CXLIII. TODD TAKES A LOOK AT HIS OLD QUARTERS IN FLEET STREET…

CXLIII. TODD TAKES A LOOK AT HIS OLD QUARTERS IN FLEET STREET

The village of Hampstead was, at the time of which we write, really a village. It still retains many of its old houses and picturesque beauties, but it is not quite such a little retired spot as it was. If ever any one walked through Hampstead, however, who was less inclined than another to pause and speculate upon its beauties, certainly that man was our doubtful acquaintance, Sweeney Todd.

He did not think it quite prudent to stop in the High Street to solace himself with any worldly comforts, although he saw several public-houses very temptingly open, but passing right on, he descended Red Lion Hill, and paused at a little inn at the foot of it, that is to say, on the London side of the pretty village.

Brandy was Todd's request, and he was met by a prompt, "Yes, sir;" but Todd had, among his varied experiences, to find out what Hampstead brandy was, and the moment he placed a portion of it in his mouth, his eyes goggled furiously, and spitting it out, he said, in a voice of anger--

"This is some mistake."

"Mistake, sir?"

"Yes; I asked for brandy, and you have given me the rinsings of some bottles and dirty glasses."

"Oh, dear no, sir; that brandy is the very best that you will get in all Hampstead."

"The best in all Hampstead!" repeated Todd, with a groan; "what must the worst be, I wonder?"

"I assure you, sir, it is considered to be very good."

"Considered?" said Todd. "Then, my friend, there's your money, and as the brandy is considered to be so good, you can drink it; but having some respect, from old companionship, for my inside, I decline it. Good evening."

With these words, Todd laid a shilling upon the bar, and strode away.

"Well," said the publican, "how singular! that's the eighth person who has refused that one quartern of brandy and paid for it. Here, wife, put this back into the bottle again, and shake it up well."

Todd pursued his route down Haverstock Hill, until he came to the then straggling district of Camden Town, and there he did find a house at which he got just a tolerable glass of brandy, and feeling very much invigorated by the drop, he walked on more rapidly still; and a thought took possession of him, which, although it was perhaps not unattended with danger, might turn out to be a very felicitous one.

During his career in the shop in Fleet Street, he had collected a number of watches from the pockets of the murdered persons, but he had always been afraid to attempt the disposal of the best of them.

The fact was, that at that time everybody had not a watch as at present. It was an expensive article, and Mr. So-and-so's watch was as well known as Mr. So-and-so himself; so that it would have been one of the most hazardous things possible for Todd to have brought suspicion upon himself by going about disposing of the watches of his victims. It was the same, too, with some other costly articles, such as rings, lockets, and so on; and as he had realised as much money as he could previous to his arrangements for leaving England, Todd had left some of this description of property to perish in the fire, which he hoped to be the means of igniting in old Fleet Street upon his departure.

Now, as he crept along by Tottenham-Court-Road, he mused upon the state of things.

"If," he muttered, "I could only get into my late house in Fleet Street, I know where to lay my hand upon portable property, which was not worth my consideration while I had thousands of pounds in gold, but which now would be a fortune to me in my reduced circumstances. If I could but lay my hand upon it!"

The more Todd thought over this proposition, the more pleased he was with it; and by the time he had indulged himself with two more glasses of brandy, it began to assume, to his mind, a much more tangible shape.

"It may be done," he said, "it surely may be done. If I could only make my way in the church it might be done well, and surely one of these picklocks that I have about me might enable me to do that."

The picklock he alluded to was one that he had put in his pocket to accommodate Mr. Lupin, when they were both so intent upon their escape from Newgate, and when Mr. Lupin was foolish enough to believe that Todd really had two thousand pounds buried in Caen Wood, Hampstead. There was one thing, however, which made Todd pause. He did not think he was sufficiently disguised to venture into the locality of his old residence, and, unfortunately for him, he was rather a peculiar-looking man. His great chance, however, was, that in Fleet Street surely no one would now think of looking for Sweeney Todd.

"I must be bold," he said, "I must be bold and resolute. It will not do to shrink now. I will buy a knife."

This was a pleasant idea to Todd. Buying a knife seemed almost like getting half-way to his revenge, and he went into an obscure cutler's shop, and bought a long double-edged knife, for which he gave two shillings. He then carefully concealed it in his clothing.

After this, he hit upon a plan of operations which he thought would have the effect of disguising him. At that period, wigs were so commonly worn that it was nothing at all particular for a person to go into a wig-makers, and select one--put it on--pay for it--and go away!

"Yes," said Todd, "I will buy a wig; for I have art enough and knowledge of wigs to enable me to do so--as shall produce the greatest possible change in my appearance. A wig, a wig will be the thing."

Todd had hardly well made this declaration than he came upon a wig-makers, and in he went. Pointing to a wig that was on a block, and which had a very clerical kind of look, he inquired the price of it.

"Oh, my dear sir," said the wig-maker, "that is much too old looking a perriwig for you. Let me recommend you a much younger wig. Now, sir, here's one that will take a matter of ten years off your age in a moment."

Todd had discretion enough to know well that he could not make up young, so he merely pointed to the wig again and enquired the price.

"Well, sir, it is a couple of guineas, but--"

Without another word, Todd laid down the couple of guineas, and putting the wig upon his head he left the shop, certainly having given the wig-maker an impression that he was the oddest customer he had had for some time; but little did he suspect that that odd customer was the criminal with whose name all London was ringing, and upon whose head--with or without a wig--so heavy a price was set.

After this, Todd made his way to a shop where second-hand clothing was bought and sold, and there he got accommodated with an old gray coat that reached down to the calves of his legs, and he bought likewise a very voluminous white cravat; and when he got into the street with these articles, and purchased at another shop a walking cane, with a great silver top to it, and put one hand behind his back and stooped very much, and moved along as if he were afflicted with all the corns and bunions that his toes could carry, and by bending his knees, decreased his height six inches, no one could have known him.

At least, so Todd flattered himself.

In this way he tottered on until he got to the immediate neighbourhood of Fleet Street. To be sure, with all his coolness and courage, he could not help shaking a little when he came to that well remembered neighbourhood.

"And I," he thought to himself, "and I by this time hoped and expected to be far over the sea, instead of being such a wretch as I am now, crawling about, as it were, amid pitfalls and all sorts of dangers! Alas! alas!"

He really shook now, and it was quite astonishing how, with his old wig, and his old gray coat and his stick, and his stooping posture, old and venerable, yes, positively venerable, Sweeney Todd actually looked.

"Ain't you well, sir?" said a respectable man, stepping up to him. "Can I assist you?"

Todd perpetrated about half a dozen wheezing coughs, and then, not sorry for an opportunity of trying his powers of imitation of age, he replied in a tremulous voice--

"Ah, sir! Yes--old age--old age, sir--eugh!--eugh!--oh, dear me, I feel that I am on my last legs, and that they are on the shake--old age, sir, will come on; but it's a comfort to look back upon a long life well spent in deeds of charity!"

"Not a doubt of it," said the stranger. "I was only afraid, sir, you were taken suddenly ill, as you stood there."

"Oh, no--no--eugh!--no. Thank you, sir."

"Good evening, sir."

"Good evening, my good sir. Oh, if I had you only in my old shop with a razor at your throat, wouldn't I polish you off!" muttered Todd, as the stranger left him.

In the course of another minute, Todd was on the Fleet Street side of Temple Bar.

He could almost see his old house--that house in which he had passed years of deep iniquity, and which he had hoped, ere that time, would have been a heap of ruins. There it was, tall, dismal, and gaunt looking. The clock of St. Dunstan's struck eleven.

"Eleven," he muttered. "A good hour. The streets are getting deserted now, and no one will know me. I will stoop yet more, and try to look older--older still."

Todd a little over acted his part, as he tottered down Fleet Street, so that some individuals turned to look after him, which was a thing he certainly did not wish, as his great object was to escape all observation if possibly he could; so he corrected that, and went on rather more strongly; and finally he came exactly opposite to his own house, and getting partially into a door-way, he looked long and fixedly at it.

What thoughts, at that time, chased each other through the guilty mind of that man, it is hard to say; but he stood like a statue, fixing his regards upon the house for the space of about a quarter of an hour.

Once only he clapped his teeth together, and gave a sort of savage growl.

It was lucky for Todd that no one saw him just then, or they would have thought him rather an extraordinary old man.

The house was perfectly dark from top to bottom. The shutters of the shop, of course, were all up, and the shutters of the first-floor windows were likewise closed. The other windows had their old dingy blinds all down; and, to all outward appearance, that den of murder was deserted.

But Todd could not believe such to be the case. In his own mind, he felt fully sure, that Sir Richard Blunt was not the man to leave the house without some sort of custody; and he quite settled with himself, that there was some one or more persons minding it, and, no doubt, by order, sitting there in one of the back rooms, so that no light should show in front.

"Curses on them all!" he muttered.

"Ah! you are looking at old Todd's house, sir?" said a voice.

Todd started; and close to him was a person smoking a pipe, and looking as jolly as possible.

"Yes--yes," stammered Todd, for he was taken by surprise rather. "Oh, yes, sir. I am amazed at the great wickedness of human nature."

"You may well, sir--you may well! Lord bless me! I never thought him a good looking man, but I never thought any ill of him neither, and I have seen him lots of times."

"Indeed, sir? Pray, what sort of man was he? I never saw him, as I live in Soho; and I am so much in years now, that in the bustling day-time I don't care to come into streets like this; for you see, sir, I can't move about as I could sixty years ago; and the people--God help them--are all in such a hurry now, and they push me here and there in such a way, that my failing breath and limbs won't stand it; and--and--eugh!--eugh! Oh, dear."

"Poor old gentleman! I don't wonder at your not liking the crowds. How old may you be, sir?'"

"A matter of eighty-nine, sir. It's an old age to get to, but I--I am younger than my brother, yet--Ha! ha! Oh dear, if it wasn't now for the rheumatism and the lumbago and a pain in my shoulder, and a few other little things, I should get on very well."

"Not a doubt of it. But you asked me what Todd was like, and I'll tell you, sir. He was nigh upon six feet high, and his face was two feet of it. He was just as ugly as any one you would wish to see for a pattern in that way, and that's his house where he murdered all the people."

"Peace be to their souls!"

"Amen! And there are underground places that lead right away through the vaults of St. Dunstan's to Bell-yard, where Mrs. Lovett's pie-shop was, you know, sir."

"I have heard. Ah, dear--dear, I have heard. A very wicked woman, indeed--very wicked; and yet, sir, it is to be hoped she has found mercy in another world."

"There would need be plenty of it," said the man with the pipe, "if Mrs. Lovett is to be accommodated with any."

"My friend," said Todd, "don't be profane; and now I must go, as I don't like being out late."

"And so must I, for my pipe's out. I shall turn in, now. Good night, sir, and a pleasant walk home to you."

"Thank you, sir, thank you--eugh! eugh! I think if it were not for my cough, I should do very well."

Todd hobbled away, and the man, who lived in Bouverie Street, went home. Todd had not got any real information from this man; but the brief conversation he had had with him, had given him a sort of confidence in his disguise, and in his power of acting, that he had not had before, so that, upon the whole, he was not sorry for the little incident.

And now it was quite evident that the streets were getting very much deserted. During the whole length of Fleet Street there was not half a dozen persons to be seen at all, and Todd, after casting a rapid glance around him to note if he were observed, suddenly crossed the way, and boldly went up to the door of old St. Dunstan's Church.

When once close to the door of the old building, he was so much in shadow that he felt tolerably secure from observation, but still he lingered a little, for he did not want to do anything so hastily as to rob it of its caution.

With his back against the church-door he glanced right and left, and then for the space of five minutes he bent all his faculties to the one task of ascertaining if any one was sufficiently near to watch him, and he got perfectly satisfied that such was not the case. He stood securely against the old church-door.

"So far," he muttered, "I am safe--quite safe."

CXLIV. TODD MAKES HIS WAY INTO HIS OWN HOUSE

When Todd was satisfied that he was not watched or even observed by any one, he turned and commenced operations upon the door of the church. The cunning person who had put on the lock, had had a notion in his necromantic head, that the larger you made a lock the better it was, and the less likely to be picked; and the consequence of this was, that Todd found no difficulty in opening the church-door.

The moment he felt the lock yield to the false key he employed, he took another keen glance around him, and, seeing no one, slipped into the sacred edifice and closed the door behind him. Feeling, then, up and down the door until his hand touched a bolt, he shot it into its socket, and then a feeling of great security took possession of him, although the interior of the church was most profoundly dark, and any one would have thought that such a man as Todd--in such a place--could hardly have been free from some superstitious terrors. An overbearing selfishness, however, mingled with the most vengeful and angry feelings, kept Todd above all these sensations, which are mostly the result of vacant mindedness.

The church felt cold, and the silence had about it a character such as the silence of no other kind of place has. It may be imagination, but the silence of a church deserted, always appears to us to be a silence different from any other, as the silence in a wood is entirely different from any other description of stillness.

"All is quiet enough here," whispered Todd. "I and the dead have this place to ourselves now, and so we have often had it. Many a time have I waded about this building in the still hours of the night, when all London slept, and opened some little window, with the hope of letting out the stench from the dead bodies before the morning should bring people to the building; but it would not do. The smell of decomposition lingered in the air, and it is here still, though not so bad. Yes, it is here still! I can smell it now, and I know the odour well."

Todd was sufficiently familiar with St. Dunstan's church almost to go over it even at that hour, and amid that darkness, without running against anything; but yet he was very careful as he went, and kept his arms outstretched before him. He dreaded to get a light, although he had the means of doing so, for Mr. Lupin had, at his request, given him some of the matches and little wax-candle-ends that the pious lady had supplied him with. Yet Todd knew how small a light would suffice to shine through some of the richly stained glass windows of the church, and therefore he dreaded to give himself a light.

He felt confident that he should have no sort of difficulty in getting into the vaults, for in consequence of recent events the stone that covered up the entrance could not be fast, and he knew from past experience that his strength was sufficient to raise it if he once got hold of it, and if it were not fastened down by cement, which, no doubt, was not the case now.

"I shall yet get," he said, "into my old house. The time has been rather short, and the goods there deposited by me in old times may there remain; and if so, I will carry away enough with me to keep me far above the necessities of life, and when once I have achieved that much, I will from some obscure place meditate upon my revenge."

In the course of about ten minutes he found the flat stone that led into the vaults, and to his satisfaction he found that it was merely laid crosswise over the aperture, in order to prevent any one in day time from heedlessly tumbling in, but at night it was not, of course, expected that any one would be there to fall into such a danger.

With one effort Todd removed it.

"Good," he said. "Now I can make my way, and once below the level of the floor of the church, there will be no danger in at once accommodating myself with a light, which will be useful enough in the vaults."

Getting upon his hands and knees now, Todd, for fear of a fall down the stone steps, cautiously got down the first few of them, and then he paused to light one of the bits of taper with which he was provided. In the course of a few moments the tiny flame was clear and bright, and shading it with his hand, Todd carefully descended the remainder of the stairs.

How still everything was in those vaults of old St. Dunstan's. Were there no spirits from another world--spirits of the murdered, to flit in horrible palpability before the eyes of that man who had cut short their thread of life? Surely if ever a visitant from another world could have been expected, it would have been to appear to Todd to convince him that there was more beyond the grave than a forgotten name and a mouldering skeleton.

When he reached the foot of the stairs and was satisfied that the little light was burning well, he held it up above his head and bent a keen glance around him.

"Ha! ha!" he laughed, "so they have been doing their best--poor fools as they are to meddle with such rubbish--to rid the family vaults of some of the new tenants that I took occasion to introduce into them. Well, let them, let them! I did play a little havoc with the gentility of the dead, I must admit!"

With this highly jocose remark, Todd passed on, taking a route well known to him, which would conduct him to the cellar that it will be recollected was immediately underneath his shop. It was from this that he hoped to get into the house.

It took Todd much less time than it would have taken any one else to make his way to that cellar; but then no one was or could be so well acquainted with all the windings and turnings of the excavation that led to it as he, and finally he reached it, just as he found the necessity of lighting up another little piece of wax candle, as the one he had already lit had burnt right to his hand. He found a piece of wood, into which he stuck the new one securely, so that it was much handier to hold.

Todd now felt the absolute necessity of being much more cautious than before, for he did know who might be in the shop above, and he did know that a very small sound below would make itself heard. Holding up the light, he saw that his nice little mechanical arrangement regarding the two chairs, remained just as it had been as he used to use it.

"Ah!" he cried, "it will be some time in London again before people will sit down in a barber's chair with anything like confidence, particularly if it should chance to be a fixture. Ha!"

Todd was getting quite merry now. The sight of the old familiar objects of that place had certainly raised his spirits very considerably, and no doubt the brandy had helped a little. Setting the light down in a corner of the cellar, he placed himself in an attitude of intense listening, which he kept up for about five minutes, at the end of which time he gave a nod, and muttered--

"There may be some one in the parlour--that I will not pretend to say no to; but the shop is free of human occupants. And now for the means of getting into it. If anybody can, I can, and that with tolerable ease, too."

The apparatus by which Todd had been in the habit of letting down his customers, consisted of a slight system of lever, which he could move from the parlour, but provided he could reach so high, he could just as easily release the loose plank from where he was; in which case the chair that was above would have a preponderating influence, as that was on the heaviest arm of the plank from the centre upon which it turned.

"I can manage that," he said; and then taking the knife from his pocket, he found that by its aid he could just reach high enough to touch the lever that acted as a kind of bolt to keep the plank in its place. The moment he removed that bolt the plank slowly moved, and then Todd caught the end of it in his hand, and pulled it right down, so that it assumed a perpendicular aspect completely. Holding then the piece of wood to which he had attached the wax light in his mouth, he climbed carefully and noiselessly up into his old shop; and when there he replaced the plank, and on the end of the board which was the counterpoise to the chair, he placed a weight, which he knew where to lay his hands upon, and which kept the chair in its place, although a very little would have overcome the counterpoise, and sent it down to the cellar below.

Todd extinguished his light, and the moment he did so, he saw a very faint illumination coming from the parlour through a portion of the door, into which a square of glass was let in, and through which he, Todd, used to glare at poor Tobias.

The sound of voices, too, came upon his ears, and he laid himself flat down on the floor, close to the wall, under a kind of bench that ran along it for a considerable distance.

"I am certain I heard something," said a voice, and then the parlour-door was opened, and a broad flash of light came into the shop. "I am quite sure I heard an odd noise."

"Oh, nonsense," said some one else. "Nonsense."

"But I did, I tell you."

"Yes, you fancied it half-an-hour ago, and it turned out to be nothing at all. Lord bless you, if I were to go on fancying things out of what I have heard since I have been in this house, minding it for Sir Richard Blunt, I should have been out of my mind long before this, I can tell you."

"But it was very odd."

"Well, the shop is not so large: you can soon see if Todd is in it. Ha! ha! ha!"

"No, no, I don't expect to see Todd there exactly, I confess; it would not be a very likely place in which to find him."

"Well, is there anything now?"

"No--no. It all seems much as usual, and yet I thought I did hear a noise; but I suppose it was nothing, or a rat, perhaps, for there are lots, they say, below. It might have been a rat. I did not think that before, and I feel all the easier now at the idea."

"Then, come and finish our game."

"Very good--all's right. You make a little drop of brandy-and-water, and we will just have this game out before we go to rest, for I am getting tired and it's late."

"Not quite twelve yet."

"Ain't it? There it goes by St. Dunstan's clock."

Todd counted the strokes of the clock, and by the time they ceased to reverberate in the night air, the man who most unquestionably had heard a noise in the shop, had gone into the parlour again, half satisfied that it was a rat, and sat down to the game at cards that had been interrupted.

These were two men that had been put into the house to mind it, until the authorities should determine what to do with it, by Sir Richard Blunt. They were not officers of any skill or repute, although they were both constables; but then Sir Richard did not consider that anything in the shape of great intelligence was required in merely taking care of an empty house--for the idea of Todd ever visiting that place again, had certainly been one that did not even enter the far-seeing brain of the magistrate.

"It's my deal," Todd heard one of them say, "but you go on, while I mix the brandy-and-water."

"Indeed!" muttered Todd, as he gathered up his gaunt form from under the bench. "Indeed! So there are two of you, are there? Well, if there is another world, you can keep each other company on your road to it, for I am not going to let your lives stand in the way of my projects. No--no, I shall yet polish off somebody in my old place, and it is a pleasure that it should be two friends of that man Blunt, whom I so hate, that I have no words in which to express it!"

Todd crept up to the parlour door with the long knife in his hand that he had bought at the cutler's in Camden Town, and putting his eyes close to the pane of glass in the door, he looked in at the two men.

They really seemed to be quite comfortable, those two men. A bright fire was burning in the grate, and a kettle was singing away upon the hob at a great rate. A pack of cards, some pipes, and some glasses, were upon the table that they had dragged up close to the fire-side; and they were, take them altogether, about as comfortable as anybody could well expect to be in that gloomy parlour of Todd's, at his house of murder in Fleet Street.

They were stout strong men though, and as Todd looked, he thought to himself, that with all his strength, and with all his desperate fighting for life, as he would do, it was not a desirable thing for him to come into personal contact with them.

"Cunning," he muttered, "will do more than strength. I must bide my time--but I will kill them both if they are in my way, and that they will be, is nearly past a doubt!"

"There," said the man who was mixing the brandy-and-water, "there, you will find that a stiff comfortable glass; lots of brandy, and lots of sugar, and only water enough to make it hot and steamy."

"You know how to mix, Bill," said the other, as he took a drop and then was obliged to cough and wink again, it was so strong and hot.

"Ah!" thought Todd, "if it would only choke you!"

The other man then took his drink at the brandy, and he too coughed and winked, and then they both laughed and declared how precious strong it was, and one of them said--

"The fun of it is, that it was old Todd's; and when he laid in such good stuff as this, he little thought that we would be enjoying it. I wonder where he is?"

"Oh, he's far enough off by this time, poking about at some of the sea-ports to try to get away, you may depend."

"Is he," muttered Todd; "you will find, my kind friend, that I am near enough to cut your throat, I hope."

CXLV. TODD HAS A NARROW ESCAPE, AND HAS A BIT OF REVENGE

It was quite a provoking thing, and gall and wormwood to Todd in a manner of speaking, to see those two boisterous men enjoying themselves in his parlour. There could be no doubt in the world, but that if he had had the means then and there to do so, he would have hurled destruction upon them both forthwith; but he could only look at them now, and wait for a better opportunity.

The fact was, that now, for the first time, Todd found that the architecture of his old place of residence was far from being of the most convenient order; inasmuch as you could not reach the staircase leading to the upper part of the residence, without going through the parlour; so that he was a prisoner in the shop.

"I tell you what it is, Bill," said one of the men, assuming quite a philosophical look. "That fellow, Todd, as used to live here, after all, was some use to society."

"Was he?"

"Yes, to be sure. Can't you guess?"

"Not I. I can't see what use a fellow can be to society who cuts folks' throats."

"Can't you?"

"No, nor you neither, if you come to that."

"Yes I can. Don't it make folks careful of going into a strange barber's shop, let me ask you that?"

"Oh, you idiot. That's always the way with you. You begins with looking as wise as an owl as has found out something wonderful, and then when one comes to find out what it is, it's just nothing at all to nobody. I tell you what it is, old fellow, it strikes me you are getting a drop too much."

"No--no; but I have got something on my mind."

"It stands on a very small place, then. What is it?"

"Just you listen and I'll tell you. I did think of not saying anything about it, because you see I thought, that is to say, I was afraid if I did, you would go off at once."

"Off? Off?"

"I don't mean dead--I mean out of this place, that's all, not out of this world; but now I feel as if I ought to tell you all about it, you know, and then you can judge for yourself. You know you slept here last night on that large sofa in the corner?"

"Yes, in course."

"Very good; you had had what one may call just the other drop you know, and so--"

"No I hadn't, but you had. I recollect quite well you dropped your light, and had no end of trouble to get it lighted again, and kept knocking your head against the mantel-shelf and saying 'Don't' as if somebody was doing it to you."

"Go along with you. Will you listen, or won't you, while I tell the horrid anecdote?"

"Horrid, is it?"

"Above a bit. It's enough to make all your hair stand on end, like quills on a guinea hen, as the man says in the play; and I expect you'll dream of it all night; so here goes, and don't you interrupt me any more, now."

"Go on. I won't."

"Well, you know we had a pretty good fire here, as we have now; and as twelve o'clock went ding-dong by old St. Dunstan's, we thought it was time to have some sleep, and you lay down on the sofa, saying as you could see by the fire light, while I took the candle to go up stairs to bed with, you know--old Todd's bed, I suppose it is, on the second-floor, and rather damp and thin, you know."

"Goodness, gracious! tell me something I don't know, will you? Do you want to drive a fellow out of his mind?"

"Well--well, don't be hasty! I'm getting on. I took the light, and shading it with one hand, for there's always a furious draught upon the stairs of this house; up I went, thinking of nothing at all. Well, in course, I had to pass the first-floor, which is shut up, you know, and has all sorts of things in it."

"Yes; go on--go on!"

"Is it interesting?"

"It is; only you go on. I'll warrant now it's a ghost you are coming to."

"No, it ain't; but don't percipitate, and you shall hear all about it. Let me see, where was I?--Oh, on the first-floor landing: But, as I say, I was thinking of nothing at all, when, all of a sudden, I heard a very odd kind of noise in the front room of the first-floor."

"I wonder you didn't fall headlong down stairs with fright, candle and all."

"No, I didn't. It sounded like the murmur of people talking a long way off. Then I began to think it must be in the next house; and I thought of going up to bed, and paying no attention to it, and I did get up two or three steps of the second-floor stairs, but still I heard it; and it got such a hold of my mind, do you know, that I couldn't leave it, but down I went again, and listened. I thought of coming to you; but, somehow, I didn't do so."

"Now, go on!"

"Well, after listening with my ear against the door for some time, I was certain that the sound was in the room; and I don't know how I screwed up courage enough to open the door very gently, and look in!"

"You did?"

"I did; and the very moment I did so, out went the light as clean as if you had taken your fingers and snuffed it out; but in the room there was a strange pale kind of light, that wasn't exactly like twilight, nor like moonlight, nor like any light that I ever saw, but you could see everything by it as plain as possible."

"Well--well?"

"The room was crammed full of people, all dressed, and looking at each other; and some of them were speaking; and upon all their clothes and faces there was blood, sometimes more, and sometimes less; and all their eyes looked like the eyes of the dead; and then one voice more loud than the rest said--'All murdered!--All murdered by Todd! The Lord have mercy upon his soul!'"

"Oh, gracious! What did you do?"

"I felt as if my breath was going from me, and my heart kept swelling and swelling till I thought it would burst, and then I dropped the candle; and the next time I come to my senses, I found myself lying on the bed in the second floor, with all my clothes on!"

"You dreamt it?"

"Oh, no--no. It's no use telling me that. I only wish I thought so, that's all."

"But, I tell you, you did."

"You may tell me as much as you like; but in the morning when I came down, there was the candle on the first-floor landing, just as I had dropped it. What do you think of that? Of course, after I drew out my head again from the first-floor front room I must have gone up stairs in the middle of my fright, and I dare say I fainted away, and didn't come to myself again till the morning."

"Oh, stuff! Don't try to make me believe in your ghost stories. If--if I thought it was true, I should bolt out of the house this minute."

"You would, really?"

"Yes, to be sure; is a fellow to stay in a place with his hair continually standing on end, I should like to know? Hardly. But it's all stuff. Take another drop of brandy! Now I tell you what, if you have the courage to go with me, I will take the light now and go up to the first-floor, and have a good look all about it! What do you say to that, now? Will you do it?"

"I don't much mind."

"Only say the word, and I am quite ready."

"Well, I will. If so be they are there, they won't do us any harm, for they took no more notice of me than as if I had been nothing at all. But how you do shake!"

"I shake? You never were more mistaken in all your life. It's you that's shaking, and that makes you think I am. You are shaking, if you please; and if you don't like the job of going up stairs, only say so; I won't press it upon you!"

"Oh, I'll go."

"You are sure of it, now? You don't think it will make you ill? because I shouldn't like that. Come now, only say at once that you would rather not go, and there's an end to it."

"Yes, but I rather would."

"Come on, then--come on. Courage, my friend, courage. Look at me, and be courageous. You don't see me shivering and shaking and shrinking. Keep up your heart, and come on!"

"You wretches," muttered Todd. "It shall go hard with me, now, but I will play you some trick that shall go right to drive you out of your shallow wits. Go! It is the very thing I would, of all others, have wished you to do."

It was quite clear that the man who had proposed going up stairs to explore the first-floor, was much the more alarmed of the two; and now that he had made the proposal, he would gladly have seized upon any excuse for backing out of it, short of actually confessing that his fears had got the better of him. No doubt he had been greatly in hopes that his companion, who had told the ghost story, would have shrunk from such an ordeal; but as he did not do so, there was no resource but to carry it out or confess that it was but a piece of braggadocio, which he wanted the firmness to carry out. He strove now to talk himself out of his fears.

"Come on--come on! Ghosts, indeed! There are no such things, of course, as any reasonable man knows; and if there are, why, what harm can they do us? I say, what harm can they do us?"

"I don't know!"

"You don't know? No, nor nobody else! Come on, I say. Of course providence is providence, and if there are ghosts, I respect them very much--very much indeed, and would do anything in the world to oblige them!"

The valiant proposer of the experimental trip to the first floor uttered these last sentences in a loud voice, no doubt with the hope that if any of the ghostly company of the first-floor were within hearing, they would be so good as to report the same to their friends, so that he might make his way there with quite a good understanding.

They trimmed the candle now; and having each of them fortified himself with a glass of brandy that Todd had laid in for his own consumption, they commenced their exploit by leaving the parlour and slowly ascending the staircase that led to the upper portion of the house.

Of course, Todd knew well the capabilities of that house, and long before the two men had actually left the parlour he had made up his mind what to do. The door of communication between the shop and the parlour was not fastened, so that he could on open at the moment; and when the men left that latter room he at once entered it. Todd's first movement, then, was to supply himself with a good dose of his own brandy, which he took direct from the bottle to save time.

"Ah!" he whispered, drawing a long breath after the draught, "I feel myself again, now!"

In order to carry out his plan, he knew that he had no time to spare; for he did not doubt but that the two men would make their visit as short as possible to the first-floor; so--with cautious but rapid footsteps--he slipped into the passage and at once commenced the ascent of the staircase after them. The light they carried guided him very well. How little they imagined that any of its beams shone upon the diabolical face of Sweeney Todd!

"Can't you come on?" said one of the men to the other. "Damme, how you do lag behind, to be sure. Any one would think you were afraid."

"Afraid? Me afraid! that is a good joke."

"Well, come quicker, then."

"You will both of you," thought Todd, "come down a little quicker, or I am very much mistaken indeed."

The distance was short, and the landing of the first floor was soon gained by the men. He who had seen, or dreamed that he had seen, the strange sight in the room upon a former occasion, was decidedly the most courageous of the two. Perhaps, after all, he was the least imaginative.

"I think you said it was the front room?" said the other.

"Oh, yes, I heard not a sound in the back one. Here's the door. You hold the light while I listen a little."

"Yes--I--I'll hold it. Keep up your courage, and don't shake now. Oh, what a coward you are!"

"Well, that's a good one. You are shaking so yourself that you will have the light out, if you don't mind. Do try and be a little steady with it; and your teeth chatter so in your head, that they are for all the world like a set of castanets."

"Oh, how you do talk. Come, listen at the door; I must say I don't hear anything; but I have the greatest respect for ghosts, I have. I never say one word against the dead--God bless 'em all!"

While this man held the light--or rather waved it to and fro in his agitation--the other, with his ear placed flat against the panel of the door, listened attentively. All was perfectly still in the first-floor, and he said--

"Perhaps they haven't begun yet, you know."

"Perhaps not;--shall we go away, now?"

"Oh, no--no. There's no end of curious things in the room; and now that we are here, let's go in, at all events, and have a little look about us. Don't be afraid. Come--come."

"Oh--I--I ain't exactly afraid, only, you see, I don't see much the use of going in, and--and, you know, we have already heard an odd noise in the shop, to-night."

"But that was nothing, for I looked, you know."

"Yes--yes,--but--but I'm afraid the fire will go out below, do you know."

"Let it go, then. If you are too much of a coward to come with me into this room, say so at once, and you can go down stairs while I have a look at it by myself. You can't have the candle, though, for it is no use my going in by myself."

"What! do you expect me to go in the dark? Oh dear, no, I could not do that; open the door, and I will follow you in; I ain't a bit afraid, only, you see, I feel very much interested, that's all."

"Oh, well, that's quite another thing."

With this, the most courageous of the two men opened the door of the front room on the first-floor, and peeped into it.

"All's right," he said. "There ain't so much as a mouse stirring. Come on!"

Highly encouraged by this announcement, the other followed him; and they allowed the door to creak nearly shut after them.

While this hesitation upon the stairs was going on, Todd had been about half way up from the passage, crouching down for fear they should by chance look that way, and see him; but when he found that they had fairly gone into the front room, he made as much speed to the top of the stairs as was consistent with extreme caution, and laying his hand upon the handle of the lock of the door of the back room on that floor, he noiselessly turned it, and the door at once yielding, he glided in.

The two rooms communicated with each other by a pair of folding-doors, and the light that the men carried sent some beams through the ill-fitting junction of the two, so that Todd could see very well about him.

CXLVI. THERE IS A FIRE IN FLEET STREET AFTER ALL.--TODD ESCAPES

When once he had gained that back room, Todd considered that his design against the peace of mind of the two men was all but accomplished; and it was with great difficulty that he kept himself from giving a hideous chuckle, that would at once have opened their ears to the fact that some one was close at hand, who, whether of this world or the next, was a proficient in horrid noises.

He controlled this ebullition of ill-timed mirth, however, and listened attentively.

"There don't seem much else beside lots of clothes," said one of the men, "and hats, and sticks, and umbrellas."

"Ah!" said the other, "and they all belong to the murdered men that Todd cut up to make pies of!"

"Horrible!--horrible!"

"You may say that, old friend. It's only a great pity that Sir Richard has so expressly forbid anything to be touched in the old crib, or else there's some nice enough things here, I should say, that would make a fellow warm and comfortable in the winter nights."

"Not a doubt of that. Here's a cloak, now!"

"A beauty--quite a beauty, I say. He can't know what is really here. Do you think he can?"

"What, Sir Richard?"

"Yes."

"Oh, don't he. I wouldn't venture to touch so much as an old hat here, for I should feel, as sure as fate, he'd find it out."

"Oh, nonsense, he couldn't; and as for the ghosts, they don't seem at all likely to interfere in the matter, for there's not one of them to be seen or heard of to-night."

"No, I defy the ghosts--a-hem! I begin to think, do you know, that ghosts are all a sham. Why here we are, two men as brave as lions, or we should not have come here, and yet the deuce a ghost is to be seen. I tell you what I'd do if one was to come. I'd say, 'Old fellow, was this your cloak?' and then if he said 'yes,' I'd say, 'well, old fellow, it's of no use to you now, you know; will you give it to me?'"

"Ha!--ha! Capital! Why you have quite got over all your fears."

"Fears? Rubbish! I was only amusing myself to hear what you would say."

"Was you, though? Only acting, after all?"

"Precisely."

"Well, then, I must say you did it remarkably well, and if you take to the stage you will make your fortune. Oh, here's a nice brown suit now, that would be just my size. I should feel inclined to say to the ghosts what you would say about the cloak."

"Well, let's say it, and if nobody says anything to the contrary, we will take it for granted. I will take the cloak, and you the brown suit; Sir Richard will be none the wiser, and we shall be a little the richer, you know. 'Mr. Ghost, may I have this cloak, if you please, as you can't possibly want it?'"

"Upon my life you are a funny fellow," said the other; and then holding up the brown suit, he said, "Mr. Ghost who once owned this, may I have this brown suit, as it is of no use to you now?"

It was at this moment that Todd dashed open the two folding doors, and with one of the most frightful, fiendish yells that ever came from the throat of man, he made one bound into the front room.

The effect of this appearance, and the sound that accompanied it, was all that Todd could possibly wish or expect. The two men were almost driven to madness. They dropped the light, and with shrieks of dismay they rushed to the door--they tore it open, and then they both fell headlong down the staircase to the passage below, where they lay in a state of insensibility that was highly amusing to Todd.

"Ha! ha!" he laughed, as he stood at the head of the stairs; "Ha! ha!"

He listened, but not so much as a groan came from either of the men, and then he clapped his huge hands together with a report like the discharge of a pistol, and laughed again. Todd had not been so well pleased since his escape from Newgate.

He slowly descended the stairs, and more than once he stopped to laugh again. The passage was intensely dark, so that when he reached it he trod upon one of the men, but that rather amused him, and he jumped violently upon the body.

"Good," he said. "Perhaps they are both dead. Well, let them both die. It will be a lesson to others how far they interfere with me. Society and I are now fairly at war, and I will win as many battles as I can. They can't say but this is a well-fought one, two to one. Ha! They ought to make me a Field-Marshal. Ha!"

Making the most hideous faces, just for the fun of the thing, Todd made his way to the parlour, and taking from a corner, where he knew to lay his hands upon them in a moment, a couple of old newspapers, he twisted them up into a kind of torch, and lighting it then at the fire, he went with it flaming in his hand to the passage.

The two men lay profoundly still. Terror and the fall they had had, combined to throw them quite into a swooning state, from which probably it would be hours before they would recover.

"This is capital," said Todd. "Lie there, both of you, until I have transacted the business in this house that brought me here. Then I will, perhaps, think of some amusing way of finishing you both off--ha!"

Still carrying the flaming papers in his hand, Todd now made his way to the first-floor, and found the candle that the men had dropped. That he lighted, as it would be much more convenient to him than the papers; and then he trod them out, for he did not wish any great light as yet to appear from the windows of that house, and perchance awaken the attention of some passing traveller or curious neighbour.

Shading the light with his hand, and looking like some grim ogre, Todd took his way to the second-floor. As he went, he every now and then muttered his satisfaction to himself, or gave utterance to one of his unearthly laughs; for in the whole of that night's adventure there was much to please him.

In the first place, he hoped, and fully expected, to get enough booty from the house to place him a little at his ease as regarded money matters, provided that with it he should be fortunate enough to get away from England. Then, again, it was no small satisfaction to Todd to do anything which looked like a triumph over Sir Richard Blunt, and this not only looked like it, but really was.

"A good step," he muttered, "a capital step, and a bold one, too; but bold steps are always good ones. Who knows but that from some place of security I may laugh at them all yet; and then, if I do not succeed in killing any of them before I go, I can at my leisure think of and mature some scheme of revenge against them; and there is much to be done with ingenuity, if you are quite unscrupulous. Ha! ha! I have some dainty schemes, if I can but carry them out in the time to come--ha!"

When Todd reached the second-floor, he at once went into the front-room, in one corner of which was a large old fashioned bureau. Now it was not to be supposed that this bureau had escaped the scrutiny of Sir Richard Blunt; but then it had so happened that before he came to search it he had all the evidence he wished against Todd, so that the search was not so complete or so scrutinising as it might have been.

We shall see that it was not.

"Ah" said Todd, as he drew out the drawers one after the other, "all the locks forced! Well, be it so. That was just what I expected. But I do not think they have moved it from the wall by the look of it."

The bureau, it was quite evident, had not been removed from the wall. It was of immense weight, but Todd managed to move it by short sudden jerks; and then when he had got it quite away at right angles from the wall, he said--

"Here was it that I hid, until some favourable opportunity should occur for the private disposal of them, various articles of value, that I dare not try to convert into money in my open way, for fear of detection. Here are watches, and rings, and jewels, that were described in hand-bills, offering rewards for missing persons, and in advertisements in the papers; so that it became most unsafe for me to show them even to the not very scrupulous Hebrews, who have from time to time bought goods of me."

As he spoke, he removed a portion of the back of the bureau, which slid out of its place softly and easily, for it was made with great skill and care. This sliding piece, when it was fairly removed, disclosed a receptacle capable of holding a great quantity of small articles, and filled up with narrow shelves, as if to hold them securely.

There were costly watches--wigs with rare jewels set in them; for the fashion of wearing wigs was so common at the time, that many wealthy residents of the Temple would pop into Todd's shop for a little arrangement of their wigs or a puff of fresh powder, if they were going somewhere in a hurry, and so lost their lives. Then there were some pairs of rich diamond knee and shoe buckles, and a few lockets, and a whole heap of chains of gold.

"Ah," said Todd; "here is enough to set me up for a time, if I can dispose of them; and now I must run risks that I would not think of while I had thousands at my command. I must take these things that I was content enough to leave behind me, lest they should at some inopportune moment lead to my detection. Now they shall do me service."

Todd commenced filling his pockets with this dangerous kind of property, each article of which was associated with the frightful crime of murder!

A couple of thousand pounds certainly would not have paid for what Todd upon this occasion managed to stow away about him; and he thought that if he could get one-fourth of that amount for the articles, that it would not be a very bad night's work, considering the not very flourishing state of his finances at that time, compared with what they had been.

During the process, though, of stocking himself with the contents of the secret place in the bureau, he more than once crept to the door of the room, and going out upon the landing, he leant over the staircase and listened. All was most profoundly still, and he was satisfied that Sir Richard Blunt's two men remained in the passage, in the same state of insensibility--if not of death--in which he had left them.

Leaving there some articles of smaller importance than those with which he loaded himself, Todd pushed the bureau back into its place again; and then, taking the light in his hand, cautiously descended the stairs.

When he reached the passage, there lay the two men as he had left them. Indeed, he had been absent much too short a space of time for any very material change to take place in their condition.

"Well," he said. "Now to dispose of you two. What shall it be? Shall I cut your throats as you lie there, or--no, no, I have hit it. No doubt you have both been full of curious speculations respecting how I disposed of those persons whom I polished off in my shop; so you shall both know exactly how it was done. Ha! a good joke."

Todd's good joke consisted now of going into the parlour, and fastening the levers which held up the shaving-chair. Then he lifted up one of the insensible bodies of the men, and carried it into the shop.

"Sit there, or lie there, how you like," he said, as he flung the man into the large shaving-chair.

It was quite a treat now to Todd, and put him in mind of old times, to arrange his apparatus for giving this wretched man a tumble into the vaults below. He went into the parlour and drew the bolt, when away went the man and the chair, and the other chair that was on the reverse side of the plank took the place of that which had gone.

"Ha! ha!" shouted Todd. "This is grand--this is most glorious! Ha! ha! Who would have thought, now, that I should ever live to be at my old work again in this house? It is capital! If that fall has not broken his neck, it's a wonder. It used to kill five out of seven; that was about the average--ha!"

Todd didn't fasten the bolt again, but went at once for the other man. He was sitting up!

Todd staggered back for a moment, when he saw him in that position looking at him. The man rubbed his eyes with his hands and said in a weak voice--

"Good God! what is it all about?"

Todd placed the light on the floor within the parlour, so that it shed sufficient rays into the shop to let him see every object in it; and then, with a cry like that of some wild beast rushing upon his prey, he dashed at the man.

The struggle that ensued was a frightful one. Despair, and a feeling that he was fighting for his life, nerved the man, who had recovered just in time to engage in such a contest, and they both fought their way into the shop together. Todd made the greatest exertions to overcome the man, but it was not until he got him by the throat, and held him with a clutch of iron, that he could do so. Then he flung him upon the chair, but the man, with a last effort, dragged Todd after him, and down they both went together to the vault below!

CXLVII. SIR RICHARD BLUNT AND CROTCHET COMMENCE THEIR SEARCH FOR TODD

When Sir Richard Blunt left Chelsea, he felt that he had given a sufficient warning to all who could feel in any way personally interested in the escape of Sweeney Todd from the punishment that his numerous crimes merited.

He rode direct to the office of the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, and his name at once procured him an interview. This was not the supercilious personage who once before, upon an occasion of Sir Richard Blunt calling upon him regarding Sweeney Todd, had exhibited so much indifference upon the subject, and Sir Richard was received as he ought to be.

"I have waited upon you, sir," said the magistrate, "to say that I have now made every arrangement that is possible for the purpose of counteracting any mischief that the man, Todd, might strive to do; and I think it very likely that I may not have the pleasure of seeing or communicating with you for some time."

"Then you still think, Sir Richard, of going personally after the notorious ruffian?"

"I do, sir. I feel that in some sort I am bound to rid society of that man. I had so large a share in his former apprehension, and in his conviction, that I feel his escape quite a personal matter; and I have no hesitation in saying that I shall not feel at ease until I have again placed him in the hands of the law."

"It is most desirable that he should be so placed, Sir Richard, and I have only two things to say to you upon the subject. One is, that I hope you will be careful of your own safety in the affair; and the other is, that anything we can do or any facilities we can throw in your way, you may most unhesitatingly command in the prosecution of your most praiseworthy enterprise."

"I thank you, sir. I shall take one man with me. His name is Crotchet; and I should wish that in your name I might tell him that, in the event of our search for Todd being successful, he may count upon an adequate reward."

"Certainly! He shall have the whole reward, Sir Richard; and as for yourself, the ministry will not be unmindful of your service in a way that I am sure will be more gratifying to you than an offer of money."

"Sir, I thank you. The government has already, upon more than two or three occasions, been sufficiently liberal to me as regards money to place me in a good position, and I have now no further desires of that sort. I will bid you good morning, sir, and at once start upon the expedition in search of Sweeney Todd. If he be alive and above ground in this country, I will have him."

"If anybody will, you will, Sir Richard."

The magistrate left the place, and repaired at once to his private office, which was close at hand, in Craven Street. There our old friend, Crotchet, was waiting for him.

"Well, Crotchet," said Sir Richard, "I have just seen the Secretary of State, and if we catch Todd, you are to have all the money."

"All on it, sir? Oh, my eye! No, I doesn't want all on it, Sir Richard. I isn't a pig."

"I never thought you were, Crotchet; but you may make up your mind to the whole of the reward, as the government will provide for me in another way; so you know now, at starting, what you have to expect, and it will keep you in good heart during all the botheration we may have in looking after this man."

"Why, so it will, sir, you see, so it will, and if I do catch him and get all this tin as is offered as a reward for him, I shall retire from the grabbing business, you see, sir."

"What will you do then, Crotchet?"

"Set up a public-house, sir, and call it 'The Crotchet's Arms,' to be sure. That's the sort of ticket for me."

"Well, Crotchet, you will be quite at liberty to do what you like; and now let us at once start on our errand. We will, from the door of Newgate, see if we cannot trace the progress of this man, with his new friend, that rascal, Lupin."

A tap sounded on the panel of the door of the room in which Crotchet and Sir Richard were conversing.

"Come in," said the magistrate, and his clerk entered with a written paper in his hand.

"Here, sir," he said, "is a report from a city officer, which will give a clue to the route that Todd and Lupin have taken, sir."

"Ah, that is welcome. Let me see it. 'Two men broke into the house of Alderman Stanhope; one a tall man with a large face--the other, shorter.' Humph! Not a doubt of it. I will go and see about it. No doubt it was Todd and his new friend Lupin. This is something of a clue, at all events however slight, and may, after all, put us upon the right track. Come on, Crotchet, we will do the best we can in this matter. Have you your pistols in good order?"

"Yes, yer honour, and a pair of darbies in my pocket, that if once they get on the wrists of old Todd, he will find it no such easy matter to get them off again."

"That is right. I only want to get face to face with the ruffian, and then I will engage that he shall not be much further trouble to society or to individuals."

Sir Richard Blunt and Crotchet proceeded then at once to the house in the City, into which Lupin and Todd, it will be recollected, had made a violent entry, and from which they had been so gallantly repulsed by the young lady. Then, from the description of the assailants, not a shadow of a doubt remained upon the magistrate's mind that they were the parties he sought; but there all clue seemed to be lost.

He and Crotchet stood in the street looking about them rather despairingly; and then they thought of going to the round-house close to Finsbury; and when they got there, they found an officer, who reported that two men answering the description of the fugitives had been seen making their way westward; and he had met a woman who had passed them, and who had heard the words "money," and "Caen Wood."

This was, in good truth, most important intelligence, if it could be relied upon; and that was the only kind of doubt that Sir Richard had. He spoke to Crotchet about it.

"What do you think, Crotchet? Is it worth while to follow this seeming clue to Highgate?"

"Yes, yer honour, it is. We can go there and back again while we are considering about it here. It's clear enough as we shan't get any other news in this part of the town; and so I advises that we go off at once to Highgate, and calls at every public-house on the road."

"Every public-house?"

"Yes, yer honour. Todd won't do without his drops of something strong to keep him a-going. These kind of feelings go down--down, till they haven't the heart to say don't, when the hangman puts the noose round their necks, if they haven't their drops. It's brandy, yer worship, as keeps 'em a going."

"I do believe, Crotchet, that there is a great deal of truth in what you say; and that it is only by use of stimulants that they keep up a kind of artificial strength, as well as drowning reflection; and so they go blundering on in the career of crime."

"You may depend upon it, sir. They'd cut their own throats in a week, If it wasn't for the tipple, yer honour."

Acting then upon the practical advice of Crotchet, which in a great measure accorded with his own convictions, Sir Richard Blunt repaired to a livery-stable, and hired two good horses. He found no difficulty in getting them, upon declaring who he was; and so, well mounted, he and Crotchet went upon the very road that had been so recently traversed by the two culprits, Todd and Lupin.

At the first public-house they came to they got no news; but at the second they were told, that two men, answering the description they gave of those they sought, had called and had some brandy.

The magistrate no longer doubted but that he was upon the right track now. With such a feeling, he pushed on, making what inquiries he could on the road; but until Highgate was reached they got no further news, and then, by dint of diligent ferreting out, they found a woman who had seen two men go down Swains Lane, and from the description she gave of them, there could be no doubt but that they were Todd and Lupin. Now as Swains Lane led direct to Caen Wood, it was a great confirmation of the former intelligence; and Sir Richard made up his mind to search the wood, as well as it could be done by him and Crotchet.

They engaged a lad from Highgate to come with them, and to take care of the horses, while they should go into the wood; but they did not say one word to him regarding their object in going there, nor could he possibly suspect it. Sir Richard and Crotchet both thought it would be much more prudent to keep that to themselves, than to put it in the power of a boy to gossip about it to every one who might chance to pass that way, while he was minding the horses.

When the wood was reached, Sir Richard said to the lad--

"Now, my boy, we shall not be very long gone, but you will bear in mind that if we are absent longer than you expected, you will be paid in proportion; so don't be impatient, but walk the horses up and down this bit of the lane; and think that you have got a very good job."

"Thank you, sir," said the boy. "Across that there meadow is the nearest way to the wood. I seed two fellows go that way, early this morning, and one on 'em was the ugliest fellow I ever saw, and he calls out to the other--'Come along Lupin, we shall be all right in the wood now. Come along, Lupin--Ha! ha!'"

"You heard that?"

"Yes, sir, I did. You see, I was sloe-gathering in the hedge, and they don't let you do it, cos they say you breaks down all the young twigs, and spoils the hedge, and so you does; and so, sir, when I heard footsteps a-coming, I hid myself right down among the long grass, so that they did not see me."

Mr. Crotchet gave a long whistle.

"Very good," said Sir Richard; "we shall be back with you soon. You take good care of the horses."

"I will, sir."

"What do you think of that, Crotchet?" said Sir Richard, as they made their way into the very meadow across which Todd and Lupin had run to get to Caen Wood.

"It's the finger o' Providence, yer worship."

"Well, I cannot deny, Crotchet, but that it may be so. At all events, whether it be Providence or chance, one thing is quite certain, and that is, that we are on the track of those whom we seek."

"Not a doubt o' that, sir. Into the wood here they have been, but whether they have staid here or not, you see, sir, is quite another affair. But it's worth looking well to; at all events yer worship, and I shan't leave an old tree in this here place as we is coming to, that I shan't walk right round and have a jolly good look at, somehow or another."

"Nor I, Crotchet. They may know of some hiding-place in this wood, for all we know to the contrary, and if they do, it strikes me we shall ferret them out."

"In course we shall, sir; and here we is."

They had reached the wood by this time, and before plunging into its recesses the magistrate looked carefully about him, and Crotchet did the same.

"Do you think, your worship, there's a chance of such a fellow as Todd staying long here?"

"Why do you think that?" said Sir Richard.

"Why, sir," said Crotchet, putting his head on one side, "this here is a sort of place that makes a man think; and always when I am in a quiet place like this, with the beautiful trees all about me, and the little birds a singing, and the frogs a croaking, it makes me think of things that I don't always think of, and of those as has passed away like spirits, and as we may meet in t'other world nor this, sir."

"Indeed, Crotchet, I do not wonder that the silence and solitude of nature should have that effect upon you."

"Exactly, sir. In course, it ain't for me to say whether in this ere world there ought to be prigs, and sneaks, and cracksmen, and all that sort of thing or not; but I will say, sir, as I'm not a little surprised how anybody can do anything very wrong, sir, in the country."

"Indeed, Crotchet?"

"Yes, sir; it has an effect on me. When I gets among the old trees and sees the branches a waving about, and hear the wind a moaning among 'em, it makes me think as there ain't a great deal in this world as is worth the bothering about, you see, sir; and least of all is it worthwhile doing anything that ain't the right thing."

"You are quite a philosopher, Crotchet, although you are not the first nor the only one upon whom the beauties of nature have produced an elevating effect. The reason I fear is that you are not familiar with such places as these. You are town-bred, Crotchet, and you pass your life among the streets of London; so such places as this affect you with all the charm of novelty, while those who are born in the country know nothing and care nothing for its sights and sounds."

"That's about it, sir, I shouldn't wonder," said Crotchet; "but I feels what I feels and thinks what I thinks."

They now had fairly penetrated into Caen Wood; and we may here appropriately remark, that Caen Wood was much more of a real wood then, than it is now, when it is rather an imitation of one than one in reality. The smoke and the vegetation-killing vapours of London have almost succeeded in begriming the green trees even at that distance off; and in a few short years Caen Wood, we fear, will be but a thing of tradition in the land.

So time works his changes!

Sir Richard Blunt, with long practised sagacity, began his hunt through the wood. It could scarcely be said that he expected to find Todd there, but he would be satisfied if he found some conclusive evidence that he had been there, for that would show him that he was upon the track of the villain, and that he was not travelling wide from the course that Todd had taken. The idea that he might have at once, on foot, made his way to some part of the coast, haunted Sir Richard, notwithstanding all the seemingly conclusive evidence he had to the contrary; and knowing well, as he did, how very little reliance ought to be placed upon personal descriptions, he did buoy himself up with many hopes consequent upon the presumed identity of Todd with the person who had been seen by those who had described him.

Taking a small piece of chalk from his pocket, the magistrate marked a few of the trees in the different directions where they searched, so that they might not, amid the labyrinths of the wood, give themselves increased trouble; and in the course of half an hour they had gone over a considerable portion of the wood.

They paused at an open spot, and Crotchet lifted from the ground a thick stick that appeared to have been recently cut from a tree.

"This is late work," he said.

"Yes; and here are the marks of numerous footsteps. What is the meaning of this strange appearance on the ground, as if something had been dragged along it?"

Crotchet looked at the appearance that Sir Richard pointed out, and then with a nod, he said--

"Let's follow this, Sir Richard. It strikes me that it leads to something."

CXLVIII. SHOWS HOW TODD HAD A VERY NARROW ESCAPE INDEED

There was something in the tone of Crotchet that made the magistrate confident he suspected something very peculiar, and he followed him without a word.

The track or trail upon the ground was very peculiar, it was broad and defined, and had turned in the direction that it went every little weed or blade of grass that was within its boundaries. A number of decayed leaves from the forest trees had likewise been swept along it; and the more any one might look at it the more they must feel convinced that something heavy had been dragged along it.

What that something heavy was, Mr. Crotchet had his suspicions, and they were right.

"This way, your worship," he said, "this way; it goes right into this hedge as nicely as possible, though the branches of these bushes are placed all smooth again."

As he spoke, Crotchet began to beat the obstructing branches of a wild nut tree and a blackberry-bush, that seemed, by their entwining arms, to have struck up a very close sort of acquaintance with each other; and then he suddenly cried out--

"Here it is, sir."

"What, Crotchet?"

"The dead 'un."

"Dead! You don't mean to say that one such is here, and that the dead body of Todd is in the thicket?"

"Come on, sir, I don't think it is him. It don't seem long enough; but here's somebody, as safe as possible, sir, for all that. Push your way through sir: it's only prickles."

The magistrate did push his way through, despite the vigorous opposition of the blackberry-bush; and then--lying upon its face--he saw the dead body of a man.

The readers of this narrative could have told Sir Richard Blunt what that body had been named while the breath of life was in it; but neither he nor Crotchet could at first make up their minds upon the subject.

"Do you know him?" said Sir Richard.

"I guess only."

"Yes, and you guess as I do. This is Lupin, Todd's prison companion, and the companion in his escape."

Crotchet nodded.

"I went to Newgate," he said, "and had a good look at him, so that I should know him, sir, dead or alive; so I'll just turn him over, and have a good look at his face."

With this, Crotchet carefully--by the aid of his foot--turned over the body, and the first glance he got at the dead face satisfied him.

"Yes, your worship," he said, "Lupin it is, and Todd has killed him. You may take your oath of that."

"Not a doubt of it: such is the result of the association of such men. Todd has found him, or fancied he should find him, an encumbrance in the way of his own escape, and has sought this wood to take his life."

"That's about it, sir."

"And now, Crotchet, we may make certain of one thing, and that is, that Todd is not in this wood, nor in this neighbourhood either. I should say, that after this deed, the first thing he would do would be to fly from this spot."

"Not a doubt of that, your worship; but the deuce of it is to find out which way he has gone."

"We must be guided in that by the same mode of inquiry, Crotchet, that brought us here. We were successful in tracing him to this wood, and we may be equally successful in tracing him from it. We must go into the village of Hampstead, and give information about this dead body; and we will make there what inquiries we can."

They were neither of them very anxious to remain in Caen Wood, after discovering how it was tenanted; and in a very short time they were mounted again, and went along the lane until they emerged upon Hampstead Heath, and so took the road to the village, where Sir Richard gave information to the authorities concerning the finding of the body of Lupin.

There, too, he heard that a man answering the description of Todd had passed through the village, and refused to partake some questionable brandy, at a public-house, on its outskirts. This man was evidently proceeding to London. Crotchet heard this information with great attention; and when he and Sir Richard Blunt were alone, he said--

"I tell you what it is, sir--the country will never suit Todd."

"How do you mean, Crotchet?"

"I mean, sir, that, in my opinion, he has gone back to London again. The country, sir, ain't the sort of place for such men as he is. You may depend upon it, he only came to the little wood to get rid of Lupin, and he has gone back to try and hide in London till the row is over."

"You really think so?"

"I do, sir; and if we want to find him, we must go, too."

"Well, Crotchet, of one thing I am pretty well convinced, and that is, that he is not in this part of the country, for after the murder in the wood, which he will be in continual fear of being discovered, it is not likely he would stay about here; and so, as we have traced him a little on the road to London, we may as well, for all we know to the contrary, assume that he has gone there at once."

"Come on, then, sir," said Crotchet; "I feel's what you call's a sort of a--Oh, dear me, what is it? A presentment--"

"A presentiment, Crotchet."

"Ah, sir, that's it. I feel that sort of thing that old Todd will try and hide himself in some old crib in London, and not at all trust to the country, where everybody is looked at for all the world as though he were a strange cat. Lord bless you, sir, if I had done anything and wanted to hide, I should go into the very thick of the people of London, and I ain't quite sure but I'd take a lodging in Bow Street."

Sir Richard Blunt was himself very much of Crotchet's opinion regarding Todd's proceedings, for his experience of the movements of malefactors had taught him that they generally, after their first attempt to try to get away, hover about the spot of their crimes; and it is a strange thing, that with regard to persons who have committed great crimes, there is a great similarity of action, as though the species of mind that could induce the commission of murder from example, were the same in other respects in all murderers.

To London, then, with what expedition they could make, Sir Richard Blunt and Crotchet went, and although they made what inquiry they could, they found no news of Todd. And now we must leave them for awhile, thrown completely out in all their researches for the escaped criminal, while we once more proceed to the house in Fleet Street, where we left Todd in rather an uncomfortable situation.

It will be recollected that, locked in the grasp of the officer, Todd and that individual had gone down with the chair through the opening in the floor of his shop.

This was the first time that Todd had undertaken that mode of getting into the cellars of his house; and when he found the chair going, he gave himself up for lost, and uttered a cry of horror. It seemed to him at that moment as if that were the species of retribution which was to come over him--death by the same dreadful means that had enabled him so often to inflict it upon others.

No doubt Todd's anticipations of being dashed to destruction upon the stones below would have been correct had he gone down alone, or had there been no one already immediately beneath the trap-door in the shop flooring; but as it was, he fell, fortunately for him, uppermost, and they both, he and the officer, fell upon the other man who had gone down only a short time previous. That saved Todd; but he was terribly shaken, and so was the officer, and it was a few moments before either of them recovered sufficiently to move a limb.

The lives of those two depended upon who should recover his strength and energies first. Todd was that man. Hate is so much stronger a passion than every other, and it was under the influence of that feeling that Todd was the first of the two to recover; and the moment he did so, the yell of rage that he uttered really might have been heard in Fleet Street. It was very indiscreet of Todd, but at that moment he thought of nothing but revenge. His own safety became a secondary consideration with him.

He grasped the officer by the throat!

At the moment that, by the feel only, for that place was in the most profound darkness, Todd felt sure that he had the officer by the throat, he knew that his triumph was certain. It would have been as vain a thing to attempt to escape the chances of destiny, as to dream of avoiding the grasp of that iron hand that now closed upon the throat of the unfortunate officer.

It was just then, though, that the officer began to recover a little from the shock of his fall. It was only to recover to die. Better for him would it have been had he slept on in insensibility to the pangs that were awaiting him; but that was not to be.

"Ah, wretch!" shrieked Todd, "so you thought you had me? Down--down to death!--Ha!--ha!"

The officer struggled much, and dashed about his feet and arms, but all was in vain.

"Ha!--ha!" laughed Todd, and that hideous laugh awakened as hideous an echo in the dismal place. "Ha!--ha! I have you now. Oh! but I should like to protract your death and see you die by inches! Only that my time is precious, and for my own sake, I will put you quickly beyond the pale of life."

The man tried to cry out; but the compression upon his throat of those bony fingers prevented him. He had his hand at liberty, and he caught Todd by the head and face, and began to do him as much mischief as he could. There was for a few seconds a fierce struggle, and then Todd, keeping still his right hand clasped about the throat of his victim, with the left laid hold of as much of his hair on the front of his head us he could, and raising his head then about six inches from the stone floor on which it had rested, he dashed it down again with all his might.

The officer's arms fell nerveless to his sides, and he uttered a deep groan.

Again Todd raised the head, and dashed it down, and that time he heard a crashing sound, and he felt satisfied that he had killed the man.

There was now no further use in holding the throat of the dead man, and Todd let him go.

"Ha!--ha!" he said. "That is done. That is done--Ha! Now am I once more lord and master in my own house--once again I reign here supreme, and can do what it may please me to do. Ha! this is glorious! Why, it is like old times coming back to me again. I feel as if I could open my shop in the morning, and again polish off the neighbourhood. It seems as if all that had happened since last I stropped a razor above, had been but a dream. The arrest--the trial--the escape--Newgate--the wood at Hampstead! All a dream--a dream!"

He was silent, and the excitement of the moment of triumph had passed away.

"No--no," he said. "No! It is too real--much too real! Oh, it is real, indeed. I am the fugitive! The haunted man without a home--without a friend; and I have this night nor any other night any place in which I may lay my head in safety. I am as one persecuted by all the world, without hope--without pity! What will now become of me?"

A low groan came upon Todd's ear.

He started, and looked around him. He tried hard to pierce with his half-shut eyes the intense darkness, but he could not; and muttering to himself--"Not yet dead--not yet dead?" he crept to an obscure corner of the cellar, and opened a door that led by a ladder to the floor of the back parlour, where there was a trap door, under which the large table usually stood, and which he could open from below.

In the parlour Todd got a light, and feeling then still disturbed about the groan that he had heard below, he armed himself with an iron bar that belonged to the outer door, and with this in his right hand, and the light in his left, he crept back again to the cellar.

A glance at the two men who lay there was sufficient to satisfy him that they were no more; and after then taking from them a couple of pairs of pistols, and a small sum of money, he crept back again to the parlour. As he did so, he heard St. Dunstan's clock strike the hour of four.

"Four!" he said. "Four. It will not be light for nearly two hours yet, and I may rest myself awhile and think. Yes, it is necessary now that I should think; for I have time--a little time--to do so, and much, oh, so much to think of. There's some of my own brandy, too, in the parlour, that's a comfort."

The fire was still burning in the parlour grate. Todd raked the glowing embers together with the iron bar, and then he took a good draught at the brandy. It revived him most wonderfully, and he gave one of his old chuckles, as he muttered--

"Oh, that I could get a few whom I could name in such a position as I had yon man in in the cellar a short time since. That would be well, indeed. Ha! I am, after all, rather lucky, though."

A sharp knock come, at this moment, at the outer door of the shop, and Todd sprang in alarm to his feet.

CXLIX. TODD IS IN GREAT PERIL IN THE EARLY MORNING IN LONDON

The silence that ensued after that knock at his door, for he had become to consider it as his again, was like the silence of the grave. The only sound that Todd heard then, was the painful beating of his own heart.

The guilty man was full of the most awful apprehensions.

"What is it?" he said. "Who is it?--who can it be? Surely, no one for me. There is no one who saw me. No--no! It cannot be. It is some accidental sound only. I--begin--to doubt if it were a knock at all.--Oh, no, it was no knock."

Bang! came the knock again.

Todd actually started and uttered a cry of terror, and then he crouched down and crept towards the door. He might, to be sure, have made his escape from the premises, with some little trouble, by the way he had got into them; but he was most anxious to find out who it was that demanded admittance to the old shop in Fleet Street, with all its bad associations and character of terror; so he crept towards the door, and just as he reached it, the knock came again.

If the whole of his future hopes--we allude to the future that might be for him in this world only, for Todd had no hopes nor thoughts of another--had depended upon his preserving silence and stillness, he could not have done so, and he gave another start.

"Hush--hush!" he then said. "Hush! I must be very cautious now--very cautious, indeed. Hush--hush!"

He then, in a tone of voice that he strove to make as different as possible from his ordinary tone, and which he was very successful indeed in doing, he said--

"Who is there?"

"It's me," said a voice, in defiance of all probability or grammar. "It's only me."

"Oh! what a mercy," said Todd.

"Open the door. Is it you, Joe? Why didn't you come home, eh? You might have got away easy enough. I have brought you something good to eat, old fellow, and some news."

"Ah, what news, my boy?"

"Why, they say that old Todd is in London."

Todd fell to the floor in a sitting posture, and uttered a deep groan. It was some few moments before he could summon strength and courage to speak to the man again. But he began to feel the necessity of doing something, for the man began to hammer away at the door, and the very worst thing that could happen to Todd, just then, would have been that man going away from the door of the shop with an impression that all was not right within it, and spreading an alarm to that effect.

"I will open the door just wide enough," muttered Todd, "and then I will drag him in and cut his throat, and throw him down into the cellar along with the two others. That will only make three this morning--yes, this morning, I may say, for it is morning now."

Acting upon this resolve, which certainly was diabolically to the purpose, Todd spoke to the man again, saying in the same assumed tone in which he had before addressed him--

"All's right--all's right. I'll open the door."

"That's the thing; but you seem to have a bad cold."

"So I have--so I have. A very bad cold; and it has affected my voice so that I can hardly speak at all."

"So I hear."

Todd slowly undid the fastenings of the door, and an infernal feeling of joy came over him at the idea of murdering this unhappy man likewise. It quite reconciled him to the danger in which he was, for he could not but know that the daylight was rapidly approaching, and that each moment increased his peril.

"Yes," he muttered, "he will make three this morning, three idiots who fancy they are a match for me; but I will soon convince them of the contrary, I will soon put him out of his pains and anxieties in this world. Ha! he shall be an independent man, for he shall have no wants, and that is true independence."

Todd drew the last bolt back that held the door.

"Come, Joe, are you coming?" said the man.

"Soon enough, my dear friend, soon enough," said Todd. "You will find me quite soon enough. Come in."

Todd felt quite certain that if the man caught but the slightest glance at him, it would be sufficient to convince him that it was not Joe, and, therefore, he only now opened the door wide enough to let him slip into the shop, and kept himself back partially behind it, so as to be, with the exception of one arm, quite out of sight.

The man hesitated.

"Come in," said Todd. "Come in."

"Why, what's the matter with you," said the man, "that makes you so mighty mysterious, eh? What is it, old fellow?"

"Oh, nothing. Come in."

The man stepped one foot across the threshold, and put his head in at the shop-door.

"Come, now," he said. "None of your jokes, Joe. Where are you?"

Todd felt that that was a critical moment, and that if he failed to take advantage of it, the least thing would give the man the alarm, and he might draw back from the door altogether, and so stop him from executing that summary proceeding against him which he, Todd, thought essential to his interests.

"No, old fellow. There's no trick. Come in."

"Oh, but I--"

The man was drawing back his head, and Todd saw that the moment for action had come. Darting forward, he stretched out his right hand and caught the man by the throat, saying as he did so, in the voice of a demon--

"In, wretch--in, I say!"

The man's cravat came away in the hand of Todd, who rolled upon his back on the floor of the shop. The man finding himself free from the terrific grip that had been laid upon him, fled along Fleet Street, crying--

"Help--help! thieves!--murder! Todd!--help! fire! murder--murder!"

Todd lay upon his back with the cravat in his hand, and so utterly confounded was he by this accident, that for a few moments he felt disposed to lie there and give up all further contest with that fate that never seemed weary of now persecuting him after the long course of successful iniquity he had been permitted to carry on.

He heard the loud cries of the man, and he knew that even at such an early hour how those cries would soon rouse sufficient assistance to be his destruction. He yet did not like to die without a struggle. Newgate, with its lonely cells, came up before his mind's eye, and then he pictured to himself the gibbet; and with a positive yell, partly of rage and partly of fear, he rose to his feet.

"What shall I do?" he said. "Dare I rush out now into Fleet Street, and by taking the other direction to that in which this man has gone, try to find safety?"

A moment's thought convinced him of the great danger of that plan, and he gave it up. There remained then nothing but the mode of retreat through the church; and no longer hesitating, he took the light in his hand and dashed open the little door that communicated with the narrow stairs that would take him underneath the shop.

Before descending them he paused to listen, and he heard the cries and shouts of men afar off. He found that his foes were mustering in strong force to attack him; and clenching his double fist, he swore the most horrible oaths. This was a process that seemed to have some effect upon the spirits of Todd. The swearing acted as a kind of safety valve to his passion.

He descended the staircase, and when he reached the foot of it he paused again. The noise in the street was not so acute. It had sobered down to a confused murmur, and he felt that his danger was upon the increase. Shading the light with one hand, for there was a current of air blowing in the cellars and secret passages, he looked like some fiend or vampire seeking for some victim among the dead.

"They come," he said. "They come. They think they have me at last. They come to drag me to death. Oh that I had but the power of heaping destruction upon them all, of submitting them all to some wretched and lingering death, I would do it! Curses on them--how I should revel in their misery and pain."

He went on a few paces past the dead bodies of the two men, and then he paused again, for he could distinctly hear the trampling of feet upon the pavement near to the house; and then, before he could utter a word, there come such a thundering appeal to the knocker of the outer door, that he dropped his candle, and it was immediately extinguished in the start that he gave.

It was quite evident that his foes were now in earnest, and they were determined he should not escape them by any fault of theirs, for the knocking was continued with a vehemence enough to beat in the door; but so long as it did continue, it was a kind of signal that his enemies were upon the outside.

"I may escape them yet," he said, tremblingly. "Oh, yes, who shall take upon them to say that I may not escape them yet? I can find my way in the dark well--quite well. I am sufficiently familiar with this place to do so."

That was true enough; but yet, although Todd was, as he said, sufficiently familiar with the place to find his way through it in the dark, he could not make such good progress as when he had a lamp or a candle to guide him.

He heard a loud crash above.

"They have broken open the door," he said, "but yet I am safe, for I have a wonderful start of them. I am safe yet, and I am well armed, too. I hold the lives of several in my hands. They will not be so fond, from their love of me, to throw away their lives. Ha! I shall beat them yet--I shall beat them yet."

With his hands outstretched before him, so that he should not run against any obstacle, he took his way through the gloomy passages that led to the vaults beneath St. Dunstan's church. The distance was not great, but his danger was; and yet such was his insatiable desire to know what was going on in his house, that he paused more than once again to listen.

From what he heard, he felt convinced that many persons had made their way into the shop and parlour, and he anticipated a thorough search of the house.

"Let them," he said, "let them. There is nothing there now that it can interest me to keep secret--absolutely nothing. Let them search well in every room. It will give me the more time."

He struggled on in the dark a little further, and then he suddenly paused. A thought had struck him.

"Oh, what a glorious thing," he said, "if I could only now fire the old house, and so scorch some of those idiots, who are no doubt running from room to room full of mad delight at the opportunity to do so, and at the prospect that they may light upon me, and so share the money among them that is offered for my blood. It is a tempting thought."

Todd felt in his pocket for the matches that had been supplied to him by his departed friend, Mr. Lupin, and he found that he had some of them left, although all the little bits of wax ends of candles were gone.

"A match will do as well as a torch to set fire to a house. I will chance it, for afterwards I shall most bitterly repent not having done so. Oh, yes, I will go back and chance it. I know how to do it; and if that Sir Richard Blunt, whom I yet hope to see in death, has not removed the materials I placed for the firing of the house, I can do it easily. Oh, that will be most capital! I think it will make me laugh again! Ha!--ha! yes, it will make me laugh again!"

He stood for the space of time of about two minutes in deep thought, with his hands compressed upon his brow; and then he muttered--

"Yes, there is no difficulty. If I can but reach the flooring of that cupboard beneath the parlour, it will do."

He rapidly made up his mind to attempt this most perilous act of setting fire to his old house, after all; notwithstanding it was now to his knowledge filled with his enemies, and that his returning was a matter of the greatest danger to himself.

He crept back by the way he had gone, and soon reached the cellar again under his shop. That cellar run partially under the parlour likewise; and it was upon that circumstance, well known to him, that Todd based his hopes of being able, with safety to himself, to fire the old house.

He shook a little as he reached the cellar underneath the shop. It was a natural thing that he should do so; for he knew that he was doing the very reverse of what impulse would have prompted him to do, namely, fly from his enemies. The mode of getting into that cellar might, for all he knew to the contrary, be found out at the most inopportune moment for him that could be conceived, and he might find himself surrounded almost at any moment by his foes.

No wonder Todd shook a little.

He quite forgot that the bodies of the two men were there--his two latest victims; and as he went crawling along with excessive care, the first thing he did, was to fall over them both, and measure his great length upon the floor of the cellar. It was quite astonishing how Todd controlled his temper, when he had any object in view which an ebullition of rage would have had the effect of jeopardising in any way. At another time, his oaths upon the occasion of such a fall would have been rather of the terrific order; but now he uttered not a word, but gathered himself up again with all the calmness and serenity of an ancient martyr, who feels that he is suffering for some great and good cause, dear to the interests of humanity.

Sweeney Todd, however, was very anxious to discover if in his fall he had made noise enough to alarm those who were above; but he was soon satisfied that such was not the case, and that the lower part of the house was quite deserted, while they had made their way to the upper, intent upon searching in all the rooms for him (Todd). Ah! they little knew the piece of obdurate cunning that they had pitted against them there!

"I shall do it!--I shall do it!" muttered Todd, "I shall easily do it. There is no one to prevent me. Ha!--ha! I do believe that I shall smother some of them, before they can possibly find the means of getting down stairs. That would be quite a mercy of providence--oh, quite!"

CL. TODD SETS FIRE TO HIS HOUSE, AND THEN HIDES IN THE CHURCH

Immediately beneath the parlour, where a portion of the cellar went, there was a quantity of old lumber. Perhaps if that lumber had been looked very carefully over, among it there might have been found some fragments of old, and some of new coffins from St. Dunstan's; for with the rich, who had vaults of their own, it was the arrogant fashion to adorn the last sad and narrow home of humanity with silver plates and nails; and Todd had despoiled the grave of some of those costly trappings.

Upon the heap of rubbish he scrambled, and that just enabled him comfortably to reach the floor of that parlour. That portion of the floor went under a cupboard in one corner, and in the floor of it three or four coarse round holes had been drilled with a centre-bit. Todd had had his own motives for drilling those holes in the cupboard floor.

He now put his finger through one of the holes, and when he did so, he gave a chuckle of delight, for he was convinced that the contents of that cupboard had not been in any way interfered with; and that, as a consequence, he should find no difficulty in firing the house completely.

"So," he said, "this is the cleverness of your much-vaunted Sir Richard Blunt. He has left a cupboard as crammed with combustible materials as it well can be, to the mercy of the first accident that may set fire to them; and now the accident has come. Ha!"

Again Todd listened attentively, and was still further satisfied that all was profoundly still in the parlour, although he heard the racket and the banging of doors in the upper part of the house.

"This is good," said Todd. "This is capital. All is well now. The fire will have made most excellent progress before they will discover it, and I will warrant that if once it takes a firm hold of the wood-work of this old house, it is not a trifle that will stop its roaring progress."

With this, Todd ignited one of his matches and thrust it alight through one of the holes in the floor of the cupboard.

A slight cracking noise ensued immediately.

"That will do," said Todd, and he withdrew the match and cast it upon the ground. The crackling noise continued. He turned and fled from the place with precipitation.

In the lower portion of that cupboard there was a quantity of hay, upon which oil and turpentine had been poured liberally. High up upon a shelf was a wooden bowl, with eight pounds of gunpowder in it, and Todd did not know a moment when the flames might reach it, when a terrific explosion would be sure to ensue.

"It is done now," he said. "It is done, and they do not know it. More revenge--more revenge! I shall have more revenge now, and there will be more death."

He knew that there was only one thing that could by any possibility prevent the gunpowder in the wooden bowl from becoming speedily ignited, and that that would be in consequence of the hay being packed too close to do more than smoulder for a little time before bursting into a flame; but that it must and would do so eventually, there could be no possible doubt, and it was in that hearty conviction that Sweeney Todd now most fully gloried.

And now, as he had done before, he kept his arms outstretched before him to prevent him from injuring himself against any of the walls or the abrupt turnings in the passages between his own house and old St. Dunstan's. He stooped, likewise, in order that he might not strike his head against the roof at in places where it was very low, and rough, and rugged.

Once only Todd got a little bewildered, and did not well know his way, and then he ignited one of the matches, and by its small light he saw in a moment which way he was to go.

"All is well," he said, and he rushed on; but yet he began to be a little surprised that he heard no noise from the house--no sound of the explosion; and inclining his ear to the ground, he stopped in one of the old vaults to listen.

A low moaning sound came upon his ears like the muttering of distant thunder, and then a report as though some heavy piece of timber had fallen from a great height to the earth. He fancied that the vault in which he was shook a little, and in terror he rushed forward. The gunpowder had exploded in the cupboard, and Todd's imagination was left to revel in the thought of the mischief which it had done to the house and to all within it.

In five minutes more he reached the foot of the little flight of stone-steps that led to the church. All was profoundly dark still, as he thought; but he had not got up above six of those steps when he became conscious that the light of early dawn had already found its way through the windows of the church, and was making everything within it dimly visible. Todd recoiled at this. He and daylight were decidedly not upon good terms with each other by any means.

"It is morning--it is morning!" he exclaimed. "What will become of me now? It is light."

He staggered right back into the vaults again, and there gave himself to painful thought for awhile; as he did so, he heard loud shouts in the streets--shouts that awakened echoes in the old church; and if anything could have given to Todd, at such a time as that, very great satisfaction, it was to hear that those shouts were all commingled with the one prevailing cry of--"Fire--fire--fire!" That was a joy, indeed, to him.

"It burns--it burns!" he said; "but I am here a prisoner; I dare not go out into the daylight; but the old house, with all that it contains, is wrapped in flames, and that is much--much! It is now everything. Oh, that I could hear the cries of those who find themselves wrapped up in the unappeasable element, and have no means of escape! They would, indeed, be music to my ears."

This state of mental exultation passed away very quickly, as it was sure to do, and gave place to the most lively fears for his own personal safety; for, after all, that was the great thing with Todd--at least it was while any portion of his deep revenges remained yet to be accomplished.

"What shall I do?" That was the question that he kept repeating to himself. "What shall I do?" He advanced now right up the steps into the body of the church. There, at least, he knew that he was safe for the present; and as he stood and listened, he thought that in the bustle and in the confusion that men's minds were in regarding the fire, he might emerge from the church and no one notice him, and fairly get away without observation. If he only got a few streets off it would be sufficient, and he should be able to tell himself that he had indeed and in truth escaped.

With these thoughts and feelings, he approached the church door.

The nearer he got to the old doors of St. Dunstan, the more appallingly and distinctly there came upon his ears the cries and the shouts of the people who were hurrying to the fire, and he muttered to himself--

"Ah, it must be blazing briskly now--very briskly. It must be quite a sight to the whole of London to see the old den burning so bravely."

An engine came rattling on, and with a roar and a crash went past the church door.

"Capital!" said Todd. "Upon my word this is capital!"

Another engine, with the horses at a mad gallop, went by, and Todd quite rubbed his hands at the idea of the scene of confusion that he had by his own unaided efforts succeed in making in old Fleet Street.

"They did not think," he said, "when they closed the gates of the old prison upon me, and told me I should die, that there was one half the mischief in me yet that they now find there is. Ay, and there is much more yet, that they dream not of, but which they shall know some day."

He laid his hand upon the lock of the church door. A long ray of the faint early gray light of dawn streamed through the massive keyhole, and at the moment Todd laid his hand upon the lock that ray of light vanished. It was obstructed by some one on the outside. He recoiled several steps, and then from the outside he heard a voice say--

"Lor bless us, yes, it's that old villain Todd's house, gentlemen, in course. It's come to a bad end, like its master will come to, if he hasn't. When I saw the flames and heard 'em a-roaring, I said to my missus 'Conwulsions!' says I, 'if that ain't Todd's house in a blaze.'"

"You are right, Mr. Beadle," said a voice in reply.

"Yes, gentlemen, perhaps I says it as oughtn't to say it, but I is commonly right in my way, you know, gentlemen; and so, as I says, 'Conwulsions! It's Todd's house a fire.'"

"And you think," said another voice, "we shall get a good view of it from the old church tower?"

"Yes, gentlemen," replied the beadle, whom the reader will not fail to recognise as our old acquaintance. "Yes, gentlemen. I'll warrant as you will get a capital view from the top of the old tower, where I will take you. Lor a mussy, how it is a roorin, that fire! I know'd it was Todd's house, and I said to my missus, 'Conwulsions!' says I, 'that's old villanous Todd's house a-fire!'"

Todd ground his teeth together with rage as he listened to this; but he felt that if he would provide for his own safety, there was indeed now no time to lose, and he rapidly retreated into the body of the church.

His first thought was to hide himself in one of the pews, but the divisions between them were not so high as to prevent a person of very moderate height indeed from looking over one of them, and there was quite light enough now for any one in such a case to have seen him, if they had chosen to glance into the pew in which he might take shelter. The case was urgent, however, and he had not much time for thought, so being close to the pulpit he ran up its steps, opened the little door, and ensconced himself within it in a moment.

There, at all events, he felt that he was hidden securely from any merely casual observation.

The church door was opened almost before he could get the pulpit door shut; but he did manage to close it, and he was satisfied that he had done so without exciting the attention of those who were entering the church. Todd could, of course, from where he was, hear, with the greatest clearness and precision, every word that they said to each other, as they walked up the aisle.

One of the persons who were coming with the beadle to view the fire from the tower of the church went on speaking to his companions.

"And so," he said, "I think, if no one be hurt, and the fire can be kept just within the limits of Todd's house, it will be no bad thing to have a place that is such a continual reminder of atrocious guilt, swept from the face of the earth."

"Yes," said the other, "the only pity is, that Sweeney Todd is not in it to go with it. Then the good thing would be complete."

"It would, gentlemen," said the beadle. "Oh, when you comes to think of what he did and what he might have done--Oh, it makes my hair stand o' end, and my parochial blood curdle, to think of what he might have done, gentlemen."

"He could not do worse than he did."

"Not wus? not wus? Oh,--oh!"

"How is it possible? He committed a number of murders, and if you can find me anything worse he could have done, I shall indeed be very much surprised."

"Gentlemen, he might have polished me off. That's what he might have done, for he has actually had me hold of by the nose. Oh, conwulsions! if I had only then thought that there was a chance of his polishing off, as he used to call it, a parochial authority, I should have--I should have--"

"What, Mr. Beadle?"

"Flewed through the window, sir, that's what I should have done, and told the world at large what had happened."

"Well, certainly, that would have been something."

"Everything," said the other gentleman, in a tone of voice that showed how much he was inclined to enjoy a joke at the expense of the beadle. "It would have been everything. But how plain you can hear the roaring of the flames now, even in this church, with the door shut."

"You can, indeed," said the other. "Ah, there dashes past another engine. Come, Mr. Beadle, the sooner we get on this tower the better."

"In a minute, gentlemen; but now as you is here arter the blessed old church has been shut up all night, I jest ask you to say if it has the orrid smell as it used to have, which offended the holy nose of the bishop when he came to confirm the people."

"I smell nothing."

"Nor I."

"Very good; then that's so far satisfactory. Cos you see, sirs, only yesterday Sir Christopher Wren and two gentlemen come and left in the church a pailful of chemists, for the express purpose of taking away the smell."

"A what?"

"A pailful of chemists."

"Of chemicals, you mean, I suppose, although that would be a singularly inappropriate term. But come on, Mr. Beadle, we are very anxious to get on the tower."

"This way, gentlemen, if you pleases. This will lead you nicely and fairly up those little stairs and right on. Oh, what a world we does live in, to be sure!"

With this general philosophical remark, the beadle, opening a little door at the extremity of the south aisle, pushed his friends up a narrow staircase that led to the top of the tower of old St. Dunstan's, and from which certainly a very good view of the surrounding streets and of the Temple could be obtained; and in the clear light of early morning, before the million fires in London were lighted, that view was seen to be a tolerably distinct one.

Todd muttered the bitterest maledictions upon them, as he heard them go up the little stairs.

There he was, certainly, to all appearance, safe enough; and he might, for all he knew, be safe enough until the next Sunday; but how was he to live in a pulpit even for the whole of a day? It might be that he would have to wait there until the dim shadows of the night should come again, and wrap up the whole church in gloom; but how many weary hours must pass before that time would come, and what infinite danger there was, that he might drop into sleep after all his fatigues, and so forget his caution, and discover himself!

Already the great fatigues he had passed through, and the many hours he had been debarred from rest, began to tell upon him; and it was with difficulty that he kept himself from dropping into slumber. He began to get fearfully alarmed at his situation.

"What shall I do?" he said, "I must escape--escape! Yes. How the fire roars! I will not sleep. Oh, no--no! It is done now; the old house is gone--gone!"

Todd fell fast asleep in the pulpit.

CLI. SHIFTS THE SCENE TO ONE OF QUIET GOODNESS AND SERENITY

The necessities of our story force us for a short space of time to leave Sweeney Todd in the pulpit of St. Dunstan's Church, and his house in process of demolition by fire, while we take the reader back again to Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where the Ingestries resided in such loving and pleasant union.

The communication that Sir Richard Blunt had made to them, had had the effect of disturbing the serenity of Mark Ingestrie to a much greater extent than he would have liked to admit, or than he was at all likely to let Johanna know.

She, too, the fair and gentle Johanna, felt an acute pang as she thought on the stern, revengeful character of Todd; and began to fancy, that if he wished to work her any woe, he would take a means of doing so which would touch her much more severely than as if he aimed at her own life, by attacking that of her husband, to whom, after so many perils, she was at length so very happily united.

"Oh, Mark," she said, "you will, you must promise me that you will depart at once from here."

"We will be gone directly, Johanna. But who have we here? Why, there is an arrival already. I will go and see who it is. It is some one in a coach."

"Oh, no--no, Mark, do not go."

"Not go?"

"No. You do not know but it may be some horrible scheme of that fiend in the shape of man, Todd, to lure you to the door, and kill you. I am full of fears, Mark, and cannot bear to let you go from my sight a moment."

"Oh, Johanna, this is unlike you, indeed. There now, look from the window, dear, and you will soon see how little you have to fear. Why, it's your father and your mother. Do you not see them, or does your tears, and your fears together, blind you?"

"A little of both, Mark," said Johanna, with a faint smile; "but I see that my dear father is there, and my mother, too. I will fly to welcome them. They have heard of the escape of Todd, and cannot endure to have us out of their sight."

As Johanna spoke, she hurried to the door to receive Mr. and Mrs. Oakley. The old man caught her in his arms, as he said--

"Oh, my own dear child! Thank God I see you safe again!"

"Safe, father?"

"Yes, my darling. You know that dreadful man?--that--that--Oh, I don't know what to call--"

"The horrid Todd," put in Mrs. Oakley, as she kissed Johanna. "He has escaped, my dear, from Newgate; but, of course, Sir Richard Blunt has been here to tell you, as he said he would; so you know all about it."

"Oh, yes--yes. Come in; I am so glad you have come."

"And so am I," said Mark Ingestrie, making his appearance in the hall; "for here is Johanna starting at every little noise, and I do believe if a mouse were now to run across the floor she would fancy that it was that old rascal, Sweeney Todd."

"Ah! but, my dear boy," said Mr. Oakley; "you really don't seem to have any idea of what a dreadful man he is--you don't, indeed."

"I don't care either, father; but I only wish one thing, and that is, that he would be so good as to trust himself, for about half a minute, within arms-length of me, that's all."

"Heaven forbid!" cried Mrs. Oakley. "My dear son, you don't know he used to--to--what did he call it, Johanna?"

"Polish people off, ma."

"Ah, to be sure."

"Well, it's no use talking," said Mark; "but if ever I get hold of him, I'll polish him off to some purpose. But you have just come in time for me to say a very serious thing to you, mother, indeed."

"Oh, what is it?" cried Mrs. Oakley.

"Don't agitate us," said old Mr. Oakley, putting on his spectacles upside-down. "Don't agitate us, my boy, but tell us at once what the dreadful thing is."

"Why, pa," said Johanna, "Mark did not say it was a dreadful thing he was going to say."

"Well, then, my dear, what is it?"

"Ah, that, indeed, I don't know; but I would wager--yes, I would wager anything, that it is something not dreadful at all. Come, Mark, what is it?--Speak out."

"Then, it's just this," said Mark. "We are going out of London, and I want you both to come with us, for I know very well if you don't, that you will be as miserable as possible, thinking of Johanna, and that Johanna will be in much the same state thinking of you, and that you will dream every night of Todd."

The old couple looked at each other with surprise and gratification. Mr. Oakley took off his spectacles, and said--

"My dear boy, do you know, I was just going to say that--that--"

"That, in fact," put in Mrs. Oakley, "we would be glad to go with you, if you would let us, for Sir Richard said he would advise you both to go out of London, and leave him to find out and hang Todd at his leisure, you know."

"Yes, that was it," said the old man. "That was the very thing that brought us over here, my dears; so if you will only be so good--"

"Come, come," said Mark, "it is, you must be so good. I asked you first, you know, so you do us the favour. Is not that it, Johanna? Of course it is."

"You are very, very good and kind, Mark."

"Oh, stuff! not at all; I say what I like, that's all, and when I say that it would please me mightily to have your father and mother with us, Johanna, where we are going, I mean it from my heart, as you know well."

"I know you do, Mark. And poor Tobias, father, is to be with us likewise. You have heard all about poor Tobias?"

"Oh, yes--yes."

"Well, then, Sir Richard Blunt told us that it would be the death of the poor lad if he should be in London and hear that Todd has escaped from Newgate. So we gladly agreed to take him with us, for he--more than any one--has suffered deeply from Todd's wickedness."

"Hilloa!" cried Mark, as he glanced from the window. "If here is not another coach at the door!"

"Oh, who is it?" said Mrs. Oakley. "It's Todd, of course, come to kill us all!"

"I hope it is," said Mark. "I'll soon set you all at rest about him. But only look! If it ain't the colonel, and Arabella, and Tobias. Well, if Todd wants to be down upon us all at once, now is his time certainly to do so."

In a few moments, the colonel and Arabella were shown into the room, and they were quite surprised to see the Oakleys there; but while Johanna and Arabella were embracing each other, Mark Ingestrie went up to the colonel, and pointing slightly to Tobias, he whispered--

"Does he know?"

"Oh, no--no."

"Very good; but he had better, I am convinced, for it will be sure to slip out in conversation, some time or another, and then the poor lad will think much more of it than as if it were told to him in a quiet manner by his friends, for he will think that there is more to conceal than there really is. I am convinced that such will be the case."

"Then we will take an opportunity of telling him, but not just now. I want to speak to Johanna."

"There she is, then."

"And what does he want to say to me?" said Johanna, as she shook hands with the colonel.

"Why, a--the fact is that--that, in fact, Sir Richard told me he would advise you to go out of town; and as I am pretty well aware that you set sufficient store by his advice to follow it, I think it is very likely you will go out of town."

"And so, dear," put in Arabella, "and so, dear, in a word, we want to go with you, if you think that such an arrangement will not be disagreeable to you."

"Now, that is the unkindest thing you have said, Arabella, for a long time. How could you suppose that it would be other than most agreeable to me to have with us such valued friends?"

"There, I told you that," said the colonel. "Of course it will be all right, and we shall make quite a merry party, I'll be bound; so that's as good as settled, and a very satisfactory thing it is, and the sooner we all set off the better. Here's Tobias quite delighted with the idea of his little excursion."

"Ah, yes," said Tobias, "and it is so kind and good of you, colonel, and of all of you; but you know I leave my heart in London still, let me go where I may."

"Never mind, Tobias," said Johanna. "I feel quite sure that you will find it in good keeping when you do come back again; so now we will make preparations at once for departure, and I hope we shall be quite delighted with where we are going. It is one of the pleasantest places, they tell me, on the coast, and will in time be a place of great importance."

"Well," said the colonel, with a laugh, "it's quite a pleasant thing to hear that it is on the coast, for that is something towards a knowledge of where it is."

"Ah, my dear--By-the-by," said Mrs. Oakley, "I should like to know where you really intend to take us all."

"To the little fishing village of Brighthelmstone, for it is nothing more; but then it lies pleasantly between the hills, and you can see the Channel opening fairly before you, and there is an air upon the Downs that is full of life and joy. You will be sure to like it, mother, and so will you, father, and you, colonel, and you, my dear Arabella."

"You don't mention me," said Mark.

"Oh, that is because you know you are of no sort of consequence at all. You are nobody."

"Thank you!"

"Well now, my dears," said Mrs. Oakley, "don't begin to quarrel now, I beg of you, for that is the worst thing you can do; and so long as we get out of the way of having all our throats cut by that horrid Todd, I don't care where I go to or how many inconveniences I put up with, so long as it is a great way off; and I do hope that Sir Richard will soon catch him again, and regularly hang him, as he deserves, the wretch, that I do."

A complete silence followed the utterance of the indiscreet speech of Mrs. Oakley's, which, if it did not at once open the eyes of poor Tobias to the real reason of the sudden journey, nothing would. All eyes were bent upon the lad; and rising from the seat which Johanna had made him take, he looked about him with dismay.

"Oh, tell me, some one," he then said, "what does it all really mean? Believe me, my kind and dear friends, that I shall suffer less from the truth than as if I were left to make myself mad by thought. Oh, tell me all!"

"You shall know all," said the colonel.

"Oh, mother--mother," said Johanna. "Why did you--"

Mrs. Oakley sat looking the picture of dismay, and Colonel Jeffrey added--

"This is an accident that I don't think is to be much lamented. Tobias must have known at some time, and it is better that he should know now that he is surrounded by his friends. Give me your hand, Tobias. You see that I smile, so it cannot be of great moment after all."

"Oh, tell me--tell me!"

"I will. Todd has made his escape from Newgate, that is all; but he is friendless and penniless, and it will be quite impossible that he can remain many days at large, as Sir Richard Blunt is already upon his track. Let me beg of you not to be in the least alarmed at this intelligence. It ought not to alarm you. Todd will have too much to do to look after his own affairs to enable him to give a thought to anybody else."

"You will save me?" said Tobias.

"I will. We will all stand between you and any harm; but, I repeat, I do not apprehend any danger to you."

They all spoke to Tobias cheeringly, and in the course of half an hour they got him into quite a different state of mind; and then, as he was to form one of the party, it was quite a relief to them all that they did not feel compelled to keep a guard upon their tongues in his presence. In the evening of that day they were all at Brighton.

CLII. TODD HAS SOME FURTHER ADVENTURES IN FLEET STREET

We left Todd in the pulpit of St. Dunstan's Church, while his old house was rapidly burning down. A perilous position for Todd!

Perhaps, if he had courage sufficient to have made the attempt, he might have escaped at several junctures, but the dread of the consequences of capture was so strong in his heart and brain, that while he felt that he was undiscovered in the pulpit, he preferred remaining there to making any precipitate means of escape.

It will be remembered how the beadle had taken up several gentlemen to the roof of the church, in order that they might get a good view of the fire; and it was during that time that Todd thought of escaping, but the rapid approach of daylight daunted him.

"Oh, that I had remained in the wood at Hampstead, or anywhere but here in London, where the hands of all men are raised against me! Oh, I was mad--mad to come here. But I am not quite lost. If I thought that, my senses would go from me this moment. Oh, no--no, I will be calm now again; I will not believe that I am quite lost yet."

Of a truth, Todd felt that if he really gave up in despair, that he might commit some extravagance which would at once draw down upon him his enemies; and there he lay in the pulpit, his gaunt form huddled up so as completely to hide himself in it, and dreading to stay as much almost as he dreaded to leave.

He heard still the loud shouts of people at the fire, and at times he thought he heard even the flames that were rapidly consuming the old den of iniquity in which he had committed so many crimes. The regular clank, clank, too, of the engine pumps came upon his ears, and he muttered--

"No, no, you may try your hardest, but you will not subdue that fire. It will blaze on in spite of you. You will not--you cannot, I say, subdue it. The house is too well prepared. I had a care for that before I left home. It will burn to the very ground--ay, and below the ground, too; and the spot of earth only will remain that held the foundation of my old house. Would that all whom I hate were at this moment writhing in the flames! Then I might feel some sort of satisfaction with myself, and even this place of peril would be for the time quite tolerable to me."

No doubt it would have been a vast satisfaction to Todd to have all that he hated in the flames of his burning house; but as yet he could only tell himself that the puny vengeance he had achieved had been upon the most inferior tools of those who had wreaked his ruin, while the principals remained untouched and most completely unscathed.

What had he yet done to Sir Richard Blunt? What to Tobias? What to Johanna? What even to the dog that had played no inconsiderable a part in his final conviction of the murder of its master? Little, indeed; and the thought that his revenges were all to do, scared his imagination, and filled him full of rage as well as terror.

He heard the sound of the footsteps of the people who had gone to the roof of the church with the beadle to see the fire, coming down again, and he shrunk still closer into the bottom of the pulpit.

"Oh," he said, "if they could but for one moment guess that I was here, what joy it would give them to drag me forth to the light of day! To once again cast me into the condemned one's cell, and then to hoot me to the gallows! But, no--no; I will not die a felon's death. Rather by my own hands will I fall, if my fortune should reach such a wretched extremity. Hush!--oh, hush! Why do I speak? They come--they come."

"Well, gentlemen, as you say, the old house is gone at last," said the beadle, "and I must say, though fires always gives me a turn, and, as a parish authority perhaps I ought not to say it, I think it is a very good job."

"A good job, Mr. Beadle?" said one. "How do you make that out?"

"Why, sir, who would have lived in it? Who would have paid rent, and rates, and taxes, and given his Christmas-box to the beadle like a Christian, in Todd's old house, I should like to know?"

"Well, you are right there."

"I know I is, sir. The fact is, that house would have been like a great blot, sirs, in the middle of Fleet Street; no one would have taken it for love or money; and it a very good thing as it's gone at last."

"You reason the matter very well, Mr. Beadle," said another, "and I for a certainty subscribe to your opinion, that it is a good thing it is gone at last, and I only hope that its late owner will soon be in the hands of justice. Somebody is trying the door of the church."

The beadle went to it, and upon opening it two persons entered the church. One of them spoke at once, saying--

"Is the beadle of St. Dunstan's in the church?"

Todd knew the voice. It was Sir Richard Blunt, and he shook so that the pulpit creaked again most ominously, so that if the attention of any one had chanced to be directed towards it, they might have felt a kind of suspicion that it was occupied. Luckily for Todd, no one looked up, nor in any way noticed the pulpit.

"Lor, sir, yes," said the beadle. "Here I is, and if I don't make a great mistake, sir, you is Sir Richard Blunt."

"I am."

"Lor bless you, sir, that's the way with me. If I sees a indiwidal once, and knows 'em, I knows 'em again."

"It's a capital faculty, Mr. Beadle. But my friend, Mr. Crotchet, here, will just go down with you through the vaults to make sure that the fire in Todd's house has in no way connected with this. We don't want to burn down the church."

"Burn down the church, sir? Oh, conwulsions! Me go down into the vaults with this gentleman? Bless you, sir, I should only obstructify him in the discharge of his duty. I couldn't think of doing it, I assure you, sir. He can go by himself, you see, and then he will have the advantage of nobody to contradict him."

"I'd rather go without him, Sir Richard," said Crotchet, who was the gentleman. "He's only a idiot!"

The beadle marched up to Crotchet, until he got within about two inches of that gentleman's nose, and then slowly shaking his head to and fro, he said--

"Did you call me a hidiot?"

"Yes, I did."

"You did? Now, young man, mind what you say, because if you call me a hidiot, I shall be bound to do--"

"What?"

"Nothing at all. I see you are rather a low fellow, so I shall treat you with the same contempt as I did the very common person that pulled my nose last week--Silent contempt! That's how I serve people. I despise you, accordingly."

"Werry good," said Crotchet. "That's by far the safestest way, old feller. So now I'll go down into the vaults."

"No news of Todd yet, Sir Richard?" said one of the gentlemen, walking up to the magistrate.

"Oh, Sir Christopher Wren, I beg your pardon," said the magistrate. "I did not see you at the moment. I am sorry to say that although we have some news of Todd, we have not yet been able to catch him. But we must have him, England is not so very large a place after all, and I don't think he has any means of getting away from it."

"The sooner the rascal expiates his crimes upon the scaffold the better. I never before heard of a criminal in whose whole career there was nothing found that could excite the faintest feeling of compassion."

"He is a desperate bad fellow, indeed," said Sir Richard Blunt, "but I hope that he will not long trouble society. I have determined to give up all other pursuits until I take him, and I have a carte blanche from the Secretary of State to go to any expense, and to do what I please, in the way of capturing him."

Todd's heart sunk within him at these words. Had they come from any one else, he would not have heeded them much but from him they were of fearful import.

"Oh, that I could kill that man," he muttered, "then I should know some peace; but while he lives and while I live, we are like two planets in one orbit, and cannot long exist together."

"I wish you every success," said Sir Christopher Wren.

"I am obliged to you, Sir Christopher. The fact is, that Todd left his house pretty full of combustibles, and my men were unwise enough, contrary to my positive orders, to let them be there; and I am afraid that he may have contrived some mode of blowing up the church by a train or some other equally diabolical means, as he had such free and unrestrained access to it for so long."

"What!" cried the beadle. "What did you say, Sir Richard?"

"I merely said that I was apprehensive Todd might have concocted some means of blowing up the church, that is all."

"And me in it! And me in it! Conwulsions!"

The beadle did not pause for another moment, but rushing to the door, he flew out of the church as if a barrel of gunpowder had been rolling after him, nor did he stop until he got right through Temple-bar and some distance down the Strand.

"I am afraid I have frightened away our friend, the beadle," said Sir Richard Blunt.

"And I don't wonder at it," replied Sir Christopher Wren. "I should not like exactly to be blown up along with the fragments of old St. Dunstan's Church myself, so I will go."

"Ah, I am sorry I mentioned it."

"Are you though? I am very much obliged to you for so doing. Excuse me, Sir Richard, for bidding you good-morning rather abruptly, if you please."

Sir Richard Blunt laughed as he bade Sir Christopher and his friend good-morning--by-the-by, the friend had already made his way outside the church-door, and was waiting for Sir Christopher in no small degree of trepidation.

"For God's sake," he said, "come along at once, or we may all be blown up together."

"Well," said Sir Richard Blunt, as he paced up the aisle of the old church, "I would risk a little scorching, if at the end of it I could only lay my hand upon the shoulder of Sweeney Todd. What on earth can have become of the rascal? But I must be patient--yes, patience will do it, for that we shall come face to face again, I feel to be as established a fact for the future, as that of my own existence now."

"Oh," thought Todd, "if I now only dared to shoot him! If I only dared do it! And I would if it were not for the other one in the vaults--that wretch they call Crotchet. And yet I have a pistol here. If I thought that after shooting him through the head or through the heart, I could by one bold rush get out of this church, what a glorious piece of work it would be! This Sir Richard Blunt is the only man that I dread. Were he no more, I should feel completely at peace. I could shoot him now."

Todd took a pistol from his pocket and presented it through the little crevice of the very slightly open door of the pulpit. The door would open a little in spite of him.

"Yes, oh, yes, I could shoot him now; but the report of the pistol would perhaps bring that other villain they call Crotchet from the vaults, and then who shall say what would happen? And yet I have another pistol, and could shoot him too. Oh, how glorious, if I could take the lives of both these men! It would indeed be a good work."

The magistrate paced to and fro waiting for Crotchet, and little suspecting that Todd was so near to him, and with a pistol aimed at him! If he had only guessed as much, he would have freely risked the shot, and would soon have been in the pulpit along with Todd. But it was not to be. Sir Richard Blunt had not any supernatural power by which he could tell of the proximity of Todd from no evidence of that fact at all.

"Yes," said Todd suddenly, "I will shoot him. I will risk all and shoot him now. If I die for it, I shall have, at least, had a great and glorious revenge! I will shoot him now, when he turns and walks up the aisle again."

Todd felt calm and pleased now that he had actually made up his mind to shoot Sir Richard. He projected the barrel of the pistol about an inch or so through the crevice caused by the spring of the door, and he calmly waited for the opportunity of sending its deadly contents into the heart of the magistrate.

The aisle down which Sir Richard had slowly paced was rather a long one, and he had walked down it some half-dozen times, in deep thought, and waiting for Crotchet. There was no reason on earth why he should not come up it again, and so expose himself to the deadly aim of Todd.

He did commence the walk up it. If he had taken twenty steps he would have been a dead man; but chance, or providence--it is not for us to say which--had it otherwise. After going about ten paces, he turned abruptly to the left, and made his way down a long narrow passage between the pews to the opening that led down to the vaults, where Crotchet was pursuing his inquiries.

Todd was foiled.

He drew back with a deep sigh.

"He is saved!" he said. "He is saved! It is not to be!"

Quite unconscious of the serious danger he had so narrowly escaped, Sir Richard went to the mouth of the opening to the vaults, and called out--

"Crotchet! Crotchet!"

"Here you is, sir," replied Crotchet; "I was just coming. It's all right. The old wagabone hasn't done nothing, sir, to spread the fire out of his own blessed premises, as I can see. The church isn't in danger, sir, I take it."

"Very good, Crotchet; then we need not remain here any longer. I cannot, for the life of me, think what has become of our man that we left in Todd's house. In all the riot and racket of the fire, no one seems to be at all aware of what has become of him. Is he a steady sort of a man, Crotchet?"

"Why yes, Sir Richard, he is. But if the truth must be told, he has got the fault of many. He is fond of the--"

Here Crotchet went through expressively the pantomime of placing a glass to his lips and draining it off, after which he rubbed his stomach, as much as to say--"Isn't it nice!"

"I understand, Crotchet: he drinks."

"Rather, Sir Richard."

"Ah, that is the case of all--or of nearly all--men in his class of life. I should not wonder now, at all, if he has not been taking a glass of something, in consequence of feeling lonely, and so set fire to the old house."

CLIII. TODD ASTONISHES THE BEADLE, AND ESCAPES PROM ST. DUNSTAN'S

"Oh!" groaned Todd to himself. "Oh, if I had but shot the villain before the other one came up from the vaults, and all would have been well; but I cannot shoot them both at once. It is not often that I lose anything by procrastination, but I have now--Oh, yes, I have now! It is maddening!--It is quite maddening! and I could find in my own heart almost to turn this pistol against my own life, only that I hope yet to live a little while for vengeance."

A smart tap came against the church door.

"Open the door, Crotchet," said Sir Richard. "We are alone in the church now, for the beadle was too careful of himself to remain after he found that there was some little danger."

"Oh, sir," said Crotchet, with an expression of disgust in his face, "beadles is humbugs, sir; and this beadle of St. Dunstan's is the very worst of the worst of beadles. Didn't you notice, sir, what an old humbug he was before, when we was a-coming here on the hunt about Todd and that beautiful creature Mrs. Lovett? Then, sir, we found out what sort of a beadle that was. I rather think I despises beadles, sir; I does, your worship."

Tap came the knock at the church door again.

"You forget, Crotchet," said Sir Richard, pointing to the door.

"Lor, yer worship, so I did. I begs his blessed pardon whosomever it is. Come in. There's nobody but the right sort here, whoever it is. Hilloa! it's our friend, Green."

"Ah, Green, are you looking for me?" said Sir Richard.

"I was, sir."

"Then you have news. What is it?"

"Todd is in the neighbourhood, sir, or was an hour or two ago, I am well assured."

"Todd?"

"Yes, sir. He was in his own house. A man came to the door of it to see the person minding it, and the door was opened a little way, and Todd tried to pull him in, and would have pulled him in, but his neckcloth gave way, and then the fire broke out directly after. The man has been in too great a fright till just a little while ago to venture into the street again."

"You have seen him?"

"I have, sir."

"Bring him here, Green."

Green immediately left the church, and Mr. Crotchet set up a long and melancholy whistle.

"In my heart I thought this might be," said Sir Richard, "and yet having no evidence to justify the suggestion of my fancy, I did not like to nurse the idea. Todd in this neighbourhood--Todd in his own house! Oh, what a chance!"

"Your worship," said Crotchet, shaking his head and speaking slowly, with an appearance of great wisdom. "Your worship, it's mostly always the case. There's a special providence that always brings back folks as has done a murder back again to the place where they has done it; and the next time I'm on the lay for a cove as has done a slaughtering job, I shall sit myself down, yer worship, in the room where he did it and wait for him. It's a special thing of Providence, it is, sir, I feel as sure as though I did it myself, as isn't Providence at all, but just Crotchet, and no sort of mistake."

"You are right, Crotchet, as far as examples go. We will only just listen to what this man that Green has gone for has got to say, and then we will be off and do our best."

"Yes, yer worship, we will; and here he is."

Green, the officer, now brought into the church the very man with whom Todd had had the little adventure at the door of his shop; and notwithstanding the time that had elapsed since that little incident, the man was still in a state of terror, which was quite manifest in every feature of his face.

"Why, what's the matter with you?" said Crotchet, as he dealt the man a blow on the back that nearly took all his breath away. "You look as scared as if you had just seen a ghost, old fellow, that you do."

"It was worse than a ghost."

Sir Richard Blunt stepped up to the man, and said--

"Do you know me? I am Sir Richard Blunt the magistrate."

"Oh, yes, sir, I know you."

"Answer me then, clearly and distinctly, for much may depend upon it. Who was it opened the door of Todd's house for you, and strove, as I hear, to drag you into it?"

"Sweeney Todd, sir."

"Are you quite sure? Do you know him well by sight?"

"Oh, yes, sir, I could swear it."

"And you thought it very natural that he should be there, and if anybody there had so laid hold of you in the dark, you would, of course, at once have naturally concluded that it must be Todd?"

"Oh, dear no, sir, I hadn't an idea that it could be him, sir; and if I hadn't seen his face, that I know quite well, I couldn't possibly have believed it to be him."

"That is enough. I will not trouble you any further. I am much obliged to you for your information."

"You are very welcome, Sir Richard; and I do hope you may catch the rascal soon. I shall never forget his having hold of me, for the longest day I have to live."

Still shaking at the bare remembrance of the danger that he had run, the man left the church; and peeping over his shoulder every now and then as he went, for fear Todd should be close at hand, he took his route to quite a different quarter of the town, where he fancied he should feel more secure; for he could not make up his mind to anything but that Todd must have some special desire to lay hold of him, and add him to the already formidable muster-roll of his victims.

When he left the church, Sir Richard Blunt turned to Crotchet, and said--

"Crotchet, you may depend, now, that Todd is in London, and fancies that among its crowds will be his greatest chance of safety. I will take measures at once to discover him. Come along with me to Craven-street, and you too, Green, and I will explain to you both what I think will be the best plan to adopt."

"All's right, sir; we'll have him," said Crotchet.

"I think we shall," said Green, "for, large as London is, I rather think we know how to search it as well as most folks. I attend you, sir, and I will run any risk in the world to take the scoundrel prisoner."

"And so will I," said Crotchet.

"I know you both well," said Sir Richard, "and I cannot desire to be aided by better men than you both are. Come on. I will not speak further of any plans or projects except in my own office, where I know that there are no spies or eaves-droppers."

"This blessed church is pretty safe," said Crotchet. "It ain't very likely that anybody is on the listening lay in it. It would be rather cold work, I take it. But, howsomdever, there's nothing like being on the right side of the hedge, and in one's own crib, that one knows all the ins and all the outs of, after all."

They both followed Sir Richard Blunt from the church, and Todd felt that he was once again alone within that sacred edifice, the very atmosphere of which was profaned by the presence of such a wretch, so loaded with crimes as he was.

"Gone," said Todd, looking up put of the pulpit, "and may all--"

We cannot repeat the maledictions of Todd. They were additionally awful spoken in such a building, and from such a place in that building. It was dreadful that the roof of a place reared to the worship of God, should be desecrated by the raving curses of such a man as Todd.

He was silent after he had satisfied his first ebullition of rage, and then he was afraid that he had gone too far, and endangered his safety by making an appearance at all above the level of the pulpit, or by speaking. How did he know but that Sir Richard Blunt might, after all, have some sort of suspicion that he was not far off, and be listening close at hand?

As this supposition, wild and vague as it was, and quite unsupported by any evidence, found a home in the brain of Todd, the perspiration of intense fear broke out upon his brow, and again he shook to the extent of making the old pulpit creak dreadfully.

"Oh, hush! hush!" he moaned. "Be still--be still. I am safe yet. There is no one here. I am safe, surely. There is no one in the church. Why do I suffer more, much more, from what does not happen, than from what does?"

Still the notion clung to him for a little while, and he remained at the bottom of the pulpit quite needlessly for the next half hour, listening with all his might, in order to detect the slightest noise that might be indicative of the presence of a foe. But all was as still as the grave, and by slow degrees Sweeney Todd got more assured.

"I breathe again," he said. "They do not suspect that I am here. It is much too unlikely a place for them to dream of for a moment. Even Sir Richard Blunt, with his utmost prescience, does not think of looking for me in the pulpit of St. Dunstan's Church. I am safe--I am safe for the present."

He agreed with this feeling that he was quite alone in the church, and he was right. He looked over the edge of the pulpit. How still and solemn the place looked!

The morning had advanced quite sufficiently now to shed a dim light into the church, and the noise in the street contingent upon the fire had nearly passed away. The fact was, that the firemen had, after making a few efforts and finding them of no use, let Todd's house burn to the ground, and turned all their efforts towards saving the edifices on either side. In that object they were successful, so that the conflagration was over, and nothing remained but the frail wall of Todd's house.

And so the clank of the engine-pumps no longer sounded in his ears, but he could yet be certain that there was a great crowd in Fleet Street, for he heard the hum of voices, and occasionally the trouble that ensued when a vehicle tried to force its way through the dense mass of people that blocked up the thoroughfare, which at the best of times was none of the clearest.

"Is there a chance now of escape," said Todd, "if I could only make up my mind to it? I do not forget that I am disguised--I ought not to forget that. Who will know me? and yet that man knew me--that man that I missed killing at the old place. Yes, he knew me. He said he could swear to me. Confound him! I wish I could have sworn to his dead body. I wonder if they have left the church-door open, or, rather, only upon the latch? I--I will descend from here, and make a bold attempt."

He opened the pulpit-door, and had got about three steps down the little ornamental flight of winding stairs that led from the pulpit to the body of the building, when the church-door was suddenly opened, and he fled back with a precipitation that made some noise, when he might have done so in perfect quietness, for it was not very likely that any one would have looked up to the pulpit immediately upon their entrance to the building.

A glance towards the door convinced Mr. Todd that it was the beadle.

"Oh, dear, I thought I heard something," said the beadle, as he closed the door after him. "But I suppose it was only fancy, after all. Now they say that all the fire is out, and that it is quite impossible for the church to be blowed up, I suppose I may come in without any danger. Lor bless us, that Sir Richard Blunt, I do believe, would think no more of blowing up a beadle, than he would of eating a penny bun, that's my opinion of him."

"Curses on your head!" muttered Todd.

"Bless me, what a world we live in," said the beadle.

"Wretch--beast," muttered Todd; "what does he want here at this time of day?"

"Yes, to-morrow's Sunday," said the beadle, as if pursuing a train of thought that had found a home in his brain. "How the weeks do run round, to be sure, and one Sunday comes after another at such a rate, that it seems as if there was weeks and weeks and weeks of 'em, without any of the other days at all. I wish I hadn't to come here."

Todd uttered faintly some dreadful imprecations, and the beadle continued talking to himself to keep his courage up, as was evident from his nervous and fidgetty manner.

"Ah, dear, me. Conwulsions! I tried to persuade my wife to come and dust the communion table and the pulpit-cushions for to-morrow, but she politely declined; she needn't have thrown the bellows at my head though, for all that."

"Dust the pulpit-cushions!" thought Todd. "The wretch is coming up here! I shall have to cut his throat, and leave him at the bottom of the pulpit for the parson to tread upon the first thing he does to-morrow, upon coming up here to preach."

As Todd spoke, he took a clasped knife out of his pocket, and opened it with his teeth. "Oh, yes, my old friend, I shall, I see, be under the painful necessity of cutting your throat, that I shall, and I shall not hesitate about it at all."

"Yes," added the beadle, "I mean to say that to throw the bellows at the man is like adding insult to injury, for it is blowing him up in a kind of way that's anything but agreeable. Lor! how cold and rum the church does feel. Rum? why did I say rum and put myself in mind of it? Oh, don't I like it, rather! If I only now had a glass of real fine old Jamaica rum at this moment, I'd be as happy as a bishop."

"Oh, I'll rum you!" growled Todd.

"Eh? Eh?"

The beadle turned round three times, as though he were going to begin a game at blind-man's-bluff, and then he said--

"I thought I heard something. Oh dear, how shivery I do get to be sure, when I'm alone in the church. I'll just get through the dusting job as quick as I can, and no mistake. Amen! Amen! I'm a miserable sinner--Amen!"

CLIV. DETAILS THE PERILOUS SITUATION OF THE BEADLE

Todd had heard all this with anger and impatience rankling at his heart. He began to have the most serious thoughts of sacrificing the beadle--indeed, if any good could have been got to himself by so doing, he would not have scrupled to do so with the greatest speed. As it was, however, he could not concoct any plan of proceedings quickly which would benefit him, and so he was compelled to remain an auditor of the beadle's private thoughts, and a spectator of what he was about, when he chose to peep over the edge of the pulpit.

"Well, it's astonishing," continued the beadle, "what a fever that fellow Todd has kept me in for I don't know how long, one way or another: me and Fleet Street have been regularly bothered by him. First of all, I was in all sorts of doubts and uncertainties about the matter before they took him and tried him, and was a-going to hang him, and then I did think that he was as--good--as done--for--"

As he uttered these last words, the beadle was banging one of the cushions of the communion-table, so that he was compelled for want of breath to utter them at intervals.

"Oh, confound you!" muttered Todd, "if I only had hold of you, I would throttle you, and then think of what to do afterwards."

Todd's great difficulty arose from the fact that he thought if he tried to descend from the pulpit, the beadle might see him and get the start of him in leaving the church, in which event the alarm that he would raise in Fleet Street would be such, that any attempt to escape would be attended by the greatest hazard.

"There is nothing for it but to wait," said Todd to himself gloomily. "I can do nothing else; but woe to him when I do catch him!"

"This dusting job on a Saturday," said the beadle, "does seem to me to be one of the most disagreeable of all that has to be done with the church. I don't mind one's duty on a Sunday, but this is horrid. On a Sunday there's lots of people, and the old place has a sort of cheerful look about it, but now I don't like it, and I've a good mind to get one of the charity-boys of the blessed parish to keep me company."

"I will kill him, too, if you do," muttered Todd.

The beadle paused upon this thought concerning the charity-boy; but as he had finished the communion-table, he did not think that for the mere dusting the pulpit and its cushions, it was worth while to make any fuss.

"It will soon be over," he said, "very soon. I'll just pop up and settle the pulpit, and then get home again as quick as I possibly can. I do wonder, now, if that old Todd will be caught soon? The old wretch!"

The beadle began the ascent of the pulpit.

"It's my opinion," he said, "that Todd--as he had other folks made up into pies--ought to be made into one himself, and then given to mad dogs for a supper--Ha! ha! That's a very good thought of mine, and when I go to the 'Pig's-eye, Tooth, and Tinder-box,' to-night, I will out with it, and they will knock their pots and glasses against the table beautifully, and cry out--'Well done, bravo!--bravo!' I rather think I'm a great man at the 'Pig's-eye, Tooth and Tinder-box.'"

By this time the beadle had got quite to the top of the pulpit stairs, and had his hand on the door. Todd was crouched down at the bottom of the pulpit, waiting for him like some famished tiger ready to pounce upon his prey. He fully intended to murder the unfortunate beadle.

"Well, here goes," said that most unhappily-situated functionary, as he stepped into the pulpit.

Todd immediately grasped his legs.

"If you say one word, you are a dead man!"

The shock was too much for the nerves of the poor beadle of St. Dunstan's, and on the instant he fainted, and fell huddled up at the bottom of the little place.

Todd immediately stood upon the prostrate form of the parochial authority.

"Ha! ha!" he laughed, "I have him now, and I shall be able to leave St. Dunstan's yet."

He trampled as hard upon the beadle as he could, and then he took the clasp knife from his pocket, and said--

"It will be better to kill him. Rise, idiot, rise, and tell me if you can, why I should not cut your throat?"

The beadle neither moved nor spoke.

"Is he dead?" said Todd. "Has the fright killed him? It is strange; but I have heard of such things. Why it surely must be so. The sudden shock has been the death of him, and it would be a waste of time for me to touch him. He is dead--he must be dead!"

Todd, full of this feeling, retreated two or three steps down the little winding staircase of the pulpit, and then reaching in his hand, he caught hold of the poor beadle by the hair of his head, and dragged him sufficiently out of the pulpit to be enabled to look him in the face. The eyes were closed, the inspiration seemed to be stopped, and there was, in truth, every appearance of death about the unfortunate functionary of the old church.

"Yes, dead," said Todd; "but it will be better for me. He will be found here, and as no violence will show upon him, the doctors will learnedly pronounce it a case of apoplexy, and there will arise no suspicion of my having been here at all. It is much better, oh, much, than as if I had killed him."

With this feeling, Todd pushed what he considered to be the dead body of the beadle back into the pulpit again, and then himself rapidly descended the little spiral flight of stairs.

The clock of St. Dunstan's struck the hour of ten, and Todd carefully counted the strokes.

"Ten," he said. "A busy hour--a hour of broad daylight, and I with such a price upon my head, and the hands of all men lifted against me, in one of the most populous streets in the City of London! It is a fearful risk!"

It was a fearful risk, and Todd might well shudder to find that his temerity had brought him into such a position; but yet he felt that if anything were to save him, it would be boldness, and not shrinking timidity. One great cause of dread had passed away from Todd when Sir Richard Blunt left the church. If in any way Todd had had to encounter him, he would have shrunk back appalled at the frightful risk.

When he gained the body of the church, he glanced again up to the pulpit, but all was there profoundly still; and the fact of the death of the beadle appeared to him, Todd, to be so very firmly established, now, as to require no further confirmation.

Although the beadle had closed the church door, he had placed the key, most probably for security, in the inner side of the lock, and there Todd found it. He thought it would be a good thing to put it in his pocket, and he did so accordingly; and when the key was removed, he placed his eye to the keyhole, and peeped out into Fleet Street.

Todd could see the people passing quickly, but no one cast a glance towards the old church, and he began to reason with himself, that surely there could be no difficulty in getting into the street quite unnoticed, if not quite unobserved. Again he told himself that he was well disguised.

"I dread no eye," he said, "but that of Sir Richard Blunt, and he is not here to look upon me. There is not one else, I think, in London that would know me through this disguise. There was never but one who could do so, and she is dead. Yes, Mrs. Lovett might have known me, but she is no more: so I will venture. Yes, I will venture now."

His heart failed him a little as he placed his hand upon the lock of the church-door. It well might do so, for the risk he run, or was about to run, was truly fearful. He was on the point of sallying out among a population, the whole of whom were familiar with his name, and to whom he was as a being accursed, who would upon the slightest hint of identity be gladly hunted to the death.

Truly, Todd might well hesitate.

But yet to hesitate was perhaps to be lost. How could he tell now one moment from another when some one might come to the church-door? and then he would be in a worse position than before. Yes, he felt that he must make the attempt to leave, whether that attempt should involve him in destruction or not, for to stay were far worse.

He opened the door and coolly closed it again, and marched into Fleet Street.

We say he did this coolly, but it were better to say that he acted a coolness that he was far from feeling. A very tempest of terror was at his heart. His brain for a moment or two felt like a volcano, and he reeled as he felt himself in the broad open light of day in Fleet Street among the throng of the population, and yet in that throng was in truth his greatest safety.

"Ain't you well, sir?" said a man.

Todd started and placed his hand upon the knife that he had handy in his pocket; and then he thought that after all it might only be a civil inquiry, and he replied--

"Oh, yes, thank you--thank you, sir. But I am old."

"I beg your pardon, sir."

The man passed on.

"Oh, curse you! I should like to settle you," said Todd to himself as he passed through Temple Bar; but what a relief it was to pass through Temple Bar at all! To leave that now frightfully dangerous Fleet Street behind him. Oh, yes, that was a relief indeed; and Todd felt as if some heavy weight had been taken off his heart upon the moment that he set foot in the Strand.

"Am I safe?" he muttered. "Am I safe? Oh, no, no. Do not let me be too confident."

He was superstitiously afraid of pluming himself upon the fact of having got so far in safety, lest at the moment that he did so, malignant destiny might be revenged upon him, by bringing in his way some one who might know him, even though his capital disguise; so he went on tremblingly.

Todd did not like large open thoroughfares now, and yet, perhaps, if he had set to work reasoning upon the subject, he would have come to the conclusion that they were quite as safe, if not a few degrees safer for him, than by-streets but there was something in the glaring publicity of such a thoroughfare as the Strand that he shrunk from, and he was glad to get from it into the gloomy precincts of Holywell Street.

That street then, as now, was certainly not the resort of the most choice of the population of London, but Todd liked it, and he was wonderfully attracted by a dirty-looking little public-house which was then in it. A murder was committed in that house afterwards, and it lost its licence, and was eventually destroyed by fire.

"Dare I go in here?" said Todd. "I am faint for want of food, and if I do not have something soon I feel that I shall sink, and then there will be a fuss, and who knows what horrible discovery might then take place? This house is dark and gloomy, and in all likelihood is the resort of gentlemen who are not in the habit of having any superfluous questions asked of them; so it will suit me well."

He dived in at the narrow doorway, and found himself in one of the smallest and darkest public-houses that he had ever beheld in all his life, for although he had lived so long in Fleet Street so close at hand, he had never ventured into that den.

"A nice parlour to the right, sir," said a rather masculine-looking specimen of the fair sex in the bar.

"Thank you, madam."

Todd went to the right, and opening a little door, which, in consequence of having a cord and pulley attached to it, made a great resistance, he entered a little grimy room, the walls of which were of wainscot, but so begrimed with tobacco smoke were they, that they were of the colour of the darkest rose-wood, and the ceiling in no way differed from them in tint. A fire was burning in a little wretched grate, and the floor was covered with coarse sand, which crackled under Todd's feet.

The furniture of this little den, which certainly had the name of 'Parlour' from courtesy only, consisted of the coldest-looking rigid wooden chairs and tables that could be imagined. Two men sat by the fire trying to warm themselves, for a cold wind was blowing in the streets of London, and the season was chilly and wintry for the time of the year.

Todd, when he found the parlour had some one in it, would gladly have effected a retreat; but to do so, after he had made his way into the middle of the room, would have only aroused suspicion, so he resolved to go on, and carry the affair through; and for greater safety, he put on a very infirm aspect, and appeared to be bent double by age and disease.

He coughed dreadfully.

"You don't seem to be very well, sir," said one of the men.

"Oh, dear me, no," said Todd. "When you are as old as I am, young man, you won't wonder at infirmities coming upon you."

"Young man, do you call me? I am forty."

"Ah, forty! When I was forty, and that was thirty years ago, I thought myself quite a youth. Oh, dear me, but what with the gout, and the lumbago, and two or three more little things, I am nearly done for now. Oh, dear me, life's a burthen."

"What would you like to have, sir?" said a girl who waited upon the parlour guests, and who came in for Todd's order.

"Anything, my dear, you have in the house to eat, and some brandy to drink, if you please."

"Sit by the fire, sir," said one of the men; "you will be more comfortable. We ought to make way for age."

"Oh, dear no, I thank you. I must be somewhere where I can rest my poor back at times, so I like this corner." It was a dark corner, and Todd preferred it. "It will do very well for me, if you please. Oh, dear me; don't disturb yourselves, gentlemen, on my account, I beg of you. I am an old broken-down man, and have not long to live now in this world of care and sorrow."

CLV. TODD GETS THE BETTER OF THE SHARPERS, AND TAKES A BOAT

The girl brought Todd a plate of roast-beef, a loaf, and some brandy, with which he regaled himself tolerably well; but he was uncomfortably conscious that the two men were looking at him all the while.

"Gentlemen," he said, "it's a very odd thing, but my appetite continues good notwithstanding all my infirmities. I eat well, and I drink well, and the doctors say that that is what keeps me alive."

"I should not wonder," said one of the men drily.

"Yes," said the other, with a laugh, "you are like us, old gentleman; we live by victuals and drink."

"Ah, I didn't mean that," said Todd; "you young people are so fond of your jokes. Dear me, when I was young I used to be fond of my joke, likewise, but now I am so old, that what with my winter cough, and the gout, and all that sort of thing, my joking days are long since gone by. I lost my poor wife, too, a little while ago--bless her heart! Ah, me!"

Todd had the greatest inclination in the world to make up one of his old diabolical faces at this juncture; but he restrained himself, for he felt the danger of doing so; and then affecting to wipe away a tear, he added--

"But I find my consolation in religion. There's where, gentlemen, an old man may look for comfort, and that strength of heart and soul, which in this world is denied to him."

"Very true, sir--very true."

"Ah, gentlemen, it is true; and there's nothing in all the world like an easy conscience. That's the sort of thing to make a man feel serene and happy in this world, while he is preparing for the joys of the next."

"How delightful it is, sir," said one of the men, "for us to meet with a gentleman who has the same opinion as ourselves. Will you join us in a glass, sir, if you please?"

"Oh, yes--yes, with pleasure. What a shocking bad fire, they tell me, has been in Fleet Street."

"Yes, it's the notorious Todd's house."

"In--deed!"

The man who had proposed the social glass rang the bell, and ordered three tumblers of brandy-and-water, and then he said--

"Ah, sir! if you or I could only lay hold of Sweeney Todd it would be rather a good day's work."

"Oh, dear, God forbid!" said Todd. "He would soon lay me low if I were to try to lay hold of him, with, as I may say in a manner of speaking, one foot in the grave. I am not, in the natural order of things, long for this world, gentlemen, and it is not for me to lay hold of desperate characters."

"That's true, sir; but do you know the reward that is offered for him by the Secretary of State?"

"No! Is there really a reward for him?"

"Yes, a thousand pounds clear to any one who will lodge him in any jail. A thousand pounds! Why, it makes a man's mouth water to think of it. One might retire, Bill, mightn't one, and give up all sorts of--"

Bill gave his enthusiastic comrade rather a severe cautionary kick under the table, and it seemed to have the effect of stopping the word 'thieving' from coming past his lips quite at unawares--at least that was the way Todd translated it. He had not the smallest doubt but that the public-house was a very indifferent one, and that the two men whom he was in company with in it were two of the most arrant thieves in all London.

Todd resolved to act accordingly, and he did not let them see that he had the least suspicion of them; but he kept such a wary eye upon their movements, that nothing they did or looked escaped him. They little supposed that so keen an observer watched them as Sweeney Todd was.

The brandy-and-water that had been ordered soon made its appearance; and Todd, while perpetrating a very well-acted fit of coughing, saw one of the men just slightly wink at the other, and take a little way from his waistcoat pocket a small bottle.

"Oh!" thought Todd, "my brandy-and-water will be prepared, I see; and if I do not look sharp, these fellows will rob me of all that I have run so much risk, and took so much trouble to get out of the old house."

After a moment's thought, he rose and said--

"I will only go and pay for what I have had at the bar, and you must permit me likewise to pay for this."

"Oh, no--no!"

"Oh, yes, but I will--I will! I dare say that I have the most money, after all, for I have been very careful in my time, and saved a trifle, so you must permit me."

The two thieves were so delighted at getting rid of him for a few moments, that although they declared it was too bad, they let him go. The moment he was gone, one said to the other, with a grin--

"Bill, put a good dose into the old chap's glass. He has got a rare gold watch in his pocket, and there's a ring on his finger, that if it isn't a diamond, it's as near like one as ever I heard of. Give him a good dose."

"Well, but you know that even a few drops will settle him?"

"Never mind that. It's all right enough; pour it in."

They put enough of some deadly drug into the glass of brandy-and water that stood next to where Todd had been sitting to kill a horse; and then he returned and sat down with a groan, as he said--

"It's quite a funny thing! There's a man at the bar inquiring for somebody; and he's got a red waistcoat on."

"A red waistcoat!" cried both the the thieves, jumping up. "Did you say a red waistcoat?"

"Why, yes; and I think he is what they call a Bow Street thingamy--Lord bless my old brain! what do they call them--"

"A runner?"

"Ah, to be sure, a Bow Street runner, to be sure."

Both the thieves bundled out of the parlour in a moment, and Todd was not idle while they were gone. The first thing he did was to decant his own brandy-and-water--which had been drugged--into an empty glass. Then he filled his glass with the contents of one of the thieves' glasses. After that, he half filled that glass with the drugged spirit, and filled it up from the other thief's glass, and that again he filled up with the drugged spirit.

By this means, each of them had half from the glass they had--as they thought--so very cleverly drugged for him, to drink from; and as they had not scrupled to put in an over dose, it may be fairly presumed that there was in each of their glasses quite enough to make them very uncomfortable.

They both returned.

"There's nobody there now," said one. "Are you sure you saw him, sir? We can't see any one."

"Didn't I tell you he was going away when I saw him? It was only the latch of the door catching his top-coat that made me see his red waistcoat; and it was a wonder then that I saw it, for I am not very noticeable in those things. Oh, dear, how bad my cough is."

"Take some of your brandy-and-water, sir," said one of the thieves, as he winked at the other. "It will do you good, sir."

"Not a doubt of it," said the other.

"Do you think so? Well--well, perhaps it may. Here's my friendship to both of you, gentlemen; and I hope we shall none of us repent of this happy meeting. I am much pleased, gentlemen, to see you both, and hope the brandy-and-water will do us all a world of good. I will give you a toast, gentlemen."

"Ah, a toast!--a toast!"

"But mind gentlemen, you must take a good draught, if you drink my toast--Will you?"

"Will we? Ay, to be sure, if you will."

"I promise, gentlemen; so here's the toast--It's to the very cunning fox who laid a trap for another, and caught his own tail in it!"

"What a droll toast!" said the two thieves. They paused a moment, but as they saw their new friend drink at least one-half of his brandy-and-water in honour of the toast, they did the same thing, and looked at each other quite contented and pleased as possible that the drugged spirit, at the very first pull, had been so freely partaken of--for they had found, by experience, the victims they would have made perceived a disagreeable taste, and would not drink twice.

"Hilloa!" said Todd.

"What's the matter, old gentleman?"

"Do you know, this is very good brandy-and-water?"

"Glad you like it."

"Like it?--I couldn't be off liking it. It's capital! Let's finish these glasses, and have others at once."

As he spoke he finished his glass, and the two thieves were so delighted that he had taken it all, that they at once finished theirs likewise; and then they looked at him, and then at each other, until one said to the other, as he made a wry face--

"I say, Bill, I--I don't much like my glass. How did yours taste, eh, old fellow?"

"Very queer."

"How strange," said Todd; "mine was beautiful! I hope, gentlemen, you have not made a mistake and put anything out of the way in your own glasses instead of mine?"

"Oh, dear. Oh--oh! I am going, Bill."

"And so am I. Oh, murder! My head is going round and round like a humming-top as big as St. Paul's."

"And so is mine."

"Then, gentlemen," said Todd, rising, "I shall have the pleasure of bidding you good day, and I hope you have just sense enough left to appreciate the toast of the 'cunning fox that laid a trap for another, in which he caught his own tail,' and I have the further pleasure of informing you that I am Sweeney Todd."

The two thieves, quite overcome by the powerful and death-dealing narcotic they had placed in the liquor, fell to the floor in a state of perfect insensibility, and Todd very calmly walked out of the public-house.

"This will not do," he said, when he reached the west-end of Holywell Street. "I must not run such risks as this. I must now be off. But where to? That is the question. Out of London, of course. The river, I think--ay, the river. That will be the best. I will house myself until night, and then I will hire a boat and go to Gravesend. From there I shall not find much difficulty in getting on board some foreign vessel, and with what I have in my pockets I will bid adieu to England for a little while, until I can sell my watches and jewels, and then I will come back and have my revenge yet upon those whom I only live now to destroy."

Full of these thoughts, Todd went down one of the narrow streets leading to the Thames, and as he saw a bill in a window of lodgings to let, he thought he should be safer there than in a house of public entertainment. He resolved upon taking a lodging for a week at any cost, and then leaving it in the evening after he should have had some rest at it, which he might do for the remainder of the day, provided the people would take him in, which he had very little doubt of them doing, as he did not intend to object to their terms, and he did intend to pay in advance.

Todd knocked at the door.

It was answered by a woman of the true landlady species, who, upon hearing that it was the lodging Todd was after, was all smiles and sweetness immediately.

"I have come up from the country, madam," said Todd, "and my luggage is at an inn in Gracechurch Street. I intend to send for it in the morning; and as I am weary, if you can accommodate me with a lodging, as I have some business to transact for my son, the Deacon, in London, I shall be much obliged."

"Oh, dear, yes sir; walk in. We have every accommodation. The drawing-room floor, sir, at three guineas and a few extras."

"That will just do," said Todd. "Will you be so good as to show me the rooms, madam?"

Todd saw the rooms, and of course admired them very much; and then he said, in the blandest manner--

"I think the rooms very cheap, madam, and will take them at once, if you please. The reference I will give you, is to the Principal of Magdalen College, Oxford, the Reverend Peter Sly, madam. My own name is Bones, and my son is the Reverend Archdeacon Bones. I will pay you now a week in advance; and all I have to beg of you is, that you do yourself justice as to charges. I will lie down and rest for a few hours, if you please, madam."

"Oh, dear, sir! yes, certainly, Mr. Bones. There shall be no noise to disturb you, and anything you want, if you will be so good as to ring for, I will supply you with the greatest pleasure."

"Thank you, madam."

Thus then was it that Todd secured himself what appeared to be a wonderfully safe asylum until night. He got into the bed with all his clothes on; for he did not know how sudden the emergency might be that might induce him to rise; and he soon fell into a deep sleep, for he had undergone the greatest fatigues of late.

CLVI. SIR RICHARD BLUNT IS VERY NEAR TAKING HIS PRISONER

We left the poor beadle in anything but a pleasant situation in the pulpit of St. Dunstan's Church.

Now it so happened that the beadle was particularly wanted at home; and as he did not make his appearance, his wife repaired to the church to search for him; but it was locked by Todd, who had swung the door shut after him, and as he had taken the key with him, she could not make her way into the sacred edifice.

As she stood at the door, however, she distinctly heard deep groans issuing from some one within the church; and in a state of great alarm, she ran off to one of the churchwardens, who had a duplicate key, and related what she had heard.

The churchwarden not being one of the most valorous of men, rather, upon the whole, declined to go into the church with no other escort than the beadle's wife; and as he, too, upon listening at the key-hole, heard the groans distinctly, he called upon the passers-by to assist, and got together quickly enough about twenty people to go into the church with him.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I don't know what it is, but there's groans; and in these horrid times, when, for all we know, Sweeney Todd is about the neighbourhood, one can't be too cautious."

"Certainly," said everybody.

"Then, gentlemen, if we all go in together when I open the door, it will be the very best plan."

This was duly agreed to; and the churchwarden, with a trembling hand, turned his key in the lock, and opened the door. He then stepped aside, and let all the crowd go in first, thinking that, as he was a man in office, the parish could not afford to lose him, in case anything serious should happen.

"Well, gentlemen," he cried, "what is it?"

"Nothing," said everybody.

"Then I will soon let nothing see that I, a churchwarden, am not to be frightened with impunity--that is to say, when I say frightened, I don't exactly mean that, but astonished, I mean. Come, come--if any one be here, I call upon them to surrender in the king's name!"

A deep groan was the only response to this valorous speech; and the moment the churchwarden heard it, he bolted out of the church, and ran right across the way into a shop opposite.

For a moment or two, this precipitate retreat of the churchwarden had something contagious in it, and the whole of the men who had been induced to stop and go into the church with him were inclined to retreat likewise; but curiosity detained some three of four of them, and that gave courage to the others.

"What was it?" said one.

"A groan," said another; "and it came from the pulpit."

"The pulpit!" cried everybody.

"Who ever heard of a pulpit groaning?" cried a third.

"You stupid!" cried the second speaker: "might it not be some one in the pulpit?--and--Oh Lord--there's a head!"

At this they all took to flight; but at the door they encountered a man, who called out--

"What's the matter? Can't you tell a fellow what the blessed row is--eh?"

This was no other than our old friend Crotchet, who was returning from a conference with Sir Richard Blunt at his private office in Craven Street.

"Oh, it's a ghost! A ghost!"

"A what?"

"A ghost in the pulpit, and there is his head."

"You don't say so?" said Crotchet, as he peered into the church, and shading his eyes with his hand, saw the beadle's head just peeping over the side of the pulpit in a most mysterious kind of way. "I'll soon have him out, ghost or no ghost."

Courage is as contagious as fear, especially when somebody else volunteers to run all the risk; and so when Crotchet said he would soon have the somebody out of the pulpit, the whole crowd followed him into the church, applauding him very greatly for his prowess, and declaring that if he had not then arrived, they would soon have had the ghost or no ghost out of the sacred building, that they would. But they kept within a few paces of the door for all that, so that they might be ready for a rush into Fleet Street, if Mr. Crotchet should be overcome in the adventure.

That was only prudent.

But Crotchet was not exactly the man to be overcome in any adventure, and with an utter oblivion of all fear, he marched right into the middle of the church, and commenced the ascent of the pulpit stairs.

"Come--come," said Crotchet. "This won't do, Mr. Ghost, if you please; just let me get hold of you, that's all."

"Oh!" groaned the beadle.

"Oh, yer is remarkably bad, is yer? but that sort of thing won't answer, by no means. Where is yer?"

Crotchet opened the pulpit door, and reaching in his hand, he caught hold of the beadle by the leg, and fairly dragged him out on to the little spiral stairs, down which he let him roll with a great many bumps, until he landed in the body of the church all over bruises.

"Why, goodness gracious!" cried the beadle's wife, "it's my wretch of a husband after all!"

The beadle had just strength to assume a sitting posture, and then he cried--"Murder!--murder!--murder!" until Mr. Crotchet, seizing a cushion from a pew, held it up before his mouth, to the imminent danger of choking him, and said--

"Hold your row! If you wants to be murdered, can't you get it done quietly, without alarming of all the parish? If you has got anything to say, say it; and if you has got nothink, keep it to yourself, stupid."

"Todd!" gasped the beadle, the moment the pew-cushion was withdrawn from his mouth. "Todd--Sweeney Todd!"

"What?" cried Crotchet.

"Here!--he has been here, and I'm a dead man--no, I'm a beadle. Oh, murder! murder!"

"Don't begin that again. Be quiet, will you? If you have got anything to say about Todd, say it, for I'm the very man of all the world as wants to hear it. Speak up, and don't wink."

"Oh, I've seen him. He's been here. I came to dust the bellowses, you see, after my wife had thrown the pulpit at my head, for asking her to come with me."

"Oh, he's a-raving gentlemen," said the wife. "As I'm a sinner, it was the bellowses as I throwed at his stupid head, and not the pulpit as never was."

"Go on," said Crotchet. "Confound the pulpit and the bellows too. It's about Todd I want to hear. Drive on, will you?"

"Oh, yes. I'm a coming to that; but it curdles my blood, and makes my wig stand on end. I had dusted the communion table, and banged the cushions, and up I goes to the pulpit, meaning to do for that as soon as I could, when who should be there but Sweeney Todd!"

"In the pulpit!" cried everybody.

"In the pulpit," said the beadle.

"Why didn't you nab him at once?" roared Crotchet.

"Because, my good friend, he nabbed me at once. He laid hold of me by this leg--no, it was this--no it wasn't. It was this--that is--no--"

"Confound both your legs! Where is he now?"

"Why, really I can't exactly say, for after stamping upon my inside for about half an hour, he left me for dead, and I was about half gone that way, and I have been a groaning ever since, till now. I am going fast--very fast, and there will be an election for beadle again in this here parish. Oh dear--oh dear! Murder--murder--mur--"

"What, you is coming that agin, is you," cried Crotchet, as he again caught up the pew-cushion. "I shall be obligated, after all, for to push this down your blessed throat. Hold your noise, will you, Mr. What's-your-name."

The beadle was so terrified at the idea of the pew-cushion again nearly smothering him, that despite all his injuries, he sprang to his feet and bolted out of the church.

"Well, did yer ever know sich a feller?" said Crotchet. "Why, one would think he was afraid of Todd."

The spectators thought that nothing was more probable; and as Mr. Crotchet considered that he had got all the information he was at all likely to get from the beadle, he did not at all trouble himself to go after him, but after considering for a few moments, decided upon seeking Sir Richard Blunt, and telling him that he had heard some unexpected news of Todd.

Crotchet knew where to pitch upon Sir Richard at once; and when he related to him what had taken place, a look of great chagrin came over the face of the magistrate.

"Crotchet," he said, "I have missed Todd, then, by what may be considered a hair's breadth. He must have been in the pulpit while I was in the church alone. Oh, that I could but for a moment have guessed as much! You, if you recollect, Crotchet, were in the vaults, and I was waiting for you."

"To be sure, Sir Richard."

"And so the rascal was almost within arm's length, and yet escaped me."

Sir Richard Blunt paced to and fro in an agony of impatience and regret. To be so near apprehending Todd, and yet to miss him, was truly terrific.

"Lor, sir," said Crotchet, "what's the use of fretting and pining about it? That won't bring it back, sir, I can tell you. After all, sir, you can't do better than grin and bear it, you know, which is the out and outest policy on all these here occasions, you know, yer worship. I wish as I'd a knowed he'd been in the church as much as you do; but you don't see me a cussin and a knocking my own head about it, no how."

"You are right, Crotchet, but in good truth it is most desperately provoking. You will proceed as I have directed you, and I will run down to Norfolk Street river, for fear Todd should try to escape us that way. You will be so good, Crotchet, as to be as vigilant as possible. You know how to find me if you want me."

"Rather, sir."

At this moment, and just as Crotchet was upon the point of leaving the room, an officer brought in a little slip of paper to Sir Richard Blunt, upon which was the word "Ben."

"Ben--Ben?" said Sir Richard, "who is Ben? Oh, I think I know. Pray show him in at once. It is my friend the beef-eater, from the Tower."

"Easy does it," said Ben, popping his head in at the door of the room. "Easy does it."

"So it does, Ben. Come in. I am glad to see you. You can go, Crotchet. Pray be seated, Ben, and tell me how I can serve you in any way, my good friend, and you may be assured that I shall have exceeding pleasure in doing so, if I possibly can in any way."

"Lord bless you," said Ben, "I hardly knows. There's ups and downs in this here world, and ins and outs."

"Not a doubt of it, Ben."

"And retreats within retreats, Sir Richard, and foxes, and laughing hyenas, as you can't concilliorate no how, if you wollop 'em till you can't wollop 'em no more."

"Precisely, Ben. If I were a hyena, I don't exactly think, do you know, that such a process would conciliate me."

"Oh, dear yes--it's the only way. But what I've come about, Sir Richard, is what I calls a delicate affair. Oh, dear yes--I tries to take it easy but I can't--I'm--I'm--"

"What, Ben?"

"I'm in love! Oh!"

"Well, Ben, there is no great wonder in that. I have been in love myself, and I believe very few indeed escape the soft impeachment. I hope your love is prosperous, Ben?"

"Thank you kindly, Sir Richard, thank you; but, you see, I thought you might tell me if there was any vice or natural kicking running in the family, and that's why I comed here."

"I tell you, Ben? Why I don't even know the name of the family."

"Yes, you does, Sir Richard. The young woman as I fell in love with, is Miss Julia Hardman, and her father is one of those chaps as nabs the bad un's for you, you know, Sir Richard."

"One of my officers?"

"To be sure he is."

"Does he reside in Norfolk Street, Strand?"

"Does he? Ay, he does; and that's how I came to know the little morsel of a cretur as has made for the first time an impression upon my heart. Oh, Ben, Ben, little could anybody think as you was a marrying sort of person, and here you is in love with Miss Julia!"

"It does seem to me a little extraordinary, Ben, for I must confess I have heard you say some rather severe things against the married state."

"I have--I have; and if it hadn't a been for all the marrying set-out with those two girls, Johanna and Arabella, I never should have got sich a idea in my head. Howsomedever, there it is, and there it is likely to remain. It's a agravation, but there it is!"

"And how did you get acquainted with Julia Hardman?"

"Oh, dear! There's a public house at the corner of her street, and after I had been to Cousin Oakley's, I used to go there at times and get a drain of something, you see, and then she used to come tripping in with a mug for the family beer, you see; and once it rained, so I took her up and carried her home beer and all, and that was how we got acquainted, you see, Sir Richard."

"A very natural way too, Ben. All I can say is, that I know her father to be a very worthy man indeed, and I believe the daughter is a good and virtuous girl."

"You don't say so? Then as there's no vice and kicking, I do believe I shall have to marry her out of hand."

CLVII. TODD FINDS THAT HE HAS GOT OUT OF THE FRYING-PAN INTO THE FIRE

After this little explanatory conversation between Ben and Sir Richard Blunt, the reader will probably guess that Todd's evil fortune had actually carried him to that very house in Norfolk Street, Strand, occupied by the Hardman family, to which he, Sir Richard, talked of going to, to give instructions to his officer, and in which resided the identical Julia, that Ben had carried home, beer and all, in the shower, and to whom his large heart had become so deeply attached.

Todd could hardly have fairly expected to be way-laid by such a conjunction of events; and certainly when he laid himself down so comfortably and easily in the bed at the lodging-house for the luxury of a few hours' sleep, for which, if sleep he could, he had paid the moderate price of three guineas, he little dreamt that his enemies were rallying, as it were, around that house, and that in a short time their voices would be actually within his hearing.

Truly it seemed as though there were henceforth to be no peace in this world for Todd; although, by circumstances little short of absolutely miraculous, he did continue to avoid absolute capture, near as he was to it at times.

The great fatigue he had undergone, combined with the little refreshment he had taken at the public-house in Hollywell Street, induced a feeling of sleep in Todd's frame; and after he had lain in the bed at the lodging-house for about a quarter of an hour, and found the house perfectly still, and that the bed was very comfortable, he pulled the clothes nearly right over his face, and fell fast asleep.

Nothing but sheer fatigue could have given Todd so unbroken a repose as he now enjoyed. It was for an hour or more quite undisturbed by any images calculated to give him uneasiness; and then he began--for there was some noise in the house--to dream that he was hunted through the streets of London by an infuriate mob; and by one of those changes incidental to dreams, when the reason sleeps and imagination ascends the mental throne, he thought that the heads of all the mob were armed with horns, like those of cattle, and that they come raging after him with a determination to toss him.

This was not a dream upon which any one was likely to be very still for any length of time, and Todd groaned in his sleep, and tossed his arms to and fro, and more than once uttered the word--"Mercy!--mercy!"

Suddenly he started wide awake as a knock came at the door and roused him. Todd blessed that knock at the moment; for by waking him it had rescued him from the dream of terrors that had been vexing his brain.

He sat up in bed, and for a moment or two could hardly collect his scattered senses sufficiently to assure himself that it was all a dream, and that he was in the lodging-house in Norfolk Street; but the brain rapidly recovers from such temporary confusions; and Todd, with a long breath of immense relief, gasped out--

"It was, after all, but a dream--only a dream! Oh, God! but it was horrible!"

He fell back upon the pillow again; but sleep did not again come to him, and he began to feel a vague kind of curiosity to know who it was that had knocked at the door; and yet, he told himself, that it could not matter to him, for that in a house like that, of course, there must be plenty of people coming and going, and that, although the persons who kept it might control noises within the house, they could not possibly have any influence upon the knocker.

"Oh, it's all right," said Todd. "It's all right. I will sleep again--I must sleep again; for it yet wants hours and hours to the night, when I may, at least, make the attempt to get off from--from England for ever!"

A faint sort of doze--it could not be called a sleep--was coming over Todd, when he suddenly heard the sound of voices; and he was startled wide awake by hearing his own name pronounced. Yes, he clearly heard some one say--"Todd!"

In a moment he sat up in bed, and intently listened. He held his breath, and he shook again, as his imagination began to picture to him a thousand dangers.

There were footsteps upon the staircase, and in a few moments he heard persons go into the next room--that is to say, the front one to that in which he lay, the room that he had paid for a few weeks' occupation of, and which was only divided from that in which he lay by a pair of folding-doors, that he knew were just upon the latch, and might, at any moment, be opened to discover him.

He then heard a female voice say--

"I do wish you would be quiet, Mr. Ben."

"Ah," said another voice, "keep him in order, Julia, for he has been quite raving about your beauty as we came along the street, I can tell you. Do you think the servant will be able to find your father?"

"Oh yes, Sir Richard. If ma were at home she could have said at once where he was; but Martha will find him, I dare say."

Todd threw the bed-clothes right over his head. It was no other than Sir Richard Blunt who was in the front-room of that diabolical lodging-house, and Todd looked upon himself as all but in custody. His sense of hearing seemed to be preternaturally acute, and although the bed-clothes covered up his ears, and he could not be said to be exactly in his usual state, inasmuch as terror had half deprived him of his reasoning powers, yet he heard plainly, and with what might be called a perfect distinctness, every word that was spoken in the front room.

Perhaps, even in the condemned cell of Newgate, Todd did not suffer such terrors as he was now assailed with in that lodging, where he thought he was so safe, and which he had, as he fancied, managed so cleverly.

"Will you be quiet, Ben!" said the girl's voice again.

"Make him--make him, Julia," said Sir Richard.

"Lor bless your little bits of eyes," said Ben. "Do now come and sit in my lap, and I'll tell you such a lively story of how the leopard we have got at the Tower lost a bit off the end of his tail?"

"I don't want to hear it."

"You don't want to hear it? Come--come, my lambkin of a Julia--when shall we be married? Oh, do name the day your Ben will be done for for life. I want it over."

"Well, I'm sure," said Julia, "if you think you will be done for, you had better not think of it any more, Mr. Benjamin."

"It won't bear thinking of, my dear. It's like a cold bath in January: you had better shut yer eyes and tumble in."

"Upon my word, Ben," said Sir Richard, laughing, "you are anything but gallant; and if I were Julia, I would not have you."

"Not have me? Lord, yes, she'll have me. Only look at me."

"Ah," said Julia, "you think, because you are a great monster of a fellow, that anybody would have you; but I can tell you that a husband half your size would be just as well, and I only wonder, after you have made all the neighbours laugh at me, that I have a word to say to such a mountain of a man, that I do, you wretch!"

"Laugh!" cried Ben, "Why, my duck, what do they laugh at? I should like to catch them laughing."

"Why, you know, you wretch, that that day it rained as if cats and dogs were coming down, you took me up as if I had been a baby, you did, and carried me home, and me with a jug of porter in my right hand, and the change out of a shilling in my left, so that I could not help myself a bit, and all the street laughing. Oh, I hate you!"

"She hates me!" said Ben. "Oh!"

"But she don't mean it, Ben," said Sir Richard.

"Do you think she doesn't, sir?"

"I am sure of it. Do you, now, Julia?"

"Yes, Sir Richard, indeed I do, really now, for he is quite a horrid monster, and I only wonder they don't put him in one of the cages at the Tower along with the other wild beasts, and make a show of him. That's all that he is fit for."

"Oh, you aggravating darling," said Ben, making a dart at Julia, and catching her up in his arms as you would some little child. "How can you go on so to your Ben?"

"Murder!" cried Julia.

"Oh, if you are going to have a fight for it," said Sir Richard, "I will go and wait down stairs, Julia."

Bang came a knock at the street-door.

"Oh, Ben, there's ma or pa," said Julia. "Let me down directly. Do Ben--oh, pray do. Let me down, Ben."

"Do yer love your Ben?"

"Anything you like, only let me down."

"Very good. There yer is, then, agin on yer little mites of feet. Lor bless you, Sir Richard, that girl loves the very ground as I walks on, she does, and she has comed over me with her fascinations in such a way as never was known. Ain't she a nice 'un?--sleek and shiny, with a capital mane. But you should see her at feeding-time, Sir Richard, how nice she does it--quite delicate and pretty; and you should see her--"

The door of the room opened, and Hardman, the officer, made his appearance.

"Your humble servant, Sir Richard. I hope I have not kept you waiting long? I was only in the neighbourhood."

"No, Hardman, thank you, it's all right. I have not been here above a quarter of an hour."

"I am glad of that, sir. How do you do, Mr. Ben?"

"Pretty well," said Ben, "only a little hungry and thirsty, that's all; but don't trouble yourself about that, Mr. Hardman; I always do get hungry when I look at Julia."

"I hope, Mr. Ben, that don't mean that you will dine off her some day when you are married?"

"Oh, lor, no. Bless her heart, no. She loves me more and more, Mr. Hardman."

"I am glad to hear it, Ben--very glad to hear it. But I presume, Sir Richard, that you have some orders for me?"

"Why, yes, Hardman. There's that rascal Todd, you know, still continues to elude us. What I want you to do is, to take charge entirely on the river, and to make what arrangements you like at the various quays and landing-places, and with all the watermen, so that he shall not have a chance of escaping in that way."

"Certainly, sir; I will set about it directly."

"Do so, Hardman. Expense in this case is of no object, for the Secretary of State will guarantee all that; but of course I don't wish you to be extravagant on that account."

"I quite understand you, Sir Richard, and will do my best."

"That I am sure you will, Hardman; and now I will go. I shall feel no peace of mind until that man is dead, or in the cell again at Newgate."

Todd popped his head out from under the clothes, and making the most hideous face, he shook one of his clenched fists in the direction of the front room. It would have been some satisfaction to him to have given a loud howl of rage but he dared not venture upon it; so he was forced to content himself with the pantomime of passion instead of its vocal expression.

"I do hope, sir, we shall soon have him," said Hardman. "It seems to me to be next thing to impossible he should escape us for long. Do you think he has any money, sir?"

"He cannot have much, for all he has, if any, must be but the produce of depredation since his escape from Newgate. He certainly has not extensive means, Hardman."

"Then he must fall into our hands, sir. Julia, is that your mother just arrived, do you think?"

"Yes, pa, it is ma's step. She has been out to get something or another, but I don't know what, as I was out myself all the morning; but it is ma, I know."

Mrs. Hardman came into the room, looking very red and flushed, and with a large basket on her arm. She looked from one to the other of the assembled guests with surprise and horror.

"What's the matter?" said her husband. "Why wife, you look panic-stricken. What has happened?"

"Oh, gracious! where's the gentleman?"

"The gentleman?" cried everybody.

"Yes, the lodger. The highly respectable gentleman who took the first-floor only a couple of hours ago. Oh, gracious, where is he? and a capital lodger too, who paid in advance, and didn't mind extras at all."

"But what lodger, mother?" said Julia.

"Oh, mum, I forgot--I forgot," said Martha, suddenly coming into the room, "I forgot to tell Miss Julia, mum, that an old gentleman had taken the first floor, mum, and gone to bed in the next room."

"In bed in the next room?" said Sir Richard Blunt.

"I am lost!" thought Todd. "I am lost now, I am quite lost! and the only thing I can do is to kill as many of them as possible, and then blow my own brains out."

"Do you mean to say, ma," said Julia, "that there's a gentleman asleep in the next room in the bed?"

"Lor!" said Ben, "you don't mean to say that, Mrs. Hardman?"

"He may be in bed, but if he is asleep," said Sir Richard, "he is a remarkable man; of course if we had had the least idea of such a thing, we should not have come up here; but here we were shown by the servant."

"Oh, yes, it's all that frightful Martha's fault. I'll--I'll kill--no--I'll discharge that odious hussy without a character, and leave her to drown herself! For Heaven's sake go down stairs all of you, and I'll go and speak to the old gentleman, and apologise to him."

"Let me go," said Ben, "and roll on him on the bed, and if that don't settle him I don't know what will."

"Shall I apologise to him?" said Sir Richard.

Todd nearly fainted when he heard this proposition; but when Mrs. Hardman rejected it, and insisted upon going herself, he felt quite a gush of gratitude towards her, and breathed a little more freely once again.