The step was but a trifle; and yet, shaken as Todd was by his fall, it really seemed to him to be one of the most hazardous and nervous things in the world to take it.
He made two feints before he succeeded. At length he stood fairly upon the roof of the adjoining house. He did not say "Thank God!"; such words were not exactly in the vocabulary of Sweeney Todd; but he wiped the perspiration from his brow, and seemed to think that he had effected something at last.
And yet how far was he from safety? It is some satisfaction to have got such a man as Todd upon the house-tops. Who pities him? Who would be violently afflicted if he made a false step and broke his neck? No one, we apprehend; but such men, somehow, do not make false steps; and if they do, they manage to escape the consequences.
Surely it was about as ticklish a thing to crawl up a sloping roof as to come down one. Todd did not think so, however, and he began to shuffle up the roof of the house he was now on, looking like some gigantic tortoise, slowly making its way.
Reasoning from his experience of the colonel's house, Todd thought he should very well be able to pitch upon the trap, in the roof of the domicile upon which he was, nor was he wrong. He found it in precisely the same relative position, and then he paused.
He drew a long breath.
"What a mad adventure this is," he said; "and yet what a satisfaction it would have been to me, before I left England, to be able to feel that I had had my revenge upon that brat Tobias. That he had not altogether failed me after I had paid so much money to be rid of him. But that is over. I have failed in that attempt; but they shall not say it cost me my life. They will be bold people who stop me in my passage to the street in this house."
He felt the trap-door. It was fast.
"Humph!" he said, "doors are but bonds; and the rains of a few winters rot them quickly enough. We shall see."
The knife, with which he would have been well pleased to give poor Tobias his quietus, was thick and strong. He slid it under the wooden trap, and by mere force lifted it up. The nails of the bolt easily withdrew themselves from the rotten wood.
Todd was right. The rains of a few winters had done their work.
It was not exactly a time in the evening, when, in such a class of house, any one might be expected to be found in the attics; so Todd made no scruple of at once removing the lower trap in the ceiling.
He dropped comfortably enough on to the floor.
And now, coming suddenly as he did from the light, faint as it was, of the open air in the room, which he found himself, seemed to be involved in profound darkness; but that he knew would wear away in a few moments, and he stood still for his eyes to get accustomed to the semi-obscurity of the place.
Gradually, then, as though out of chaos, there loomed a bedstead and all the necessary appointments of a bed-room. It was untenanted; and so Todd, after listening intently, and believing, from the marked stillness that there prevailed, that the upper part of the house was deserted, walked to the door, and opening it, stood upon the landing.
"If I can now but step down stairs noiselessly, and open the street door, all will be well. People don't sit upon the staircase, and I may be fortunate enough to encounter no one."
There was no time to lose. Affairs in Fleet-street required his presence; and, besides, the present moment might be the most propitious, for all he knew, for the enterprise.
Down he went, not clinging to the balustrades--for who should say they might not wheeze and creak?--not walking upon the middle of the stairs, for there was no saying what tell-tale sounds they might give vocality to; but sliding along close to the wall, and stepping so quietly, that it would have required attentive ears to have detected his silent and steady march.
And so, flight by flight of these stairs Todd descended in safety, until he reached the passage. Yes, he got to the passage without the shadow of an interruption.
Then he heard voices in one of the parlours.
"Confound them!" said Todd, "they will hear me open the street door to a certainty; but it must be done."
He crept up to the door. There was some complicated latch upon it that defied all his knowledge of latches, and all his perseverance; and yet, no doubt, it was something that only required a touch; but he might be hours in finding out in the dark where to apply that touch.
He still heard the voices in the parlour.
More than five minutes--precious minutes to him--had already been consumed in fumbling at the lock of the street door; and then Todd gave it up as useless, and he crept to the parlour-door to listen to the speakers, and so, perhaps, ascertain the force that was within.
A female voice was speaking.
"Oh, dear me, yes, I daresay," it said. "You no doubt think that house can be kept for nothing, and that a respectable female wants no clothes to her back; but I can tell you, Mr. Simmons, that you will find yourself wonderfully mistaken, sir."
"Pshaw!" said a man's voice. "Pshaw! I know what I mean, and so do you. You be quiet wife, and think yourself well off, that you are as you are."
"Well off?"
"Yes, to be sure, well off."
"Well off, when I was forced to go to Mr. Rickup's party, in the same dress they saw me in last Easter. Oh! you brute!"
"What's the matter with the dress?"
"The matter? Why I'll tell you what the matter is. The matter is, and the long and short of everything, that you are a brute."
"Very conclusive indeed. The deuce take me if it ain't."
"I suppose by the deuce, you mean the devil, Mr. Simmons; and if he don't take you some day, he won't have his own. Ha! ha! you may laugh, but there's many a true word spoken in jest, Mr. Simmons."
"Oh, you are in jest, are you?"
"No sir, I am not, and I should like to know what woman could jest with only one black silk, and, that turned. Yes, Mr. Simmons, you often call upon the deuce to take this, and to take that. Mind he don't come some day to you when you least expect it sir, and say--"
"Lend me a light!" said Todd, popping his awfully ugly face right over the top of the half open door, a feat which he was able to accomplish by standing on his tip toes.
There are things that can be described, but certainly the consternation of Mr. and Mrs. Simmons cannot be included in the list. They gazed upon the face of Todd in speechless horror, nor did he render himself a bit less attractive by several of his most hideous contortions of visage.
Finding then that both husband and wife appeared spell-bound, Todd stepped into the room, and taking a candle from the table, he stalked into the passage with it.
The light in his hand threw a light upon the mystery of the lock. Todd opened the street-door, and passed out in a moment. To hurl the candle and candlestick into the passage, and close the door, was the next movement of Todd, but then he saw two figures upon the steps leading to Colonel Jeffery's house, and he shrunk back a moment.
"Now William," said Colonel Jeffery himself, "you will take this letter to Sir Richard Blunt, and tell him to use his own discretion about it."
"Yes, sir."
"Be quick, and give it into no hands but his own."
"Certainly, sir."
"Remember, William, this is important."
The groom touched his hat, and went away at a good pace, and Colonel Jeffery himself closed the door.
"Indeed," muttered Todd. "Indeed. So, Sir Richard Blunt, who is called an active magistrate, is to know of my little adventure here? Well--well--we shall see."
He darted from the door of the house, through which he had made so highly successful and adventurous a progress, and pursued William with such strides as soon brought him close up to him. But the thoroughfare in which they were was too public a one for Todd to venture upon any overt act in it.
He followed William sufficiently closely however to be enabled to take advantage of any opportunity that might present itself to possess himself by violence of the letter.
Now William had been told the affair was urgent, so of course he took all the nearest cuts he could to the house of Sir Richard Blunt, and such a mode of progress soon brought him into a sufficiently quiet street for Todd's purpose.
The latter looked right and left. He turned completely round, and no one was coming--a more favourable opportunity could not be. Stepping lightly up to William he by one heavy blow upon the back of his neck felled him.
The groom lay insensible.
Todd had seen him place the colonel's letter in his breast-pocket, and at once he dived his huge hand into that receptacle to find it. He was successful--one glance at the epistle that he drew forth sufficed to assure him that it was the one he sought. It was duly addressed to Sir Richard Blunt--"With speed and private."
"Indeed, very private," said Todd.
"Wretch! Wretch!" cried some one from a window, and Todd knew then that the deed of violence had been witnessed by some one from one of the houses.
With an execration, he darted off at full speed, and soon placed a perfect labyrinth of streets between him and all pursuit. He thrust the letter all crumbled up into his pocket, and he would not pause to read it until he was much nearer to Fleet-street than to the colonel's house, or the scene of his attack upon the groom. Then, by the light of a more than usually brilliant lamp, which with its expiring energies was showing the world what an old oil lamp could do, he opened and read the brief letter.
It was as follows.
"DEAR SIR RICHARD.
"Todd has been here upon murderous thoughts intent. Poor Tobias has, I fear, broken a blood-vessel, and is in a most precarious condition. I leave all to you. The villain escaped, but is injured I think."
"Yours very faithfully,
"JOHN JEFFERY."
"To SIR RICHARD BLUNT.
"Broken a blood-vessel," said Todd. "Ha! ha! Broken a blood-vessel. Ha! Then Tobias may yet be food for worms, and the meat of the pretty crawlers to the banquet. Ha!"
He walked on with quite a feeling of elation; and yet there was, as he came to think, a something--he could not exactly define what--about the tone of the letter, that began upon second thoughts to give him no small share of uneasiness.
The familiar way in which he was mentioned as Todd merely, without further description, argued some foregone conclusion. It seemed to say, Todd, the man whom we both know so well, and have our eyes upon.
Did it mean that? A cold perspiration broke out upon the forehead of the guilty wretch. What was he to think? What was he to do?
He read the letter again. It sounded much more unmeaning and strange now. He had at first been too much dazzled by the pleasant intelligence regarding Tobias, to comprehend fully the alarming tone of the epistle; but now it waked upon his imagination, and his brain soon became vexed and troubled.
"Off--off, and away," he muttered. "Yes, I must be off before the dawn. The interception of this letter saves me for some few hours. In the morning, the colonel will see Sir Richard Blunt, and then they will come to arrest me; but I shall be upon the German Ocean by then. Yes, the Hamburgh ship for me."
He was so near his home now that it was not worth while to call a coach. He could run to Fleet Street quicker, so off he set at a great pace till his breath failed him.
Then he held on to a post so faint and weak, that a little child might have apprehended him.
"Curse them all," he said. "I wish they all had but one throat, and I a knife at it. All who cross me, I mean."
Time was rather an important element now in Todd's affairs, and he felt that he could not allow himself a long period even to recover from the state of exhaustion in which he was.
After a few minutes rest, he pushed on.
One of those sudden changes that the climate of this country is subject to, now took place; and although the sky had looked serene and bright, and there had been twinkling stars in the blue firmament but a short time before, Todd began to find that his clothing was but little protection against the steady rain that commenced falling with a perseverance that threatened something lasting.
"All is against me," he said. "All is against me."
He struggled on with the rain dashing in his face, and trickling, despite all his exertions to the contrary, down his neck. Suddenly he paused, and laid his finger upon his forehead, as though a sudden thought of more than ordinary importance had come across his mind.
"The turpentine!" he said. "The turpentine. Confound it, I forget the turpentine."
What this might mean was one of Todd's own secrets; but before he went home, he ran down several streets until he came to a kind of wholesale drug warehouse.
He rang the bell violently.
"What is it?" said a voice.
"The small keg of turpentine that was to be sent to Mr. Todd's in Fleet Street, is particularly wanted."
"It was sent about half an hour ago."
"Oh, thank you--thank you. That will do. A wet night."
In a few minutes more he was at his own shop-door.
