The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
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.
CHAPTER 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.