"Mistake. Further inquiry."
The first secretary quivered, stooped lower, rose and retired on soundless soles. Joh Fredersen's left eyebrow rose a trifle as he watched the retreating figure — only as long as was possible without turning 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, his chief characteristic uncertainty, before the great concentrated, almighty certainty, which was called Joh Fredersen, and was his father.
The first 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 through the room.
One chair was empty. On seven others sat seven men, pursuing the numbers which sprang unceasingly from the invisible.
A lamp glowed white-red.
New York spoke.
A lamp sparkled up: white-green.
London began to speak.
Freder looked up at the clock opposite the door, commanding 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 narrow windows which ran from floor to ceiling. Cascades of light frothed against the panes. Outside, deep down, at the foot of the New Tower of Babel boiled the Metropolis. But in this room not a sound was to be heard 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 as 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 head, 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. Then Joh Fredersen's voice 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 the flexible keyboard. Soundlessly were orders flashed out to waiting men.
"The door opened. Nobody was announced. Nobody comes to me unannounced. Only my son."
A light below glass — a question. Joh Fredersen extinguished the light. The first secretary entered and crossed over to the great Master of Metropolis.
"You were right. It was a mistake. It has been rectified," he reported, expressionlessly.
"Thank you." Not a look. Not a gesture. "The G — bank has been notified to pay you your salary. Good evening."
The young man stood motionless. Three, four, five, six seconds flicked off the gigantic time-piece. Two empty eyes burnt in the chalky face of the young man, impressing their brand of fear upon Freder's vision.
One of Joh Fredersen's shoulders made a leisurely movement.
"Good evening," said the young man, in a strangled tone.
He went.
"Why did you dismiss him, father?" the son asked.
"I have no use for him," said Joh Fredersen, still not having looked at his son.
"Why not, father?"
"I have no use for people who start when one speaks to them," said the Master over Metropolis.
"Perhaps he felt ill… perhaps he is worrying about somebody who is dear to him."
"Possibly. Perhaps too, he was still under the effects of the too long night in Yoshiwara. Freder, avoid assuming people to be good, innocent and victimized just because they suffer. He who suffers has sinned, against himself and against others."
"You do not suffer, father?"
"No."
"You are quite free from sin?"
"The time of sin and suffering lies behind me, Freder."
"And if this man, now… I have never seen such a thing… but I believe that men resolved to end their lives go out of a room as he did… "
"Perhaps."
"And suppose you were to hear, to-morrow, that he were dead… that would leave you untouched…?" "Yes."
Freder was silent.
His father's hand slipped over a lever, and pressed it down. The white lamps in all the rooms surrounding the brain-pan of the New Tower of Babel went out. The Master over Metropolis had informed the circular world around him that he did not wish to be disturbed without urgent cause.
"I cannot tolerate it," he continued, "when a man, working upon Metropolis, at my right hand, in common with me, denies the only great advantage he possesses above the machine."
"And what is that, father?"
"To take delight in work," said the Master over Metropolis. Freder's hand glided over his hair, then rested on its glorious fairness. He opened his lips, as though he wanted to say something; but he remained silent.
"Do you suppose," Joh Fredersen went on, "that I need my secretaries' pencils to check American stock-exchange reports? The index tables of Rotwang's trans-ocean trumpets are a hundred times more reliable and swift than clerk's brains and hands. But, by the accuracy of the machine I can measure the accuracy of the men, by the breath of the machine, the lungs of the men who compete with her."
"And the man you just dismissed, and who is doomed (for to be dismissed by you, father, means going down!.. Down!.. Down!..) he lost his breath, didn't he?" "Yes."
"Because he was a man and not a machine… " "Because he denied his humanity before the machine." Freder raised his head and his deeply troubled eyes. "I cannot follow you now, father," he said, as if in pain. The expression of patience on Joh Fredersen's face deepened.
"The man," he said quietly, "was my first secretary! The salary he drew was eight times as large as that of the last."
"That was synonymous with the obligation to perform eight times as much. To me. Not to himself. To-morrow the fifth secretary will be in his place. In a week he will have rendered four of the others superfluous. I have use for that man."
"Because he saves four others."
"No, Freder. Because he takes delight in the work of four others. Because he throws himself entirely into his work — throws himself as desiringly as if it were a woman."
Freder was silent. Joh Fredersen looked at his son. He looked at him carefully.
"You have had some experience?" he asked.
The eyes of the boy, beautiful and sad, slipped past him, out into space. Wild, white light frothed against the windows, and, in going out, left the sky behind, as a black velvet cloth over Metropolis.