The String of Pearls (1850), p. 579

indeed, that he had conducted the conversation in. "It is quite a madening thing, you see, to find that there is nothing between us and liberty but this door. Every moment is of the greatest possible importance. Will you do it?"
"Are you mad?"
"No. I am quite sane, I confess, though that I have not the pluck to do it. You ought to be a man of courage. What is it to you, if you were to murder everybody in this house, so that you got this door open? That is the great object, the only object; and to you, you know, three or four more deaths will not make much consequence."
"My friend," said Todd, with a sickly smile, "I am afraid you believe the calumnies that have been heaped upon my innocent hand. But, if nothing can be done, but what you say, I will make the attempt. There are two files, though, and they are equally sharp. Do you take one, and I will take the other."
"You want me with you?"
"I do, most surely."
"Well—well; if it must be so, it must. I will come. Let us set about it at once, and—"
Before Mr. Lupin could say another word, there came a sharp rap at the door from the outside with the knocker; and so sudden and so utterly unexpected was the sound at such an hour, that Lupin and Todd fell on each other in their hurry to escape, they knew not where.

CHAPTER CXXXV.
THE CHASE THROUGH SMITHFIELD, AND THE MURDER.

They were afraid to speak, were those two murderers, as they now stood trembling in the passage of the Governor's house in Newgate. They could only be conscious of each others presence by the hard breathing which their fears gave rise to , and as Lupin had extinguish, J the little light, the most intense darkness reigned around them.
Bang—bang—bang! went the knocker upon the door of the Governor's house again.
"Lost—lost!" said Todd.
If Lupin was not the most hardened villain of the two, he was certainly at that moment the most courageous. He aimed a blow at Todd in the dark to give effect to his admonition for silence; but it did not take effect. Todd, however, was quite still now, and in the course of a few moments the knock at the door was repeated a third time. Then Lupin whispered to Todd—
"Keep yourself up as close against the wall as you can. Some one will come to the door, and you can throttle whoever it is, while I take the key of the little lock from them."
"Yes," said Todd, faintly.
The word had hardly escaped his lips, when a flash of light from above came streaming down into the passage, and from each side of the door, close to the passage wall, against which they screwed themselves into as small a compass as possible, they saw a man approaching.
The person who came to answer the knock at the Governor's door was evidently only just roused from sleep, for he was looking heavy, and yawning as he came. The candle he carried swayed to and fro in his hand, and it was very unlikely that he would see anything that was not remarkably close to his nose.
"Ah, dear me," he yawned. "Can't people come at reasonable times? Who'd be a Governor's clerk, I wonder, to—ah, dear!—get up at all hours of the night in Newgate. Ah, heigho!"
Mr. Lupin wanted to say only two words to Todd, and those were "Kill