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HOME > Short Stories > The String of Pearls > CHAPTER CXXXIV. THE ESCAPE, AND THE RETREAT IN CAEN WOOD, HAMPSTEAD.
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CHAPTER CXXXIV. THE ESCAPE, AND THE RETREAT IN CAEN WOOD, HAMPSTEAD.
 While Mr. Lupin talked, he did not lose time, but he was working away at the lock of the door at the end of the passage. After a few moments there was a crackling sound, and then the lock yielded to the exertion of Mr. Lupin, and went back into its home. The door, with a wheezing sound, slowly opened. "All's right," whispered Lupin. "The less we say now, Todd, the better, for our voices will go farther now that we shall be clear of this passage. Come on. Follow me!"
They both emerged into the night air; and crouching down, Lupin ran along the little yard in which they were, and which was not above half-a-dozen yards across. He paused at a door, and then suddenly starting away from it, he muttered—
"It is not this one. Ah! this is it! Stand quite close up against the wall, and then there will be the less chance of any one seeing you. I must work away at this door."
"Where does it lead to?" whispered Todd.
"To the chapel."
Todd screwed himself up into the smallest space that he possibly could against the wall, close to the door, while Lupin tried to open it. That door for more than ten minutes baffled him. Probably that fact was owing in some degree to the circumstance of his being in the dark, for of course, before emerging from the vaulted passage, he had thought it prudent to extinguish the little light he had.
"It baffles you," said Todd, in a voice of great anxiety.
"As yet, yes. No. It is open."
Todd breathed more freely.
"Come in," said Lupin. "Come in. We have done wonders as yet, my friend, and we will do wonders yet, I think, if Providence only looks with a gracious—There I go again. When shall I forget that chapel, I wonder?"
"It don't matter," said Todd. "I used to find a little religion answer very well myself."
"Not a doubt of it. Now, then, that the door is fast, we may muster up a light again."
With the aid of one of his matches, Lupin again illuminated the little wax end of the candle, and then Todd found that he was in a small kind of vestibule from which a green baize door led directly into the chapel. In fact, that was the entrance by which the lower class of offenders confined in Newgate were brought to the chapel on Sundays. The little building looked much larger by the faint light of that one candle than it really was, and Todd glared around him with a feeling of terror, as he had not felt since he had left his cell. Perhaps, after all, a good deal of that was owing to the low temperature of the chapel, that lent a chill to his system.
"Look at that seat," said Lupin, pointing to one. "Do you know what it is?"
"Only a seat," said Todd. "Is there anything particular in it?"
"Nothing, except the kind of interest it might have for you, as being the one upon which the condemned prisoners sit, on the Sunday previous to their execution, that is all."
Todd turned aside with a shudder.
"Enough," he said. "Enough. That is enough. Let us get on, and not waste time in idle talking about such idle matters as these. I do not feel very well."
"And I," said Lupin, "would give a few bright pieces out of those hundreds that you have hidden, for a glass of brandy. But that's not to be thought of now. This is a door that leads from the chapel to the Governor's house, through which the parson, and the Governor and Sheriffs come on the occasion of Sunday service here. It is by that we must attempt an escape in this place."
Sweeney Todd, and Mr. Lupin looked like two spectres, as they crept noiselessly through the chapel of Newgate; but Lupin appeared to know perfectly well the route which it was necessary for him to take, and he soon went up three small steps, and applied his ear to the panel of a door to listen, as he said—
"Through here lies our route."
"Is all still?" said Todd.
"Quite. I don't believe, except ourselves, there is any one up and about in Newgate except a couple of lazy fellows in the vestibule; but we are too far off them to be in any danger of their overhearing us. This door will not give any trouble. Ah!"
"What is the matter?"
"It is bolted on the other side."
"Then we are foiled?"
"Not at all. It will take us a little time to unbolt it, that's all. Hand me the chisel."
Todd handed it to him; and then holding the light for Lupin, the latter set to work upon the panelling of the door, to cut away sufficient of it to enable him to get his head through, to draw back the bolts, one of which was at the top of the door and another at the bottom of it.
The door, though, was not built for strength, for it was scarcely imagined that it would ever be attacked, so that the panelling was only of an ordinary character; and as the chisel was a good one, and Mr. Lupin was tolerably expert in its use, the chips from the wood soon began noiselessly to fall about him. He worked in a circle, so that when he should get fairly through the panel, there would be quite space enough for him to get his arm through, and unfasten both the bolts; and this he completed in about ten minutes.
"I should never have got on without you," said Todd. "The only notion I had of the affair, was to try and fight my way out of the prison, and if I fell in doing so, I was no worse off than I should be on Monday morning—or, indeed, rather better, for I could not endure the agony of waiting for death."
"They would not have killed you."
"They must."
"Nay, they will go through fire and water here, and suffer anything, rather than that a man should escape the gallows. They would have flung themselves upon you, and overpowered you by numbers, and on Monday morning, if you had a breath of life left in you, you would have been dragged out to death."
Todd shuddered.
"And you so innocent, too," added Lupin. "But it is the innocent that in this world, verily, are chastened alway."
"You are getting into your old habit of preaching again," said Todd, roughly.
"So I am. I am much obliged to you, my friend, to put me in mind of it. Very much obliged. I was for a moment preaching; but here is the door open, and now I beg that you will tread as though you trod upon a mine, for we do not know what persons in this p............
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