for the axe. It was impossible for him to carry the axe through the
street in his hands. And if hidden under his coat he would still have
had to support it with his hand, which would have been noticeable. Now
he had only to put the head of the axe in the noose, and it would hang
quietly under his arm on the inside. Putting his hand in his coat
pocket, he could hold the end of the handle all the way, so that it did
not swing; and as the coat was very full, a regular sack in fact, it
could not be seen from outside that he was holding something with the
hand that was in the pocket. This noose, too, he had designed a
fortnight before.
When he had finished with this, he thrust his hand into a little opening
between his sofa and the floor, fumbled in the left corner and drew out
the _pledge_, which he had got ready long before and hidden there. This
pledge was, however, only a smoothly planed piece of wood the size and
thickness of a silver cigarette case. He picked up this piece of wood
in one of his wanderings in a courtyard where there was some sort of
a workshop. Afterwards he had added to the wood a thin smooth piece
of iron, which he had also picked up at the same time in the street.
Putting the iron which was a little the smaller on the piece of wood,
he fastened them very firmly, crossing and re-crossing the thread round
them; then wrapped them carefully and daintily in clean white paper and
tied up the parcel so that it would be very difficult to untie it. This
was in order to divert the attention of the old woman for a time, while
she was trying to undo the knot, and so to gain a moment. The iron strip
was added to give weight, so that the woman might not guess the first
minute that the "thing" was made of wood. All this had been stored by
him beforehand under the sofa. He had only just got the pledge out when
he heard someone suddenly about in the yard.
"It struck six long ago."
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