He didn't wish to wake her up, and
the slight creak of the broad bedstead had sounded very loud to him. He
turned round apprehensively and waited for her to move, but she did not
stir. While he looked at her, he had a vision of himself lying there
too, also fast asleep, and--it occurred to him for the first time in his
life--very defenceless. This quite novel impression of the dangers of
slumber made him think suddenly of his revolver. He left the bedroom
with noiseless footsteps. The lightness of the curtain he had to lift
as he passed out, and the outer door, wide open on the blackness of
the veranda--for the roof eaves came down low, shutting out the
starlight--gave him a sense of having been dangerously exposed, he could
not have said to what. He pulled the drawer open. Its emptiness cut his
train of self-communion short. He murmured to the assertive fact:
"Impossible! Somewhere else!"
He tried to remember where he had put the thing; but those provoked
whispers of memory were not encouraging. Foraging in every receptacle
and nook big enough to contain a revolver, he came slowly to the
conclusion that it was not in that room. Neither was it in the other.
The whole bungalow consisted of the two rooms and a profuse allowance of
veranda all round. Heyst stepped out on the veranda.
"It's Wang, beyond a doubt," he thought, staring into the night.
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