Joh Fredersen, who was watching him, bent forward. He wanted to say something, to ask a question. But before he could open his lips Rotwang threw up his head and met Joh Fredersen’s glance with so green a fire in his eyes that the Master of the great Metropolis remained dumb.
Twice, three times did this green glow flash between the piece of paper and Joh Fredersen’s face. And during the whole time not a sound was perceptible in the room but the breath that gushed in heaves from Rotwang’s breast as though from a boiling, poisoned source.
“Where did you get the plan?” the great inventor asked at last. Though it was less a question than an expression of astonished anger.
“That is not the point,” answered Joh Fredersen. “It is about this that I have come to you. There does not seem to be a soul in Metropolis who can make anything of it.”
Rotwang’s laughter interrupted him.
“Your poor scholars!” cried the laughter. “What a task you have set them, Joh Fredersen. How many hundredweights of printed paper have you forced them to heave over. I am sure there is no town on the globe, from the construction of the old Tower of Babel onward, which they have not snuffled through from North to South. Oh—if you could only smile, Parody! If only you already had eyes to wink at me. But laugh, at least, Parody! Laugh, rippingly, at the great scholars to whom the ground under their feet is foreign!”
The being obeyed. It laughed, ripplingly.
“Then you know the plan, or what it represents?” asked Joh Fredersen, through the laughter.
“Yes, by my poor soul, I know it,” answered Rotwang. “But, by my poor soul, I am not going to tell you what it is until you tell me where you got the plan.”
Joh Fredersen reflected. Rotwang did not take his gaze from him. “Do not try to lie to me, Joh Fredersen,” he said softly, and with a whimsical melancholy.