The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
boy was a spy, but I never thought for one moment there was a disguise
of sex. Oh, idiot! idiot! And who are you, sir?"
"I am Sir Richard Blunt."
Todd groaned and staggered. The officers would have let him sit down in
the shaving chair for a moment or two to recover from the shock his mind
had sustained by his capture, but when he found that it was the shaving
chair he was led to, he shuddered, and in a wailing voice, said--
"No--no! not there--not there! Anywhere but there. I dare not sit
there!"
"It isn't worth while sitting at all," said Crotchet. "I'm blowed if I
ain't all crumpled up in a blessed mummy by being in that cupboard so
jolly long. All my joints is a-going crinkley-crankley."
Todd looked in the face of Sir Richard Blunt, and in a faint voice
spoke--
"I--I don't feel very well. There's a little drop of cordial medicine
that I often take in my coat pocket. You see I can't get at it, my hands
being manacled. I only want to take a drop to comfort me."
"Get it out, Crotchet," said Sir Richard.
"Here ye is," said Crotchet, as he produced a little bottle, with a pale
straw-coloured liquid in, from Todd's pocket.
"Give it to me. Oh, give it to me," said Todd. "I will thank you much.
It will recover me. Give it to me!"
"No, Todd," said Sir Richard, as he took the little bottle and put it in
his own pocket. "I do not intend, if I can help it, to permit you to
evade the law by poisoning yourself."
Finding himself thus defeated in his insidious attempt upon his own
life, Todd got quite frantic with rage, and had a grand struggle with
the officers, in his endeavours to get at some of the razors that were
near at hand in the shop; but they effectually prevented him from doing
so, and finally he became too much exhausted to make any further
efforts.
"My curses be upon you all!" he said. "May you, and all who belong to
you--"
But we cannot transcribe the horrible denunciations of Todd. They were
too horrible even for the officers to listen to with patience, and Sir
Richard Blunt, turning to Johanna, said--
"Run over the way to your friends at the fruiterer's. All is over now,
and your disguise is no longer needed."
Johanna did not pause another moment, but ran over the way, and in the
course of a few moments she was in the arms of the fruiterer's daughter,
where she relieved her overcharged heart by weeping bitterly.
"Shut up the shop, Crotchet," said Sir Richard Blunt, "and then get a
coach. I will lodge this man at once in Newgate, and then we will see to
Mrs. Lovett."
At this name Todd looked up.
"She has escaped you," he said.
"I don't think so," responded Sir Richard.
"But I say she has--she is dead: she fell into the Thames this morning
and was drowned."
"Oh, you allude to your pushing her into the river this morning near
London-bridge?" said Sir Richard. "I saw that affair myself."
Todd glared at him.
"But it was not of much consequence. We got her out, and she is all
right again now at her shop in Bell-yard."
Todd held his hands over his eyes for some moments, and then he said in
a low voice--
"It is all a dream, or I am mad."
Crotchet, in obedience to the orders he had received, put up the
shutters of Todd's shop, and then fetched a coach, during the whole of
which time, Sir Richard Blunt himself kept his hand upon Todd's collar,
so that he could control him if he should again become so violent as he
had been.
The spirit to struggle was, however, gone from Todd for the time being.
Indeed, he seemed to be completely stunned by his capture, and to be
able only to see things darkly. He was yet to awaken to a full
consciousness of his situation, and let that awakening be when it would,
it was sure to be awful.
"All's right," said Crotchet. "Here's the vehicle, and the crib is shut
up."
"Crotchet!"
"Yes, your worship. What is it? Why, you never looked at a feller in
that sort of way before."
"I never did have anything so important to say to you, Crotchet, nor did
I ever place in your hands so important a trust. It is one that will
make you or mar you, Crotchet. I have myself important business here, or
I would myself take this man to Newgate. As it is, Crotchet, I wish to
entrust you with that important piece of duty, and I rely upon you,
Crotchet, for keeping an eye upon him, and delivering him in safety."
"It's as good as done," said Crotchet. "If he gets away from me, he has
only another individual to do, and that's the old gent as is down below,
with the long tail. Lor' bless you, sir, didn't I say from the first, as
Todd smugged the people as comed to him to be shaved?"
"You did, Crotchet."
"Werry good. Then does yer think as I'm the feller all for to let him go
when once I've got a hold of him? Rather not!"
"I entrust you with him then, Crotchet. Take him away. I give him
entirely into your hands."
Upon this, Crotchet slid his arm beneath that of Sweeney Todd, and
looking in his face with a most grotesque air of satisfaction, he said,
"kim up--kim up!"
He then, by an immense exertion of strength, hoisted Todd completely
over the door step, after which, catching him with both hands about the
small of his back, he pitched him into the coach.
"My eye," said the coachman, "has the gemman had a drop too much?"
"He will have," said Crotchet, "some o' these odd days. To Newgate--to
Newgate."
Crotchet rode inside along with Todd "for fear he should be dull," he
said, and the other officer got up outside the coach, and then off it
went to that dreadful building that Todd had often grimly smiled at as
he passed, but into which as a resident he had never expected to enter.
Sir Richard Blunt remained in the shop of Sweeney Todd. The oil lamp
that hung by a chain from the ceiling shed a tolerable light over all
objects, and no sooner had the magistrate fastened the outer door after
the departure of Crotchet with Todd, than he stamped three times heavily
upon the floor of the shop.
This signal was immediately answered by three distinct taps from
underneath the floor, and then the magistrate stamped again in the same
manner.
The effect of all this stamping and counter-signals was immediately very
apparent. The great chair which has played so prominent a part in he
atrocities of Sweeney Todd slowly sunk, and the revolving plank hung
suspended by its axle, while a voice from below called out--
"Is all right, sir?"
"Yes, Crotchet has taken him to Newgate. I am now alone. Come up."
"We are coming, sir. We all heard a little disturbance, but the floor is
very thick you know, sir. So we could not take upon ourselves to say
exactly what was happening."
"Oh, it's all right. He resisted, but by this time he is within the
stone walls of Newgate. Let me lend you a hand."
Sir Richard Blunt stooped over the aperture in the floor, and the first
person that got up was no other than Mr. Wrankley the Tobacconist.
"How do you feel after your tumble?" said Sir Richard.
"Oh, very well. The fact is they caught me so capitally below that it
was quite easy. Todd did not think it worth his while to come down to
see if I were alive or dead."
"Ah, that was the only chance; but of course if he had done so he must
have been taken at once into custody--that would have been all. Come on,
my friends, come on. Our trouble with regard to Todd is over now, I
think."
The two churchwardens of St. Dunstan's and the beadle, and four of Sir
Richard Blunt's officers, and the fruiterer from opposite, now came up
from below the shop of Sweeney Todd, where they had been all waiting to
catch Mr. Wrankley when the chair should descend with him.
"Conwulsions!" said the beadle, "I runned agin everybody when I seed him
a-coming. I thought to myself, if a parochial authority had been served
in that 'ere way, there would have been an end of the world at once."
"I had some idea of asking you at one time to play that little part for
me," said Sir Richard.
"Conwulsions! had you, sir?"
"Yes. But now, my friends, let us make a careful search of this house;
and among the first things we have to do is, to remove all the
combustible materials that Todd has stowed in various parts of it, for
unless I am much deceived, the premises are in such a state that the
merest accident would set them in a blaze."
"Conwulsions!" then cried the beadle. "I ain't declared out of danger
yet then!"
CHAPTER CXI.
MRS. LOVETT PLANS.
We hasten to Bell Yard again.
Mrs. Lovett's immersion in the Thames had really not done her much harm.
Perhaps the river was a little purer than we now find it, and probably
it had not entirely got rid of its name of the "Silver Thames"--an
appellation that now would be really out of place, unless we can imagine
some silver of a much more dingy hue than silver ordinarily presents to
the eye of the observer.
She soon, we find, settled in her own mind a plan of action,
notwithstanding the rather complicated and embarrassing circumstances in
which she found herself placed. That plan of action had for its basis
the impeachment of Todd as a murderer, at the same time that it looked
forward to her own escape from the hands of justice. Her first action
was to quiet the cook in the regions below, for if she did not take some
such step, she was very much afraid her establishment might come to a
stand-still some few hours before she intended that it should do so.
With this object, she wrote upon a little slip of paper the following
words, and passed it into the cellar through an almost imperceptible
crevice in the flooring of the shop--
"Early to-morrow morning you shall have your liberty, together with gold
to take you where you please. All I require of you is, that you do your
ordinary duty to-night, and send up the nine o'clock batch of pies."
This, she considered, could not but have its due effect upon the
discontented cook; and having transmitted it to him in the manner we
have described, she sat down at her desk to write the impeachment of
Todd. In the course of an hour, Mrs. Lovett had filled two pages of
writing paper with a full account of how persons met their death in the
barber's shop. She sealed the letter, and directed it to Sir Richard
Blunt in a bold free hand.
"It is done," she said. "When I am far from London, as I can easily find
the means of being, this will reach the hands of the magistrate to whom
it is addressed, and who has the character of being sharp and active."
(Mrs. Lovett did not know how sharp and active Sir Richard had already
been in her affairs!) "He will act upon it. Todd, in the midst of his
guilt, with many evidences of it about him, will be taken, and I shall
escape! Yes, I shall escape, with about a tithe of what I ought to
have--but I shall have revenge!"
On one of the shelves of the shop--certainly out of reach, but only just
so--stood an old dirty-looking tin jar, such as fancy biscuits might be
kept in. No one for a moment would have thought of looking for anything
valuable in such a place; and yet, keeping the shop door locked the
while, lest any intruder should at unawares pop in and see what she was
about, it was to this tin can upon its dirty shelf that Mrs. Lovett
cautiously went.
"Those who hide can find," she muttered. "I warrant now that Todd had
searched in every seemingly cunning and intricate hiding-place in this
whole house, and he has gone away disappointed. The secret of hiding
anything is not to try to find some place where people may be baffled
when they look, but to light upon some place into which they will not
look at all."
With these words, Mrs. Lovett took down the tin can, and having from the
upper portion of it removed some dusty, mouldy small biscuits, she dived