The String of Pearls (1850), p. 446

Todd felt himself quite at home in Bell Yard. He was in truth the landlord of the house. It had not been safe to make the extensive under-ground alterations in the place if Mrs. Lovett had been the tenant of a stranger merely; so Tood had purchased the freehold, and such being the case, and his tenant, the charming Mrs. Lovett, being as he firmly believed, at the botton of the Thames, who should feel at home in the place if he, Sweeney Todd, did not?
He felt that he had time, too. There was no hurry in life, and he quite smiled to himself, as he said—
"How often I have longed for a rummage among my dear departed friend Mrs. Lovett's goods and chattels, and now how many happily and singly circumstances have changed about to enable me to gratify my inclination. Ha!"
Todd, in the security of his bad heart, uttered one of his old laughs—but then for the whole of that day he had been unusually happy. His good terms with
himself shone out even of his eyes, horrible eyes.
"Yes," he said, "yes, she is dead—dead—dead. Ha! ha ! Mrs. Lovett—clever, fascinating creature—how muddy you lie to-night. Ha!"
It was not prudent, however, to waste time, although he had plenty of it—it
never is; so up rose Todd, and proceeded to the parlour. How fast-locked the
door was!
"Now really," he said, "it is a thousand pities that poor dear Mrs. L. has gone down to the bottom of the Thames with her keys in her pocket. It would have made no manner of difference in the world to her to have let me have them. It would have saved me some little trouble, and the doors some little damage."
With a malicious grin, as though he delighted in the mischief tie had made, he dashed himself bodily against the parlour door, and burst it open with a crash.
"That will do," he said. "To be sure, the party who, when my absence gets noised about, comes to take possession of this house, would rather that the doors were whole; but what of that? Ha! I have mortgaged it twice over for its full value, and they may fight about it if they like. Ha! ha! How they will litigate, and I shall read the pleasant account of it in the papers."
By this time Todd was in Mrs. Lovett's parlour, and folding his arms across his breast, he gazed about him with a feeling of marked satisfaction, as he said—
"For five years she has been making, of course, a private purse for herself, the dear creature, as well as looking to the share of the money in the bank; and
for the last few weeks, since our agreement together has not been quite so perfect, she has kept all her takings herself; so reasoning upon that, she must, bless her provident spirit, have a tolerable sum laid by somewhere, which I, as her executor, will most assuredly pounce upon."
At this moment some one clamoured for admission at the shop-door, rapping at it with a penny-piece in a manner that sounded very persevering.
"Curses on you," muttered Todd, "who are you?"
"A twopenny—a twopenny—a twopenny!" cried a boy, who was at the
door, in a sing-song sort of voice—"I want a twopenny—a twopenny!"
Rap, rap, rap! went one of the penny-pieces against the upper half of the shop-door, which was of glass. Rap, rap, rap! Todd felt quite convinced that that boy would not go without some sort of answer being given to his demand, so he slunk round the shop, crouching down, until he came close to the door, and then assuming one of his most hideous faces, he suddenly rose up, and from within half an inch of the boy's face upon the other side of the glass, he confronted him.
So horrible and so completely unexpected was this face to the boy, that for a moment or two he seemed to be absolutely paralysed by it, and then, with a cry
of terror, he dropped the penny-piece with which he had been rapping the window, and fled up Bell Yard as though the evil one himself were at his heels.
"That will do," said Todd.
He went back to the parlour and glared round him again in the hope of find