There were costly watches—wigs with rare jewels set in them; for the fashion of wearing wigs was so common at the time, that many wealthy residents of the Temple would pop into Todd's shop for a little arrangement of their wigs or a puff of fresh powder, if they were going somewhere in a hurry, and so lost their lives. Then there were some pairs of rich diamond knee and shoe buckles, and a few lockets, and a whole heap of chains of gold.
"Ah," said Todd; "here is enough to set me up for a time, if I can dispose of them; and now I must run risks that I would not think of while I had thousands at my command. I must take these things that I was content enough to leave behind me, lest they should at some inopportune moment lead to my detection. Now they shall do me service."
Todd commenced filling his pockets with this dangerous kind of property, each article of which was associated with the frightful crime of murder!
A couple of thousand pounds certainly would not have paid for what Todd upon this occasion managed to stow away about him; and he thought that if he could get one-fourth of that amount for the articles, that it would not be a very bad night's work, considering the not very flourishing state of his finances at that time, compared with what they had been.
During the process, though, of stocking himself with the contents of the secret place in the bureau, he more than once crept to the door of the room, and going out upon the landing, he leant over the staircase and listened. All was most profoundly still, and he was satisfied that Sir Richard Blunt's two men remained in the passage, in the same state of insensibility—if not of death—in which he had left them.
Leaving there some articles of smaller importance than those with which he loaded himself, Todd pushed the bureau back into its place again; and then, taking the light in his hand, cautiously descended the stairs.
When he reached the passage, there lay the two men as he had left them. Indeed, he had been absent much too short a space of time for any very material change to take place in their condition.
"Well," he said. "Now to dispose of you two. What shall it be? Shall I cut your throats as you lie there, or—no, no, I have hit it. No doubt you have both been full of curious speculations respecting how I disposed of those persons whom I polished off in my shop; so you shall both know exactly how it was done. Ha! a good joke."
Todd's good joke consisted now of going into the parlour, and fastening the levers which held up the shaving-chair. Then he lifted up one of the insensible bodies of the men, and carried it into the shop.
"Sit there, or lie there, how you like," he said, as he flung the man into the large shaving-chair.