“Eleven thousand eight hundred and eleven—!”
The man on the shimmering disc swung around as though he had received a blow in the side. The hellish rhythm of his arms ceased, running itself out in vibration. The man fell to earth like a log and did not move again.
Slim ran down the passage, reached the end and pushed asunder the circle of women, who, stiffened with shock, seemed to be thrown into deeper horror more by the end of that which they had brought to pass than by the beginning. He knelt down beside the man, looked him in the face and pushed the tattered silk away from his heart. He did not give his hand time to test his pulse. He lifted the man up and carried him out in his arms. The sighing of the women soughed behind him like a dense, mist-coloured curtain.
September stepped across his path. He swept aside as he caught Slim’s glance at him. He ran along by him, like an active dog, breathing rapidly; but he said nothing.
Slim reached the door of Yoshiwara. September, himself, opened it for him. Slim stepped into the street. The driver pulled open the door of the taxi; he looked in amazement at the man who hung in Slim’s arms, in tatters of white silk with which the wind was playing, and who was more awful to look on than a corpse.
The proprietor of Yoshiwara bowed repeatedly while Slim was climbing into the car. But Shin did not give him another glance. September’s face, which was as grey as steel, was reminiscent of the blades of those ancient swords, forged of Indian steel, in Shiras or Ispahan and on which, hidden by ornamentation, stand mocking and deadly words.
The car glided away: September looked after it. He smiled the peaceable smile of Eastern Asia.
For he knew perfectly well what Shin did not know, and what, apart from him, nobody in Metropolis knew, that with the first drop of water or wine which moistened the lips of a human being, there disappeared even the very faintest memory of all which appertained to the wonders of the drug, Maohee.
The car stopped before the next medical depot. Male nurses came and carried away the bundle of humanity, shivering in tatters of white silk, to the doctor on duty. Slim looked about him. He beckoned to a policeman who was stationed near the door.
“Take down a report,” he said. His tongue would hardly obey him, so parched was it with thirst.
The policeman entered the house after him.
“Wait!” said Slim, more with the movement of his head than in words. He saw a glass jug of water standing on the table and the coolness of the water had studded the jug with a thousand pearls.
Slim drank like an animal which finds drink on coming from the desert. He put down the jug and shivered. A short shudder passed through him.
He turned around and saw the man he had brought with him lying on a bed over which a young doctor was bending.
The lips of the sick man were moistened with wine. His eyes stood wide open, staring up at the ceiling, tears upon tears running gently and incessantly from the corners of his eyes, down over his temples. It was as though they had nothing to do with the man—as though they were trickling from a broken vessel and could not stop trickling until the vessel had run quite empty.
Slim looked the doctor in the face; the latter shrugged his shoulders. Slim bent over the prostrate man.
“Georgi,” he said in a low voice, “can you hear me?”
The sick man nodded; it was the shadow of a nod.
“Do you know who I am?”
A second nod.
“Are you in a condition to answer two or three questions?”
Another nod.
“How did you get the white silk clothes?”
For a long time he received no answer apart from the gentle falling of the tear drops. Then came the voice, softer than a whisper.
“… He changed with me …”
“Who did?”
“Freder … Joh Fredersen’s son …”
“And then, Georgi?”
“He told me I was to wait for him …”
“Wait where, Georgi?”
A long silence. And then, barely audible:
“Ninetieth Street. House seven. Seventh floor …”
Slim did not question him further. He knew who lived there. He looked at the doctor; the latter’s face wore a completely impenetrable expression.
Slim drew a breath as though he were sighing. He said, more deploringly than inquiringly:
“Why did you not rather go there, Georgi …”
He turned to go but stopped still as Georgi’s voice came wavering after him;
“… The city … all the lights … more than enough money … It is written … Forgive us our trespasses … lead us not into temptation …”
His voice died away. His head fell to one side. He breathed as though his soul wept, for his eyes could do so no longer.
The doctor cleared his throat cautiously.
Slim raised his head as though somebody had called him, then dropped it again.
“I shall come back again,” he said softly. “He is to remain under your care …”
Georgi was asleep.
Slim left the room, followed by the policeman.
“What do you want?” Slim asked with an absentminded look at him.
“The report, sir.”
“What report?”
“I was to take down a report, sir.”
Slim looked at the policeman very attentively, almost meditatively. He raised his hand and rubbed it across his forehead.
“A mistake,” he said. “That was a mistake …”
The policeman saluted and retired, a little puzzled, for he knew Slim.
He remained standing on the same spot. Again and again he rubbed his forehead with the same helpless gesture.
Then he shook his head, stepped into the car and said:
“Ninetieth block …”
VII
“Where is Georgi?” asked Freder, his eyes wandering through Josaphat’s three rooms, which stretched out before him—beautiful, with a rather bewildering superabundance of armchairs, divans and silk cushions, with curtains which goldenly obscured the light.
“Who?” asked Josaphat, listlessly. He had waited, had not slept and his eyes stood excessively large in his thin, almost white face. His gaze, which he did not take from Freder, was like hands which are raised adoringly.
“Georgi,”
