"Idiot!" said Todd, as he spurned the insensible form of Mrs. Stag with his foot. "Idiot! I would kill you, but that it would not do me any good. The narcotic you have taken in the gin may or may not carry you off for all I care. It don't matter to me one straw." He glared around him for a few moments with the fierceness of an ogre, and then walking to the shop-door, he deliberately locked and bolted it, so that no one could get in, even if they were expiring for a pie.
"Humph," he said. "This is a time of day when it is not likely the shop will be troubled with many customers. It is between the batches, I know, so I am safe for an hour; and during that time if I do not make some discoveries here, it will surely be my own fault."
Again he glared around him with the ogre-like aspect, and he ran his eyes carefully over the whole shop, from corner to corner—from floor to roof, and from roof to floor. At length he said—
"Where now, if I were hiding anything, would I select a place in this shop?"
After putting this question to himself Todd again ran his eyes over the shop, and at length he came to the conclusion that it was not there he should seek for any hiding place at all, and he certainly paid the sagacity of Mrs. Lovett one of the highest compliments he possibly could by concluding that she would do as he would under like circumstances.
"No," he said. "The shop is no hiding place for the secret store of my late friend Mrs. Lovett. No—no. I must seek in the very centre of her home, for that which I would find. Let me think—let me think."
Todd felt himself quite at home in Bell Yard. He was in truth the landlord of the house. It had not been safe to make the extensive under-ground alterations in the place if Mrs. Lovett had been the tenant of a stranger merely; so Todd had purchased the freehold, and such being the case, and his tenant, the charming Mrs. Lovett, being as he firmly believed, at the bottom of the Thames, who should feel at home in the place if he, Sweeney Todd, did not?
He felt that he had time, too. There was no hurry in life, and he quite smiled to himself, as he said—
"How often I have longed for a rummage among my dear departed friend Mrs. Lovett's goods and chattels, and now how many happily and singly circumstances have changed about to enable me to gratify my inclination. Ha!"
Todd, in the security of his bad heart, uttered one of his old laughs—but then for the whole of that day he had been unusually happy. His good terms with himself shone out even of his eyes, horrible eyes.
"Yes," he said, "yes, she is dead—dead—dead. Ha! ha! Mrs. Lovett—clever, fascinating creature—how muddy you lie to-night. Ha!"
It was not prudent, however, to waste time, although he had plenty of it—it never is; so up rose Todd, and proceeded to the parlour. How fast-locked the door was!
"Now really," he said, "it is a thousand pities that poor dear Mrs. L. has gone down to the bottom of the Thames with her keys in her pocket. It would have made no manner of difference in the world to her to have let me have them. It would have saved me some little trouble, and the doors some little damage."
With a malicious grin, as though he delighted in the mischief he had made, he dashed himself bodily against the parlour door, and burst it open with a crash.
"That will do," he said. "To be sure, the party who, when my absence gets noised about, comes to take possession of this house, would rather that the doors were whole; but what of that? Ha! I have mortgaged it twice over for its full value, and they may fight about it if they like. Ha! ha! How they will litigate, and I shall read the pleasant account of it in the papers."
By this time Todd was in Mrs. Lovett's parlour, and folding his arms across his breast, he gazed about him with a feeling of marked satisfaction, as he said—
"For five years she has been making, of course, a private purse for herself, the dear creature, as well as looking to the share of the money in the bank; and for the last few weeks, since our agreement together has not been quite so perfect, she has kept all her takings herself; so reasoning upon that, she must, bless her provident spirit, have a tolerable sum laid by somewhere, which I, as her executor, will most assuredly pounce upon."
At this moment some one clamoured for admission at the shop-door, rapping at it with a penny-piece in a manner that sounded very persevering.
"Curses on you," muttered Todd, "who are you?"
"A twopenny—a twopenny—a twopenny!" cried a boy, who was at the door, in a sing-song sort of voice—"I want a twopenny—a twopenny."
Rap, rap, rap! went one of the penny-pieces against the upper half of the shop-door, which was of glass. Rap, rap, rap! Todd felt quite convinced that that boy would not go without some sort of answer being given to his demand, so he slunk round the shop, crouching down, until he came close to the door, and then assuming one of his most hideous faces, he suddenly rose up, and from within half an inch of the boy's face upon the other side of the glass, he confronted him.
So horrible and so completely unexpected was this face to the boy, that for a moment or two he seemed to be absolutely paralysed by it, and then, with a cry of terror, he dropped the penny-piece with which he had been rapping the window, and fled up Bell Yard as though the evil one himself were at his heels.
"That will do," said Todd.
He went back to the parlour and glared round him again in the hope of finding something there, but the only cupboard which he observed was fast locked. One blow with the poker, using it javelin-like, forced it open, and Todd began flinging out upon the floor the glass and china, with which it was well enough filled, without any mercy. What cared he for such matters? Would he not before twelve hours now be miles and miles away? What, then, was glass and china to him? Nothing—absolutely nothing.
He was disappointed, though, for he did not find the supposed concealed hoard of Mrs. Lovett behind the other things in this cupboard.
"Be it so," he said. "No doubt she fancies her bed-room is the safest place, after all, for her money—that is easily sought. Bless you, Mrs. Lovett, I will find your gold yet!"
With this view, Todd, by the aid of the poker, broke open another door, namely, the one which led from the parlour to the staircase, that would enable him to ascend to the upper part of the house. Truly, Mrs. Lovett was great in the locking-up way—very great indeed.
Todd was now getting out of patience just a little, but only a little, that was all. He naturally enough in his own house wanted to make discoveries a little quicker than he was making them, that was all; and so he felt put out of his way a litt............