'Indeed! you are prudent. Would you like your whiskers trimmed?'
'A little, but not quite off.'
There was now a pause of some moments' duration, after which Sweeney Todd said, in a very offhand manner - 'I suppose you have seen the two figures at St Dunstan's church strike the hour?'
'Two figures?' said the one who was not being shaved, for the other would have had a mouthful of lather if he had spoken; 'two figures? No - what may they be all about?'
'Well,' resumed Todd, with the most indifferent air and manner in the world, 'if you have not seen them, it's quite a shame that you should not; and while I am shaving your friend, as it now only wants about five minutes to eleven, you have a good opportunity of going and getting back in time when your friend is - disposed of - what do you say to that? Charley, go with the gentleman, and show him the figures striking the hour at St Dunstan's. You must cross over to the other side of the way, you know, to see them properly and effectually. Don't hurry, sir.'
'Very much obliged,' said the disengaged grazier, for such he seemed to be; 'but I would rather go with my friend here, when he is shaven. You can't think what cynical remarks he makes at anything he has not seen before, so that to go with him is really always to me half the treat.'
'Very good and very right,' said Todd; 'I shall soon be done. I have just about finished you off, now, sir. That will do.'
There was no disappointment at all visible in Todd's manner, and the grazier rose and wiped his face on the jack-towel, that hung from a roller for the use of those whom it might concern, paid his money, and with a civil good-day to the barber, left the shop along with his friend.
An awfully diabolical look came across the countenance of Sweeney Todd, as he muttered to himself, 'Curses on them both! I may yet have one of them though.'
'What did you say, sir?' asked Johanna.
'What is that to you, you young imp?' roared Todd. 'Curse you! I'll pull out your teeth by degrees, with red-hot pincers, if you presume to listen to what I say! I'll be the death of you, you devil's cub.'
Johanna shrank back, alarmed, and then Todd walked across his shop to the back-parlour, the door of which he carefully double-locked, after which, turning to Johanna, he said,-
'You will mind the shop till I return, and if anybody comes, you can tell them that they need not wait, for I shall probably be some time gone. All you have to do is mind the place, and, hark you, no peeping nor prying about; sit still, and touch nothing, for if you do, I shall most assuredly discover it, and your punishment will be certain and perhaps terrible.'
'I will be careful, sir.'
'Do so, and you will be rewarded. Why, the last lad I had served me so well that I have had him taken care of for life, in a fine handsome country house, with grounds attached, a perfect villa, where he is waited upon by attendants, in the most attentive manner.'
'How kind,' said Johanna, 'and is he happy?'
'Very, very - notwithstanding the general discontent of human nature, he is quite happy, as a matter of course. Mind my instructions, and in due time you will no doubt yourself share as amiable a fate.'
Todd put on his hat, and with a horrible and strange leer upon his countenance, left the shop, and Johanna found herself in the situation she had coveted, namely, to be alone in the shop of Sweeney Todd, and able to make what examination of it she pleased, without the probability of much interruption.
'Heaven be my aid,' she cried, 'for the sake of truth.'
XXXIII. Discoveries in the Vaults of St. Dunstan's
'Well, Sir Richard,' remarked the beadle of St Dunstan's to the magistrate, after the ponderous stone was raised in the centre of the church, upon which the workmen had been busy, 'don't you smell nothink now?'
The magistrate, churchwardens, and, indeed, everyone present, shrank back from the horrible stench that saluted them, now that the stone was fairly removed.
'Why, good God!' exclaimed the senior churchwarden; 'have we been sitting and hearing sermons with such a charnel-house under? I always understood that none of the vaults exactly underneath the church had been used for many years past.'
'Hush!' said the magistrate. 'The enquiry we are upon is, perhaps, a more important one than you imagine, sir.'
'More important! How can that be? Didn't the bishop smell it when he came to confirm the people, and didn't he say in the vestry that he could not confirm anybody while such a smell was in the church, and didn't we tell him that it would be a sad thing if he didn't? and then he did confirm the people in such a twinkling, that they didn't know what they were confirmed in at all.'
'Hush! my good sir, hush, and hear me. Will you, now that you have got up this great stone, and opened, as I see, the top of a stone staircase, by so doing, send away the workmen, and, indeed, all persons but yourself and me?'
'Well, but - but you don't mean us to go down, sir, do you?'
'I mean to go, you may depend. Send away the men at once, if you please. I have ample warrant for all I am about to do, I assure you. I suspect I shall be well able to free St Dunstan's church from the horrible stench that has been infesting it for some time past.'
'You think so, sir? Bless you, then, I'll do just whatever you like.'
The workmen were not sorry to be dismissed from the uncomfortable employment, but the beadle who was holding his nose, and who having overheard what Sir Richard had said, was extremely anxious upon the subject, put in his claim to stay, on the ground of being one of the officials of the church; and he was accordingly permitted to stay.
'This seems to lead to the vaults,' remarked Sir Richard, as he looked down the chasm, which the removal of the stone had left.
'Yes,' replied the churchwarden, 'it does, and they have, as I say, been unused for a long time; but how that dreadful smell can come from bodies that have been forty or fifty years there, I can't think.'
'We must be careful of the foul air,' remarked the magistrate. 'Get a torch, Mr Beadle, if you please, and we will lower it into the vault. If that lives, we can: and if you please go first to the door of the church, and take this silk handkerchief with you, and hold it up in your hand; and upon that signal, four persons will come to you. They are officers of mine, and you will bring them to me.'
'Oh, dear, yes, certainly,' said the beadle, who was quite happy at the thoughts of such a reinforcement. 'I'll do it, sir, and as for a torch, there is some famous links in the vestry cupboard, as I'll get in a minute. Well, I do think the smell is a little better already; don't you, sir? I'm a going. Don't be impatient, sir. I'm going like a shot, I am.'
To give the beadle his due, he certainly executed his orders quickly. The four officers, sure enough, obeyed the signal of the handkerchief, and in a few minutes more, a torchlight was lowered by a rope down the gloomy aperture. All watched the light with great interest as it descended; but, although it certainly burnt dimmer than before, yet it showed no signs of going out, and the magistrate said, 'We may safely descend. The air that will support flame will likewise support animal life; therefore we need be under no sort of apprehension. Follow me.'
He commenced a careful descent of the stone steps, and was promptly followed by his four men, and much more slowly by the beadle and the churchwarden, neither of whom seemed much to relish the adventure, although their curiosity prompted them to COntinue it.
The stone steps consisted of about twenty, and when the bottom was gained, it was found to be covered with flagstones of considerable size, upon which sawdust was strewn, but not sufficiently thickly to cover them in