His Excellency the Governor by Leonid Andreyev

In the next few days no letters came. The sendings stopped abruptly, as by preconcerted action, and the silence that followed held something sinister and unusual. The sudden cessation gave the feeling that the end was not yet come, that somewhere in the void something was taking its course; that a new phase had entered into the Thought, and was shaping things in secret. And time sped by, with a swoop of its mighty pinions -- each upward swing a day, each downward sweep a night!

Twice the Pike had interviewed her Excellency at a most unusual hour. He scolded the man in the anteroom who helped him off with his coat, rowing him in energetic whispers as though he were one of his own policemen, or a cabby. And when the coat was off and he was drawing on his fresh white gloves, he bent his sleek head condescendingly to the fellow's side-whiskers, gnashed his musty-tobacco-stained teeth, and held his half-gloved hand, with fingers dangling limp, close over his nose. (He always did this at the slightest contact with a lackey.). Then, assuming the manner of a man of the world, he mounted the stairs.