The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
"Rather an unusual taste after it's down, don't you think, sir?" she
said.
"Has it? Well, I don't know. Perhaps you have been tasting a pie, madam,
and that may have influenced the flavour. Try it again. You never can
tell the taste of a glass of gin, in my opinion, until you have taken
two at least. Try this, Mrs. Stag."
"Really I--I. Thank you, sir."
Off went a second glass, and then Todd glared at her with the eyes of a
fiend, as he said, placing the bottle upon the counter, "That ought to
be a dose, I think."
"Sir?" stammered Mrs. Stag. "I--I--God bless me--I--sir--gin--I--that is
lots of pies--gin--gravy. Mrs. Lovett--in the crown of a bonnet--I--my
dear, my dear--Bless us all. Lock it all up--no--no--no. Gin--I--good
again--Pies--gravy."
Todd caught her by the throat or she would have fallen; and then, as she
became quite insensible, he thrust her under the counter.
CHAPTER CI.
TODD MAKES HIMSELF QUITE AT HOME IN BELL-YARD.
"Idiot!" said Todd, as he spurned the insensible form of Mrs. Stag with
his foot. "Idiot! I would kill you, but that it would not do me any
good. The narcotic you have taken in the gin may or may not carry you
off for all I care. It don't matter to me one straw."
He glared around him for a few moments with the fierceness of an ogre,
and then walking to the shop-door, he deliberately locked and bolted it,
so that no one could get in, even if they were expiring for a pie.
"Humph," he said. "This is a time of day when it is not likely the shop
will be troubled with many customers. It is between the batches, I know,
so I am safe for an hour; and during that time if I do not make some
discoveries here, it will surely be my own fault."
Again he glared around him with the ogre-like aspect, and he ran his
eyes carefully over the whole shop, from corner to corner--from floor to
roof, and from roof to floor. At length he said--
"Where now, if I were hiding anything, would I select a place in this
shop?"
After putting this question to himself Todd again ran his eyes over the
shop, and at length he came to the conclusion that it was not there he
should seek for any hiding place at all, and he certainly paid the
sagacity of Mrs. Lovett one of the highest compliments he possibly could
by concluding that she would do as he would under like circumstances.
"No," he said. "The shop is no hiding place for the secret store of my
late friend Mrs. Lovett. No--no. I must seek in the very centre of her
home, for that which I would find. Let me think--let me think."
Todd felt himself quite at home in Bell Yard. He was in truth the
landlord of the house. It had not been safe to make the extensive
under-ground alterations in the place if Mrs. Lovett had been the tenant
of a stranger merely; so Todd had purchased the freehold, and such being
the case, and his tenant, the charming Mrs. Lovett, being as he firmly
believed, at the bottom of the Thames, who should feel at home in the
place if he, Sweeney Todd, did not?
He felt that he had time, too. There was no hurry in life, and he quite
smiled to himself, as he said--
"How often I have longed for a rummage among my dear departed friend
Mrs. Lovett's goods and chattels, and now how many happily and singly
circumstances have changed about to enable me to gratify my inclination.
Ha!"
Todd, in the security of his bad heart, uttered one of his old
laughs--but then for the whole of that day he had been unusually happy.
His good terms with himself shone out even of his eyes, horrible eyes.
"Yes," he said, "yes, she is dead--dead--dead. Ha! ha! Mrs.
Lovett--clever, fascinating creature--how muddy you lie to-night. Ha!"
It was not prudent, however, to waste time, although he had plenty of
it--it never is; so up rose Todd, and proceeded to the parlour. How
fast-locked the door was!
"Now really," he said, "it is a thousand pities that poor dear Mrs. L.
has gone down to the bottom of the Thames with her keys in her pocket.
It would have made no manner of difference in the world to her to have
let me have them. It would have saved me some little trouble, and the
doors some little damage."
With a malicious grin, as though he delighted in the mischief he had
made, he dashed himself bodily against the parlour door, and burst it
open with a crash.
"That will do," he said. "To be sure, the party who, when my absence
gets noised about, comes to take possession of this house, would rather
that the doors were whole; but what of that? Ha! I have mortgaged it
twice over for its full value, and they may fight about it if they like.
Ha! ha! How they will litigate, and I shall read the pleasant account of
it in the papers."
By this time Todd was in Mrs. Lovett's parlour, and folding his arms
across his breast, he gazed about him with a feeling of marked
satisfaction, as he said--
"For five years she has been making, of course, a private purse for
herself, the dear creature, as well as looking to the share of the money
in the bank; and for the last few weeks, since our agreement together
has not been quite so perfect, she has kept all her takings herself; so
reasoning upon that, she must, bless her provident spirit, have a
tolerable sum laid by somewhere, which I, as her executor, will most
assuredly pounce upon."
At this moment some one clamoured for admission at the shop-door,
rapping at it with a penny-piece in a manner that sounded very
persevering.
"Curses on you," muttered Todd, "who are you?"
"A twopenny--a twopenny--a twopenny!" cried a boy, who was at the door,
in a sing-song sort of voice--"I want a twopenny--a twopenny."
Rap, rap, rap! went one of the penny-pieces against the upper half of
the shop-door, which was of glass. Rap, rap, rap! Todd felt quite
convinced that that boy would not go without some sort of answer being
given to his demand, so he slunk round the shop, crouching down, until
he came close to the door, and then assuming one of his most hideous
faces, he suddenly rose up, and from within half an inch of the boy's
face upon the other side of the glass, he confronted him.
So horrible and so completely unexpected was this face to the boy, that
for a moment or two he seemed to be absolutely paralysed by it, and
then, with a cry of terror, he dropped the penny-piece with which he had
been rapping the window, and fled up Bell Yard as though the evil one
himself were at his heels.
"That will do," said Todd.
He went back to the parlour and glared round him again in the hope of
finding something there, but the only cupboard which he observed was
fast locked. One blow with the poker, using it javelin-like, forced it
open, and Todd began flinging out upon the floor the glass and china,
with which it was well enough filled, without any mercy. What cared he
for such matters? Would he not before twelve hours now be miles and
miles away? What, then, was glass and china to him? Nothing--absolutely
nothing.
He was disappointed, though, for he did not find the supposed concealed
hoard of Mrs. Lovett behind the other things in this cupboard.
"Be it so," he said. "No doubt she fancies her bed-room is the safest
place, after all, for her money--that is easily sought. Bless you, Mrs.
Lovett, I will find your gold yet!"
With this view, Todd, by the aid of the poker, broke open another door,
namely, the one which led from the parlour to the staircase, that would
enable him to ascend to the upper part of the house. Truly, Mrs. Lovett
was great in the locking-up way--very great indeed.
Todd was now getting out of patience just a little, but only a little,
that was all. He naturally enough in his own house wanted to make
discoveries a little quicker than he was making them, that was all; and
so he felt put out of his way a little, as any gentleman might under
such circumstances. He swore a little, and was not so polite in his
mention of the deceased Mrs. Lovett as he might have been.
He ascended the stairs three at a time.
"I wonder," he said, when he reached the top of the first flight; "I
wonder where the wily wretch slept. She never would let me up stairs
since she occupied the house."
The locking-up propensities of Mrs. Lovett did not continue past the
ground-floor; and Todd found all the doors upon the floor he was now on
readily enough yield to his touch. The second one he went into was
undoubtedly the room he sought. It was rather elegantly furnished as a
bed chamber; and as Todd stood in the centre of the floor, he chuckled
to himself, and muttered--
"Ha! when she rose this morning, she did not quite fancy she was taking
her last look at this chamber. Ha! ha! Well, my dear Mrs. L., you had
some taste, I will admit, for this room is very nicely got up. It is a
world of pities you had not sense enough to be my slave, but you must
try to be my equal, which in your poor vanity you thought I could
permit. No--no--no!--that was impossible. Why should I single you out of
all the world, Mrs. Lovett, to be just to?"
This, in Todd's estimation, was a very conclusive argument, indeed.
Whether it would have been so to Mrs. Lovett is another thing.
And now the arch villain commenced a search in the chamber of his victim
of the most extraordinary character for minuteness that could possibly
be conceived. It was quite clear that there he expected to find
something worth looking for, and that if he were foiled, it should not
be for want of due diligence in the investigation.
In the course of ten minutes, the trim and well-kept bedroom was one
scene of confusion and disorder. The dressing-glass was thrown down,
and, being in his way once, was kicked to the other end of the room, and
smashed to fragments. The bed-clothes were tossed hither and thither in
the most reckless manner. Boxes were burst open and ransacked, but all
in vain. Not one penny-piece could Todd discover.
"Confound her!" he said, as he wiped his brow with a lace cap he picked
off the dressing-table; "confound her! I begin to suspect that what she
had of her own she put in her pocket this morning, and it has gone down
to the bottom of the river with her! How infernally provoking!"
He peeped up the chimney, and got nothing by that motion but a flop of
soot in his eye.
He stamped and swore and cursed in the most horrible manner that can
possibly be conceived.
Feeling that Mrs. Lovett in the matter of her little private savings had
been one too many for him, he looked rather hopelessly through the other
rooms of the house. They were all completely vacant, and from the
appearance of the dust upon the floors of them did not seem to have been
entered for years past. He gave up the search in despair, and gloomily
walked down stairs to the parlour again.
"It is lost," he said. "It is lost. Well, I must even be content with
that which I have: I don't think any one will be the richer for what is
here. No, no. It could not have escaped my search, and if it has done so
by a miracle, or next thing to one, it will remain until the house falls
to pieces years hence, perhaps, and fall into the hands of some one when
I am de--No--no--what puts that word _dead_ into my mouth? I hate to
think of it! I am young in constitution, and shall live many--many years
yet; oh, yes, I--I need have no fear of death."
Todd glared round him as though he expected that the very
impersonification of the grim King of Terrors would rise up before him
to take vengeance for being treated so slightingly; but all was still.
He wiped his brow again with the lace cap of Mrs. Lovett, which he had
mechanically retained when he left the bed-room, and then he began to