but I should
like to protract your death and see you die by inches! Only that my time
is precious, and for my own sake, I will put you quickly beyond the pale
of life." The man tried to cry out; but the compression upon his throat of those
bony fingers prevented him. He had his hand at liberty, and he caught
Todd by the head and face, and began to do him as much mischief as he
could. There was for a few seconds a fierce struggle, and then Todd,
keeping still his right hand clasped about the throat of his victim,
with the left laid hold of as much of his hair on the front of his head
us he could, and raising his head then about six inches from the stone
floor on which it had rested, he dashed it down again with all his
might. The officer's arms fell nerveless to his sides, and he uttered a deep
groan. Again Todd raised the head, and dashed it down, and that time he heard a
crashing sound, and he felt satisfied that he had killed the man. There was now no further use in holding the throat of the dead man, and
Todd let him go. "Ha!--ha!" he said. "That is done. That is done--Ha! Now am I once more
lord and master in my own house--once again I reign here supreme, and
can do what it may please me to do. Ha! this is glorious! Why, it is
like old times coming back to me again. I feel as if I could open my
shop in the morning, and again polish off the neighbourhood. It seems as
if all that had happened since last I stropped a razor above, had been
but a dream. The arrest--the trial--the escape--Newgate--the wood at
Hampstead! All a dream--a dream!" He was silent, and the excitement of the moment of triumph had passed
away. "No--no," he said. "No! It is too real--much too real! Oh, it is real,
indeed. I am the fugitive! The haunted man without a home--without a
friend; and I have this night nor any other night any place in which I
may lay my head in safety. I am as one persecuted by all the world,
without hope--without pity! What will now become of me?" A low groan came upon Todd's ear. He started, and looked around him. He tried hard to pierce with his
half-shut eyes the intense darkness, but he could not; and muttering to
himself--"Not yet dead--not yet dead?" he crept to an obscure corner of
the cellar, and opened a door that led by a ladder to the floor of the
back parlour, where there was a trap door, under which the large table
usually stood, and which he could open from below. In the parlour Todd got a light, and feeling then still disturbed about
the groan that he had heard below, he armed himself with an iron bar
that belonged to the outer door, and with this in his right hand, and
the light in his left, he crept back again to the cellar. A glance at the two men who lay there was sufficient to satisfy him that
they were no more; and after then taking from them a couple of pairs of
pistols, and a small sum of money, he crept back again to the parlour. As he did so, he heard St. Dunstan's clock strike the hour of four. "Four!" he said. "Four. It will not be light for nearly two hours yet,
and I may rest myself awhile and think. Yes, it is necessary now that I
should think; for I have time--a little time--to do so, and much, oh, so
much to think of. There's some of my own brandy, too, in the parlour,
that's a comfort." The fire was still burning in the parlour grate. Todd raked the glowing
embers together with the iron bar, and then he took a good draught at
the brandy. It revived him most wonderfully, and he gave one of his old
chuckles, as he muttered--

"Oh, that I could get a few whom I could name in such a position as I
had yon man in in the cellar a short time since. That would be well,
indeed. Ha! I am, after all, rather lucky, though." A sharp knock come, at this moment, at the outer door of the shop, and
Todd sprang in alarm to his feet. CHAPTER CXLIX. TODD IS IN GREAT PERIL IN THE EARLY MORNING IN LONDON. The silence that ensued after that knock at his door, for he had become
to consider it as his again, was like the silence of the grave. The only
sound that Todd heard then, was the painful beating of his own heart. The guilty man was full of the most awful apprehensions. "What is it?" he said. "Who is it?--who can it be? Surely, no one for
me. There is no one who saw me. No--no! It cannot be. It is some
accidental sound only. I--begin--to doubt if it were a knock at
all.--Oh, no, it was no knock." Bang! came the knock again. Todd actually started and uttered a cry of terror, and then he crouched
down and crept towards the door. He might, to be sure, have made his
escape from the premises, with some little trouble, by the way he had
got into them; but he was most anxious to find out who it was that
demanded admittance to the old shop in Fleet Street, with all its bad
associations and character of terror; so he crept towards the door, and
just as he reached it, the knock came again. If the whole of his future hopes--we allude to the future that might be
for him in this world only, for Todd had no hopes nor thoughts of
another--had depended upon his preserving silence and stillness, he
could not have done so, and he gave another start. "Hush--hush!" he then said. "Hush! I must be very cautious now--very
cautious, indeed. Hush--hush!" He then, in a tone of voice that he strove to make as different as
possible from his ordinary tone, and which he was very successful indeed
in doing, he said--

"Who is there?" "It's me," said a voice, in defiance of all probability or grammar. "It's only me." "Oh! what a mercy," said Todd. "Open the door. Is it you, Joe? Why didn't you come home, eh? You might
have got away easy enough. I have brought you something good to eat, old
fellow, and some news." "Ah, what news, my boy?" "Why, they say that old Todd is in London." Todd fell to the floor in a sitting posture, and uttered a deep groan. It was some few moments before he could summon strength and courage to
speak to the man again. But he began to feel the necessity of doing
something, for the man began to hammer away at the door, and the very
worst thing that could happen to Todd, just then, would have been that
man going away from the door of the shop with an impression that all was
not right within it, and spreading an alarm to that effect. "I will open the door just wide enough," muttered Todd, "and then I will
drag him in and cut his throat, and throw him down into the cellar along
with the two others. That will only make three this morning--yes, this
morning, I may say, for it is morning now." Acting upon this resolve, which certainly was diabolically to the
purpose, Todd spoke to the man again, saying in the same assumed tone in
which he had before addressed him--

"All's right--all's right. I'll open the door." "That's the thing; but you seem to have a bad cold." "So I have--so I have. A very bad cold; and it has affected my voice so
that I can hardly speak at all." "So I hear."