“It means what it means,” answered Slim in his shrill voice. His eyes bore an awful hatred. He stood, leaning far forward, as if ready to pounce upon Joh Fredersen, and his hands became claws. “It means that Freder, your son is not to be found—it means that he, perhaps, wanted to look on with his own eyes at what becomes of Metropolis by his father’s will and the hands of a few lunatics—it means, as the now half-witted servants told me, that your son left the safety of his home, setting out in company with a man who was wearing the uniform of a workman of Metropolis, and that it might well be difficult to seek your son in this city, in which, by your will, madness has broken out—the madness to destroy, Mr. Fredersen, the madness to ruin!—and which has not even light to lighten its madness—!” Slim wanted to continue, but he did not do so. Joh Fredersen’s right hand made a senseless, fumbling gesture through the air. The torch fell from his hand, continuing to burn on the floor. The mightiest man of Metropolis swung half around, as though he had been shot, and collapsed empty-eyed, back into the chair by the writing-table. Slim stooped forward, to look Joh Fredersen in the face. Before these eyes he was struck silent. Ten—twenty—thirty seconds long he did not dare to draw a breath. His horrified gaze followed the aimless movements of Joh Fredersen’s fingers, which were fumbling about as though seeking for some lever of rescue, which they could not find. Then, suddenly, the hand rose a little from the table-top. The forefinger straightened as though admonishing to attention. Joh Fredersen murmured something. Then he laughed. It was a tired, sad little laugh, at the sound of which Slim thought he felt the hair of his head begin to bristle. Joh Fredersen was talking to himself. What was he saying? Slim bent over him. He saw the forefinger of Joh Fredersen’s right hand gliding slowly across the shiny table-top, as though he were following and spelling out the lines of a book. Joh Fredersen’s soft voice said: “_Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap._...” Then Joh Fredersen’s forehead fell on to the smooth wood, and, unceasingly, in a tone which, except for a dead woman, no one had ever heard from Joh Fredersen, his soft voice cried the name of his son.... But the cries remained unanswered.... Up the steps of the New Tower of Babel there crept a man. It seldom happened in the great Metropolis, Joh Fredersen’s time-saving city, that anyone used the stairs. They were reserved in case of all the lifts and the Pater-noster being over-crowded, of the cessation of all means of transit, of the outbreak of fire and similar accidents—improbable occurrences in this perfect settlement of human beings. But the improbable had happened. Piled up, one above the other, the lifts, which came hurtling down, blocked up their shafts, and the cells of the Pater-noster seemed to have been bent and charred by a hellish heat, smouldering up from the depths.