"Shall I lay hold of her," thought Todd, "and choke her the moment she comes into the room, or shall I answer her, and let her go again? Which will be the safest course? I suppose I must let her go, for she might possibly make a noise. Ah! how I should like to have my hand upon all their throats!" Mrs. Hardman came into the room on tip-toe, leaving the folding-door just a little ajar.
"My dear sir," she said, "are you awake?"
"Oh, go to the deuce," said Todd.
"What did you remark, my dear sir?"
"Go along—go along—Eugh!—eugh! Oh, dear, how bad my cough is. I dreamt that no end of people were talking and talking away in the next room; but that can't be, as I have paid for it. Oh, dear!—oh!"
Mrs. Hardman took her cue from this; and she was at once resolved to pass off the disturbance in the next room as merely a dream of her new lodger.
"Dear me, sir," she said in the blandest possible accents; "have you indeed had a dream? What a singular thing!"
"Eugh! Is it? I don't think so."
"Well, sir, when I say singular, of course I mean that it's very natural. I always dream when I sleep in a strange bed, do you know, sir, and sometimes the most horrid dreams."
"Oh, go along."
"Yes, sir, directly. Would you like anything got for you, sir? A nice mutton chop for instance, or—or—"
"No—no! Good God, why don't you go?"
"I am going, sir. Thank you. There will be a very quiet house here, I assure you, sir."
With these words, Mrs. Hardman was about to leave the room, flattering herself that it was all passing off quite comfortably as a mere dream, when Ben, thinking it incumbent upon him to do something civil, suddenly popped his head into the room, and in a voice that sounded like the growl of some bear for his food, he said—
"Take it easy, old gentleman. You'll find that easy does it all the world over; and if so be as you ever comes near the Tower, just you ask for Ben, and I'll show you the beasteses, all gratis, and for nothing. Feeding time at four o'clock."
"Oh, you great ugly wretch!" cried Mrs. Hardman, dealing Ben a sound box on the ear. "How dared you interfere, I should like to know, you monster in inhuman shape?"
"Oh, lor!" said Ben, "I only hope another of the family ain't so handy with her front paws."
"Oh—oh!" said Todd. "No peace!—no peace!"
Mrs. Hardman at once closed the door of communication between the two rooms; for she quite despaired now of being able to make any apology to her lodger, and she seemed much inclined to execute further vengeance upon Ben, but Sir Richard Blunt interfered, saying—
"Come—come, Mrs. Hardman, you should recollect that what Ben said was with the very best of motives, and any one, you know, may go wrong a little in trying to do good. Let us all adjourn down stairs, and be no further disturbance to this old gentleman, who, taking everything into consideration, has, I think, shown quite an exemplary amount of patience."
Todd heard those words. They seemed to him quite like a reprieve from death.
"I will come down stairs, of course," said Mrs. Hardman, in an under tone; "but for all that, this great monster of a Ben ought to be put in one of his own cages, at the Tower, and there kept as a warning to all people."
"A warning o' what, mum?" said Ben.
Mrs. Hardman was not very clear about what he would be a warning of, so she got out of the difficulty by saying—"What's that to you, stupid?"—and as Ben was rather slow in explaining that it did rather concern him, she walked down stairs with a look of triumph that was highly amusing to Sir Richard Blunt, as well as to Mr. Hardman, the officer.
How Todd listened to the footsteps as they went down the stairs! How his heart beat responsive to every one of them! and when he felt for certain that that immediate and awful danger had passed away, he peeped out from amid the mass of bed-clothes, with his eyes almost starting from his head.
"Gone! gone!" he gasped. "He has really gone. My mortal enemy—the only man who can make me tremble, that terrible Sir Richard Blunt! That he should be within half-a-dozen paces of me; that he should hear me speak; that he should only have to stretch out his hand to lay it upon my shoulder, and yet that I should escape him! Oh, it cannot be real!"
Todd heard some accidental noise in the house, and he immediately dived his head under the bed-clothes again.
"They are coming again!—they are coming again!" he gasped.
The noise led to nothing, and after a few moments, Todd became convinced that it had nothing to do with him, so he ventured, half-suffocated, to look up again.
"I must listen—I must listen," he said, in a low anxious tone. "I must listen until he has gone. When I hear the street-door of the house shut, I shall think that they have let him go and then I shall be able to breathe again; but not before. Oh, no—no, not before—hush—hush! What is that?"
Every little accidental sound in the house now set the heart of Todd wildly beating. If one had come into the room, and said—"You are my prisoner,"—the probability was, that he would have fainted; but if he did not, it is quite certain that he could not have offered any resistance. A child might have captured him then, during the accession of terror that had come over him in that house, whither he had slunk purposely for safety and for secrecy.
At length he heard a noise of voices in the passage, and then the street-door was opened. As he lay, he could feel a rush of cold air in consequence. Then it was closed again, and the house was very still.
"He has gone! He has gone!" said Todd.
The manner in which Todd pronounced these few words it would be impossible to describe. No shivering wretch reprieved upon the scaffold, with the rope round his neck, could feel a greater relief than did Todd, when he found that the door of that house was really closed upon Sir Richard Blunt.
And then he began to felicitate himself upon the fact that, after all, he had come to that place; "for now," he thought, "I know that, although I have been in great danger, it has passed away; and as Sir Richard Blunt has transacted all his business in this house, he is not likely to come to it again."
That was a pleasant thought, and as Todd dashed from his brow the heavy drops that intense fear had caused to assemble there, he almost smiled.
A............