"Could they have proved any thing against you?" demanded the Rattlesnake.
"Yes, Meg," answered the Resurrection Man; "there was a stiff'un in the front room at the very moment when the police broke into the house. We had burked him on the preceding evening; and he was still hanging head downwards to the ceiling."
"It was much better, then, to blow the place up, as you did," observed the Rattlesnake.
"Of course it was, Meg. Don't you see," continued the Resurrection Man, after a pause, during which he imbibed a considerable quantity of the exhilarating fluid in his glass,—"don't you see that I was too old a bird not to be always prepared for such an event as that which happened at last? I had got together a great quantity of gunpowder in the back-room of the crib, and had stowed it away in brown paper parcels in a cupboard. This cupboard stood between the fire-place and the back wall of the house. So I had made a hole through the wall, and had introduced a long iron pipe into the cupboard. This pipe was ten or twelve feet in length, and ran all along the wall that divided my yard from the next. The pipe, so placed, was protected by a wooden cover or case; and any one who saw it, must have thought it was only a water-pipe. It was, however, filled with excellent gunpowder, and there was nothing to do but to put a match to the farthest end of the pipe to blow up the whole place."
"Capital contrivance!" exclaimed the Rattlesnake. "Had you put up that pipe long before the police broke into the house?"
"Oh! yes—some months," answered the Resurrection Man; "and very lucky it was, too, that the pipe was water-tight, so that the rain had never moistened the powder in the least. Well, when the blue-bottles broke in, I rushed into the back-room, locked the door, leapt through the window, flew to the end of the pipe, tore out the plug, applied the match, and in a moment all was over."
"And for a long time even your old pals at the Boozing-ken on Saffron Hill, fancied you had been blown up with the rest," said the Rattlesnake.
"Of course they did, because the newspapers, which you always used to go and fetch me to read, said there was no doubt that every one of the gang in the house at the time had perished."
"And they also spoke of the way in which the police had followed you and the Cracksman to the house," said the Rattlesnake.
"Yes—and that was how I came to learn that the man who had hunted me almost to death, was Richard Markham," exclaimed the Resurrection Man, his countenance suddenly wearing an expression of such concentrated—vile—malignant rage, as to render him perfectly hideous.