Freder’s hands fumbled across the pane. A penetrating coldness streamed out of the glass, the smoothness of which was reminiscent of the sucking sharpness of a steel blade. Freder’s finger tips glided towards the setting of the pane ... and remained, crooked, hanging in the air, as though bewitched. He saw: Down there, below, Maria was crossing the street....
Leaving the house which held him captive, she turned her back on him and walked with light, hurried step towards the Maelstrom, which the street was....
Freder’s fists smote against the pane. He cried the girl’s name. He yelled: “Maria...!” She must hear him. It was impossible that she did not hear him. Regardless of his raw knuckles he banged with his fists against the pane.
But Maria did not hear him. She did not turn her head around. With her gentle but hurried step she submerged herself in the surf of people as though into her very familiar element.
Freder leaped for the door. He heaved with his whole body, with his shoulders, his knees, against the door. He no longer shouted. His mouth was gaping open. His breath burnt his lips grey. He sprang back to the window. There, outside, hardly ten paces from the window, stood a policeman, his face turned towards Rotwang’s house. The man’s face registered absolute nonchalance. Nothing seemed to be farther from his mind than to watch the magician’s house. But the man who was striving, with bleeding fists, to shatter a window pane in his house could not have escaped even his most casual glance.
Freder paused. He stared at the policeman’s face with an unreasoning hatred, born of fear of losing time where there was no time to be lost. He turned around and snatched up the rude foot-stool, which stood near the table. He dashed the foot-stool with full force at the window pane. The rebound jerked him backwards. The pane was undamaged.
Sobbing fury welled up in Freder’s throat. He swung the foot-stool and hurled it at the door. The foot-stool crashed to earth. Freder dashed to it, snatched it up and struck and struck, again and again, at the booming door, in a ruddy, blind desire to destroy.
Wood splintered, white. The door shrieked like a living thing. Freder did not pause. To the rhythm of his own boiling blood, he beat against the door until it broke, quivering.
Freder dragged himself through the hole. He ran through the house. His wild eyes sought an enemy and fresh obstacles in each corner. But he found neither one nor the other. Unchallenged, he reached the door, found it open and reeled out into the street.
He ran in the direction which Maria had taken. But the surf of the people had washed her away. She had vanished.