothing to
chance now. 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. He felt
sure that the Marquess had not seen him in that brief moment, when the
old man stood in the doorway; if he had done so, he would certainly have
spoken Heyton's name; there was nothing to show that the blow had been
dealt by Heyton; with the selfishness of the baser kind of criminal, he
had refrained from examining the motionless figure, lest he should be
stained by the blood which flowed from the wound. No; the robbery would
be laid to the charge of the ordinary burglar.