And then there was a voice at his shoulder, saying, "Excuse me, sir, a moment of your time…"
Faust stopped and turned, prepared to chastise the importunate wretch who had the temerity to delay him. He looked into the doorway but could see no person. He was about to go on when he heard a whirring sound in the air. His rapid brain told him that something was amiss; but the insight came to him almost simultaneous with the crashing of a blunt object of considerable hardness against his temple. He saw stars for a moment, and great shooting comets, and then knew nothing as black Unconsciousness gathered him into her dark mantle.
CHAPTER 4
While this was going on, in another part of town, at the little tavern called the Pied Cow, a tall, yellow-haired jackanapes of a fellow was having a morning bowl of borscht at one of the rustic tables set outside. He was a tall, thin fellow, cleanshaven in the new Italian fashion, his clothing a gentleman's cast-offs, his head o'er-topped by a mass of unruly curls. He sat now, thin features intent, red lips pursed as he surveyed the street.
This jackanapes, whose name was Mack, and whose sobriquet was the Club, a reference to the instrument that he carried in his belt, and used more often than an honest man would, had come to Cracow, some say from Troyes in Frankland, others from the stews of Londontown in distant England, to seek his fortune. Mack the Club was not prepared to let his fortune wait its own sweet time to call. He was an enterprising rogue, quick-witted and not unintelligent, who had spent a year in a monastery learning the scrivener's trade before deciding to follow more direct methods of making his fortune.
Hearing of Faust, he had spied upon the learned doctor, well aware of Faust's reputation as a necromancer who had won great wealth in this world in the form of precious metals used in his alchemical pursuits, and gifts and souvenirs from grateful kings who had found the doctor's remedies efficacious in the treatment of their myriad woes.