Again Todd raised the head, and dashed it down, and that time he heard a crashing sound, and he felt satisfied that he had killed the man.
There was now no further use in holding the throat of the dead man, and Todd let him go.
"Ha!—ha!" he said. "That is done. That is done—Ha! Now am I once more lord and master in my own house—once again I reign here supreme, and can do what it may please me to do. Ha! this is glorious! Why, it is like old times coming back to me again. I feel as if I could open my shop in the morning, and again polish off the neighbourhood. It seems as if all that had happened since last I stropped a razor above, had been but a dream. The arrest—the trial—the escape—Newgate—the wood at Hampstead! All a dream—a dream!"
He was silent, and the excitement of the moment of triumph had passed away.
"No—no," he said. "No! It is too real—much too real! Oh, it is real, indeed. I am the fugitive! The haunted man without a home—without a friend; and I have this night nor any other night any place in which I may lay my head in safety. I am as one persecuted by all the world, without hope—without pity! What will now become of me?"
A low groan came upon Todd's ear.
He started, and looked around him. He tried hard to pierce with his half-shut eyes the intense darkness, but he could not; and muttering to himself—"Not yet dead—not yet dead?" he crept to an obscure corner of the cellar, and opened a door that led by a ladder to the floor of the back parlour, where there was a trap door, under which the large table usually stood, and which he could open from below.
In the parlour Todd got a light, and feeling then still disturbed about the groan that he had heard below, he armed himself with an iron bar that belonged to the outer door, and with this in his right hand, and the light in his left, he crept back again to the cellar.
A glance at the two men who lay there was sufficient to satisfy him that they were no more; and after then taking from them a couple of pairs of pistols, and a small sum of money, he crept back again to the parlour. As he did so, he heard St. Dunstan's clock strike the hour of four.
"Four!" he said. "Four. It will not be light for nearly two hours yet, and I may rest myself awhile and think. Yes, it is necessary now that I should think; for I have time—a little time—to do so, and much, oh, so much to think of. There's some of my own brandy, too, in the parlour, that's a comfort."