The String of Pearls 106Todd Makes Himself Quite at Home in Bell-Yard
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The String of Pearls 106
Todd Makes Himself Quite at Home in Bell-Yard
PrestEnglish
"Idiot!" said Todd, as he spurned the insensible form of Mrs. Stag with his foot. "Idiot! I would kill you, but that it would not do me any good. The narcotic you have taken in the gin may or may not carry you off for all I care. It don't matter to me one straw."
He glared around him for a few moments with the fierceness of an ogre, and then walking to the shop-door, he deliberately locked and bolted it, so that no one could get in, even if they were expiring for a pie.
"Humph," he said. "This is a time of day when it is not likely the shop will be troubled with many customers. It is between the batches, I know, so I am safe for an hour; and during that time if I do not make some discoveries here, it will surely be my own fault."
Again he glared around him with the ogre-like aspect, and he ran his eyes carefully over the whole shop, from corner to corner--from floor to roof, and from roof to floor. At length he said--
"Where now, if I were hiding anything, would I select a place in this shop?"
After putting this question to himself Todd again ran his eyes over the shop, and at length he came to the conclusion that it was not there he should seek for any hiding place at all, and he certainly paid the sagacity of Mrs. Lovett one of the highest compliments he possibly could by concluding that she would do as he would under like circumstances.
"No," he said. "The shop is no hiding place for the secret store of my late friend Mrs. Lovett. No--no. I must seek in the very centre of her home, for that which I would find. Let me think--let me think."
Todd felt himself quite at home in Bell Yard. He was in truth the landlord of the house. It had not been safe to make the extensive under-ground alterations in the place if Mrs. Lovett had been the tenant of a stranger merely; so Todd had purchased the freehold, and such being the case, and his tenant, the charming Mrs. Lovett, being as he firmly believed, at the bottom of the Thames, who should feel at home in the place if he, Sweeney Todd, did not?
He felt that he had time, too. There was no hurry in life, and he quite smiled to himself, as he said--
"How often I have longed for a rummage among my dear departed friend Mrs. Lovett's goods and chattels, and now how many happily and singly circumstances have changed about to enable me to gratify my inclination. Ha!"
Todd, in the security of his bad heart, uttered one of his old laughs--but then for the whole of that day he had been unusually happy. His good terms with himself shone out even of his eyes, horrible eyes.
"Yes," he said, "yes, she is dead--dead--dead. Ha! ha! Mrs. Lovett--clever, fascinating creature--how muddy you lie to-night. Ha!"
It was not prudent, however, to waste time, although he had plenty of it--it never is; so up rose Todd, and proceeded to the parlour. How fast-locked the door was!
"Now really," he said, "it is a thousand pities that poor dear Mrs. L. has gone down to the bottom of the Thames with her keys in her pocket. It would have made no manner of difference in the world to her to have let me have them. It would have saved me some little trouble, and the doors some little damage."
With a malicious grin, as though he delighted in the mischief he had made, he dashed himself bodily against the parlour door, and burst it open with a crash.
"That will do," he said. "To be sure, the party who, when my absence gets noised about, comes to take possession of this house, would rather that the doors were whole; but what of that? Ha! I have mortgaged it twice over for its full value, and they may fight about it if they like. Ha! ha! How they will litigate, and I shall read the pleasant account of it in the papers."
By this time Todd was in Mrs. Lovett's parlour, and folding his arms across his breast, he gazed about him with a feeling of marked satisfaction, as he said--
"For five years she has been making, of course, a private purse for herself, the dear creature, as well as looking to the share of the money in the bank; and for the last few weeks, since our agreement together has not been quite so perfect, she has kept all her takings herself; so reasoning upon that, she must, bless her provident spirit, have a tolerable sum laid by somewhere, which I, as her executor, will most assuredly pounce upon."
At this moment some one clamoured for admission at the shop-door, rapping at it with a penny-piece in a manner that sounded very persevering.
"Curses on you," muttered Todd, "who are you?"
"A twopenny--a twopenny--a twopenny!" cried a boy, who was at the door, in a sing-song sort of voice--"I want a twopenny--a twopenny."
Rap, rap, rap! went one of the penny-pieces against the upper half of the shop-door, which was of glass. Rap, rap, rap! Todd felt quite convinced that that boy would not go without some sort of answer being given to his demand, so he slunk round the shop, crouching down, until he came close to the door, and then assuming one of his most hideous faces, he suddenly rose up, and from within half an inch of the boy's face upon the other side of the glass, he confronted him.
So horrible and so completely unexpected was this face to the boy, that for a moment or two he seemed to be absolutely paralysed by it, and then, with a cry of terror, he dropped the penny-piece with which he had been rapping the window, and fled up Bell Yard as though the evil one himself were at his heels.
"That will do," said Todd.
He went back to the parlour and glared round him again in the hope of finding something there, but the only cupboard which he observed was fast locked. One blow with the poker, using it javelin-like, forced it open, and Todd began flinging out upon the floor the glass and china, with which it was well enough filled, without any mercy. What cared he for such matters? Would he not before twelve hours now be miles and miles away? What, then, was glass and china to him? Nothing--absolutely nothing.
He was disappointed, though, for he did not find the supposed concealed hoard of Mrs. Lovett behind the other things in this cupboard.
"Be it so," he said. "No doubt she fancies her bed-room is the safest place, after all, for her money--that is easily sought. Bless you, Mrs. Lovett, I will find your gold yet!"
With this view, Todd, by the aid of the poker, broke open another door, namely, the one which led from the parlour to the staircase, that would enable him to ascend to the upper part of the house. Truly, Mrs. Lovett was great in the locking-up way--very great indeed.
Todd was now getting out of patience just a little, but only a little, that was all. He naturally enough in his own house wanted to make discoveries a little quicker than he was making them, that was all; and so he felt put out of his way a little, as any gentleman might under such circumstances. He swore a little, and was not so polite in his mention of the deceased Mrs. Lovett as he might have been.
He ascended the stairs three at a time.
"I wonder," he said, when he reached the top of the first flight; "I wonder where the wily wretch slept. She never would let me up stairs since she occupied the house."
The locking-up propensities of Mrs. Lovett did not continue past the ground-floor; and Todd found all the doors upon the floor he was now on readily enough yield to his touch. The second one he went into was undoubtedly the room he sought. It was rather elegantly furnished as a bed chamber; and as Todd stood in the centre of the floor, he chuckled to himself, and muttered--
"Ha! when she rose this morning, she did not quite fancy she was taking her last look at this chamber. Ha! ha! Well, my dear Mrs. L., you had some taste, I will admit, for this room is very nicely got up. It is a world of pities you had not sense enough to be my slave, but you must try to be my equal, which in your poor vanity you thought I could permit. No--no--no!--that was impossible. Why should I single you out of all the world, Mrs. Lovett, to be just to?"
This, in Todd's estimation, was a very conclusive argument, indeed. Whether it would have been so to Mrs. Lovett is another thing.
And now the arch villain commenced a search in the chamber of his victim of the most extraordinary character for minuteness that could possibly be conceived. It was quite clear that there he expected to find something worth looking for, and that if he were foiled, it should not be for want of due diligence in the investigation.
In the course of ten minutes, the trim and well-kept bedroom was one scene of confusion and disorder. The dressing-glass was thrown down, and, being in his way once, was kicked to the other end of the room, and smashed to fragments. The bed-clothes were tossed hither and thither in the most reckless manner. Boxes were burst open and ransacked, but all in vain. Not one penny-piece could Todd discover.
"Confound her!" he said, as he wiped his brow with a lace cap he picked off the dressing-table; "confound her! I begin to suspect that what she had of her own she put in her pocket this morning, and it has gone down to the bottom of the river with her! How infernally provoking!"
He peeped up the chimney, and got nothing by that motion but a flop of soot in his eye.
He stamped and swore and cursed in the most horrible manner that can possibly be conceived.
Feeling that Mrs. Lovett in the matter of her little private savings had been one too many for him, he looked rather hopelessly through the other rooms of the house. They were all completely vacant, and from the appearance of the dust upon the floors of them did not seem to have been entered for years past. He gave up the search in despair, and gloomily walked down stairs to the parlour again.
"It is lost," he said. "It is lost. Well, I must even be content with that which I have: I don't think any one will be the richer for what is here. No, no. It could not have escaped my search, and if it has done so by a miracle, or next thing to one, it will remain until the house falls to pieces years hence, perhaps, and fall into the hands of some one when I am de--No--no--what puts that word dead into my mouth? I hate to think of it! I am young in constitution, and shall live many--many years yet; oh, yes, I--I need have no fear of death."
Todd glared round him as though he expected that the very impersonification of the grim King of Terrors would rise up before him to take vengeance for being treated so slightingly; but all was still.
He wiped his brow again with the lace cap of Mrs. Lovett, which he had mechanically retained when he left the bed-room, and then he began to ask himself what should be done with the shop.
"For a few hours yet," he said, "a few short hours, there must be no disturbance and no commotion in this neighbourhood with which my name may possibly be connected. After that, they may do what they like and say what they like, but now all must be peace and silence. What shall I do with this confounded shop, now? I wish I had not given so strong a dose of the narcotic to you, old woman, left in charge by Mrs. Lovett. Ah, what is that?"
The sound from the shop as of some one being violently sick, came upon Todd's ears.
"Ah," he said, "so the narcotic has taken that effect, has it, upon Mrs. Lovett's representative? Well, well, she will recover from it much sooner than I thought she would, and that will now be all the better, for it absolves me of my difficulty about the shop for the next few hours."
He walked into the shop and found Mrs. Stag sitting up behind the counter, and in rather a dubious condition as regarded the peace of her stomach.
"Well, ma'am," said Todd. "How are you now?"
"The Lord have mercy upon us!"
"Amen! But how came you in this state, ma'am?"
"The pies, sir. The pies. You really have no idea of how very rich they are, sir. It's all along of the pies, that's all, sir; but I am getting better, though my head is none of the best."
"Yes," said Todd. "Of course it was the very rich pies. It could not have been what you drank."
"Oh, no, no. Oh, dear no. That wasn't enough to hurt an infant, sir, as you ought to know. What a mercy it is that Mrs. Lovett has not come home, for she is rather a violent woman at times. It's really quite a mercy."
"She won't be home just yet, I think," said Todd. "You will have time to get completely to rights before you see her, and when you do see her I would advise you to make your peace with the other world as quickly as you can!"
Todd closed the parlour door; and as it was only the lock that had given, it did not show much symptoms of what had happened to it; as that in all likelihood Mrs. Stag, supposing that it was fast as she had first found it, would not pay any attention to it or scrutinise it sufficiently to be aware that it had been at all tampered with by any one.
"Only a few hours after all," muttered Todd, "and then I don't care what anybody thinks or says about this shop and its affairs, or about me in connection with them. Ah, I had quite forgotten. I wonder what Mrs. Lovett's cook is about?"
Todd paused, and gave some few moments' thought to the cook. He had an idea of going down to the oven cellar, and killing him, so that he might feel quite certain he was out of the way of perpetrating any mischief; but a second thought determined him in the other way.
"No--no," he said. "What can he do? No doubt the house will be shut after a time, and then he will starve to death. Ha!"
