Maria took a step, then stopped again.
There was something lying over there. There was something lying there on the floor. Between her and the trap-door, something was lying on the floor. It was an unrecognisable heap. It was something dark and motionless. It might be human, and was, perhaps, only a sack. But it lay there and must be passed around if one wanted to reach the trap-door.
With a greater display of courage than had ever before in her life been necessary, Maria silently set one foot before the other. The heap on the floor did not move. She stood, bending far forward, making her eyes reconnoitre, deafened by her own heart-beat and the roar of the uproar-proclaiming city.
Now she saw clearly. What was lying there was a man. The man lay on his face, legs drawn tightly to his body, as though he had gathered them to him to push himself up and had then not found any more strength to do it. One hand lay thrown over his neck, and its crooked fingers spoke more eloquently than the most eloquent of mouths of a wild self-defence.
But the other hand of the heap of humanity lay stretched far away from it, on the square of the trap-door, as though wishing, in itself, to be a bolt to the door. The hand was not of flesh and bone. The hand was of metal, the hand was the masterpiece of Rotwang, the great inventor.
Maria threw a glance at the door, on which the seal of Solomon glowed. She ran up to it, although she knew it to be pointless to implore this inexorable door for liberty. She felt, under her feet, distant, quite dull, strong and impelling, a shake, as of distant thunder.
The voice of the great Metropolis roared: Danger—!
Maria clasped her hands and raised them to her mouth. She ran up to the trap-door. She knelt down. She looked at the heap of humanity which lay at the edge of the trap-door, the metal hand of which seemed obstinately to be defending the trap-door. The fingers of the other hand, thrown over the man’s neck, were turned towards her, poised high, like a beast before the spring.
And the trembling shake again—and now much mightier—
Maria seized the iron ring of the trap-door. She pushed it up. She wanted to pull up the door. But the hand—the hand which lay upon it—held the door clutched fast.