"You've only one throat; and I'm not going to have it cut.

You sit down and eat your supper.

Go and lock that door first, though." Firmin locked the door of the hall; then he locked the door of the kitchen; then he sat down, and began to eat his supper.

His appetite was hearty, but none the less he derived little pleasure from the meal.
He kept stopping with the food poised on his fork, midway between the plate and his mouth, for several seconds at a time, while he listened with straining ears for the sound of burglars breaking in the windows of the hall.

He was much too far from those windows to hear anything that happened to them, but that did not prevent him from straining his ears.