TODD MAKES HIS WAY INTO HIS OWN HOUSE.
When Todd was satisfied that he was not watched or even observed by any
one, he turned and commenced operations upon the door of the church. The
cunning person who had put on the lock, had had a notion in his
necromantic head, that the larger you made a lock the better it was, and
the less likely to be picked; and the consequence of this was, that Todd
found no difficulty in opening the church-door.
The moment he felt the lock yield to the false key he employed, he took
another keen glance around him, and, seeing no one, slipped into the
sacred edifice and closed the door behind him. Feeling, then, up and
down the door until his hand touched a bolt, he shot it into its socket,
and then a feeling of great security took possession of him, although
the interior of the church was most profoundly dark, and any one would
have thought that such a man as Todd--in such a place--could hardly have
been free from some superstitious terrors. An overbearing selfishness,
however, mingled with the most vengeful and angry feelings, kept Todd
above all these sensations, which are mostly the result of vacant
mindedness.
The church felt cold, and the silence had about it a character such as
the silence of no other kind of place has. It may be imagination, but
the silence of a church deserted, always appears to us to be a silence
different from any other, as the silence in a wood is entirely different
from any other description of stillness.
"All is quiet enough here," whispered Todd. "I and the dead have this
place to ourselves now, and so we have often had it. Many a time have I
waded about this building in the still hours of the night, when all
London slept, and opened some little window, with the hope of letting
out the stench from the dead bodies before the morning should bring
people to the building; but it would not do. The smell of decomposition
lingered in the air, and it is here still, though not so bad. Yes, it is
here still! I can smell it now, and I know the odour well."
Todd was sufficiently familiar with St. Dunstan's church almost to go
over it even at that hour, and amid that darkness, without running
against anything; but yet he was very careful as he went, and kept his
arms outstretched before him. He dreaded to get a light, although he had
the means of doing so, for Mr. Lupin had, at his request, given him some
of the matches and little wax-candle-ends that the pious lady had
supplied him with. Yet Todd knew how small a light would suffice to
shine through some of the richly stained glass windows of the church,
and therefore he dreaded to give himself a light.
He felt confident that he should have no sort of difficulty in getting
into the vaults, for in consequence of recent events the stone that
covered up the entrance could not be fast, and he knew from past
experience that his strength was sufficient to raise it if he once got
hold of it, and if it were not fastened down by cement, which, no doubt,
was not the case now.
"I shall yet get," he said, "into my old house. The time has been rather
short, and the goods there deposited by me in old times may there
remain; and if so, I will carry away enough with me to keep me far above
the necessities of life, and when once I have achieved that much, I will
from some obscure place meditate upon my revenge."
In the course of about ten minutes he found the flat stone that led into
the vaults, and to his satisfaction he found that it was merely laid
crosswise over the aperture, in order to prevent any one in day time
from heedlessly tumbling in, but at night it was not, of course,
expected that any one would be there to fall into such a danger.
With one effort Todd removed it.
"Good," he said. "Now I can make my way, and once below the level of the
floor of the church, there will be no danger in at once accommodating
myself with a light, which will be useful enough in the vaults."
Getting upon his hands and knees now, Todd, for fear of a fall down the
stone steps, cautiously got down the first few of them, and then he
paused to light one of the bits of taper with which he was provided. In
the course of a few moments the tiny flame was clear and bright, and
shading it with his hand, Todd carefully descended the remainder of the
stairs.
How still everything was in those vaults of old St. Dunstan's. Were
there no spirits from another world--spirits of the murdered, to flit in
horrible palpability before the eyes of that man who had cut short their
thread of life? Surely if ever a visitant from another world could have
been expected, it would have been to appear to Todd to convince him that
there was more beyond the grave than a forgotten name and a mouldering
skeleton.
When he reached the foot of the stairs and was satisfied that the little
light was burning well, he held it up above his head and bent a keen
glance around him.
"Ha! ha!" he laughed, "so they have been doing their best--poor fools as
they are to meddle with such rubbish--to rid the family vaults of some
of the new tenants that I took occasion to introduce into them. Well,
let them, let them! I did play a little havoc with the gentility of the
dead, I must admit!"
With this highly jocose remark, Todd passed on, taking a route well
known to him, which would conduct him to the cellar that it will be
recollected was immediately underneath his shop. It was from this that
he hoped to get into the house.
[Illustration: Todd In The Scene Of His Murders.]
It took Todd much less time than it would have taken any one else to
make his way to that cellar; but then no one was or could be so well
acquainted with all the windings and turnings of the excavation that led
to it as he, and finally he reached it, just as he found the necessity
of lighting up another little piece of wax candle, as the one he had
already lit had burnt right to his hand. He found a piece of wood, into
which he stuck the new one securely, so that it was much handier to
hold.
Todd now felt the absolute necessity of being much more cautious than
before, for he did know who might be in the shop above, and he did know
that a very small sound below would make itself heard. Holding up the
light, he saw that his nice little mechanical arrangement regarding the
two chairs, remained just as it had been as he used to use it.
"Ah!" he cried, "it will be some time in London again before people will
sit down in a barber's chair with anything like confidence, particularly
if it should chance to be a fixture. Ha!"
Todd was getting quite merry now. The sight of the old familiar objects
of that place had certainly raised his spirits very considerably, and no
doubt the brandy had helped a little. Setting the light down in a corner
of the cellar, he placed himself in an attitude of intense listening,
which he kept up for about five minutes, at the end of which time he
gave a nod, and muttered--
"There may be some one in the parlour--that I will not pretend to say no
to; but the shop is free of human occupants. And now for the means of
getting into it. If anybody can, I can, and that with tolerable ease,
too."
The apparatus by which Todd had been in the habit of letting down his
customers, consisted of a slight system of lever, which he could move
from the parlour, but provided he could reach so high, he could just as
easily release the loose plank from where he was; in which case the
chair that was above would have a preponderating influence, as that was
on the heaviest arm of the plank from the centre upon which it turned.
"I can manage that," he said; and then taking the knife from his pocket,
he found that by its aid he could just reach high enough to touch the
lever that acted as a kind of bolt to keep the plank in its place. The
moment he removed that bolt the plank slowly moved, and then Todd caught
the end of it in his hand, and pulled it right down, so that it assumed
a perpendicular aspect completely. Holding then the piece of wood to
which he had attached the wax light in his mouth, he climbed carefully
and noiselessly up into his old shop; and when there he replaced the
plank, and on the end of the board which was the counterpoise to the
chair, he placed a weight, which he knew where to lay his hands upon,
and which kept the chair in its place, although a very little would have
overcome the counterpoise, and sent it down to the cellar below.
Todd extinguished his light, and the moment he did so, he saw a very
faint illumination coming from the parlour through a portion of the
door, into which a square of glass was let in, and through which he,
Todd, used to glare at poor Tobias.
The sound of voices, too, came upon his ears, and he laid himself flat
down on the floor, close to the wall, under a kind of bench that ran
along it for a considerable distance.
"I am certain I heard something," said a voice, and then the
parlour-door was opened, and a broad flash of light came into the shop.
"I am quite sure I heard an odd noise."
"Oh, nonsense," said some one else. "Nonsense."
"But I did, I tell you."
"Yes, you fancied it half-an-hour ago, and it turned out to be nothing
at all. Lord bless you, if I were to go on fancying things out of what I
have heard since I have been in this house, minding it for Sir Richard
Blunt, I should have been out of my mind long before this, I can tell
you."
"But it was very odd."
"Well, the shop is not so large: you can soon see if Todd is in it. Ha!
ha! ha!"
"No, no, I don't expect to see Todd there exactly, I confess; it would
not be a very likely place in which to find him."
"Well, is there anything now?"
"No--no. It all seems much as usual, and yet I thought I did hear a
noise; but I suppose it was nothing, or a rat, perhaps, for there are
lots, they say, below. It might have been a rat. I did not think that
before, and I feel all the easier now at the idea."
"Then, come and finish our game."
"Very good--all's right. You make a little drop of brandy-and-water, and
we will just have this game out before we go to rest, for I am getting
tired and it's late."
"Not quite twelve yet."
"Ain't it? There it goes by St. Dunstan's clock."
Todd counted the strokes of the clock, and by the time they ceased to
reverberate in the night air, the man who most unquestionably had heard
a noise in the shop, had gone into the parlour again, half satisfied
that it was a rat, and sat down to the game at cards that had been
interrupted.
These were two men that had been put into the house to mind it, until
the authorities should determine what to do with it, by Sir Richard
Blunt. They were not officers of any skill or repute, although they were
both constables; but then Sir Richard did not consider that anything in
the shape of great intelligence was required in merely taking care of an
empty house--for the idea of Todd ever visiting that place again, had
certainly been one that did not even enter the far-seeing brain of the
magistrate.
"It's my deal," Todd heard one of them say, "but you go on, while I mix
the brandy-and-water."
"Indeed!" muttered Todd, as he gathered up his gaunt form from under the
bench. "Indeed! So there are two of you, are there? Well, if there is
another world, you can keep each other company on your road to it, for I
am not going to let your lives stand in the way of my projects. No--no,
I shall yet polish off somebody in my old place, and it is a pleasure
that it should be two friends of that man Blunt, whom I so hate, that I
have no words in which to express it!"
Todd crept up to the parlour door with the long knife in his hand that
he had bought at the cutler's in Camden Town, and putting his eyes close
to the pane of glass in the door, he looked in at the two men.
They really seemed to be quite comfortable, those two men. A bright fire
was burning in the grate, and a kettle was singing away upon the hob at
a great rate. A pack of cards, some pipes, and some glasses, were upon
the table that they had dragged up close to the fire-side; and they
were, take them altogether, about as comfortable as anybody could well
expect to be in that gloomy parlour of Todd's, at his house of murder in
Fleet Street.
They were stout strong men though, and as Todd looked, he thought to
himself, that with all his strength, and with all his desperate fighting
for life, as he would do, it was not a desirable thing for him to come
into personal contact with them.
"Cunning," he muttered, "will do more than strength. I must bide my
time--but I will kill them both if they are in my way, and that they
will be, is nearly past a doubt!"
"There," said the man who was mixing the brandy-and-water, "there, you
will find that a stiff comfortable glass; lots of brandy, and lots of
sugar, and only water enough to make it hot and steamy."
"You know how to mix, Bill," said the other, as he took a drop and then
was obliged to cough and wink again, it was so strong and hot.
"Ah!" thought Todd, "if it would only choke you!"
The other man then took his drink at the brandy, and he too coughed and
winked, and then they both laughed and declared how precious strong it
was, and one of them said--
"The fun of it is, that it was old Todd's; and when he laid in such good
stuff as this, he little thought that we would be enjoying it. I wonder
where he is?"
"Oh, he's far enough off by this time, poking about at some of the
sea-ports to try to get away, you may depend."
"Is he," muttered Todd; "you will find, my kind friend, that I am near
enough to cut your throat, I hope."