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 ............