Page:Thea von Harbou Metropolis eng 1927.pdf/19

 METROPOLIS narrow windows which ran from Boor to ceiling. Cascades of

light frothed against the panes. Outside, deep down, at the foot of the New Tower of Babel boiled tbe Metropolis. But in this room not a sound was to be beard but the incessantly dripping numbers. The Rotwang-process had rendered the walls and windows sound-proof.

In this room, which was at the same time crowned and subjugated by the mighty time-piece, the clock, indicating numbers, nothing had any significance but numbers. The son of the great Master of Metropolis realised that, as long a~ numbers came dripping out of the invisible no word, which was not a number, and coming from a visible mouth, could lay claim to the least attention. Therefore he stood, gazing unceasingly'at his father's hea-d.

watching the monstrous hand of the clock sweep onward, inevitably, like a sickle, a reaping scythe, pass through the skull of his father, without harming him, climb upwards, up the number-beset ring, creep around the heights and sink again, to repeat the vain blow of the scythe. At last the white-red light went out. A voice ceased. Then the white-green light went out, too. Silence. . The hands of those writing stopped and, for the space of a moment, they sat as though paralysed, relaxed, exhausted. Tn Joh Fredersen's voi~ said with a dry gentleness: Thank you, to-morrow. And without looking round: "What do you want, my boy?" The seven strangers quitted the now silent room. Freder crossed to his father, whose glance was sweeping the lists of captured number-drops. Freder's eyes clung to the blue -. metal plate near his father's right hand. "How did you know it was I?" he asked, softly. Joh Fredersen did not look up at him. Although his face had gained an expression of patience and pride at the first question which his son put to him he had lost none of his alertness. He glanced at the clock. His fingers glided over

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