The String of Pearls 137Todd Makes an Acquaintance in Newgate, and Tries an Escape
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The String of Pearls 137
Todd Makes an Acquaintance in Newgate, and Tries an Escape
PrestEnglish
In the course of a quarter of an hour more, Todd was left alone. The irons he wore weighed upwards of a hundredweight, and it was with some difficulty that he managed to get up, and sit upon the stone seat that was in the cell.
It was close upon evening, and the cell was getting very dark indeed, so that the walls, close as they were together, were only very dimly discernable indeed.
Todd rested his head upon his hands, and thought.
"Has it then really come to this?" he said. "Am I truly doomed to die? Oh, what a dreadful thing it is for me now to begin to doubt of what I always thought myself so sure, namely, that there was no world beyond the grave. Oh, if I could only still please myself with an assurance of that! But I cannot--I cannot now. Oh, no--no--no."
He started, for the cell door opened, and the turnkey brought him in his food for the night, which he placed on the floor. It was not then the custom to sit up with condemned prisoners.
"There," said the man, "it's more than you deserve. Good-night, and be hanged to you. Here's the sheriff been kicking up the devil's delight in the prison about that knife affair."
"I hope he will discharge you all," said Todd.
"Do you?"
"Oh, yes. I wish you had all one neck only, and I a knife at it. With what a pleasant gash I would force it in--in--in!"
"Well, you are a nice article, I must say."
"Bring me two candles, and pens, ink, and paper."
The turnkey stared with astonishment.
"Anything else," he said, "in a small way that you'd like? Buttered rolls, perhaps, and a glass of something good? Perhaps a blunderbuss would suit you? I tell you what it is, old fellow, it ain't very often that anybody goes out from here on a Monday morning to be scragged, that we don't feel a little sorry for them, but I don't think we shall any of us cry after you. You may sleep or do what you like now until to-morrow morning, for you have got it all to yourself. Two candles, indeed! Well I'm sure--what next? Two candles!--Oh, my eye!"
The turnkey banged shut the door of the cell, and barred and bolted it in a passion; and then away he went to the lobby, which was the great gossiping place, to relate the cool demands of Sweeney Todd.
Once more the prisoner was alone. For some time he set in silence, and then he muttered--
"All the night to myself. He will not visit this cell until the morning. A long--long night; many hours of solitude. Well, I may chance to improve them. It was well in that scuffle for the hammer, when they threw me down, that I contrived to grasp a handful of tools from the smith's basket, and hid them among my clothing. Let me see what I have--ay, let me see, or rather feel, for by this light, or rather by this darkness, I can only judge of them by the feel."
The tools that Sweeney Todd had been clever enough to abstract from the smith's basket, consisted of two files and a chisel. He ran his fingers over them with some feeling of satisfaction.
"Now," he muttered, "if the feeling to die were upon me, here are the means; but it has passed away, and even with these small weapons, and in a cell of Newgate, I do not feel quite so helpless as I was. It will be time to die if all should fail else, but yet if I could only for a time live for revenge, what a glorious thing it would be! How I should like yet to throttle Tobias. What a pleasure it would be to me to hold that girl by the throat, who so hoodwinked me as to impose herself upon me for a boy, and hear and see her choking. How I should like to see the blood of Sir Richard Blunt weltering forth while his colour faded, and he expired gradually!"
Todd ground his teeth together in his rage.
"Yes," he added, while he moved with difficulty under the weight of his iron. "Yes, I have bidden adieu to wealth and the power that wealth would have given me. I have carried on my life of crimes for nothing, and in blood I have waded to accomplish only this world of danger that now surrounds me--to give to myself the poor privilege of suicide; but yet how fain I would live for vengeance!"
His chains rattled upon his limbs.
"Yes, for revenge. I would fain live for revenge. There are some five or six that I would like to kill! Yes, and I would gloat over their death-agonies, and shriek in their ears, 'I did it! I, Sweeney Todd, did it!'"
The fetters entangled about his legs, and threw him heavily to the floor of the cell.
He raved and cursed frightfully, until he was too much exhausted to continue such a course, and then he sat upon the floor, and with one of the files he began working away assiduously at the iron, in order to free himself from those clogs to his movements.
As he so worked, he heard the prison clock strike ten.
"Ten," he said. "Ten already. Of a truth I did not think it was so late. I must be quick. Others have escaped from Newgate, and why should not I? The attempt will and shall be made; and who knows but that it may be successful? A man may do much when he is resolved that he will do all he wishes or die."
Todd filed away at the chains.
"Who will stop me," he said, "with the feeling that will possess me? Who will say, 'I will stop this man, or he shall kill me?' No one--no one!"
The file was a good one, and it bit fairly into the iron. In the course of a quarter of an hour Todd had one wrist at liberty, and that was a great thing. He was tired, however, of the comparatively slow progress of the file, and he made a great effort to break the chains from his ankles; but he only bruised himself in the attempt to do so without succeeding.
With a feeling of exhaustion, he paused.
"Oh, that I could find an opportunity of exerting so much force against those whom I hate!" he said.
At this moment he fancied he heard a slight noise not far from him, and every faculty was immediately strained to assist in listening for a repetition of it. It did not come again then.
"It must have been imagination," he said, "or some sound far off in the prison conveyed by echoes to this spot. I will not suffer myself to be alarmed or turned from my purpose. It is nothing--nothing. I will use the file again."
He commenced now upon the other wrist, and by the little experience he had gathered from his practice at the one which he had already filed in two, he got on more quickly with this one. He found that a long light movement of the file did more work than a rapid grating process. In much less time, then, this other wrist manacle was off, and he could lift up both his arm in freedom.
"This is something," he said, "Nay, it is much, very much indeed. I feel it, and accept it as a kind of earnest of success. Where is the man--where are the two or three men, that will dare to stand in my desperate way, when I have one of these files in each hand, and are free from fetters. They will need be mad to do it. Such an amount of zeal is not to be found. No, they will step aside and let me pass."
It now became a matter of great importance with him, to get the other two fetters that bound his ankles undone. He felt as if he should go mad, if he did not quickly release himself from them now.
Sitting upon the floor of the cell, he set to work; but he found that the file he had been using did not bite very well. The work it had done already had dulled its powers; but the other was fresh and keen, and with it he made great progress.
The left-hand shackle was entirely removed, and now only by his right ankle was he connected with that hundredweight of iron, which held him to the ground.
"I shall be free!" he muttered. "I shall be free! Did they think to hold me with these chains? Ha! ha! No. It may be, that there is a dark spirit of evil that aids men, such as I am; and if it be so, I will consent to be wholly his, if--"
Todd started, for the same noise that had before come upon his ears, now attracted him. It was plainer though than before; and at the moment he thought that it must be in his cell. A cry of terror rose to his lips, but he smothered it in the utterance, and bent again all his faculties to listen.
The sound did not now pass away like an echo as it had done before, but it went on steadily, and he could trace it as localising itself against one of the walls of the cell.
It was a profound mystery. He could not make out what it meant. It was a strange dull scraping noise. At times he thought it was some animal in the cell--a rat, probably; but then the sound was too continuous, and although he stamped once, and said 'Hush!' several times, it steadily continued.
The darkness in the cell was now so intense, that it was in vain to attempt to pierce it. Any straining of the eyes only peopled the palpable black atmosphere with all sorts of strange shapes, conjured up by the imagination; so Todd was glad to close his eyes after a few moments' experience of that character.
"I will know what this is," he said. "I must know what this is, and I will know!"
He held out his arms, and he slowly advanced towards the side of the cell from whence the sound came.
"Speak," he said, "if you are mortal, speak. If immortal, I fear you not. I am now past all such terrors. You can but kill me."
His hands touched the cold stone wall; and then he felt it from the floor upwards, but nothing but the chill surface of the stones was perceptible; and yet the scraping noise continued, and at last he felt convinced that it came from the other side of the wall.
Now he did not know what to think, for he had no means of knowing what was upon the other side of that wall. It might be a corridor of the prison. It might be a room belonging to one of the officials, who was about some work that, if explained, would not appear singular at all.
He placed his ear to the exact spot from whence the noise came, and he listened attentively.
As he so listened, Todd began to have other notions about that noise, and for more than once the square block of stone, against which his ear reposed, shook in its place.
"It must be a cell like this," he said, "that is on the other side of the wall, and that, no doubt, is some prisoner at work, trying to effect his escape. If so, it is fortunate. He must be a bold man, and we can help each other."
Still Todd hesitated what he should do, notwithstanding the hypothesis regarding the noise he heard appeared so very probable. He was resolved to spend a little more time in listening, for he felt that once to commit himself would possibly be to spoil his own chances of escape. He kept his ear to the stone of the wall, then which shook more and more each passing moment.
Suddenly he heard a voice. In a drawling accent, it sang a few lines of a popular thieves' song--
"The beak looked big, and shook his head,
Heigho, the beak!
He wished such family cares were dead,
That honest folks might get their bread,
Heigho, the beak!
The family cove, he grinned a grin,
Heigho, the cove!
Says he, to prig I think no sin;
For sure a Romany must have tin:
Heigho, the cove!"
"It must be all right," thought Todd, "or he would not sing that song; but what good it can do him to get from his own cell into this, I cannot imagine. He would be equally confined here as there, and all his labour thrown away. But together, we may do something. I will speak to him. Yes, I think I will speak to him."
Todd still waited and lingered before he gave any intimation of his presence and knowledge of what was going on, and then the song ceased, and by the renewed vigour with which the tenant of the next cell worked at the stone, it would seem that he had got very impatient at the length of time it took him.
Suddenly, the stone, which was about a foot square, shook so, that Todd withdrew from it, thinking that it would come out of its place altogether; and as it was evidently the object of the prisoner at the other side to push it through into Todd's cell, he thought it better to stand on one side, and let it come.
Suddenly, with a crash, it fell through, and then Todd spoke, for the first time, to the prisoner.
