The String of Pearls (1850), p. 636

A glance at the two men who lay there was sufficient to satisfy him that they were no more; and after then taking from them a couple of pairs of pistols, and a small sum of money, he crept back again to the parlour. As he did so, he heard St. Dunstan's clock strike the hour of four.
"Four!" he said. "Four. It will not be light for nearly two hours yet, and I may rest myself awhile and think. Yes, it is necessary now that I should think; for I have time—a little time—to do so, and much, oh, so much to think of. There's some of my own brandy, too, in the parlour, that's a comfort."
The fire was still burning in the parlour grate. Todd raked the glowing embers together with the iron bar, and then he took a good draught at the brandy. It revived him most wonderfully, and he gave one of his old chuckles, as he muttered—
"Oh, that I could get a few whom I could name in such a position as I had yon man in in the cellar a short time since. That would be well, indeed. Ha! I am, after all, rather lucky, though."
A sharp knock come, at this moment at the outer door of the shop, and Todd sprang in alarm to his feet.

CHAPTER CXLIX.
TODD IS IN GREAT PERIL IN THE EARLY MORNING IN LONDON.

The silence that ensued after that knock at his door, for he had become to consider it as his again, was like the silence of the grave. The only sound that Todd heard then, was the painful beating of his own heart.
The guilty man was full of the most awful apprehensions.
"What is it?" he said. "Who is it?—who can it be? Surely, no one for me. There is no one who saw me. No—no! It cannot be. It is some accidental sound only. I—begin—to doubt if it were a knock at all.—Oh, no, it was no knock."
"Bang! came the knock again."
Todd actually started and uttered a cry of terror, and then he crouched down and crept towards the door. He might, to be sure, have made his escape from the premises, with some little trouble, by the way he had got into them; but he was most anxious to find out who it was that demanded admittance to the old shop in Fleet Street, with all its bad associations and character of terror; so he crept towards the door, and just as he reached it, the knock came again.
If the whole of his future hopes—we allude to the future that might be for him in this world only, for Todd had no hopes nor thoughts of another—had depended upon his preserving silence and stillness, he could not have done so, and he gave another start.
"Hush—hush he then said. "Hush! I must be very cautious now—very cautious, indeed. Hush—hush!"
He then, in atone of voice that he strove to make as different as possible from his ordinary tone, and which he was very successful indeed in doing, he said—
"Who is there?"
"It's me," said a voice, in defiance of all probability or grammar, "It's only me."
"Oh! what a mercy," said Todd.
"Open the door. Is it you, Joe? Why didn't you come home, eh? You might have got away easy enough. I have brought you something good to eat, old fellow, and some news.''
"Ah, what news, my boy?"
"Why, they say that old Todd is in London."
Todd fell to the floor in a sitting posture, and uttered a deep groan. It was some few moments before he could summon strength and courage to speak to the man again. But he began to feel the necessity of doing something, for the