Pumpkins' Glow: 200+ Eerie Tales for Halloween. Джек Лондон
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led them through the Temple with great rapidity, pursuing with admirable tact the precise path his master had taken towards the entrance to the Temple in Fleet-street, opposite Chancery-lane. Darting across the road then, he stopped with a low growl at the shop of Sweeney Todd - a proceeding which very much surprised those who followed him, and caused them to pause to hold a consultation ere they proceeded further. While this was proceeding Todd suddenly opened the door, and aimed a blow at the dog with an iron bar, but the latter dexterously avoided it, and, but that the door was suddenly closed again, he would have made Sweeney Todd regret such an interference.
'We must enquire into this,' said the captain; 'there seems to be mutual ill-will between that man and the dog.'
They both tried to enter the barber's shop, but it was fast on the inside; and after repeated knockings, Todd called from within, saying, 'I won't open the door while that dog is there. He is mad, or has a spite against me - I don't know nor care which - it's a fact, that's all I am aware of.'
'I will undertake,' said the captain, 'that the dog shall do you no harm; but open the door, for in we must come, and will.'
'I will take your promise,' said Sweeney Todd; 'but mind you keep it, or I shall protect myself and take the creature's life; so, if you value it, you had better hold it fast.'
The captain pacified Hector as well as he could, and likewise tied one end of a silk handkerchief round his neck, and held the other firmly in his grasp; after which Todd, who seemed to have some means from within of seeing what was going on, opened his door and admitted his visitors.
'Well, gentlemen, shaved, or cut, or dressed, I am at your service; which shall I begin with?'
The dog never took his eye off Todd, but kept up a low growl from the first moment of his entrance.
'It's rather a remarkable circumstance,' said the captain, 'but this is a very sagacious dog, you see, and he belongs to a friend of ours, who has most unaccountably disappeared.'
'Has he, really?' said Todd. 'Tobias! Tobias!'
'Yes, sir.'
'Run to Mr Philip's, in Cateaton-street, and get me six-penny-worth of preserved figs, and don't say that I don't give you the money this time when you go on a message. I think I did before, but you swallowed it; and when you come back, just please remember the insight into business I gave you yesterday.'
'Yes,' said the boy, with a shudder, for he had a great horror of Sweeney Todd, as well he might, after the severe discipline he had received at his hands, and away he went.
'Well, gentlemen,' said Todd, 'what is it you require of me?'
'We want to know if anyone having the appearance of an officer in the navy came to your house?'
'Yes - a rather good-looking man, weatherbeaten, with a bright blue eye, and rather fair hair.'
'Yes, yes! the same.'
'Oh! to be sure, he came here, and I shaved him and polished him off'
'What do you mean by polishing him off?'
'Brushing him up a bit, and making him tidy: he said he had got somewhere to go in the city, and asked me the address of a Mr Oakley, a spectacle-maker. I gave it him, and then he went away; but as I was standing at my door about five minutes afterwards, it seemed to me, as well as I could see the distance, that he got into some row near the market.'
'Did this dog come with him?'
'A dog came with him, but whether it was that dog or not I don't know.'
'And that's all you know of him?'
'You never spoke a truer word in your life,' said Sweeney Todd, as he diligently stropped a razor upon his great, horny hand.
This seemed something like a complete fix; and the captain looked at Colonel Jeffery, and the colonel at the captain, for some moments, in complete silence. At length the latter said,-
'It's a very extraordinary thing that the dog should come here if he missed his master somewhere else. I never heard of such a thing.'
'Nor I either,' said Todd. 'It is extraordinary; so extraordinary that, if I had not seen it, I would not have believed. I dare say you will find him in the next watch-house.'
The dog had watched the countenance of all parties during this brief dialogue, and twice or thrice he had interrupted it by a strange howling cry.
'I'll tell you what it is,' said the barber; 'if that beast stays here, I'll be the death of him. I hate dogs - detest them; and I tell you, as I told you before, if you value him at all keep him away from me.
'You say you directed the person you describe to us where to find a spectacle-maker named Oakley. We happen to know that he was going in search of such a person, and, as he had property of value about him, we will go there and ascertain if he reached his destination.'
'It is in Fore-street - a little shop with two windows; you cannot miss it.'
The dog, when he saw they were about to leave, grew furious; and it was with the greatest difficulty they succeeded, by main force, in getting him out of the shop, and dragging him some short distance with them, but then he contrived to get free of the handkerchief that held him, and darting back, he sat down at Sweeney Todd's door, howling most piteously.
They had no resource but to leave him, intending fully to call as they came back from Mr Oakley's; and, as they looked behind them, they saw that Hector was collecting a crowd round the barber's door, and it was a singular thing to see a number of persons surrounding the dog, while he, to all appearance, appeared to be actually making efforts to explain something to the assemblage. They walked on until they reached the spectacle-maker's, and there they paused; for they all of a sudden recollected that the mission that Mr Thornhill had had to execute there was of a very delicate nature, and one by no means to be lightly executed, or even so much as mentioned, probably, in the hearing of Mr Oakley himself.
'We must not be so hasty,' said the colonel.
'But what am I to do? I sail tonight; at least I have got to go round to Liverpool with my vessel.'
'Do not then call at Mr Oakley's at all at present; but leave me to ascertain the fact quietly and secretly.'
'My anxiety for Thornhill will scarcely permit me to do so; but I suppose I must, and if you write me a letter to the Royal Oak Hotel, at Liverpool, it will be sure to reach me, that is to say, unless you find Mr Thornhill himself, in which case I need not by any means give you so much trouble.'
'You may depend upon me. My friendship for Mr Thornhill, and gratitude, as you know, for the great service he has rendered to us all, will induce me to do my utmost to discover him; and, but that I know he set his heart upon performing the message he had to deliver accurately and well, I should recommend that we at once go into this house of Mr Oakley's, only that the fear of compromising the young lady - who is in the case, and who will have quite enough to bear, poor thing! of her own grief - restrains me.'
After some more conversation of a similar nature, they decided that this should be the plan adopted. They made an unavailing call at the watch-house of the district, being informed there that no such person, nor anyone answering the description of Mr Thornhill had been engaged in any disturbance, or apprehended by any of the constables; and this only involved the thing in greater mystery than ever, so they went back to try and recover the dog, but that was a matter easier to be desired and determined upon than executed, for threats and persuasions were alike ineffectual.
Hector would not stir an inch from the barber's door. There he sat, with the hat by his side, a most melancholy and strange-looking spectacle, and a most efficient guard was he for that hat, and it was evident, that while he chose to exhibit the formidable row of teeth he did occasionally, when anybody showed a disposition to touch it, it would remain sacred. Some people, too, had thrown a few copper coins into the hat, so that Hector, if his mind had been that way inclined, was making a very good thing of it; but who shall describe the anger of Sweeney Todd, when he found that he was likely to be so beleaguered?
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