These words summoned up many an idler who was trying to dream away the night in the pens of Smithfield, and the officers soon got together a rabble host for the pursuit of Todd and his villanous companion.
But these officers with their fifty pounds reward were rather late in the field. It was the few persons who first heard the rattle and the outcries of the watchman, who were close upon the heels of the men, and they kept them well in sight right across Smithfield and so on towards Barbican. Todd heard the shouts of the pursuers, but he did not look back, for fear of losing time by so doing; and the fact was, that Mr. Lupin was so fleet of foot that it required all the exertion of Todd to keep up with him at all. Upon any less exciting occasion it is extremely doubtful if Todd could have kept up such a race; but as it was, he seemed to lose his wind, and then in some mysterious way to get on without any at all. Mr. Lupin crossed Aldersgate Street, and dashed down Barbican. He then turned down the first opening he came to on the right, and he did so, not because he was making for any known place of safety, but because he knew that a labyrinth of small streets were thereabouts, amid the intricacies of which he hoped to baffle his pursuers; and it was certainly under the circumstances very good policy in him to take the course he did.
From the moment of so abruptly turning out of Barbican, they were both out of sight of their pursuers, who had been able to keep them steadily in view up to this; but although that was the case, they were not without their perils, for a watchman met them both and aimed a blow at Lupin's legs with his stick, crying in an Irish brogue—
"Stop that, my beauty—Stop that any way!"
Lupin sprang upon him like an enraged tiger, and turning the stick from his hands, he laid him flat with one blow of it and on he rushed, carrying it with him as a defence against the attack of any one else.
They now turned a corner and met a string of half-drunken gents of the period, arm-in-arm, and occupying the whole breadth of the pavement. Lupin avoided them by swerving into the road-way, but they caught hold of Todd, crying—
"Here's the devil. Let's make him an offer for his tail!"
Certainly, Sweeney Todd was not at that moment disposed for trifling, and he laid about him with his immense fists in such style that the gents were all rolling in the kennel in a moment or two; and then, however, before Todd could again reach Mr. Lupin so closely as he had been, he heard a loud shout of—
"There's one of them. Come on!—Come on!"
That was no drunken shout, and Todd immediately felt that the danger was imminent. He rushed on at increased speed, and just got up to Lupin at the corner. They turned it together, and then Todd managed to say—