The String of Pearls (1850), p. 627

"Ah," said Todd; "here is enough to set me up for a time, if I can dispose of them; and now I must run risks that I would not think of while I had thousands at my command, I must take these things that I was content enough to leave behind me, lest they should at some inopportune moment lead to my detection. Now they shall do me service."
Todd commenced filling his pockets with this dangerous kind of property, each article of which was associated with the frightful crime of murder!
A couple of thousand pounds certainly would not have paid for what Todd upon this occasion managed to stow away about him; and he thought that if he could get one-fourth of that amount for the articles, that it would not be a very bad night's work, considering the not very flourishing state of his finances at that time, compared with what they had been.
During the process, though, of stocking himself with the contents of the secret place in the bureau, he more than once crept to the dooi of the room, and going out upon the landing, he leant over the staircase and listened. All was most profoundly still, and he was satisfied that Sir Richard Blunt's two men remained in the passage, in the same state of insensibility—if not of death—in which he had left them.
Leaving there some articles of smaller importance than those with which he loaded himself, Todd pushed the bureau back into its place again; and then, taking the light in his hand, cautiously descended the stairs.
When he reached the passage, there lay the two men as he had left them. Indeed, he had been absent much too short a space of time for any very material
change to take place in their condition.
"Well," he said. "Now to dispose of you two. What shall it be? Shall I cut your throats as you lie there, or—no, no, I have hit it. No doubt you have both been full of curious speculations respecting how I disposed of those persons whom I polished off in my shop ; so you shall both know exactly how it was done. Ha! a good joke."
Todd s good joke consisted now of going into the parlour, and fastening the levers which held up the shaving-chair. Then he lifted up one of the insensible bodies of the men, and carried it into the shop.
"Sit there, or lie there, how you like," he said, as he flung the man into the large shaving-chair.
It was quite a treat now to Todd, and put him in mind of old times, to arrange his apparatus for giving this wretched man a tumble into the vaults below. He went into the parlour and drew the bolt, when away went the man and the chair, and the other chair that was on the reverse side of the plank took the place of that which had gone.
"Ha! ha !" shouted Todd. "This is grand—this is most glorious! Ha! ha ! Who would have thought, now, that I should ever live to be at my old work again in this house—? It is capital ! If that fall has not broken his neck, it's a wonder. It used to kill five out of seven: that was about the average—ha!"
Todd did not fasten the bolt again, but went at once for the other man. He was sitting up!
Todd staggered back for a moment, when he saw him in that position looking at him. The man rubbed his eyes with his hands, and said in a weak voice—
"Good God! what is it all about?"
Todd placed the light on the floor within the parlour, so that it shed sufficent rays into the shop to let him see every object in it; and then, with a cry like that of some wild beast rushing upon his prey, he dashed at the man.
The struggle that ensued was a frightful one. Despair, and a feeling that he was fighting for his life, nerved the man, who had recovered just in time to engage in such a contest, and they both fought their way into the shop together. Todd made the greatest exertions to overcome the man, but it was not until he got him by the throat, and held him with a clutch of iron, that he could do so. Then he flung him upon the chair, but the man, with a last effort dragged Todd after him, and down they both went together to the vault below