Perhaps, if he had courage sufficient to have made the attempt, he might have escaped at several junctures, but the dread of the consequences of capture was so strong in his heart and brain, that while he felt that he was undiscovered in the pulpit, he preferred remaining there to making any precipitate means of escape.
It will be remembered how the beadle had taken up several gentlemen to the roof of the church, in order that they might get a good view of the fire; and it was during that time that Todd thought of escaping, but the rapid approach of daylight daunted him.
"Oh, that I had remained in the wood at Hampstead, or anywhere but here in London, where the hands of all men are raised against me! Oh, I was mad—mad to come here. But I am not quite lost. If I thought that, my senses would go from me this moment. Oh, no—no, I will be calm now again; I will not believe that I am quite lost yet."
Of a truth, Todd felt that if he really gave up in despair, that he might commit some extravagance which would at once draw down upon him his enemies; and there he lay in the pulpit, his gaunt form huddled up so as completely to hide himself in it, and dreading to stay as much almost as he dreaded to leave.
He heard still the loud shouts of people at the fire, and at times he thought he heard even the flames that were rapidly consuming the old den of iniquity in which he had committed so many crimes. The regular clank, clank, too, of the engine pumps came upon his ears, and he muttered—
"No, no, you may try your hardest, but you will not subdue that fire. It will blaze on in spite of you. You will not—you cannot, I say, subdue it. The house is too well prepared. I had a care for that before I left home. It will burn to the very ground—ay, and below the ground, too; and the spot of earth only will remain that held the foundation of my old house. Would that all whom I hate were at this moment writhing in the flames! Then I might feel some sort of satisfaction with myself, and even this place of peril would be for the time quite tolerable to me."
No doubt it would have been a vast satisfaction to Todd to have all that he hated in the flames of his burning house; but as yet he could only tell himself that the puny vengeance he had achieved had been upon the most inferior tools of those who had wreaked his ruin, while the principals remained untouched and most completely unscathed.
What had he yet done to Sir Richard Blunt? What to Tobias? What to Johanna? What even to the dog that had played no inconsiderable a part in his final conviction of the murder of its master? Little, indeed; and the thought that his revenges were all to do, scared his imagination, and filled him full of rage as well as terror.
He heard the sound of the footsteps of the people who had gone to the roof of the church with the beadle to see the fire, coming down again, and he shrunk still closer into the bottom of the pulpit.
"Oh," he said, "if they could but for one moment guess that I was here, what joy it would give them to drag me forth to the light of day! To once again cast me into the condemned one's cell, and then to hoot me to the gallows! But, no—no; I will not die a felon's death. Rather by my own hands will I fall, if my fortune should reach such a wretched extremity. Hush!—oh, hush! Why do I speak? They come—they come."
"Well, gentlemen, as you say, the old house is gone at last," said the beadle, "and I must say, though fires always gives me a turn, and, as a parish authority perhaps I ought not to say it, I think it is a very good job."
"A good job, Mr. Beadle?" said one. "How do you make that out?"
"Why, sir, who would have lived in it? Who would have paid rent, and rates, and taxes, and given his Christmas-box to the beadle like a Christian, in Todd's old house, I should like to know?"
"Well, you are right there."
"I know I is, sir. The fact is, that house would have been like a great blot, sirs, in the middle of Fleet Street; no one would have taken it for love or money; and it a very good thing as it's gone at last."
"You reason the matter very well, Mr. Beadle," said another, "and I for a certainty subscribe to your opinion, that it is a good thing it is gone at last, and I only hope that its late owner will soon be in the hands of justice. Somebody is trying the door of the church."
The beadle went to it, and upon opening it two persons entered the church. One of them spoke at once, saying—
"Is the beadle of St. Dunstan's in the church?"
Todd knew the voice. It was Sir Richard Blunt, and he shook so that the pulpit creaked again most ominously, so that if the attention of any one had chanced to be directed towards it, they might have felt a kind of suspicion that it was occupied. Luckily for Todd, no one looked up, nor in any way noticed the pulpit.
"Lor, sir, yes," said the beadle. "Here I is, and if I don't make a great mistake, sir, you is Sir Richard Blunt."
"I am."
"Lor bless you, sir, that's the way with me. If I sees a indiwidal once, and knows 'em, I knows 'em again."
"It's a capital faculty, Mr. Beadle. But my friend, Mr. Crotchet, here, will just go down with you through the vaults to make sure that the fire in Todd's house has in no way connected with this. We don't want to burn down the church."
"Burn down the church, sir? Oh, conwulsions! Me go down into the vaults with this gentleman? Bless you, sir, I should only obstructify him in the discharge of his duty. I couldn't think of doing it, I assure you, sir. He can go by himself, you see, and then he will have the advantage of nobody to contradict him."
"I'd rather go without him, Sir Richard," said Crotchet, who was the gentleman. "He's only a idiot!"
The beadle marched up to Crotchet, until he got within about two inches of that gentleman's nose, and then slowly shaking his head to and fro, he said—
"Did you call me a hidiot?"
"Yes, I did."
"You did? Now, young man, mind what you say, because if you call me a hidiot, I shall be bound to do—"
"What?"
"Nothing at all. I see you are rather a low fellow, so I shall treat you with the same contempt as I did the very common person that pulled my nose last week—Silent contempt! That's how I serve people. I despise you, accordingly."
"Werry good," said Crotchet. "That's by far the safestest way, old feller. So now I'll go down into the vaults."
"No news of Todd yet, Sir Richard?" said one of the gentlemen, walking up to the magistrate.
"Oh, Sir Christopher Wren, I beg your pardon," said the magistrate. "I did not see you at the moment. I am sorry to say that although we have some news of Todd, we have not yet been able to catch him. But we must have him, England is not so very large a place after all, and I don't think he has any means of getting away from it."
"The sooner the rascal expiates his crimes upon the scaffold the better. I never before heard of a criminal in whose whole career there was nothing found that could excite the faintest feeling of compassion."
"He is a desperate bad fellow, indeed," said Sir Richard Blunt, "but I hope that he will not long trouble society. I have determined to give up all other pursuits until I take him, and I have a carte blanche from the Secretary of State to go to any expense, and to do what I please, in the way of capturing him."
Todd's heart sunk within him at these words. Had they come from any one else, he would not have heeded them much but from him they were of fearful import.
"Oh, that I could kill that man," he muttered, "then I should know some peace; but while he lives and while I live, we are like two planets in one orbit, and cannot long exist together."
"I wish you every success," said Sir Christopher Wren.
"I am obliged to you, Sir Christopher. The fact is, that Todd left his house pretty full of combustibles, and my men were unwise enough, contrary to my positive orders, to let them be there; and I am afraid that he may have contrived some mode of blowing up the church by a train or some other equally diabolical means, as he had such free and unrestrained access to it for so long."
"What!" cried the beadle. "What did you say, Sir Richard?"
"I merely said that I was apprehensive Todd might have concocted some means of blowing up the church, that is all."
"And me in it! And me in it! Conwulsions!"
The beadle did not pause for another moment, but rushing to the door, he flew out of the church as if a barrel of gunpowder had been rolling after him, nor did he stop until he got right through Temple-bar and some distance down the Strand.
"I am afraid I have frightened away our friend, the beadle," said Sir Richard Blunt.
"And I don't wonder at it," replied Sir Christopher Wren. "I should not like exactly to be blown up along with the fragments of old St. Dunstan's Church myself, so I will go."
"Ah, I am sorry I mentioned it."
"Are you though? I am very much obliged to you for so doing. Excuse me, Sir Richard, for bidding you good-morning rather abruptly, if you please."
Sir Richard Blunt laughed as he bade Sir Christopher and his friend good-morning—by-the-by, the friend had already made his way outside the church-door, and was waiting for Sir Christopher in no small degree of trepidation.
"For God's sake," he said, "come along at once, or we may all be blown up together."
"Well," said Sir Richard Blunt, as he paced up the aisle of the old church, "I would risk a little scorching, if at the end of it I could only lay my hand upon the shoulder of Sweeney Todd. What on earth can have become of the rascal? But I must be patient—yes, patience will do it, for that we shall come face to face again, I feel to be as established a fact for the future, as that of my own existence now."
"Oh," thought Todd, "if I now only dared to shoot him! If I only dared do it! And I would if it were not for the other one in the vaults—that wretch they call Crotchet. And yet I have a pistol here. If I thought that after shooting him through the head or through the heart, I could by one bold rush get out of this church, what a glorious piece of work it would be! This Sir Richard Blunt is the only man that I dread. Were he no more, I should feel completely at peace. I could shoot him now."
Todd took a pistol from his pocket and presented it through the little crevice of the very slightly open door of the pulpit. The door would open a little in spite of him.
"Yes, oh, yes, I could shoot him now; but the report of the pistol would perhaps bring that other villain they call Crotchet from the vaults, and then who shall say what would happen? And yet I have another pistol, and could shoot him too. Oh, how glorious, if I could take the lives of both these men! It would indeed be a good work."
The magistrate paced to and fro waiting for Crotchet, and little suspecting that Todd was so near to him, and with a pistol aimed at him! If he had only guessed as much, he would have freely risked the shot, and would soon have been in the pulpit along with Todd. But it was not to be. Sir Richard Blunt had not any supernatural power by which he could tell of the proximity of Todd from no evidence of that fact at all.
"Yes," said Todd suddenly, "I will shoot him. I will risk all and shoot him now. If I die for it, I shall have, at least, had a great and glorious revenge! I will shoot him now, when he turns and walks up the aisle again."
Todd felt calm and pleased now that he had actually made up his mind to shoot Sir Richard. He projected the barrel of the pistol about an inch or so through the crevice caused by the spring of the door, and he calmly waited for the opportunity of sending its deadly contents into the heart of the magistrate.
The aisle down which Sir Richard had slowly paced was rather a long one, and he had walked down it some half-dozen times, in deep thought, and waiting for Crotchet. There was no reason on earth why he should not come up it again, and so expose himself to the deadly aim of Todd.
He did commence the walk up it. If he had taken twenty steps he would have been a dead man; but chance, or providence—it is not for us to say which—had it otherwise. After going about ten paces, he turned abruptly to the left, and made his way down a long narrow passage between the pews to the opening that led down to the vaults, where Crotchet was pursuing his inquiries.
Todd was foiled.
He drew back with a deep sigh.
"He is saved!" he said. "He is saved! It is not to be!"
Quite unconscious of the serious danger he had so narrowly escaped, Sir Richard went to the mouth of the opening to the vaults, and called out—
"Crotchet! Crotchet!"
"Here you is, sir," replied Crotchet; "I was just coming. It's all right. The old wagabone hasn't done nothing, sir, to spread the fire out of his own blessed premises, as I can see. The church isn't in danger, sir, I take it."
"Very good, Crotchet; then we need not remain here any longer. I cannot, for the life of me, think what has become of our man that we left in Todd's house. In all the riot and racket of the fire, no one seems to be at all aware of what has become of him. Is he a steady sort of a man, Crotchet?"
"Why yes, Sir Richard, he is. But if the truth must be told, he has got the fault of many. He is fond of the—"
Here Crotchet went through expressively the pantomime of placing a glass to his lips and draining it off, after which he rubbed his stomach, as much as to say—"Isn't it nice!"
"I understand, Crotchet: he drinks."
"Rather, Sir Richard."
"Ah, that is the case of all—or of nearly all—men in his class of life. I should not wonder now, at all, if he has not been taking a glass of something, in consequence of feeling lonely, and so set fire to the old house."