and then if he said 'yes,' I'd say, 'well, old fellow, it's
of no use to you now, you know; will you give it to me?'" "Ha!--ha! Capital! Why you have quite got over all your fears." "Fears? Rubbish! I was only amusing myself to hear what you would say." "Was you, though? Only acting, after all?" "Precisely." "Well, then, I must say you did it remarkably well, and if you take to
the stage you will make your fortune. Oh, here's a nice brown suit now,
that would be just my size. I should feel inclined to say to the ghosts
what you would say about the cloak." "Well, let's say it, and if nobody says anything to the contrary, we
will take it for granted. I will take the cloak, and you the brown suit;
Sir Richard will be none the wiser, and we shall be a little the richer,
you know. 'Mr. Ghost, may I have this cloak, if you please, as you can't
possibly want it?'" "Upon my life you are a funny fellow," said the other; and then holding
up the brown suit, he said, "Mr. Ghost who once owned this, may I have
this brown suit, as it is of no use to you now?" It was at this moment that Todd dashed open the two folding doors, and
with one of the most frightful, fiendish yells that ever came from the
throat of man, he made one bound into the front room. The effect of this appearance, and the sound that accompanied it, was
all that Todd could possibly wish or expect. The two men were almost
driven to madness. They dropped the light, and with shrieks of dismay
they rushed to the door--they tore it open, and then they both fell
headlong down the staircase to the passage below, where they lay in a
state of insensibility that was highly amusing to Todd. [Illustration: Todd Alarms The Two Bow Street Officers.] "Ha! ha!" he laughed, as he stood at the head of the stairs; "Ha! ha!" He listened, but not so much as a groan came from either of the men, and
then he clapped his huge hands together with a report like the discharge
of a pistol, and laughed again. Todd had not been so well pleased since
his escape from Newgate. He slowly descended the stairs, and more than once he stopped to laugh
again. The passage was intensely dark, so that when he reached it he
trod upon one of the men, but that rather amused him, and he jumped
violently upon the body. "Good," he said. "Perhaps they are both dead. Well, let them both die. It will be a lesson to others how far they interfere with me. Society
and I are now fairly at war, and I will win as many battles as I can. They can't say but this is a well-fought one, two to one. Ha! They ought
to make me a Field-Marshal. Ha!" Making the most hideous faces, just for the fun of the thing, Todd made
his way to the parlour, and taking from a corner, where he knew to lay
his hands upon them in a moment, a couple of old newspapers, he twisted
them up into a kind of torch, and lighting it then at the fire, he went
with it flaming in his hand to the passage. The two men lay profoundly still. Terror and the fall they had had,
combined to throw them quite into a swooning state, from which probably
it would be hours before they would recover. "This is capital," said Todd. "Lie there, both of you, until I have
transacted the business in this house that brought me here. Then I will,
perhaps, think of some amusing way of finishing you both off--ha!" Still carrying the flaming papers in his hand, Todd now made his way to
the first-floor, and found the candle that the men had dropped. That he
lighted, as it would be much more convenient to him than the papers; and
then he trod them out, for he did not wish any great light as yet to
appear from the windows of that house, and perchance awaken the
attention of some passing traveller or curious neighbour. Shading the light with his hand, and looking like some grim ogre, Todd
took his way to the second-floor. As he went, he every now and then
muttered his satisfaction to himself, or gave utterance to one of his
unearthly laughs; for in the whole of that night's adventure there was
much to please him. In the first place, he hoped, and fully expected, to get enough booty
from the house to place him a little at his ease as regarded money
matters, provided that with it he should be fortunate enough to get away
from England. Then, again, it was no small satisfaction to Todd to do
anything which looked like a triumph over Sir Richard Blunt, and this
not only looked like it, but really was. "A good step," he muttered, "a capital step, and a bold one, too; but
bold steps are always good ones. Who knows but that from some place of
security I may laugh at them all yet; and then, if I do not succeed in
killing any of them before I go, I can at my leisure think of and mature
some scheme of revenge against them; and there is much to be done with
ingenuity, if you are quite unscrupulous. Ha! ha! I have some dainty
schemes, if I can but carry them out in the time to come--ha!" When Todd reached the second-floor, he at once went into the front-room,
in one corner of which was a large old fashioned bureau. Now it was not
to be supposed that this bureau had escaped the scrutiny of Sir Richard
Blunt; but then it had so happened that before he came to search it he
had all the evidence he wished against Todd, so that the search was not
so complete or so scrutinising as it might have been. We shall see that it was not. "Ah" said Todd, as he drew out the drawers one after the other, "all the
locks forced! Well, be it so. That was just what I expected. But I do
not think they have moved it from the wall by the look of it." The bureau, it was quite evident, had not been removed from the wall. It
was of immense weight, but Todd managed to move it by short sudden
jerks; and then when he had got it quite away at right angles from the
wall, he said--

"Here was it that I hid, until some favourable opportunity should occur
for the private disposal of them, various articles of value, that I dare
not try to convert into money in my open way, for fear of detection. Here are watches, and rings, and jewels, that were described in
hand-bills, offering rewards for missing persons, and in advertisements
in the papers; so that it became most unsafe for me to show them even to
the not very scrupulous Hebrews, who have from time to time bought goods
of me." As he spoke, he removed a portion of the back of the bureau, which slid
out of its place softly and easily, for it was made with great skill and
care. This sliding piece, when it was fairly removed, disclosed a
receptacle capable of holding a great quantity of small articles, and
filled up with narrow shelves, as if to hold them securely. There were costly watches--wigs with rare jewels set in them; for the
fashion of wearing wigs was so common at the time, that many wealthy
residents of the Temple would pop into Todd's shop for a little
arrangement of their wigs or a puff of fresh powder, if they were going
somewhere in a hurry, and so lost their lives.