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