Todd dragged a bedstead beneath the trap; and then his great
height enabled him to thrust it open, and project his head through it. He found that part of his corporality was in the roof as it were--that
is to say, in the cavity, between the ceiling of the room and the house. A trap-door of somewhat larger size in the actual roof, opened to the
air. Todd dragged himself through, and was fairly upon the top of the
colonel's house. A slippery elevation! But surely that was better than
facing a red-hot poker, and a pair of hair-trigger duelling pistols; and
so, for a time, the desire to escape kept down every other feeling. Even
his revengeful thoughts gave way to the great principle of
self-preservation; and Todd was only intent upon safely getting away. He
glared round him upon the night sky, and a gaudy assemblage of chimney
tops. What was he to do? In a minute he uttered a string of such curses,
as we cannot very well here set down, and he turned preternaturally calm
and still. "Shall I go back," he said, "or escape?" He heard the tramp of horses' feet, and peeping carefully over the front
parapet of the house, he saw Colonel Jeffery arrive on horseback, and
dismount. His groom led the horse away, and the colonel ascended the
steps. Then, and not until then, Todd made up his mind. "Escape," he said, "and be off." There was a long sloping part of the roof close to where he was, and he
thought that if he slid down that very carefully he should be able to
get on to the roof of the next house, and so perchance through their
trap door, and by dint of violence or cunning, or both united, reach the
street. It was a desperate resource, but his only one. The top part of the long sloping roof was easily gained, and then Todd
began to let himself down very carefully, but the angle of the roof was
greater than he had imagined, and by the time he got about half way down
he found a dangerous and most uncomfortable acceleration of motion
ensuing. It was in vain he tried to stop himself: down he went with a speed into
the gutter behind the copping-stone, that left him lying there for a few
moments half stunned, and scarcely conscious if he were safe or not. The colonel's house, however, was stoutly built, and Todd's weight had
not displaced anything; so that there he lay safe enough, wedged into a
narrow rain gutter, from which, when he did recover himself sufficiently
to make the attempt, he found some difficulty in wrenching himself out
of. Sore and shaken, Todd now looked about him. He was close to the roof of
the next-door house. To be sure there was a chasm of sixty feet; but its
width was not as many inches, so Todd ought, with his long legs, to
easily step it. CHAPTER LXXXIV. TODD'S WONDERFUL ESCAPE. The step was but a trifle; and yet, shaken as Todd was by his fall, it
really seemed to him to be one of the most hazardous and nervous things
in the world to take it. He made two feints before he succeeded. At length he stood fairly upon
the roof of the adjoining house. He did not say "Thank God! "; such words
were not exactly in the vocabulary of Sweeney Todd; but he wiped the
perspiration from his brow, and seemed to think that he had effected
something at last. And yet how far was he from safety? It is some satisfaction to have got
such a man as Todd upon the house-tops. Who pities him? Who would be
violently afflicted if he made a false step and broke his neck? No one,
we apprehend; but such men, somehow, do not make false steps; and if
they do, they manage to escape the consequences. Surely it was about as ticklish a thing to crawl up a sloping roof as to
come down one. Todd did not think so, however, and he began to shuffle
up the roof of the house he was now on, looking like some gigantic
tortoise, slowly making its way. Reasoning from his experience of the colonel's house, Todd thought he
should very well be able to pitch upon the trap, in the roof of the
domicile upon which he was, nor was he wrong. He found it in precisely
the same relative position, and then he paused. He drew a long breath. "What a mad adventure this is," he said; "and yet what a satisfaction it
would have been to me, before I left England, to be able to feel that I
had had my revenge upon that brat Tobias. That he had not altogether
failed me after I had paid so much money to be rid of him. But that is
over. I have failed in that attempt; but they shall not say it cost me
my life. They will be bold people who stop me in my passage to the
street in this house." He felt the trap-door. It was fast. "Humph!" he said, "doors are but bonds; and the rains of a few winters
rot them quickly enough. We shall see." The knife, with which he would have been well pleased to give poor
Tobias his quietus, was thick and strong. He slid it under the wooden
trap, and by mere force lifted it up. The nails of the bolt easily
withdrew themselves from the rotten wood. Todd was right. The rains of a few winters had done their work. It was not exactly a time in the evening, when, in such a class of
house, any one might be expected to be found in the attics; so Todd made
no scruple of at once removing the lower trap in the ceiling. He dropped comfortably enough on to the floor. And now, coming suddenly as he did from the light, faint as it was, of
the open air in the room, which he found himself, seemed to be involved
in profound darkness; but that he knew would wear away in a few moments,
and he stood still for his eyes to get accustomed to the semi-obscurity
of the place. Gradually, then, as though out of chaos, there loomed a bedstead and all
the necessary appointments of a bed-room. It was untenanted; and so
Todd, after listening intently, and believing, from the marked stillness
that there prevailed, that the upper part of the house was deserted,
walked to the door, and opening it, stood upon the landing. "If I can now but step down stairs noiselessly, and open the street
door, all will be well. People don't sit upon the staircase, and I may
be fortunate enough to encounter no one." There was no time to lose. Affairs in Fleet-street required his
presence; and, besides, the present moment might be the most propitious,
for all he knew, for the enterprise. Down he went, not clinging to the balustrades--for who should say they
might not wheeze and creak?--not walking upon the middle of the stairs,
for there was no saying what tell-tale sounds they might give vocality
to; but sliding along close to the wall, and stepping so quietly, that
it would have required attentive ears to have detected his silent and
steady march. And so, flight by flight of these stairs Todd descended in safety, until
he reached the passage. Yes, he got to the passage without the shadow of
an interruption. Then he heard voices in one of the parlours. "Confound them!" said Todd, "they will hear me open the street door to a
certainty; but it must be done." He crept up to the door.