Madigan [antikvár]

It was half past five in the morning. The Police Commissioner took in the fact through a single despairing eye. Then, holding the watch by the end of the strap as if it were somehow distasteful, he reached out and allowed the thing to drop from his fingers onto the top of the bedside table. The resulting small clatter annoyed him disproportionately. It came as the most recent of a long series of idiotic noisesdistant auto horns, shouts of late-hour drinkers from the streets, odd poppings and creakings within the old apartment itselfall of which had served to provide an unrhythmic accompaniment to the thoughts which troubled him and which had, it seemed, spent the night running across his mind on continuous film. He was as tense and tired now as when he had curled up in the bed in both the position and mood of a supplicant six hours earlier. He groaned. He opened his eyes and then quickly closed them. He yawned. He groaned again. Then he granted himself the satisfaction of one loud, crisp obscenity, threw back the bedclothes and drew his long frame from the bed. He put on his dressing gown, took cigarettes and matches from the table and stepped through the half-opened french doors and onto the small balcony which overlooked the gardens of his own and the neighboring brownstone houses. High above the roofs and chimney pots of the houses opposite him across the gardens, the rays of a not quite risen sun caught the incongruous but beautiful spire of the Chrysler Building some thirty blocks to the south and painted it a delicate pink.He leaned against the side railing of the balcony and3