With a panting sound Georgi made to open the door of the taxi and to jump out into the road. However, the movement of the car threw him back on to the cushions. He clenched his fists, pressing them before both eyes. A vision shot through his head, quite misty and lacking in outline, a strong little machine, no larger than a five-year-old child. Its short arms pushed and pushed and pushed, alternately forwards, backwards, forwards.... The head, sunken on the chest, rose, grinning.... “No!” shrieked the man, clapping his hands and laughing. He had been set free from the machine. He had exchanged lives. Exchanged—with whom? With a man who had said: “You will find more than enough money in my pockets....” The man bent back his head into the nape of his neck and stared at the roof suspended above him. On the roof there flamed the word: Yoshiwara.... The word Yoshiwara became rockets of light which showered around him, paralysing his limbs. He sat motionless, covered in a cold sweat. He clawed his fingers into the leather of the cushions. His back was stiff, as though his spine were made of cold iron. His jaws chattered. “No—!” said Georgi, tearing his fists down. But before his eyes which stared into space, the word flamed up: “Yoshiwara....” Music was in the air, hurled into the nocturnal streets by enormous loud-speakers. Wanton was the music, most heated of rhythm, of a shrieking, lashing gaiety.... “No—!” panted the man. Blood trickled in drops from his bitten lips. But a hundred multi-coloured rockets wrote in the velvet-black sky of Metropolis, the word: “Yoshiwara....” Georgi pushed the window open. The glorious town of Metropolis, dancing in the drunkenness of light, threw itself impetuously towards him, as though he were the only-beloved, the only-awaited. He leant out of the window, crying: “Yoshiwara—!” He fell back upon the cushions. The car turned in a gentle curve, round in another direction. A rocket shot up and wrote in the sky above Metropolis: Yoshiwara.... CHAPTER IV There was a house in the great Metropolis which was older than the town. Many said that it was older, even, than the cathedral, and, before the Archangel Michael raised his voice as advocate in the conflict for God, the house stood there in its evil gloom, defying the cathedral from out its dull eyes. It had lived through the time of smoke and soot. Every year which passed over the city seemed to creep, when dying, into this house, so that, at last it was a cemetery—a coffin, filled with dead tens of years. Set into the black wood of the door stood, copper-red, mysterious, the seal of Solomon, the pentagram.