Death Demands an Audience [antikvár]

CHAPTER IAT FOUR FIFTY-THREE o'clock on the afternoon of January eleventh dusk was coming down over the city. The dark days were by no means over. Fifth Avenue was already a river of light, a swiftly moving river whose granite banks, towering precipitately into the cold evening sky, were slashed with the brilliance of electric signs in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. Parisian decorators, English tobacconists and retailers without number cried their wares aloud in crashing color on the twilight. Traffic jammed the roadbed from curb to curb and the pavements were full. New York was beginning to go home. There was a bite in the frosty air. It felt like snow.At Forty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue Garth and Campbell's windows shone through the gloom, pale yellow rectangles that held the cream of what the city had to offer to the luxury trade in showmanship and content. Fur wraps that could be drawn through a ring, outrageous hats at still more outrageous prices, laces like star dust, gowns and bags and lingerie and perfumes in next year's modes beckoned enticingly to the passers-by.In one window a centaur carried a nude girl wrapped insufficiently in a white tunic toward a lair of ermine and mink and silver fox, in another a small jeweled dagger and a cup of coffee gave point to an exquisite pair of green suede gauntlets thrown down on a marble bench within7