'I'm very much obliged to you,' said Todd, as he passed his hand over the chin of his customer. I'm very much obliged; I find I must give you another lather, sir, and I'll get another razor with a keener edge, now that I have taken off all the rough as one may say in a manner of speaking.'
'Oh, I shall do.'
'No, no, don't move, sir, I shall not detain you a moment; I have my other razors in the next room, and will polish you off now, sir, before you will know where you are; you know, sir, you have promised to recommend me, so I must do the best I can with you.'
'Well, well, a clean shave is a comfort, but don't be long, for I want to get back, do you see.'
'Not a moment, not a moment.'
Sweeney Todd walked into his back-parlour, conveying with him the only light that was in the shop, so that the dim glimpse that, up to this time, Johanna from the outside had contrived to get of what was going on, was denied to her; and all that met her eyes was impenetrable darkness.
Oh, what a world of anxious agonising sensations crossed the mind of the young and beautiful girl at that moment. She felt as if some great crisis in her history had arrived, and that she was condemned to look in vain into the darkness to see of what it consisted.
We must not, however, allow the reader to remain in the same state of mystification, which came over the perceptive faculties of Johanna Oakley; but we shall proceed to state clearly and distinctly what did happen in the barber's shop, while he went to get an uncommonly keen razor in his back-parlour.
The moment his back was turned, the seeming farmer who had made such a good thing of his beasts, sprang from the shaving-chair, as if he had been electrified; and yet he did not do it with any appearance of fright, nor did he make any noise. It was only astonishingly quick, and then he placed himself close to the window, and waited patiently with his eyes fixed upon the chair, to see what would happen next.
In the space of about a quarter of a minute, there came from the next room a sound like the rapid drawing of a heavy bolt, and then in an instant the shaving-chair disappeared beneath the floor; and the circumstances by which Sweeney Todd's customers disappeared was evident.
There was a piece of the flooring turning upon a centre, and the weight of the chair when a bolt was withdrawn, by means of a simple leverage from the inner room, weighed down upon one end of the top, which, by a little apparatus, was to swing completely round, there being another chair on the under surface, which thus became the upper, exactly resembling the one in which the unhappy customer was supposed to be 'polished off'.
Hence was it that in one moment, as if by magic, Sweeney Todd's visitors disappeared, and there was the empty chair. No doubt, he trusted to a fall of about twenty feet below, on to a stone floor, to be the death of them, or, at all events, to stun them until he could go down to finish the murder, and - to cut them up for Mrs Lovett's pies! after robbing them of all money and valuables they might have about them.
In another moment, the sound as of a bolt was again heard, and Sir Richard Blunt, who had played the part of the wealthy farmer, feeling that the trap was closed again, seated himself in the new chair that had made its appearance with all the nonchalance in life, as if nothing had happened.
It was a full minute before Todd ventured to look from the parlour into the darkened shop, and then he shook so that he had to hold by the door to steady himself.
'That's done,' he said. 'That's the last, I hope. It is time I finished; I never felt so nervous since the first time. Then I did quake a little. How quiet he went; I have sometimes had a shriek ringing in my ears for a whole week.'
It was a large high-backed piece of furniture, that shaving-chair, so that, when Todd crept into the shop with the light in his hand, he had not the remotest idea it was tenanted; but when he got round it, and saw his customer calmly waiting with the lather upon his face, the cry of horror that came gargling and gushing from his throat was horrible to hear.
'Why, what's the matter?' said Sir Richard.
'O God, the dead! the dead! O God!' cried Todd, 'this is the beginning of my punishment. Have mercy, Heaven! oh, do not look upon me with those dead eyes!'
'Murderer!' shouted Sir Richard, in a voice that rang like the blast of a trumpet through the house.
In an instant he sprang upon Sweeney Todd, and grappled him by the throat. There was a short struggle, and they were down upon the floor together, but Todd's wrists were suddenly laid hold of, and a pair of handcuffs were scientifically put upon him by the officers, who, at the word 'murderer', that being a preconcerted signal, came from the cupboard where they had been concealed.
'Secure him well, my men,' said the magistrate, and don't let him lay violent hands upon himself. Ah! Miss Oakley, you are in time. This man is a murderer. I found out all the secret about the chair last night, after twelve, by exploring the vaults under the old church. Thank God, we have stopped his career.'
XXXIX. The Conclusion
It wants five minutes to nine, and Mrs Lovett's shop is filling with persons anxious to devour or to carry away one or more of the nine o'clock batch of savoury, delightful, gushing gravy pies.
Many of Mrs Lovett's customers paid her in advance for the pies, in order that they might be quite sure of getting their orders fulfilled when the first batch should make its gracious appearance from the depths below.
'Well, Jiggs,' said one of the legal fraternity to another. 'How are you today, old fellow? What do you bring it in?'
'Oh! I ain't very blooming. The fact is the count and I, and a few others, made a night of it last evening, and, somehow or another, I don't think whiskey and water, half-and-half, and tripe go together.'
'I should wonder if they did.'
'And so I've come for a pie just to settle my stomach; you see, I'm rather delicate.'
'Ah! you are just like me, young man, there,' said an elderly personage; I have a delicate stomach, and the slightest thing disagrees with me. A mere idea will make me quite ill.'
'Will it, really?'
'Yes; and my wife, she -'
'Oh! bother your wife. It's only five minutes to nine, don't you see? What a crowd there is, to be sure. Mrs Lovett, you charmer, I hope you have ordered enough pies to be made tonight. You see what a lot of customers you have.'
'Oh! there will be plenty.
'That's right. I say, don't push so; you'll be in time, I tell you; don't be pushing and shoving in that sort of way - I've got ribs.'
'And so have I. Last night, I didn't get to bed at all, and my old woman is in a certain condition, you see, gentlemen, and won't fancy anything but one of Lovett's veal pies, so I've come all the way from Newington to get one for -'
'Hold your row, will you? and don't push.'
'For to have the child marked as a pie as its -'
'Behind there, I say; don't be pushing a fellow as if it was half-price at a theatre.'
Each moment added some new comers to the throng, and at last any strangers who had known nothing of the attractions of Mrs Lovett's pie-shop, and had walked down Bell Yard, would have been astonished at the throng of persons there assembled - a throng, that was each moment increasing in density, and becoming more and more urgent and clamorous.
* * * * *
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine! Yes, it is nine at last. It strikes by old St Dunstan's church clock, and in weaker strains the chronometrical machine at the pie-shop echoes the sound. What excitement there is now to get at the pies when they shall come! Mrs Lovett lets down the square, moveable platform that goes