The String of Pearls 43Crotchet Astonishes Mr. Todd
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The String of Pearls 43
Crotchet Astonishes Mr. Todd
PrestEnglish
The key was soon procured, but it will be recollected that Crotchet had fastened the door rather too securely for it to be opened by any such ordinary implement as a key, and so disappointment was the portion of the shoemaker's wife.
"Don't you think, my love," said the shoemaker, "that it will be just as well to leave this affair until the morning, before taking any further notice of it?"
"And pray, then, am I to sleep all night, if I don't know the rights of it, I should like to know? Perhaps, if you can tell me that, you are a little wiser than I think you. Marry, come up!"
"Oh, well, I only--"
"You only! Then only don't. That's the only favour I ask of you, sir, is to only don't."
What extraordinary favour this was, the lady did not condescend to explain any more particulars, but it was quite enough for the husband to understand that a storm was brewing, and to become humble and submissive accordingly.
"Well, my dear, I'm sure I only wish you to do just what you like; that's all, my dear, I'm sure."
"Very good."
After this, she made the most vigorous efforts to get into the attic, and if any one had been there--which at that juncture there was not--they might truly have asked "Who's that knocking at the door?" Finding that all her efforts were ineffectual, she took to peeping through the key-hole, but nothing was to be seen; and then, for the first time, the idea struck her that there was something supernatural about the business, and in a few moments this notion gained sufficient strength to engender some lively apprehensions.
"I tell you what," she said to her husband, "if you don't fetch a constable at once, and have the door opened, and see all about, I'm afraid--indeed I'm quite sure--I shall be very ill."
"Oh, dear--oh, dear."
"It's of no use your standing here and saying 'Oh, dear,' like a great stupid as you are--always was and always will be. Go for a constable, at once."
"A constable?"
"Yes, There's Mr. Otton, the beadle of St. Dunstan's, lives opposite, as you well know, and he's a constable. Run over the way and fetch him, this minute."
She began hastily to descend the stairs, and the shoemaker followed her, remonstrating, for the idea of fetching a constable, and making him and his house the talk of the whole neighbourhood, was by no means a proposition that met with his approval. The lady was positive, however, and Mr. Otton, the beadle of St. Dunstan's, was brought from over the way, and the case stated to him at length.
"Conwulsions!" exclaimed Otton, "what can I do?"
"Burst open the door," said the lady.
"Burst a door open, mum! What is you a thinking on? Why, that's contrary to Habus Corpus, mum, and all that sort of thing. Conwulsions, mum! you mustn't do it. But I tell you what, now, will be the thing."
Here Mr. Otton put his finger to the side of his nose, and looked so cunning that you would hardly have believed it possible.
"What?--what?"
"Why, suppose, mum, we ask Mr. Todd, next door, to give us leave to go up into his attic, and get out at the window and look in at yours, mum?"
"That'll do. Run in--"
"Me!" cried the shoemaker. "Oh, M--Mr. Todd is a strange man--a very strange man--not at all a neighbourly sort of man, and I don't like to go to him.--I won't go, that's flat--unless, my love, you particularly wish it."
"Conwulsions!" cried the beadle. "Ain't I a-going with you? Ain't I a constabulary force, I should like to know? Conwulsions! What is yer afeard on? Come on. Lor, what's the meaning o' that, I wonders, now; I should just like to take that ere fellow up. Whoever heard of a horn being blowed at such a rate, in the middle o' Fleet-street, afore, unless it was somethin' as consarned the parish? Conwulsions! it's contrary to Habus Corpus, it is. Is me a constabulary force, or is me not?"
This was the bugle sound which warned Sir Richard Blunt and his friend Crotchet that Sweeney Todd had returned to his shop; and, in fact, while this very conversation was going on at the shoemaker's, Todd had lit the lamp in his shop, and actually opened it for business again, as the evening was by no means very far advanced. Mr. Otton went to the door, and looked about for the audacious bugle player, but he was not to be seen; so he returned to the back parlour of the shoemaker, uttering his favourite expletive of "Conwulsions" very frequently.
"Now, if you is ready," he said, "I is; so let's come at once, and speak to Mr. Todd. He may be a strange man, but for all that, he knows, I dessay, what's proper respect to a beetle."
With this strange transformation of his own title upon his lips, Mr. Otton stalked on rather majestically, as he thought, to the street, and thence to Todd's shop door, with the shoemaker following him. The gait of the latter expressed reluctance, and there was a dubious expression upon his face, which was quite amusing to behold.
"Really, Mr. Otton," he said, "don't you think, after all, it would be better to leave this affair alone till the morning? We can easily tell my wife, you know, that Mr. Todd won't let us into his attic. That must satisfy her, for what can she say to it?"
"Sir," said the beadle, "when you call in the constabullary force, you must do just what they say, or lasteways you acts contrary to Habus Corpuses. Come on. Conwulsions! is we to be brought over the street, and then is we to do nothing to go down to prosperity?"
The beadle uttered these words with such an air of pomposity and importance that the shoemaker, who had a vague idea that Habus Corpus was some fearful engine of the law at the command of all its administrators, no longer offered any opposition, but, as meekly as any lamb, followed Mr. Otton into Sweeney Todd's shop. The door yielded to a touch, and Mr. Otton presented his full rubicund countenance to the gaze of Sweeney Todd, who was at the further end of the shop, as though he had just come from the parlour at the back of it, or was just going there. He did not at first see the shoemaker, who was rather obscured by the portly person of the beadle, and Todd's first idea was, the most natural one in the world, namely, that the beadle came upon an emergency to be shaved. Giving him an hideous leer, Todd said--
"A fine night for a clean shave."
"Werry. In course, Mr. T., you is the best judge o' that 'ere, but I does for myself."
As he spoke, Mr. Otton rubbed his chin, to intimate that it was to his shaving himself that he alluded just then.
"Hair cut?" said Todd, giving a snap to the blades of a large pair of scissors, that made Mr. Otton jump again, and nearly induced the shoemaker to run out of the shop into the street.
"No," said the beadle; and taking off his hat, he felt his hair, as though to satisfy himself that it was all there, just as usual. "No."
Todd looked as though he would have shaved him with extreme pleasure, and advancing a few steps, he added--
"Then what is it that you bring your wieldy carcase here for, you gross lump of stupidity? Ha! ha! ha!"
"What? Conwulsions!"
"Pho!--Pho! Can't you take a joke, Mr. Otton? I know you well enough. It's my funny way to call people, whom I admire very much, all the hard names I can think of."
"Is it?"
"Oh, dear, yes. I thought you and all my neighbours knew that well enough. I'm one of the drollest dogs alive. That I am. Won't you sit down?"
"Well, Mr. Todd, a joke may be a joke." The beadle looked very sententious at this discovery. "But you have the oddest way of poking your fun at any one that ever I heard of; but, I comes to you now as a respectable parishioner, to--"
"Oh," said Todd, putting his hands, very deliberately into his pockets, "how much?"
"It ain't anything to pay. It's a mere trifle. I just want to go up to your front attic, and--"
"What?"
"Your front attic, and get out of the window to look into the front attic next door. We won't trouble you if you will oblige us with a candle. That's all."
Todd advanced two steps further towards the beadle and looked peeringly in his face. All the suspicious qualities of his nature rose up in alarm. Every feeling of terror regarding the instability of his position, and the danger by which he was surrounded, rushed upon him. At once he conjectured that danger was approaching him, and that in this covert manner the beadle was intent upon getting into the house, for the purpose of searching it to his detriment. As the footpad sees in each bush an officer, so, in the most trivial circumstances, even the acute intellect of Sweeney Todd saw dangers, and rumours of dangers, which no one but himself could have had the remotest idea of. He glared upon the beadle with positive ferocity, and so much affected was Otton by that lynx-like observation of Sweeney Todd's, that he stepped aside and disclosed that he was not alone. If anything could have confirmed Todd in his suspicions that there was a dead-set at him, it was finding that the beadle was not alone. And yet the shoemaker was well known to him. But what will lull such suspicion as Sweeney Todd had in his mind? Once engendered, it was like the jealousy that--
"Makes the meat it feeds on!"
He advanced, step by step, glaring upon the beadle and upon the shoemaker. Reaching up his hand, he suddenly turned the lamp that hung from the ceiling clear round, so that, in lieu of its principal light falling upon him, it fell upon the faces of those who had paid him so unceremonious a visit.
"Lawks!" said the beadle.
"Excuse us, Mr. Todd," said the shoemaker, "I assure you we only meant--"
"What?" thundered Todd. Then suddenly softening his voice, he added--"You are very welcome here indeed. Pray what do you want?"
"Why, sir," said Otton, "you must know that this gentleman has a lodger."
"A what?"
"A lodger, sir, and so you see that's just the case. You understand that this lodger--lor, Mr. Todd, this is your neighbour the shoemaker, you know. The front attic, you know, and all that sort of thing. After this explanation, I hope you'll lend us a candle at once, Mr. Todd, and let us up to the attic."
Todd shaded his eyes with his hands, and looked yet more earnestly at the beadle.
"Why, Mr. Otton," he said, "indeed you do want a shave."
"A shave?"
"Yes, Mr. Otton, I have a good razor here that will go over your chin like a piece of butter. Only take a seat, sir, and if you, neighbour, will go home comfortably to your own fireside, I will send for you when Mr. Otton is shaved."
"But really," said the beadle, rubbing his chin, "I was shaved this morning, and as I do for myself always, you see, why I don't think I require. Conwulsions! Mr. Todd, why do you look at a man so? Remember the Habus Corpus. That's what we call the paladermius of the British Constitution, you know."
By this time the beadle had satisfied himself that he did not at all require shaving, and turning to the shoemaker, he said--
"Why don't you be shaved?"
"Well, I don't care if I do, and perhaps, in the meantime you, Mr. Otton, will go up to the attic, and take a peep into the next one, and see if my lodger is up or in bed, or what the deuce has become of him. It's a very odd thing, Mr. Todd, that a man should take one's attic, and then disappear without coming down stairs."
"Disappear without coming down stairs?" said Todd.
"Yes, and my wife says--"
Todd made an impatient gesture.
"Gentlemen, I will look in my attic myself. The fact is, that the flooring is rather out of order, and unless you know exactly where to step you will be apt to fall through a hole into the second floor."
"The deuce you are!" said Otton.
"Yes; so I would not advise either of you to make the attempt. Just remain there, and I'll go at once."
The proposition suited both parties, and Mr. Todd immediately passed through a door at the back of his shop, which he immediately closed behind him again. Instead of going up stairs, however, he slid aside a small opening in the panel of this door, and placed his ear to it. "If people say anything impudent, it is the moment they are free from the company that has held them in check," was one of Sweeney Todd's maxims. His first notion that the beadle and the shoemaker had come covertly to search his house, had given way a little, and he wanted to convince himself of the innocency or the reverse of their intentions, before he put himself to any further trouble.
"I don't like it," said the shoemaker.
"Like what? Conwulsions! what don't you like?"
"Intruding upon Mr. Todd. What does he care about my lodgers? It ain't as if he let any of his own house, and had a fellow feeling with us."
"Werry good," said the beadle, "but you send for me, and you ask me what's best, and I tell yer that Habus Corpus, and one thing and another, what I advised was the only thing, that was to get into Mr. Todd's attic, and then get on the parapet and into yours. But if so be as there's holes in Mr. Todd's attic, that will alter the affair, you know."
"Fool--fool!" muttered Todd. "After all, they only come upon their own twaddling affairs, and I was idiot enough to suspect such muddy pated rascals."
In an instant he was in the shop again.
"Nobody there, gentlemen; I have looked into the attic, and there's nobody there."
"Well, I'm very much obliged to you, Mr. Todd," said the shoemaker, "for taking so much trouble. I'll go, and rather astonish my wife, I think."
"Conwulsions!" said the beadle. "It's an odd thing, but you know, Mr. Todd, Habus Corpus must have his way."
