He grabbed her under her arms, lifted her effortlessly from the floor, and waited until she had stopped struggling. Her face was now level with his.
“Mouse,” was all he said. The way and manner with which he intoned her name suggested that her final hours were at hand.
He was the watchman of the hotel. Each night drew him alone on his rounds through the Aurora, just like Mouse, and no one knew what his real name was.
He was big – almost twice as tall as Mouse – and his shoulders seemed to her to be as wide as the corridor. His hands were like shovels, and seemed to have been made only to tear off the heads of thieves like her. He had an enormous, flat face, whose cheekbones were so far apart from one another that from close up, Mouse could see them only out of the corners of her eyes: His body, coarse as though it were carved out of solid rock, took up her entire field of vision.
“Mouse,” he said again, and this time it sounded even more threatening.
“Let me go!” She tried to kick him with her feet, which despite her fear seemed a little ridiculous. A gnat would hardly have been more dangerous to him.
In fact, after one more unfathomable look, he set her on the ground, but still held her arm fast with his left hand, while his right began to search her uniform.
“The pockets,” he said.
In fact, she was quite happy that he was holding on to her. Who knew if her trembling knees could have held her of their own power?
“Pockets,” he rumbled again.
It took her a moment to realize what he wanted of her. It was a little bit as though she were trying to decipher the gruntings of an animal.
With shaking fingers, she turned out the insides of her pockets. Out of one fell a hazelnut. That was all.
The Roundsman raised an eyebrow.
“That’s hardly anything,” she said sharply, because she remembered that attack was supposed to be the best defense. But whoever had come up with that saying had probably done so in the comfortable safety of an armchair, not in a moment of greatest danger.
“Hmm?” he grunted, and bent forward threateningly. She grew dizzy at the sight of this human tower.
“I didn’t swipe anything,” she said doggedly.
That was stupid, it occurred to her. He had not even accused her of stealing something. Now he knows that you have a bad conscience.
The danger of the Roundsman was not so much his size and power. It was more the fact that one underestimated him. Sure, he was big, and could send you to the beyond any time with a single blow. But at the same time his monosyllables make him appear clumsy as an overgrown child – and Mouse could not let go of the thought that he generated this impression entirely on purpose. Secretly, she was convinced the Roundsman possessed a razor-sharp cunning. When he wanted to, he could move noiselessly as a cat despite his colossal form. Sometimes he unexpectedly stood right behind someone when they least expected him. Not to forget each moment when he seemed to be in several places at once. And even when he was not actually there himself, his eyes and ears were ever-present.
In his eyes, she read the knowledge that she had stolen the brooch. He knew it, like he did every time.
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