The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.
pardon, I assure you, sir. If you keep your mouth shut, and your eyes
open, you will get on amazingly. Have you seen the paper to-day, sir?"
"No!"
"Sorry for that, sir. A very odd case, sir--a little on one side--a most
remarkable case, I may say. A gentleman, sir, went into a barber's shop,
and--"
"Eh!--puff! sleush! puff! Am I to be poisoned by your soap-suds? Upon my
valour, I shall have to make an example of you to all barbers."
"You opened your mouth at the wrong time, sir."
"The wrong devil. Don't keep me here all night."
"Certainly not, sir. But as I was saying about this curious case in the
paper. A military gentleman went into a barber's shop to be shaved."
"Well. The devil--pluff, pluff! Good God! Am I to endure all this?"
"Certainly not, sir. I'll show you the paper itself. You must know, sir,
that the paragraph is headed 'Mysterious disappearance of a gentleman.'"
"Damn it, what do I care about it? Get on with the shaving."
"Certainly, sir."
Todd gave a horrible scrape to Major Bounce's face with a blunt razor.
"Quite easy, sir?"
"Easy? Good gracious, do you want to skin me?"
"Oh, dear no, sir. What an idea. To skin a military gentleman. Certainly
not, sir. I see you require one of my best keen razors--one of the
Magnum Bonums. Ha! ha!"
"Eh? What was that?"
"Only me giving a slight smile, sir."
"The deuce it was. Don't do it again, then, that's all; and get your
keen razor at once, and make an end of the business."
"I will--make an end of the business. Sit still, sir. I'll be back in a
moment."
Todd went into the parlour.
"£50,000!" muttered Major Bounce. "I am a happy fellow. At last, after
so many ups and downs, I light upon my feet. A charming widow!--and she
wishes to leave England. How lucky. I wish the very same thing.
£50,000!--50,000 charms!"
* * * * *
"Good God! what's that?" said a man, who was passing Todd's window, in
Fleet-street. "What a horrid shriek. Did you hear it, mum?"
"Oh dear, yes," said a woman. "I'm all of a tremble."
"It came from the barber's shop, here. Let's go in, and ask if anything
is the matter?"
The man and woman crossed Todd's threshold, and opened the shop door. A
glance showed them that a man's face was at a small opening of the
parlour door. _The shaving chair was empty._
"What's the matter?" said the man.
"With whom?" said Todd.
"Well, I don't know, but I thought somebody cried out."
Todd crept along the floor until he came close to the man, and then he
said--
"My friend, have you anything to do?"
"Yes, thank God."
"Then, go and do it; and the next time you hear me cry out with the
stomach-ache, ask yourself if it is your business to come in and ask me
any questions about it. As for you, ma'am, unless you want to be shaved,
I don't know, for the life of me, what you do here."
"Well, we only thought--"
Todd gave a hideous howl, which so terrified both the intruders, that
they left the shop in a moment. His countenance then assumed that awful
satanic expression which it sometimes bore, and he stood for the space
of about five minutes in deep thought. Starting then suddenly, he took
up the sword and hat of Major Bounce, and was in the act of putting both
into a cupboard, when a smothered cry met his ears. Todd unsheathed the
sword, and after fastening his shop door, he went into the parlour. He
was absent about ten minutes, and when he returned he had not the sword,
but he hastily washed his hands.
"Done!" he said.
Scratch! scratch! scratch! came something at his door, and Todd bent
forward in an attitude of listening. Scratch!--scratch!--scratch!--His
face turned ghastly pale, and his knees knocked together as he whispered
to himself--
"What is that?--what is that?"
Todd was getting superstitious. Since his adventure with Mr. Crotchet,
his nerves had been out of order, notwithstanding the exertions he had
made to control himself, and to convince his judgment that it was all a
matter of imagination. Yet now, somehow or another, although there was
no visible connection between the two things, he could not help mentally
connecting this scratching at the door with the vision on the staircase.
It is strange how the fancy will play such tricks, but it is no less
strange than true that she does so, yoking together matters most
dissimilar, and leading the judgment into strange disorder.
Scratch!--scratch!--scratch!
"What--what is it?" gasped Todd.
But time works wonders, and after the first shock to his nerves, the
barber began to think that some one must be playing him a trick, and,
for all he knew, it might be the very man whom he had snubbed so for
interfering with him, or it might be some boy--the boys would at times
tease Sweeney Todd. This supposition gathered strength each moment.
"It is a trick--a trick," he said. "I will be revenged!"
He took a thick stick from a corner, and stealthily approached the door.
The odd scratching noise continued, and he again paused for a few
moments to listen to it.
"A boy--a boy," he growled. "It is one of the infernal boys."
Opening the door a little way with great quickness, Todd aimed a blow
through the opening. There was a short angry bark, and his old enemy,
the dog that had belonged to the mariner, thrust in his head, and glared
at Todd.
"Help!--help! Murder!" cried Todd. "The dog again!"
He made a vain effort to shut the door; but Hector was too strong for
him, and, as he had got his head in, he seemed to be determined to force
in his whole body, which he fully succeeded in doing. Todd dropped the
stick, and rushed into the back-parlour for safety, from whence, through
a small square of glass near the top of the door, he glared at the
proceedings of his four-footed foe. The dog went direct to the cupboard
from which he had taken his master's hat, and, opening the door, he
dragged out an assemblage of miscellaneous property, as though he hoped
to find among it some other vestige of the dear master he had lost.
When, however, after tossing the things about, he found that they were
all strange to him, he gave a melancholy howl. Hector then appeared to
be considering what he should do next, and, after a few moments'
consideration, he made a general survey of the shop, and finally ended
by leaping into the shaving-chair, where he sat and commenced such a
series of melancholy howls, that Todd was nearly driven out of his mind
at the conviction that the whole street must be soon in a state of
alarm. Oh! how glad he would have been to have shot Hector; but then,
although he had pistols in the parlour, he might miss him, and send the
bullet into Fleet-street through his own window, and, perchance, hit
somebody, and that would be a trouble. The report, too, would bring a
crowd round his shop, and the old story of him and the accusing dog--for
had not that dog accused him?--would be brought up again. But yet
something must be done.
"Am I to be a prisoner here," said Todd, "while that infernal dog sits
in the shaving chair, howling?"
Now and then, for the space of about half-a-minute, the dog would be
quiet, but then the prolonged howl that he would give plainly showed
that he had only been gathering breath to give it. Todd got desperate.
"I must and will shoot him," he said.
Going to a sideboard he opened a drawer, and took from it a large
double-barrelled pistol. He looked carefully at the priming, and
satisfying himself that all was right, he crept again to the parlour
door.
"I must and will shoot him at any risk," he said. "This infernal dog
will be else the bane and torment of my life. I thought I had been
successful in poisoning the brute as he suddenly disappeared from my
door, but he has been preserved by some sort of miracle on purpose to
torment me."
Howl went the dog again. Sweeney Todd took a capital aim with the
pistol. To be sure his nerves were not quite in such good order as they
sometimes were, but then the distance was so short that how could he
miss such an object as a Newfoundland dog?
"I have him--I have him," he muttered. "Ha! ha! I have him!"
He pulled the trigger of the pistol--snap went the lock, and the powder
in the pan flashed up in Todd's face, but that was all. Before he could
utter even an oath the shop door was opened, and a man's voice cried--
"Hasn't nobody seen nothing of never a great dog nowheres? Oh, there you
is, my tulip. Come to your father, you rogue you. So you guved me the
slip at last did you, you willain!"
CHAPTER XLIV.
TODD AND THE SILVERSMITH.
Hector whined a kind of recognition of this man, but he did not move
from the chair in Todd's shop upon which he had seated himself.
"Come, old fellow," said the man, "you don't want to be shaved, do you?"
Hector gave a short bark, but he wagged his tail as much as to
intimate--"Mind, I am not at all angry with you." And indeed it was
quite evident, from the manner of the dog to this man, that there was a
good understanding between them.
"Come now, Pison," said the man, "don't be making a fool of yourself
here any more. You ain't on friendly terms here, my tulip."
"Hilloa!" cried Todd.
The man gave a start, and Hector uttered an angry growl.
"Hilloa! Who are you?"
"Why, I'm the ostler at the 'Bullfinch!' _oppesite_."
"Is that your dog?"
"Why in a manner o' speaking, for want of a better master, he's got me."
The ostler, by dint of shading his eyes with his hands, and looking very
intently, at last saw Todd, and then he added--
"Oh, it's you, master, is it?"
"Take away that animal directly," cried Todd. "Take him away. I hate
dogs. Curses on both you and him; how came he here?"
"Ah, Pison, Pison, why did you come here, you good for nothink feller
you? You ought to have knowed better. Didn't I always say to
you--leastways, since I've had you--didn't I say to you--'Don't you go
over the way, for that ere barber is your natural enemy, Pison,' and yet
here yer is."
As he spoke, the ostler embraced Hector, who was not at all backward in
returning the caress, although in the midst of it he turned his head in
the direction of the back-parlour, and gave a furious bark at Todd.
"There is some mystery at the bottom of all this," muttered Todd; and
then raising his voice, he added--"How did you come by the dog?"
"Why, I'll tell you, master. For a matter of two days, you know, he
stuck at your door with a hat as belonged--"
"Well, well!"
"Yes, his master, folks said, was murdered."
"Ha! ha!"
"Eh? Oh, Lord, what was that?"
"Only me; I laughed at the idea of anybody being murdered in Fleet
Street, that was all."
"Oh, ah! It don't seem very likely. Well, as I was a saying, arter you
had finished off his master--"
"I?"
"Oh, I begs your pardon! Only, you see, the dog would have it that you
had, and so folks say so as natural as possible; but, howsomdever, I
comed by and seed this here dog in the agonies o' conwulsions all along
o' pison. Now where I come from, the old man--that's my father as
was--had lots o' dogs, and consekewently I knowed somethink about them
ere creturs; so I takes up this one and carries him on my back over the
way to the stables, and there I cures him and makes a pet of him, and I
called him Pison, cos, you see, as he had been pisoned. Lor, sir, you
should only have seed him, when he was a getting a little better, how he
used to look at me and try to say--'Bill, don't I love you neither!'
It's affection--that it is, blow me!"
Todd gave an angry snarl of derision.
"I tell you what it is, my man," he said; "if you will hang that dog, I
will give you a guinea."