“But it’s too soon for that,” Tiemen snapped at her, in a friendly way, “how many times have we rehearsed this, and you keep messing it up over and over.”
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Steel said with prearranged mortification — now it was Mrs. Steel again — and she withdrew her hand. Hardly had she done so, however, than Tiemen leaped forward, dug into the half-open drawer, and took out the revolver. He stuck it into his pocket, and with a triumphant glance at Mrs. Steel he said to our fellow, “There — and now you no longer have anything to be afraid of.”
“I can see that the rings say nothing to you (that is, she was speaking French, and she had literally said, ‘. . ne vous disent rien’), so I’ll show you something else. Perhaps women’s cigarette cases?”
“Women’s cigarette cases, after all, were not in the program (‘I’ve never said a word to you about women’s cigarette cases,’ Tiemen muttered in the style of an actor’s ‘aside,’ ‘and it’s unbelievable how forgetful you are’), but fine, bring them. But don’t forget that nothing is going to appeal to us, not even among the things that will lead quite naturally to the bracelet.”
“I’d rather get right to it.”
“Right you are,” said Tiemen, suddenly irritated by God-knows-what, “right you are, at least we’ll get through it faster, and why should I make so much fuss if I see that this nincompoop loses all the same, one way or another?”
“What nincompoop?” asked he who lived between two doors.
Mrs. Steel covered her mouth with her hand, and, brushing back her ringlets, she choked discreetly.
“Oh you!” and Tiemen, like a Gypsy cattle-rancher at a cattle-ranching Gypsy, winked at her, who was again no longer Mrs. Steel. “But let’s move on,” he roared, with his eyes following the saleswoman carrying the bracelet.
“Now,” Tiemen moved on, settling into an armchair that the doorman had pulled up for him, “now, as you know, in no time it will come to the orchestrated confluence of people on the sidewalk across the street. The gunfire — at random— which will then break out will divert your attention.” (Tiemen turned to the door.) “My comrade will use this distraction to swap the actual bracelet for a fake one.”
Tiemen fell silent, he was gawking at the street, where there was nothing at all; a moment later he started pounding angrily on the armchair. This failure of direction was so infectiously awkward that it brought about embarrassment even for him who had come here to steal for real. An awkward pause came about: Mrs. Steel was wiping her mouth; Tiemen was pacing nervously; the doorman walked with an apologetic expression from the armchair to the door; and the virtuous thief, him there, was seized by the kind of feeling an actor has when his scene is cut short by an order to start all over again.
“Alright then!” an angry Tiemen mumbled. “And after all those rehearsals! Missing extras!. .”
But just then, a sudden and deep relief: On the sidewalk across the street, from out of nowhere, there was a dramatically riled-up mob, and the mock gunfire started its rat-tat-tat. Tiemen spread out again comfortably and shouted eagerly, “Hurray! Attention diverted! Is your attention diverted?”
“It is,” the saleswoman said with such affected intensity that it would have been an insult anywhere else.
“Good!” said Tiemen, and after nodding at the other fellow with the smug swagger of a virtuoso bandleader who, having provided the first couple of bars, leaves the rote-performing orchestra to its own devices, he said, “Now perform!”
Yet here there rang out such a dissonance that Tiemen, the bandleader departing nonchalantly, promptly returned to the conductor’s stand.
“Perform!. . But how? I don’t have a fake. I don’t have anything to replace the bracelet with! A fake! You haven’t said a word about a fake.”
“You haven’t said so much as a word to me about a fake, not a word,” Tiemen teased, while Mrs. Steel held her sides, “but of course I haven’t said a word to you about it. . Since when do we speak of obvious things?. .”
“Idealist!” the saleswoman coughed.
“But how many times have I told you,” Tiemen yelled, and for real now, “that I don’t want any blood unless it’s necessary. And when there’s no blood, there’s slickness and ingenuity, surely that goes without saying. — Idealist? A moron! He wants to steal, the hero, he wants to steal when it’s already gone out of style. Or perhaps you’ve never even heard of deceit? Deceit, my little chickadee! So what’s his business among thieves if he doesn’t know how to deceive, what business does he have among people, the moron? Why do you make everything so difficult for yourself? My word — out with the fake.”
“I don’t have a fake. You haven’t said a word about a fake. I’m not pretending, I don’t know how to. I want to steal honestly.”
“Steal honestly? Steal honestly?” Tiemen was dashing about rakishly. “Fine! As you wish. But don’t count on me, eh? You have a club. So hit her with the club.” And, solemnly, “Otherwise there’s no bracelet for you. And you know how much depends on the bracelet.”
“Too late!” And Mrs. Steel straightened up impressively; it was Mrs. Steel, the whole Mrs. Steel from Benedictine Mill, and her certainty that he recognized her dazzlingly was so banal somehow that she condescendingly uttered a “yes, it’s me,” not caring about how dangerously she was compromising the majesty of the appointed period with a familiar theatrical intermezzo: “Too late! Not only did you want to rob me, on top of that you were going to murder me. Rob me, murder me — a weak and helpless woman.”
And she grabbed him firmly by the shoulder. — He looked around, they were alone: Tiemen, the saleswoman, and himself, for the doorman, though present, had assumed in the meantime the convincing quality of a permanent prop.
“Shoot her,” he cried, trying to extricate himself. “Come on, you have her revolver! Shoot her, or don’t you see that she’s tricked me?”
But the saleswoman, having torn the club away from him, again burst into laughter; so Tiemen lit himself a cigarette and spoke precisely as though his words had but one purpose: to set to music the arc described by the tossed, still-burning match:
“Shoot her! But what are you thinking? Get my hands dirty. . These days it’s no longer done, in our circles it’s no longer done. . Tricked you! Tricked you! What was the poor thing to do if you weren’t going to get on with it yourself?”
Some bell started ringing. Remarkably, you could tell that even the bell had been coached, “but,” he said to himself, “credit where credit’s due: it is masterfully imitating the bell of an impregnable cash register, roused by unannounced thieves,” and at the same time this jangling also produced a darkness that swept down upon the street, drowning its as-though-green-house-grown traffic. But the bell also produced a light, erupting from the shop’s hidden sources, that seemed to dissolve in the milky silence; and it also produced shadows on the partition between the shop and its back room. Those shadows numbered four, yet no sooner had he blinked than they materialized: Look, he was encircled by four policemen with martial mustaches and the expression of magnanimous bailiffs who have never inflicted more torture than the offender could stand before passing out. No! There were five of these individuals, but the fifth had the quality of a commander who never even resorts to torture, and it was Mr. Steel, with the heroically puffed-out chest of a man ready for anything life might throw at him.