The String of Pearls: a Romance--The Original Sweeney Todd

by Thomas Preskett Prest

  This indeed was a great mystery, for even admitting that Sweeney Todd was a murderer, and it must be allowed that as yet we have only circumstantial evidence of that fact, we can form no conclusion from such evidence as to how he perpetrated the deed, or how afterwards he disposed of the body of his victim.

  This great and principal difficulty in the way of committing murder with impunity – namely, the disposal of a corpse, certainly did not seem at all to have any effect on Sweeney Todd; for if he made corpses, he had some means of getting rid of them with the most wonderful expedition as well as secrecy.

  ‘He is a murderer,’ thought Tobias. ‘I know he is, although I have never seen him do the deed, or seen any appearance in the shop of a deed of blood having been committed. Yet, why is it that occasionally when a better-dressed person than usual comes into the shop he sends me out on some errand to a distant part of the town?’

  Tobias did not forget, too, that on more than one occasion he had come back quicker doubtless than he had been expected, and that he had caught Sweeney Todd in some little confusion, and seen the hat, the stick, or perhaps the umbrella of the last customer quietly waiting there, although the customer had gone; and, even if the glaring improbability of a man leaving his hat behind him in a barber’s shop was got over, why did he not come back for it?

  This was a circumstance which was entitled to all the weight which Tobias during his mental cogitation could give to it, and there could be but one possible explanation of a man not coming back for his hat, and that was that he had not the power to do so.

  ‘His house will be searched,’ thought Tobias, ‘and all those things which must of course have belonged to so many different people will be found, and then they will be identified, and he will be required to say how he came by them, which, I think, will be a difficult task indeed for Sweeney Todd to accomplish. What a relief it will be to me, to be sure, when he is hanged, as I think he is tolerably sure to be!’

  ‘What a relief!’ muttered Sweeney Todd, as he slowly opened the cupboard-door unseen by Tobias – ‘what a relief it will be to me when this boy is in his grave, as he really will be soon, or else I have forgotten all my moral learning, and turned chicken-hearted – neither of them very likely circumstances.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Misadventure of Tobias. The Mad-House.

  Sweeney Todd paused for a moment at the cupboard-door, before he made up his mind as to whether he should pounce on poor Tobias at once, or adopt a more creeping, cautious mode of operation.

  The latter course was by far the more congenial to him, and so he adopted it in another moment or so, and stole quietly from his place of concealment, and with so little noise, that Tobias could not have the least suspicion anyone was in the room but himself.

  Treading as if each step might involve some fearful consequences, he thus at length got completely behind the chair on which Tobias was sitting, and stood with folded arms, and such a hideous smile upon his face, that they together formed no inept representation of the Mephistopheles of the German drama.

  ‘I shall at length,’ murmured Tobias, ‘be free from my present dreadful state of mind by thus accusing Todd. He is a murderer – of that I have no doubt; it is but a duty of mine to stand forward as his accuser.’

  Sweeney Todd stretched out his two brawny hands, and clutched Tobias by the head, which he turned round till the boy could see him, and then he said, –

  ‘Indeed, Tobias, and did it never strike you that Todd was not so easily to be overcome as you would wish him, eh, Tobias?’

  The shock of this astonishing and sudden appearance of Sweeney Todd was so great, that for a few moments Tobias was deprived of all power of speech or action, and with his head so strangely twisted as to seem to threaten the destruction of his neck, he glared in the triumphant and malignant countenance of his persecutor, as he would into that of the arch enemy of all mankind, which probably he now began to think the barber really was.

  If aught more than another was calculated to delight such a man as Todd, it certainly was to perceive what a dreadful effect his presence had upon Tobias, who remained about a minute and a half in this state before he ventured upon uttering a shriek, which, however, when it did come almost frightened Todd himself.

  It was one of those cries which can only come from a heart in its utmost agony – a cry which might have heralded the spirit to another world, and proclaimed as it very nearly did, the destruction of the intellect for ever.

  The barber staggered back a pace or two as he heard it, for it was too terrific even for him, but it was for a very brief period that it had that stunning effect upon him, and then, with a full consciousness of the danger to which it subjected him, he sprang upon poor Tobias as a tiger might be supposed to do upon a lamb, and clutched him by the throat, exclaiming, –

  ‘Such another cry, and it is the last you ever live to utter, although it cover me with difficulties to escape the charge of killing you. Peace! I say peace!’

  This exhortation was quite needless, for Tobias could not have uttered a word, had he been ever so much inclined to do so; the barber held his throat with such an iron clutch, as if it had been in a vice.

  ‘Villain,’ growled Todd, ‘villain, so this is the way in which you have dared to disregard my injunctions. But no matter, no matter! You shall have plenty of leisure to reflect upon what you have done for yourself. Fool to think that you could cope with me, Sweeney Todd. Ha, ha!’

  He burst into a laugh, so much more hideous, more than his ordinary efforts in that way, that, had Tobias heard it – which he did not, for his head had dropped upon his breast, and he had become insensible – it would have terrified him almost as much as Sweeney Todd’s sudden appearance had done.

  ‘So,’ muttered the barber, ‘he has fainted, has he? Dull child, that is all the better – for once in a way, Tobias, I will carry you, not to oblige you, but to oblige myself – by all that’s damnable it was a lively thought that brought me here tonight, or else I might, by the dawn of the morning, have had some very troublesome enquiries made of me.’

  He took Tobias up as easily as if he had been an infant, and strode from the chambers with him, leaving Mrs Ragg to draw whatever inference she chose from his absence, but feeling convinced that she was too much under his control to take any steps of a nature to give him the smallest amount of uneasiness.

  ‘The woman,’ he muttered to himself, ‘is a double distilled ass, and can be made to believe anything, so that I have no fear whatever of her. I dare not kill Tobias, because it is necessary, in case of the matter being at any other period mentioned, that his mother shall be in a position to swear that she saw him after this night alive and well.’

  The barber strode through the Temple, carrying the boy, who seemed not at all in a hurry to recover from the nervous and partial state of suffocation into which he had fallen.

  As they passed through the gate, opening into Fleet Street, the porter, who knew the barber well by sight, said, ‘Hilloa, Mr Todd, is that you? Why, who are you carrying?’

  ‘Yes, it’s I,’ said Todd, ‘and I am carrying my apprentice boy, Tobias Ragg, poor fellow.’

  ‘Poor fellow! why, what’s the matter with him?’

  ‘I can hardly tell you, but he seems to me and to his mother to have gone out of his senses. Good-night to you, good-night. I’m looking for a coach.’

  ‘Good-night, Mr Todd; I don’t think you’ll get one nearer than the market – what a kind thing now of him to carry the boy! It ain’t every master would do that; but we must not judge of people by their looks, and even Sweeney Todd, though he has a face that one would not like to meet in a lonely place on a dark night, may be a kindhearted person.’

  Sweeney Todd walked rapidly down Fleet Street, towards old Fleet Market, which was then in all its glory, if that could be called glory which consisted in all sorts of filth enough to produce a pestilence within the city of London.

  When there he addressed a l
arge bundle of great coats, in the middle of which was supposed to be a hackney coachman of the regular old school, and who was lounging over his vehicle, which was as long and lumbering as a city barge.

  ‘Jarvey,’ he said, ‘what will you take me to Peckham Rye for?’

  ‘Peckham Rye – you and the boy – there ain’t any more of you waiting round the corner are there, ’cos, you know, that won’t be fair.’

  ‘No, no, no.’

  ‘Well, don’t be in a passion, master, I only asked, you know, so you need not be put out about it; I will take you for twelve shillings, and that’s what I call remarkable cheap, all things considered.’

  ‘I’ll give you half the amount,’ said Sweeney Todd, ‘and you may consider yourself well paid.’

  ‘Half, master! that is cutting it low; but howsoever, I suppose I must put up with it, and take you. Get in, I must try and make it up by some better fare out of somebody else.’

  The barber paid no heed to these renewed remonstrances of the coachman, but got into the vehicle, carrying Tobias with him, apparently with great care and consideration; but when the coach door closed, and no one was observing him, he flung him down among the straw that was at the bottom of the vehicle, and resting his immense feet upon him, he gave one of his disagreeable laughs, as he said, –

  ‘Well, I think I have you now, Master Tobias; your troubles will soon be over. I am really very much afraid that you will die suddenly, and then there will be an end of you altogether, which will be a very sad thing, although I don’t think I shall go into mourning, because I have an opinion that that only keeps alive the bitterness of regret, and that it’s a great deal better done without, Master Tobias.’

  The hackney coach swung about from side to side in the proper approved manner of hackney coaches in the olden times, when they used to be called bone shakers, and to be thought wonderful if they made a progress of three miles and a half an hour.

  This was the sort of vehicle then in which poor Tobias, still perfectly insensible, was rumbled over Blackfriars-bridge, and so on towards Peckham Rye; and anyone acquainted with that locality is well aware that there are two roads, the one to the left, and the other to the right, both of which are pleasantly enough studded with villa residences. Sweeney Todd directed the coachman to take the road to the left, which he accordingly did, and they pursued it for a distance of about a mile and a half.

  It must not be supposed that this pleasant district of country was then in the state it is now, as regards inhabitants or cultivation. On the contrary, it was rather a wild spot, on which now and then a serious robbery had been committed; and which had witnessed some of the exploits of those highwaymen, whose adventures, in the present day, if one may judge from the public patronage they may receive, are viewed with a great amount of interest.

  There was a lonely, large, rambling old-looking house by the wayside, on the left. A high wall surrounded it, which only allowed the topmost portion of it to be visible, and that presented great symptoms of decay, in the dilapidated character of the chimney-pots, and the general appearance of discomfort which pervaded it.

  Then Sweeney Todd directed the coachman to stop, and when the vehicle, after swinging to and fro for several minutes, did indeed at last resolve itself into a state of repose, Sweeney Todd got out himself, and rang a bell, the handle of which hung invitingly at the gate.

  He had to wait several minutes before an answer was given to this summons, but at length a noise proceeded from within, as if several bars and bolts were being withdrawn; and presently the door was opened, and a huge, rough-looking man made his appearance on the threshold.

  ‘Well! what is it now?’ he cried.

  ‘I have a patient for Mr Fogg,’ said Sweeney Todd. ‘I want to see him immediately.’

  ‘Oh! well, the more the merrier; it don’t matter to me a bit. Have you got him with you and is he tolerably quiet?’

  ‘It’s a mere boy, and he is not violently mad, but very decidedly so as regards what he says.’

  ‘Oh! that’s it, is it? He can say what he likes here, it can make no difference in the world to us. Bring him in – Mr Fogg is in his own room.’

  ‘I know the way: you take charge of the lad, and I will go and speak to Mr Fogg about him. But stay, give the coachman these six shillings, and discharge him.’

  The doorkeeper of the lunatic asylum, for such it was, went out to obey the injunctions of Sweeney Todd, while that rascally individual himself walked along a wide passage to a door which was at the further extremity of it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Mad-House Cell

  When the porter of the mad-house went out to the coach, his first impression was that the boy, who was said to be insane, was dead; for not even the jolting ride to Peckham had been sufficient to arouse him to a consciousness of how he was situated; and there he lay still at the bottom of the coach alike insensible to joy or sorrow.

  ‘Is he dead?’ said the man to the coachman.

  ‘How should I know?’ was the reply; ‘he may be or he may not, but I want to know how long I am to wait here for my fare.’

  ‘There is your money, be off with you. I can see now that the boy is all right, for he breathes, although it’s after an odd fashion that he does so. I should rather think he has had a knock on the head, or something of that kind.’

  As he spoke, he conveyed Tobias within the building, and the coachman, since he had no further interest in the matter, drove away at once, and paid no more attention to it whatever.

  When Sweeney Todd reached the door at the end of the passage, he tapped at it with his knuckles, and a voice cried, –

  ‘Who knocks – who knocks? Curses on you all, who knocks?’

  Sweeney Todd did not make any verbal reply to this polite request, but opening the door he walked into the apartment, which is one that really deserves some description.

  It was a large room with a vaulted roof, and in the centre was a superior oaken table, at which sat a man considerably advanced in years, as was proclaimed by his grizzled locks that graced the sides of his head, but whose herculean frame and robust constitution had otherwise successfully resisted the assaults of time.

  A lamp swung from the ceiling, which had a shade over the top of it, so that it kept a tolerably bright glow upon the table below, which was covered with books and papers, as well as glasses and bottles of different kinds, which showed that the mad-house keeper was, at all events, as far as he himself was concerned, not at all indifferent to personal comfort.

  The walls, however, presented the most curious aspect, for they were hung with a variety of tools and implements, which would have puzzled anyone not initiated into the matter even to guess at their nature.

  These were, however, in point of fact, specimens of the different kinds of machinery which were used for the purpose of coercing the unhappy persons whose evil destiny made them members of that establishment.

  Those were what is called the good old times, when all sorts of abuses flourished in perfection, and when the unhappy insane were actually punished, as if they were guilty of some great offence. Yes, and worse than that were they punished, for a criminal who might have injustice done to him by any who were in authority over him, could complain, and if he got hold of a person of higher power, his complaints might be listened to, but no one heeded what was said by the poor maniac, whose bitterest accusations of his keepers, let their conduct have been to him what it might, was only listened to and set down as a further proof of his mental disorder.

  This was indeed a most awful and sad state of things, and, to the disgrace of this country, it was a social evil allowed until very late years to continue in full force.

  Mr Fogg, the madhouse keeper, fixed his keen eyes, from beneath his shaggy brows, upon Sweeney Todd, as the latter entered his apartment, and then he said, –

  ‘Mr Todd, I think, unless my memory deceives me.’

  ‘The same,’ said the barber, making a hideous face. ‘I be
lieve I am not easily forgotten.’

  ‘True,’ said Mr Fogg, as he reached for a book, the edges of which were cut into a lot of little slips, on each of which was a capital letter, in the order of the alphabet – ‘true, you are not easily forgotten, Mr Todd.’

  He then opened the book at the letter T, and read from it:

  ‘Mr Sweeney Todd, Fleet Street, London, paid one year’s keep and burial of Thomas Simkins, aged 13, found dead in his bed after a residence in the asylum of 14 months and 4 days. I think, Mr Todd, that was our last little transaction: what can I do now for you, sir?’

  ‘I am rather unfortunate,’ said Todd, ‘with my boys. I have got another here, who has shown such decided symptoms of insanity, that it has become absolutely necessary to place him under your care.’

  ‘Indeed! does he rave?’

  ‘Why, yes, he does, and it’s the most absurd nonsense in the world he raves about; for, to hear him, one would really think that, instead of being one of the most humane of men, I was in point of fact an absolute murderer.’

  ‘A murderer, Mr Todd!’

  ‘Yes, a murderer – a murderer to all intents and purposes; could anything be more absurd than such an accusation? – I, that have the milk of human kindness flowing in every vein, and whose very appearance ought to be sufficient to convince anybody at once of my kindness of disposition.’

  Sweeney Todd finished his speech by making such a hideous face, that the mad-house keeper could not for the life of him tell what to say to it; and then there came one of those short, disagreeable laughs which Todd was such an adept in, and which, somehow or another, never appeared exactly to come from his mouth, but always made people look up at the walls and ceiling of the apartment in which they were, in great doubt as to whence the remarkable sound came.