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.
todd in the scene of his murders.
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."
