Page 321 - The Grotesque Children's Book
P. 321
“Every day!?”
“Every day but Sunday. It’s where I paint Lady Bianca’s portrait.”
“I’m no thief, Master Allori.”
“Of course you aren’t. Which is why they’d never suspect you.”
“I don’t want any part of this. I don’t want to know even that you’re plotting this.”
“Too late! I’ve confided in you. And if you tell anyone there’s a plot to steal the jewels,
it would be my word against yours, and whom would they believe. You, do you think?”
“I’m walking away right now.”
“They’d be worth some two or three thousand florins. Half would be for you.”
Santi sat back down.
“There’s a good boy. Again, if you don’t want to join me in this, you don’t have to. I
would understand. I’m just trying to get us some insurance in the event that the Duke decides
not to pay. And your part is very simple. Just come into the room while I’m painting, under the
guise, say, of bringing me more pigments and cloths. I’ll thank you and take from you all the
pigments and only some of the cloths. The rest of the cloths you use to take some of the jewels
out of room. We’ll meet up here at the Bow and Dart. You’ll slip me the jewels. I’ll give you
all but one of them to a colleague who will take them to Antwerp and sell them, and bring us the
cash two days later.
“All but one of them?”
“Yes. I will accidentally drop one of the jewels in the alchemist’s office, and when the
guards go a-looking, he’ll of course be of foremost suspicion. By that time, the jewels will be
long gone and sold.”
“But what if we get caught?”
“At what point would we be caught?”
“Say, right away in the room? What if her Lady Bianca sees me taking jewels from her
box?
“Then I should out loud, yelling for you to put them down, you protest you were just
looking at them, and I chastise you saying they don’t belong to you and never do that again.
We’d be out all that money, but we wouldn’t have done anything.”
“What if, what if we get caught later?”
“Later, for you, would simply be here at the Bow and Dart, and who’d be watching?
Look, try this right now. Hand me something, anything...pretend you are bringing out something
hidden from your pockets. You’ll see that no one is paying us the least attention.”
Santi did, and they weren’t.
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