t seemed to
him that Death would remain standing there, and would not go away until
those people had been captured, until the bombs had been taken from
them, until they had been placed in a strong prison. There Death was
standing in the corner, and would not go away--it could not go away,
even as an obedient sentinel stationed on guard by a superior's will and
order.

"At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!" this phrase kept
ringing, changing its tone continually: now it was cheerfully mocking,
now angry, now dull and obstinate. It sounded as if a hundred wound-up
gramophones had been placed in his room, and all of them, one after
another, were shouting with idiotic repetition the words they had been
made to shout:

"At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!"

And suddenly, this one o'clock in the afternoon to-morrow, which but a
short while ago was not in any way different from other hours, which
was only a quiet movement of the hand along the dial of his gold watch,
assumed an ominous finality, sprang out of the dial, began to live
separately, stretched itself into an enormously huge black pole which
cut all life in two. It seemed as if no other hours had existed before
it and no other hours would exist after it--as if this hour alone,
insolent and presumptuous, had a right to a certain peculiar existence.

"Well, what do you want?" asked the Minister angrily, muttering between
his teeth.

The gramophone shouted:

"At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!" and the black pole
smiled and bowed. Gnashing his teeth, the Minister rose in his bed to
a sitting posture, leaning his face on the palms of his hands--he
positively could not sleep on that dreadful night.

Clasping his face in his swollen, perfumed palms, he pictured to himself
with horrifying clearness how on the following morning, not knowing
anything of the plot against his life, he would have risen, would have
drunk his coffee, not knowing anything, and then would have put on his
coat in the hallway. And neither he, nor the doorkeeper who would have
handed him his fur coat, nor the lackey who would have brought him the
coffee, would have known that it was utterly useless to drink coffee,
and to put on the coat, since a few instants later, everything--the
fur coat and his body and the coffee within it--would be destroyed by an
explosion, would be seized by death. The doorkeeper would have opened
the glass door.... He, the ami