"You really think so?"
"I do, sir; and if we want to find him, we must go, too."
"Well, Crotchet, of one thing I am pretty well convinced, and that is, that he is not in this part of the country, for after the murder in the wood, which he will be in continual fear of being discovered, it is not likely he would stay about here; and so, as we have traced him a little on the road to London, we may as well, for all we know to the contrary, assume that he has gone there at once."
"Come on, then, sir," said Crotchet; "I feel's what you call's a sort of a—Oh, dear me, what is it? A presentment—"
"A presentiment, Crotchet."
"Ah, sir, that's it. I feel that sort of thing that old Todd will try and hide himself in some old crib in London, and not at all trust to the country, where everybody is looked at for all the world as though he were a strange cat. Lord bless you, sir, if I had done anything and wanted to hide, I should go into the very thick of the people of London, and I ain't quite sure but I'd take a lodging in Bow Street."
Sir Richard Blunt was himself very much of Crotchet's opinion regarding Todd's proceedings, for his experience of the movements of malefactors had taught him that they generally, after their first attempt to try to get away, hover about the spot of their crimes; and it is a strange thing, that with regard to persons who have committed great crimes, there is a great similarity of action, as though the species of mind that could induce the commission of murder from example, were the same in other respects in all murderers.
To London, then, with what expedition they could make, Sir Richard Blunt and Crotchet went, and although they made what inquiry they could, they found no news of Todd. And now we must leave them for awhile, thrown completely out in all their researches for the escaped criminal, while we once more proceed to the house in Fleet Street, where we left Todd in rather an uncomfortable situation.
It will be recollected that, locked in the grasp of the officer, Todd and that individual had gone down with the chair through the opening in the floor of his shop.
This was the first time that Todd had undertaken that mode of getting into the cellars of his house; and when he found the chair going, he gave himself up for lost, and uttered a cry of horror. It seemed to him at that moment as if that were the species of retribution which was to come over him—death by the same dreadful means that had enabled him so often to inflict it upon others.