Page:Thea von Harbou Metropolis eng 1927.pdf/76

 METROPOLIS Right and left, spiral walls, hillowing outwards, swept away to each side.

That was all Sliro saw. But from the empty depths hefore

him came a white shimmer. no stronger than if coming from a field of snow. On this shimmer there Boated a voice, that of a murderer and of one being murdered.

"Light, September'" said Sliro with a gulp. An unbearable feeling of thirst gnawed at his throat. The room slowly grew brighter, as thougb the light were coming unwillingly. Slim saw. he was standing in one of the windings of the round room. which was shaped like a shell.

He was standing between the heights and the depths, separated by a low banister from the emptiness from which came the snow-like light and the murderer's voice and the voice of his victim. He stepped to the banister, and leaned far

over it. A milk-white disc, lighted from beneath and luminous. At the edge of the disc, like a dark, rambling pattern on a plate-rim. women, crouching, kneeling there, in their gorgeous attire, as though drunken. Some had dropped their

foreheads to the ground, their hands clutched above their ebony hair. Some crouched. huddled together in clumps, head pressed to head. symbols of fear. Some were swaying rhythmically from side to side as if calling on gods. Some were weeping. Some were as if dead.

But they all seemed to be the hand-maids of the man on the snow-light illuminated disk. The man wore the whilte silk woven for comparatively few in Metropolis. He wore the soft shoes in which the beloved sons of mighty fathers seemed to caress the earth. But

the silk hung in tatters about the body of the man and the shoes looked as though the feet within them bled. "Is that the man for whom you are looking, sir?" asked a Levantine cousin from out September, leaning confidently towards slim's ear. Slim did not answer. He was looking at the man. "At least," continued September, "it is the youngster who came here yesterday by the same cal as you to-day. And the devil take him for it! He has turned my revolving shell into the fore-court of helll He has been roasting soulsl I have

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