He entered the front room on the ground-floor: the resurrection tools and house-breaking implements, which were piled up in that chamber, had not been disturbed. Huge black cob-webs, dense as filthy rags, were suspended from mattock to spade, and from crow-bar to long flexible iron rod.
Tidkins turned with an air of satisfaction into the back room, where the dust lay thick upon the floor, and the walls were green with damp.
"Yes—it is all right!" he exclaimed, joyfully: "no one has been here during my absence. I suppose that villain Jem Cuffin was content with all the gold and jewels he got, and took no farther steps to molest me. But, by Satan! if ever I clap my eyes on him again!"—and the Resurrection Man ground his teeth furiously together. "Well," he continued, speaking aloud to himself in a musing strain, "it's a blessing to be able to come back and settle in the old crib! There's no place in London like it: the house in Chick Lane is nothing to it. And now that I have returned," he added, his hideous countenance becoming ominously dark and appallingly threatening, as the glare of the lantern fell upon it,—"one of these deep, cold, cheerless dungeons shall soon become the abode of Richard Markham!"
As he uttered these last words in a loud, measured, and savage voice, the Resurrection Man raised the stone-trap, and descended into the subterranean.
The detestable monster gloated in anticipation upon the horrible revenge which he meditated; and as he now trod the damp pavement of the vaulted passage, he glanced first at the four doors on the right, then at the four doors on the left, as if he were undecided in which dungeon to immure his intended victim.
At length he stopped before one of the doors, exclaiming, "Ah! this must be the cell! It's the one, as I have been told, where so many maniacs dashed their brains out against the wall, when this place was used as an asylum—long before my time."
Thus musing, Tidkins entered the cell, holding the lantern high up so as to embrace at a glance all the gloomy horrors of its aspect.
"Yes—yes!" he muttered to himself: "this is the one for Richard Markham! All that he has ever done to me shall soon be fearfully visited on his own head! Ah, ah! we shall see whether his high rank—his boasted virtues—his immense influence—and his glorious name can mitigate one pang of all the sufferings that he must here endure! Yes," repeated Tidkins, a fiendish smile relaxing his stern countenance,—"this is the dungeon for Richard Markham!"
"No—it is thine!" thundered a voice; and at the same moment the door of the cell closed violently upon the Resurrection Man.
Tidkins dropped the lantern, and flung himself with all his strength against the massive door;—but the huge bolt on the outside was shot into its iron socket too rapidly to permit that desperate effort to prove of the least avail.