Page:Thea von Harbou Metropolis eng 1927.pdf/18

 METROPOLIS Joh Fredersen was comparing the figures of the evening exchange report with the lists which lay before him. Once his voice sounded. vibrationless: "Mistake. Further inquiry." The first secretary quivered, stooped lower, rose and retired on soundless soles. Joh Fredersen's left eyebrow rose a tr·ille as he watched the retreating figure-only as long as was possible without tW'ning his head. A thin. concise penal-line crossed out a name. The white-red light glowed. The voice spoke. The numbers dropped down through the great room. In the brain-pan of Metropolis.' Freder remained standing, motionless. by the door. He was not sure as to whether or not his father had noticed him. Whenever he entered this room he was once more a boy of ten years old, bis chief characteristic uncertainty, before the great concentrated, almighty certainty, which was called Joh Fredersen, and was his father. The nrst secretary walked past him, greeting him silently, respectfully. He resembled a competitor leaving the course, beaten. The chalky face of the young man hovered for one moment before Freder's eyes like a big, white, lacquer mask. Then it was blotted out. Numbers dropped down througb the room. One chair was empty." On seven others sat seven men, pursuing the ~umbers which sprang unceasingly from the invisible. A lamp glowed wlllte-red. New York spoke. A lamp sparkled up: white-green. London began to speak. Freder looked up at the clock opposite the door, corom,anding the whole wall like a gigantic wheel. It was the same clock, which, from the heights of the New Tower of Babel, flooded by searchlights, flicked off its second-sparks over the great Metropolis. Joh Fredersen's head stood out against it. It was a crushing yet accepted halo above the brain of"Metropolis. The searchlights raved in a delirium of colour upon the 23