the schedule of need turns burglary into robbery
oral narcotics addicts tend to operate on an extremely rigid physical schedule of need and satisfaction, and Gately is at this moment firmly in the need part of the schedule; and so D. W. Gately disastrously decides to go ahead and allow a nonviolent burglary to become in effect a robbery—which the operative legal difference involves either violence or the coercive threat of same
Context
The hinge of the catastrophe stated as pharmacology, not character: it is the rigid schedule of need — Gately caught in its "need part" — that overrides the easy exit and makes him bind the sick homeowner rather than screw out the door. The disaster is committed by the disease's clock. Malice never enters; a man dies because another man was due for satisfaction.