The String of Pearls (1850), p. 634

public-house, on its outskirts. This man was evidently proceeding to London. Crotchet heard this information with great attention j and when he and Sir Richard Blunt were alone, he said—
"I tell you what it is, sir—the country will never suit Todd."
"How do you mean, Crotchet?"
"I mean, sir, that, in my opinion, he has gone back to London again. The country, sir, ain't the sort of place for such men as he. You may depend upon it, he only came to the little wood to get rid of Lupin, and he has gone back to try and hide in London till the row is over."
"You really think so?"
"I do, sir; and if we want to find him, we must go, too."
"Well, Crotchet, of one thing I am pretty well convinced, and that is, that he is not in this part of the country, for after the murder in the wood, which he will be in continual fear of being discovered, it is not likely he would stay about here; and so, as we have traced him a little on the road to London, we may as well, for all we know to the contrary, assume that he has gone there at once."
"Come on, then, sir," said Crotchet; "I feels what you call s a sort of a—
"Oh, dear me, what is it? A presentment—"
"A presentiment, Crotchet."
"Ah, sir, that's it. I feel that sort of thing that old Todd will try and hide himself in some old crib in London, and not at all trust to the country, where
everybody is looked at for all the world as though he were a strange cat—Lord bless you, sir, if 1 had done anything and wanted to hide, I should go into the very thick of the people of London, and I ain't quite sure but I'd take a lodging in Bow Street."
Sir Richard Blunt was himself very much of Crotchet's opinion regarding Todd's proceedings, for his experience of the movements of malefactors had taught him that they generally, after their first attempt to try to get away, hover about the spot of their crimes; and it is a strange thing, that with regard to persons who have committed great crimes, there is a great similarity of action, as though the species of mind that could induce the commission of murder from
example, were the same in other respects in all murderers.
To London, then, with what expedition they could make, Sir Richard Blunt and Crotchet went, and although they made what inquiry they could, they found no news of Todd. And now we must leave them for awhile, thrown completely out in all their researches for the escaped criminal, while we once more proceed to the house in Fleet Street, where we left Todd in rather an uncomfortable situation.
It will be recollected that, locked in the grasp of the officer, Todd and that individual had gone down with the chair through the opening in the floor of his shop.
This was the first time that Todd had undertaken that mode of getting into the cellars of his house; and when he found the chair going, he gave himself up for lost, and uttered a cry of horror. It seemed to him at that moment as if that were the species of retribution which was to come over him—death by the same dreadful means that had enabled him so often to inflict it upon others.
No doubt Todd's anticipations of being dashed to destruction upon the stones below would have been correct had he gone down alone, or had there been no one already immediately beneath the trap-door in the shop flooring; but as it was, he fell, fortunately for him, uppermost, and they both, he and the officer, fell upon the other man who had gone down only a short time previous. That saved Todd; but he was terribly shaken, and so was the officer, and it was a few moments before either of them recovered sufficently to move a limb.
The lives of those two depended upon who should recover his strength and energies first. Todd was that man. Hate is so much stronger a passion than every other, and it was under the influence of that feeling that Todd was the first of the two to recover; and the moment he did so, the yell of rage that he uttered really aught have been heard in Fleet Street. It was very indiscreet of