The String of Pearls (1850), p. 14

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 his 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 inquire 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 blockings, 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 m his grasp, after which Todd, who seemed to have some means from within of seeing what was going on, opened the door, and admitted his visitors.
"Well, gentlemen," said Todd, "shaved, or cut, or dressed, I am at your service; which shall I begin with?"
The dog never took his eyes 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. Phillips's, in Cateaton-street, and get me six-pennyworth of figs, and don't say that I don't give you the money this time when you go a message. I think I did before, but you swallowed it; and when you come back, just please to 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 any one having the appearance of an officer in the navy came to your house?"
"Yes—a rather good-looking man, weather-beaten, with a bright blue eye, and rather fair hair?"
"Yes, yes! the same."
"Oh! to be sure, he came here, and 1 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