The String of Pearls 93Todd Astonishes Mrs. Lovett'S Spy
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The String of Pearls 93
Todd Astonishes Mrs. Lovett'S Spy
PrestEnglish
We return to Todd. After he had put up his own shutters, and properly secured his doors for the night, he lit the lamp in his parlour, and glancing curiously around him, he muttered--
"Yes. This will assuredly be the last night here. How I hate the look of anything, and how eagerly I shall banish from my mind all kind of remembrance of this place when I am in another land, as I shall be shortly. Let me see: I will embrace the catholic religion, and I will be most devout. The regularity of my religious exercises shall do much for me. Indeed, I do not think I could have remained so long in London, if I had not had the prudence to be regular at the church. It is true that of late I have neglected all that, but then I am going soon, and it does not matter."
Todd sat down, and looked over the memoranda of things he had to do that he had made. He felt tolerably satisfied with the condition of affairs. That Colonel Jeffery and that others suspected him, he could not doubt; but he felt quite confident that he should be far off, before those suspicions repaired into anything dangerous to him.
He still clung to the idea that they knew nothing, or else they would arrest him; and while such did not ensue, he considered himself as in a tolerably safe position.
He then set about the preparations for firing his house. We need not follow him through those preparations. We need not state how he soaked clothes in turpentine and oil, and how he placed them in such positions, combined with small packages of gunpowder, and lumps of rosin, that if a torch were to be applied at the lower part of the house, the whole would be in a few moments in a blaze. Suffice it to say, that Todd worked hard for the next two hours, and that by the time they had gone, he had got everything ready for the perpetration of that last crime which he intended to commit, before he crossed the threshold of his house upon the following night, to leave it for ever.
More than once during these two hours he drank brandy. The ardent spirit had become necessary to the existence of Todd now; and when he took a draught at the conclusion of his labours, he smiled grimly as he said--
"Charley Green will have quite a funeral of flame. He shall die, and his body shall be consumed in the blazing fragments of this house, and it will go hard but this side of Fleet Street suffers. Oh, if the flames would only spread to the old church, I should rejoice much at that, and they may do so.--Yes, they may do so. Ha! ha! I shall be remembered in London."
As he spoke, a dull heavy sort of sound at the outer door of his house came upon his ears. It was as though something heavy had been thrown against it. With fear expressed upon every feature of his face, Todd listened for a repetition of the sound.
It did not come again.
Todd began to breathe a little more freely, and yet he kept asking himself--"What was it?"--and the utmost powers of his imagination could return him no feasible answer to the interesting inquiry. But nothing was more easy than to go to the door and see if any one was there, or if anything had happened to it. Should he open it for such a purpose? Should he unbar and unbolt at the risk of he knew not what? No: he would, from the first floor balcony, and there was a frail one, reconnoitre the street. He should then be easily able to see if there were any danger.
He had no sooner made this determination, than he carried it out, by ascending the dark blackened staircase, conducting to the upper part of his house, that staircase which was now so completely covered by combustible materials.
At every few steps he took he listened attentively. He thought there might yet be a repetition of the sound; but no--all was still; and by the time he reached his first floor, he was in some sort recovered from his first fright. That was something. He left his light upon the stair-head, for he had no wish to point himself out to the chance passengers in Fleet Street, or perhaps to some enemy, by going into that room with a light in his hand. No, Todd was much too acute for that; so carefully closing the door, so that no ray of light got in from the staircase, he crept to the window.
The shutters had to be unfastened, for Todd's house was always carefully closed up like the Duke of Wellington's at the present day. He very quickly unclosed one of the long-disused windows, and opening it gently, looked out over the edge of the little crazy balcony into the street.
Something big and black was against his door.
The more Todd bent his gaze upon this object, the more a kind of undefined terror took possession of him, and the more puzzled he was to give a name to the dark mass that had been laid upon his threshold. There was no lamp very near his house, or else, miserable as was the light from those old oil apologies for illuminators, some few rays might have fallen upon the dark mass, and told Todd what it was.
But no--all was dark and dubious, and he strained his eyes in vain to penetrate the mystery.
"I must go down," he said; "I must open the door. Yes, I cannot live and not know what this is. I must open the door, however reluctantly, and ascertain precisely. Ah!"
While Todd was talking, and still keeping his eyes fixed upon the mysterious object at his door, he saw suddenly in the midst of it a bright luminous spark, as if something connected with it was of a red heat, and slowly smouldering on fire.
If he was before puzzled to account for the phenomenon of a dark object, without shape or form, lying propped up against his door, he was now more than ever confounded, and his imagination started some of the most improbable conjectures in the world, to account for the appearance.
He thought that it must be some combustible, which, in the course of a few moments, would go off with a stunning report, and blow his street-door to atoms; but then again, what could be the object of such a thing?
The more he considered the affair from above, the more he was puzzled and terrified; so at last, with a feeling of desperation, he ran down stairs and began to unfasten the street-door. He did not pause in his work until he had flung it open, and then the mystery was explained.
A man, half asleep, with a lighted pipe in his mouth, rolled backwards into the shop; and as he did so, with the dreamy half-consciousness that he was upon some sort of duty, he said--
"I'll watch him, Mrs. Lovett. He shan't get away without your knowing of it, ma'am."
Todd understood the man's errand in a moment. Of course he had been employed to watch him by Mrs. Lovett, who had a slight idea that he might not be forthcoming for the promised morning settlement. Todd seized the man by the collar, and dragging him fairly into the shop, closed the door again.
"Ah!" he said, "a good joke."
"What's a joke, sir?" said the man. "What's a joke? Murder! Where am I?--where am I? Help!"
"Hush!" said Todd. "Hush! It's of no consequence. I know all about it man. Mrs. Lovett employed you to watch me. She was a little jealous, but we have made it all right now, and she asked me, if I saw you, to pay you and give you a glass of something, beside."
"Did she, sir?"
"To be sure she did; so come in, and you can tell her when you see her in the morning, that you had of me a glass of as good liquor as could be found in London. By-the-bye, what am I to pay you?"
"A guinea, sir."
"Exactly. It was a guinea, of course. This way, my friend, this way. Don't fall over the shaving-chair, I beg of you. You can't hurt it, for it is a fixture; but you might hurt yourself, and that is of more importance to you, you know. While we do live in this world, if it be for ever so short a time, we may as well live comfortably."
Talking away thus all suspicion from the man who was not one of the brightest of geniuses in the world, Todd led the way to the parlour--that fatal parlour which had been the last scene of more than one mortal life.
He closed the door, and then in quite a good-humoured way, he pointed to the seat, saying--
"Rest yourself, my friend--rest yourself, while I get out the bottle. And so it is one guinea that I am to give you, eh?"
"Yes, sir; and all I can say is that I am very glad to hear that you and Mrs. Lovett have made matters all right again. Very glad, indeed, sir, I may say. In course, I shouldn't have took the liberty of sitting down by your door, sir, if she had not told me to watch the house and let her know, if so, be as you come out of it, or if I saw any packages moving. She didn't say anything to me what it was for; but a guinea is just as well earned easy as not, you see, sir!"
"Certainly, my friend, certainly. Drink that."
The man tossed off the glass of something that Todd gave him, and then he licked his lips, as he said--
"What is it, sir? It's strong, but I can't say, for my part, that I like the flavour of it much."
"Not like it?"
"Not much, sir."
"Why it's a most expensive foreign liquor that is, and by all the best judges in the kingdom is never found fault with. Very few persons, indeed, have tasted it; but of those few, not one has come to me to say, Mr. Todd--"
"Good God!" said the man, as he clasped his head with both of his hands. "Good God, how strange I feel. I must be going mad!"
"Mad!" cried Todd, as he leant far over the table so as to bring his face quite close to the man's. "Mad! not at all. What you feel now is part of your death-pang. You are dying--I have poisoned you. Do you hear that? You have watched me, and I have in return poisoned you. Do you understand that?"
The dying man made an ineffectual effort to rise from the chair, but he could not. With a gasping sob he let his head sink upon his breast--he was dead!
"They perish," said Todd, "one by one; they who oppose me, perish, and so shall they all. Ha! so shall they all; and she who set this fool on to his destruction shall feel, yet, the pang of death, and know that she owes it to me! Yes, Mrs. Lovett, yes."
He closed his arms over his breast, and looked at the body for some moments in silence; and then, with a sneer upon his lips, he added--
"No, Mrs. Lovett, you did not show your judgment in this matter. Had you wished to watch me, you should have done it yourself, and not employed this poor weak wretch who has paid the price of his folly. Go--go!"
He struck the chair from under the dead man with his foot, and the corpse that had partially been supported by it and the table, fell to the floor. Another kick sent it under the large table, and then, as another of Todd's victims had once done, it disappeared.
"To-morrow night, by this time," said Todd, musingly, "where shall I be!"
