She was not screaming for food. She was screaming: Danger—! Danger—! The screaming did not stop. It howled on, incessantly. Who had dared to unchain the voice of the great Metropolis, which otherwise obeyed no one but Joh Fredersen? Was Joh Fredersen no longer in this house? Or was this voice to call him?—this wild roar of: Danger—! Danger—! What danger was threatening Metropolis? Fire could not be alarming the city, to make her roar so, as though she had gone mad. No high tide was threatening Metropolis. The elements were subdued and quiet.
Danger—of man?... Revolt—?
Was that it—?
Rotwang’s words fluttered through her brain.... In the City of the Dead—what was going on in the City of the Dead? Did the uproar come from the City of the Dead? Was destruction welling up from the depths?
Danger—! Danger—! screamed the voice of the great city.
As though by power of a thrust within, Maria ran, all at once, to the door and tore it open. The room which lay before her, just as that which she had left, received its solitary light—and sparely enough—through the window. At the first glance round, the room seemed to be empty. A strong current of air, coming from an invisible source, streamed, hot and even, through the room, bringing in the roaring of the town with renewed force.
Maria stooped forward. She recognised the room. She had run along these walls in her despairing search for a door. There was a door, which had neither bolt nor lock. Copper-red, in the gloomy wood of the door, glowed the seal of Solomon, the pentagram. There, in the middle, was a square, the trap-door, through which, some time ago, a period which she could not measure, she had entered the house of the great inventor. The bright square of the window fell upon the square of the door.
A trap, thought the girl. She turned her head around....
Would the great Metropolis never stop roaring—?
Danger—! Danger—! Danger—! roared the town.