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....