Tiemen had the look of a person at an appointed meeting, and our walker the look of a person who, upon arriving at the appointed meeting-place, has found the one whose absence would have surprised him, if not discomfited him. Tiemen took him by the sleeve and led him to the display.
“Till now, I have never robbed a jeweler’s,” he said, “but your first time is worthy of something special. Don’t worry, it’ll go smoothly. You see the beautiful platinum bracelet with rubies? Your mission, as you know, is to steal that bracelet, that one there, and nothing else. That’s what we agreed. If you fail. . But you know that everything depends on your not failing.”
As he was saying this, Tiemen was pointing out a bracelet wrapped around a wax arm on a plush green pillow, where it was obviously boasting. He would have gladly nodded, and not only with his head, but with words as well, that it went without saying, but he couldn’t, for again there was that unpainful cramp in his jaw, which made him salivate such that it wasn’t enough to swallow, not being able to swallow.
All of a sudden, he sensed that Tiemen, behind his back, was surreptitiously slipping into his hand something that stood out for the striking disproportion of its weight (it was very heavy) to its dimensions, which were minute. And this disproportion taught him, without his needing to look, that it was a wooden club lined with lead.
“Make no mistake, the shop girl is alone. What I gave you (after the words ‘what I gave you’ he became certain that Tiemen would never, ever pronounce the word ‘club’) — hide it up your sleeve. Yes, it’ll fit, it’s the right size. But don’t you go using it before I give you the signal. I spill blood only if it can’t be avoided. I don’t like blood, you know, and I hope I succeed in making the robbery easy for you, so you’ll find murder unnecessary. But it’s not so much about avoiding the guillotine, but that it’s more elegant without bloodletting.”
All of a sudden a doorman approached them from behind, and in a manner that left not the slightest doubt that the word “guillotine” was the prearranged sign for him to step out onto that stage. He opened the door for them with a deep bow, saying:
“If I’m not mistaken, you’re the two gentlemen who are supposed to steal the platinum bracelet with rubies. Right this way!” Tiemen nodded quite affably toward the doorman, and they went in. The saleswoman was, in all sincerity, Mrs. Steel. But only for a few seconds. Before you knew it, the saleswoman, while remaining a saleswoman, ceased being Mrs. Steel. The fault lay with a hairy wart, about which our hero (and this annoyed him) was altogether incapable of saying whether it might have come about immediately, or whether he had simply overlooked it at first. A few seconds later, however, and here was Mrs. Steel again, and this despite the hairy wart, which went on as a hairy wart, but which the genuine Mrs. Steel — he was sure of it — did not have. He couldn’t handle it, he lost his cool, he was already letting down the club hidden up his sleeve when this shop girl, bowing gracefully, said:
“Oh no, I’m not Mrs. Steel. But what can I get you? Perhaps that beautiful platinum ruby bracelet that you, planning your burglary, have been eyeing for so long? I’ll get it for you.”
“Nowise have we a robbery planned,” Tiemen responded, trying primarily to deceive those listeners, of whom there happened to be none, who might have known Old Czech syntax better than he, who hadn’t the least notion of it, being almost illiterate, “and that bracelet, magnificent though it is, is not the bauble we wish for above all, albeit nowise excluding its purchase, should it come to that. . First let’s see the rings,” he added in modern Czech, but apparently just to clear away — in vain, ultimately — the impression of that Czech which he took for the Czech of Chelčický’s Net of Faith.
It’s just as obvious from the retort of the hero, put off by Tiemen’s chosen speech to the point that he exploded, “What’s with this talk, now?. . If you please!”
But Tiemen, as if he had expected the crotchety reprimand, already had a gesture prepared, which meant: “Leave it to me, alright? I know what I’m doing.”
But just then the saleswoman returned with a velvet tray full of rings, which she very slowly placed on the counter. At the same time, she moseyed with a serene look over to Tiemen’s eyes, then she moseyed with a serene look over to the other’s eyes, thereby expressing that she was rebuking them, if only carelessly. When she had done so, she lowered her suddenly as-though-enamored eyes to the mat, saying, “Are you perhaps talking about the revolver. .? Because if you are perhaps talking about the revolver. .,” and with her left hand she opened some drawer, into which she plunged her right hand, which she left there with a meaningfully threatening mischievousness.