The String of Pearls (1850), p. 635

Todd, but at that moment he thought of nothing but revenge. His own safety became a secondary consideration with him.
He grasped the officer by the throat!
At the moment that, by the feel only, for that place was in the most profound darkness, Todd felt sure that he had the officer by the throat, he knew that his triumph was certain. It would have been as vain a thing to attempt to escape the chances of destiny, as to dream of avoiding the grasp of that iron hand that now closed upon the throat of the unfortunate officer.
It was just then, though, that the officer began to recover a little from the shock of his fall. It was only to recover to die. Better for him would it have been had he slept on in insensibility to the pangs that were awaiting him; but that was not to be.
"Ah, wretch!" shrieked Todd, "so you thought you had me? Down—down to death!—Ha!—ha!"
The officer struggled much, and dashed about his feet and arms, but all was in vain.
"Ha!—ha!" laughed Todd, and that hideous laugh awakened as hideous an echo in the dismal place. "Ha!—ha! I have you now. Oh! but I should like to protract your death and see you die by inches! Only that my time is precious, and for my own sake, I will put you quickly beyond the pale of life."
The man tried to cry out, but the compression upon his throat of those bony fingers prevented him. He had his hand at liberty, and he caught Todd by the head and face, and began to do him as much mischief as he could. There was for a few seconds a fierce struggle, and then Todd, keeping still his right hand clasped about the throat of his victim, with the left laid hold of as much of his hair on the front of his head as he could, and raising his head then about six inches from the stone floor on which it had rested, he dashed in down again with all his might.
The officers arms fell nerveless to his sides, and he uttered a deep groan. Again Todd raised the head, and dashed it down, and that time he heard a crashing sound, and he felt satisfied that he had killed the man.
There was now no further use in holding the throat of the dead man, and Todd let him go.
"Ha!—ha!" he said. "That is done. That is one—Ha! Now am I once more lord and master in my own house—once again I reign here supreme, and can do what it may please me to do. Ha! this is glorious! Why, it is like old times coming back to me again. I feel as if I could open my shop in the morning, and again polish off the neighbourhood. It seems as if all that had happened since last I stropped a razor above, had been but a dream. The arrest—the trial—the escape—Newgate—the wood at Hampstead! All a dream—a dream!"
He was silent, and the excitement of the moment of triumph had passed away.
"No—no," he said. "No! It is too real—much too real! Oh, it is real, indeed. I am the fugitive! The haunted man without a home—without a friend; and I have this night nor any other night any place in which I may lay my head in safety. I am as one persecuted by all the world, without hope—without pity! What will now become of me?"
A low groan came upon Todd's ear.
He started and looked around him. He tried hard to pierce with his hall-shut eyes the intense darkness, but he could not ; and muttering to himself—"Not vet dead—not yet dead?" he crept to an obscure corner of the cellar, and opened a door that led by a ladder to the floor of the back parlour, where there was a trap door, under which the large table usually stood, and which he could open from below.
In the parlour Todd got a light, and feeling then still disturbed about the groan that he had heard below, he armed himself with an iron bar that belonged to the outer door, and with this in his right hand, and the light in his left, he crept back again to the cellar.