The Invisible Man
A Grotesque Romance by H. G. Wells CHAPTER I.
THE STRANGE MAN’S ARRIVAL The stranger came early in February, one wintry
day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down,
walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in
his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft
felt hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled
itself aga
inst his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to the burden he carried.
He staggered into the “Coach and Horses” more dead than alive, and flung his portmanteau
down. “A fire,” he cried, “in the name of human charity! A room and a fire!” He
stamped and shook the snow from off himself in the bar, and followed Mrs. Hall into her
guest parlour to strike his bargain. And with that much introduction, that and a couple
of sovereigns flung upon the table, he took up his quarters in the inn. Mrs
. Hall lit the fire and left him there
while she went to prepare him a meal with her own hands. A guest to stop at Iping in
the wintertime was an unheard-of piece of luck, let alone a guest who was no “haggler,”
and she was resolved to show herself worthy of her good fortune. As soon as the bacon
was well under way, and Millie, her lymphatic maid, had been brisked up a bit by a few deftly
chosen expressions of contempt, she carried the cloth, plates, and glasses into the parlour
and began to lay
them with the utmost éclat. Although the fire was burning up briskly,
she was surprised to see that her visitor still wore his hat and coat, standing with
his back to her and staring out of the window at the falling snow in the yard. His gloved
hands were clasped behind him, and he seemed to be lost in thought. She noticed that the
melting snow that still sprinkled his shoulders dripped upon her carpet. “Can I take your
hat and coat, sir?” she said, “and give them a good dry in the kitchen?” “N
o,” he said without turning. She was not sure she had heard him, and was
about to repeat her question. He turned his head and looked at her over
his shoulder. “I prefer to keep them on,” he said with emphasis, and she noticed that
he wore big blue spectacles with sidelights, and had a bush side-whisker over his coat-collar
that completely hid his cheeks and face. “Very well, sir,” she said. “As you
like. In a bit the room will be warmer.” He made no answer, and had turned his face
away from her
again, and Mrs. Hall, feeling that her conversational advances were ill-timed,
laid the rest of the table things in a quick staccato and whisked out of the room. When
she returned he was still standing there, like a man of stone, his back hunched, his
collar turned up, his dripping hat-brim turned down, hiding his face and ears completely.
She put down the eggs and bacon with considerable emphasis, and called rather than said to him,
“Your lunch is served, sir.” “Thank you,” he said at the same
time,
and did not stir until she was closing the door. Then he swung round and approached the
table with a certain eager quickness. As she went behind the bar to the kitchen
she heard a sound repeated at regular intervals. Chirk, chirk, chirk, it went, the sound of
a spoon being rapidly whisked round a basin. “That girl!” she said. “There! I clean
forgot it. It’s her being so long!” And while she herself finished mixing the mustard,
she gave Millie a few verbal stabs for her excessive slowness.
She had cooked the ham
and eggs, laid the table, and done everything, while Millie (help indeed!) had only succeeded
in delaying the mustard. And him a new guest and wanting to stay! Then she filled the mustard
pot, and, putting it with a certain stateliness upon a gold and black tea-tray, carried it
into the parlour. She rapped and entered promptly. As she did
so her visitor moved quickly, so that she got but a glimpse of a white object disappearing
behind the table. It would seem he was pickin
g something from the floor. She rapped down
the mustard pot on the table, and then she noticed the overcoat and hat had been taken
off and put over a chair in front of the fire, and a pair of wet boots threatened rust to
her steel fender. She went to these things resolutely. “I suppose I may have them to
dry now,” she said in a voice that brooked no denial. “Leave the hat,” said her visitor, in
a muffled voice, and turning she saw he had raised his head and was sitting and looking
at her. For a
moment she stood gaping at him, too
surprised to speak. He held a white cloth—it was a serviette
he had brought with him—over the lower part of his face, so that his mouth and jaws were
completely hidden, and that was the reason of his muffled voice. But it was not that
which startled Mrs. Hall. It was the fact that all his forehead above his blue glasses
was covered by a white bandage, and that another covered his ears, leaving not a scrap of his
face exposed excepting only his pink, peaked nos
e. It was bright, pink, and shiny just
as it had been at first. He wore a dark-brown velvet jacket with a high, black, linen-lined
collar turned up about his neck. The thick black hair, escaping as it could below and
between the cross bandages, projected in curious tails and horns, giving him the strangest
appearance conceivable. This muffled and bandaged head was so unlike what she had anticipated,
that for a moment she was rigid. He did not remove the serviette, but remained
holding it, as she
saw now, with a brown gloved hand, and regarding her with his inscrutable
blue glasses. “Leave the hat,” he said, speaking very distinctly through the white
cloth. Her nerves began to recover from the shock
they had received. She placed the hat on the chair again by the fire. “I didn’t know,
sir,” she began, “that—” and she stopped embarrassed. “Thank you,” he said drily, glancing from
her to the door and then at her again. “I’ll have them nicely dried, sir, at
once,” she said, and carried his
clothes out of the room. She glanced at his white-swathed
head and blue goggles again as she was going out of the door; but his napkin was still
in front of his face. She shivered a little as she closed the door behind her, and her
face was eloquent of her surprise and perplexity. “I never,” she whispered. “There!”
She went quite softly to the kitchen, and was too preoccupied to ask Millie what she
was messing about with now, when she got there. The visitor sat and listened to her retreating
fee
t. He glanced inquiringly at the window before he removed his serviette, and resumed
his meal. He took a mouthful, glanced suspiciously at the window, took another mouthful, then
rose and, taking the serviette in his hand, walked across the room and pulled the blind
down to the top of the white muslin that obscured the lower panes. This left the room in a twilight.
This done, he returned with an easier air to the table and his meal. “The poor soul’s had an accident or an
op’ration or somethin’,”
said Mrs. Hall. “What a turn them bandages did give me,
to be sure!” She put on some more coal, unfolded the clothes-horse,
and extended the traveller’s coat upon this. “And they goggles! Why, he looked more like
a divin’ helmet than a human man!” She hung his muffler on a corner of the horse.
“And holding that handkerchief over his mouth all the time. Talkin’ through it!
... Perhaps his mouth was hurt too—maybe.” She turned round, as one who suddenly remembers.
“Bless my soul alive!” she said,
going off at a tangent; “ain’t you done them
taters yet, Millie?” When Mrs. Hall went to clear away the stranger’s
lunch, her idea that his mouth must also have been cut or disfigured in the accident she
supposed him to have suffered, was confirmed, for he was smoking a pipe, and all the time
that she was in the room he never loosened the silk muffler he had wrapped round the
lower part of his face to put the mouthpiece to his lips. Yet it was not forgetfulness,
for she saw he glanced at it as
it smouldered out. He sat in the corner with his back to
the window-blind and spoke now, having eaten and drunk and being comfortably warmed through,
with less aggressive brevity than before. The reflection of the fire lent a kind of
red animation to his big spectacles they had lacked hitherto. “I have some luggage,” he said, “at
Bramblehurst station,” and he asked her how he could have it sent. He bowed his bandaged
head quite politely in acknowledgment of her explanation. “To-morrow?” he said.
“There
is no speedier delivery?” and seemed quite disappointed when she answered, “No.”
Was she quite sure? No man with a trap who would go over? Mrs. Hall, nothing loath, answered his questions
and developed a conversation. “It’s a steep road by the down, sir,” she said in
answer to the question about a trap; and then, snatching at an opening, said, “It was there
a carriage was upsettled, a year ago and more. A gentleman killed, besides his coachman.
Accidents, sir, happen in a moment, don’t t
hey?” But the visitor was not to be drawn so easily.
“They do,” he said through his muffler, eyeing her quietly through his impenetrable
glasses. “But they take long enough to get well,
don’t they? ... There was my sister’s son, Tom, jest cut his arm with a scythe,
tumbled on it in the ’ayfield, and, bless me! he was three months tied up sir. You’d
hardly believe it. It’s regular given me a dread of a scythe, sir.” “I can quite understand that,” said the
visitor. “He was afraid, one time, that h
e’d have
to have an op’ration—he was that bad, sir.” The visitor laughed abruptly, a bark of a
laugh that he seemed to bite and kill in his mouth. “Was he?” he said. “He was, sir. And no laughing matter to
them as had the doing for him, as I had—my sister being took up with her little ones
so much. There was bandages to do, sir, and bandages to undo. So that if I may make so
bold as to say it, sir—” “Will you get me some matches?” said the
visitor, quite abruptly. “My pipe is out.” Mrs. Hall was
pulled up suddenly. It was certainly
rude of him, after telling him all she had done. She gasped at him for a moment, and
remembered the two sovereigns. She went for the matches. “Thanks,” he said concisely, as she put
them down, and turned his shoulder upon her and stared out of the window again. It was
altogether too discouraging. Evidently he was sensitive on the topic of operations and
bandages. She did not “make so bold as to say,” however, after all. But his snubbing
way had irritated her
, and Millie had a hot time of it that afternoon. The visitor remained in the parlour until
four o’clock, without giving the ghost of an excuse for an intrusion. For the most part
he was quite still during that time; it would seem he sat in the growing darkness smoking
in the firelight—perhaps dozing. Once or twice a curious listener might have
heard him at the coals, and for the space of five minutes he was audible pacing the
room. He seemed to be talking to himself. Then the armchair creaked a
s he sat down again. CHAPTER II.
MR. TEDDY HENFREY’S FIRST IMPRESSIONS At four o’clock, when it was fairly dark
and Mrs. Hall was screwing up her courage to go in and ask her visitor if he would take
some tea, Teddy Henfrey, the clock-jobber, came into the bar. “My sakes! Mrs. Hall,”
said he, “but this is terrible weather for thin boots!” The snow outside was falling
faster. Mrs. Hall agreed, and then noticed he had
his bag with him. “Now you’re here, Mr. Teddy,” said she, “I’d be glad if you’d
give th’ old clock in the parlour a bit of a look. ’Tis going, and it strikes well
and hearty; but the hour-hand won’t do nuthin’ but point at six.” And leading the way, she went across to the
parlour door and rapped and entered. Her visitor, she saw as she opened the door,
was seated in the armchair before the fire, dozing it would seem, with his bandaged head
drooping on one side. The only light in the room was the red glow from the fire—which
lit his eyes like adverse railway signals, but lef
t his downcast face in darkness—and
the scanty vestiges of the day that came in through the open door. Everything was ruddy,
shadowy, and indistinct to her, the more so since she had just been lighting the bar lamp,
and her eyes were dazzled. But for a second it seemed to her that the man she looked at
had an enormous mouth wide open—a vast and incredible mouth that swallowed the whole
of the lower portion of his face. It was the sensation of a moment: the white-bound head,
the monstrous goggle
eyes, and this huge yawn below it. Then he stirred, started up in his
chair, put up his hand. She opened the door wide, so that the room was lighter, and she
saw him more clearly, with the muffler held up to his face just as she had seen him hold
the serviette before. The shadows, she fancied, had tricked her. “Would you mind, sir, this man a-coming
to look at the clock, sir?” she said, recovering from the momentary shock. “Look at the clock?” he said, staring
round in a drowsy manner, and speak
ing over his hand, and then, getting more fully awake,
“certainly.” Mrs. Hall went away to get a lamp, and he
rose and stretched himself. Then came the light, and Mr. Teddy Henfrey, entering, was
confronted by this bandaged person. He was, he says, “taken aback.” “Good afternoon,” said the stranger, regarding
him—as Mr. Henfrey says, with a vivid sense of the dark spectacles—“like a lobster.” “I hope,” said Mr. Henfrey, “that it’s
no intrusion.” “None whatever,” said the stranger. “Though,
I und
erstand,” he said turning to Mrs. Hall, “that this room is really to be mine for
my own private use.” “I thought, sir,” said Mrs. Hall, “you’d
prefer the clock—” “Certainly,” said the stranger, “certainly—but,
as a rule, I like to be alone and undisturbed. “But I’m really glad to have the clock
seen to,” he said, seeing a certain hesitation in Mr. Henfrey’s manner. “Very glad.”
Mr. Henfrey had intended to apologise and withdraw, but this anticipation reassured
him. The stranger turned round with
his back to the fireplace and put his hands behind
his back. “And presently,” he said, “when the clock-mending is over, I think I should
like to have some tea. But not till the clock-mending is over.” Mrs. Hall was about to leave the room—she
made no conversational advances this time, because she did not want to be snubbed in
front of Mr. Henfrey—when her visitor asked her if she had made any arrangements about
his boxes at Bramblehurst. She told him she had mentioned the matter to the postman,
and
that the carrier could bring them over on the morrow. “You are certain that is the
earliest?” he said. She was certain, with a marked coldness. “I should explain,” he added, “what
I was really too cold and fatigued to do before, that I am an experimental investigator.” “Indeed, sir,” said Mrs. Hall, much impressed. “And my baggage contains apparatus and appliances.” “Very useful things indeed they are, sir,”
said Mrs. Hall. “And I’m very naturally anxious to get
on with my inquiries.” “Of c
ourse, sir.” “My reason for coming to Iping,” he proceeded,
with a certain deliberation of manner, “was ... a desire for solitude. I do not wish to
be disturbed in my work. In addition to my work, an accident—” “I thought as much,” said Mrs. Hall to
herself. “—necessitates a certain retirement. My
eyes—are sometimes so weak and painful that I have to shut myself up in the dark for hours
together. Lock myself up. Sometimes—now and then. Not at present, certainly. At such
times the slightest distu
rbance, the entry of a stranger into the room, is a source of
excruciating annoyance to me—it is well these things should be understood.” “Certainly, sir,” said Mrs. Hall. “And
if I might make so bold as to ask—” “That I think, is all,” said the stranger,
with that quietly irresistible air of finality he could assume at will. Mrs. Hall reserved
her question and sympathy for a better occasion. After Mrs. Hall had left the room, he remained
standing in front of the fire, glaring, so Mr. Henfrey pu
ts it, at the clock-mending.
Mr. Henfrey not only took off the hands of the clock, and the face, but extracted the
works; and he tried to work in as slow and quiet and unassuming a manner as possible.
He worked with the lamp close to him, and the green shade threw a brilliant light upon
his hands, and upon the frame and wheels, and left the rest of the room shadowy. When
he looked up, coloured patches swam in his eyes. Being constitutionally of a curious
nature, he had removed the works—a quite
unnecessary proceeding—with the idea of
delaying his departure and perhaps falling into conversation with the stranger. But the
stranger stood there, perfectly silent and still. So still, it got on Henfrey’s nerves.
He felt alone in the room and looked up, and there, grey and dim, was the bandaged head
and huge blue lenses staring fixedly, with a mist of green spots drifting in front of
them. It was so uncanny to Henfrey that for a minute they remained staring blankly at
one another. Then Henfre
y looked down again. Very uncomfortable position! One would like
to say something. Should he remark that the weather was very cold for the time of year? He looked up as if to take aim with that introductory
shot. “The weather—” he began. “Why don’t you finish and go?” said
the rigid figure, evidently in a state of painfully suppressed rage. “All you’ve
got to do is to fix the hour-hand on its axle. You’re simply humbugging—” “Certainly, sir—one minute more. I overlooked—”
and Mr. Henfrey finishe
d and went. But he went feeling excessively annoyed. “Damn
it!” said Mr. Henfrey to himself, trudging down the village through the thawing snow;
“a man must do a clock at times, surely.” And again, “Can’t a man look at you?—Ugly!” And yet again, “Seemingly not. If the police
was wanting you you couldn’t be more wropped and bandaged.” At Gleeson’s corner he saw Hall, who had
recently married the stranger’s hostess at the “Coach and Horses,” and who now
drove the Iping conveyance, when occasional
people required it, to Sidderbridge Junction,
coming towards him on his return from that place. Hall had evidently been “stopping
a bit” at Sidderbridge, to judge by his driving. “’Ow do, Teddy?” he said, passing. “You got a rum un up home!” said Teddy. Hall very sociably pulled up. “What’s
that?” he asked. “Rum-looking customer stopping at the ‘Coach
and Horses,’” said Teddy. “My sakes!” And he proceeded to give Hall a vivid description
of his grotesque guest. “Looks a bit like a disguise, don’
t it? I’d like to see
a man’s face if I had him stopping in my place,” said Henfrey. “But women are that
trustful—where strangers are concerned. He’s took your rooms and he ain’t even
given a name, Hall.” “You don’t say so!” said Hall, who was
a man of sluggish apprehension. “Yes,” said Teddy. “By the week. Whatever
he is, you can’t get rid of him under the week. And he’s got a lot of luggage coming
to-morrow, so he says. Let’s hope it won’t be stones in boxes, Hall.” He told Hall how his aunt a
t Hastings had
been swindled by a stranger with empty portmanteaux. Altogether he left Hall vaguely suspicious.
“Get up, old girl,” said Hall. “I s’pose I must see ’bout this.” Teddy trudged on his way with his mind considerably
relieved. Instead of “seeing ’bout it,” however,
Hall on his return was severely rated by his wife on the length of time he had spent in
Sidderbridge, and his mild inquiries were answered snappishly and in a manner not to
the point. But the seed of suspicion Teddy had so
wn germinated in the mind of Mr. Hall
in spite of these discouragements. “You wim’ don’t know everything,” said Mr.
Hall, resolved to ascertain more about the personality of his guest at the earliest possible
opportunity. And after the stranger had gone to bed, which he did about half-past nine,
Mr. Hall went very aggressively into the parlour and looked very hard at his wife’s furniture,
just to show that the stranger wasn’t master there, and scrutinised closely and a little
contemptuously a sh
eet of mathematical computations the stranger had left. When retiring for the
night he instructed Mrs. Hall to look very closely at the stranger’s luggage when it
came next day. “You mind your own business, Hall,” said
Mrs. Hall, “and I’ll mind mine.” She was all the more inclined to snap at Hall
because the stranger was undoubtedly an unusually strange sort of stranger, and she was by no
means assured about him in her own mind. In the middle of the night she woke up dreaming
of huge white heads
like turnips, that came trailing after her, at the end of interminable
necks, and with vast black eyes. But being a sensible woman, she subdued her terrors
and turned over and went to sleep again. CHAPTER III.
THE THOUSAND AND ONE BOTTLES So it was that on the twenty-ninth day of
February, at the beginning of the thaw, this singular person fell out of infinity into
Iping village. Next day his luggage arrived through the slush—and very remarkable luggage
it was. There were a couple of trunks ind
eed, such as a rational man might need, but in
addition there were a box of books—big, fat books, of which some were just in an incomprehensible
handwriting—and a dozen or more crates, boxes, and cases, containing objects packed
in straw, as it seemed to Hall, tugging with a casual curiosity at the straw—glass bottles.
The stranger, muffled in hat, coat, gloves, and wrapper, came out impatiently to meet
Fearenside’s cart, while Hall was having a word or so of gossip preparatory to helping
bring
them in. Out he came, not noticing Fearenside’s dog, who was sniffing in a dilettante spirit
at Hall’s legs. “Come along with those boxes,” he said. “I’ve been waiting
long enough.” And he came down the steps towards the tail
of the cart as if to lay hands on the smaller crate. No sooner had Fearenside’s dog caught sight
of him, however, than it began to bristle and growl savagely, and when he rushed down
the steps it gave an undecided hop, and then sprang straight at his hand. “Whup!” cried
Hal
l, jumping back, for he was no hero with dogs, and Fearenside howled, “Lie down!”
and snatched his whip. They saw the dog’s teeth had slipped the
hand, heard a kick, saw the dog execute a flanking jump and get home on the stranger’s
leg, and heard the rip of his trousering. Then the finer end of Fearenside’s whip
reached his property, and the dog, yelping with dismay, retreated under the wheels of
the waggon. It was all the business of a swift half-minute. No one spoke, everyone shouted.
The str
anger glanced swiftly at his torn glove and at his leg, made as if he would stoop
to the latter, then turned and rushed swiftly up the steps into the inn. They heard him
go headlong across the passage and up the uncarpeted stairs to his bedroom. “You brute, you!” said Fearenside, climbing
off the waggon with his whip in his hand, while the dog watched him through the wheel.
“Come here,” said Fearenside—“You’d better.” Hall had stood gaping. “He wuz bit,” said
Hall. “I’d better go and see to en,”
and he trotted after the stranger. He met
Mrs. Hall in the passage. “Carrier’s darg,” he said “bit en.” He went straight upstairs, and the stranger’s
door being ajar, he pushed it open and was entering without any ceremony, being of a
naturally sympathetic turn of mind. The blind was down and the room dim. He caught
a glimpse of a most singular thing, what seemed a handless arm waving towards him, and a face
of three huge indeterminate spots on white, very like the face of a pale pansy. Then he
was struck violently in the chest, hurled back, and the door slammed in his face and
locked. It was so rapid that it gave him no time to observe. A waving of indecipherable
shapes, a blow, and a concussion. There he stood on the dark little landing, wondering
what it might be that he had seen. A couple of minutes after, he rejoined the
little group that had formed outside the “Coach and Horses.” There was Fearenside telling
about it all over again for the second time; there was Mrs. Hall saying
his dog didn’t
have no business to bite her guests; there was Huxter, the general dealer from over the
road, interrogative; and Sandy Wadgers from the forge, judicial; besides women and children,
all of them saying fatuities: “Wouldn’t let en bite me, I knows”; “’Tasn’t
right have such dargs”; “Whad ’e bite ’n for, then?” and so forth. Mr. Hall, staring at them from the steps and
listening, found it incredible that he had seen anything so very remarkable happen upstairs.
Besides, his vocabulary
was altogether too limited to express his impressions. “He don’t want no help, he says,” he
said in answer to his wife’s inquiry. “We’d better be a-takin’ of his luggage in.” “He ought to have it cauterised at once,”
said Mr. Huxter; “especially if it’s at all inflamed.” “I’d shoot en, that’s what I’d do,”
said a lady in the group. Suddenly the dog began growling again. “Come along,” cried an angry voice in
the doorway, and there stood the muffled stranger with his collar turned up, and his hat
-brim
bent down. “The sooner you get those things in the better I’ll be pleased.” It is
stated by an anonymous bystander that his trousers and gloves had been changed. “Was you hurt, sir?” said Fearenside.
“I’m rare sorry the darg—” “Not a bit,” said the stranger. “Never
broke the skin. Hurry up with those things.” He then swore to himself, so Mr. Hall asserts. Directly the first crate was, in accordance
with his directions, carried into the parlour, the stranger flung himself upon it with extra
ordinary
eagerness, and began to unpack it, scattering the straw with an utter disregard of Mrs.
Hall’s carpet. And from it he began to produce bottles—little fat bottles containing powders,
small and slender bottles containing coloured and white fluids, fluted blue bottles labeled
Poison, bottles with round bodies and slender necks, large green-glass bottles, large white-glass
bottles, bottles with glass stoppers and frosted labels, bottles with fine corks, bottles with
bungs, bottles with wood
en caps, wine bottles, salad-oil bottles—putting them in rows on
the chiffonnier, on the mantel, on the table under the window, round the floor, on the
bookshelf—everywhere. The chemist’s shop in Bramblehurst could not boast half so many.
Quite a sight it was. Crate after crate yielded bottles, until all six were empty and the
table high with straw; the only things that came out of these crates besides the bottles
were a number of test-tubes and a carefully packed balance. And directly the crate
s were unpacked, the
stranger went to the window and set to work, not troubling in the least about the litter
of straw, the fire which had gone out, the box of books outside, nor for the trunks and
other luggage that had gone upstairs. When Mrs. Hall took his dinner in to him,
he was already so absorbed in his work, pouring little drops out of the bottles into test-tubes,
that he did not hear her until she had swept away the bulk of the straw and put the tray
on the table, with some little empha
sis perhaps, seeing the state that the floor was in. Then
he half turned his head and immediately turned it away again. But she saw he had removed
his glasses; they were beside him on the table, and it seemed to her that his eye sockets
were extraordinarily hollow. He put on his spectacles again, and then turned and faced
her. She was about to complain of the straw on the floor when he anticipated her. “I wish you wouldn’t come in without knocking,”
he said in the tone of abnormal exasperation t
hat seemed so characteristic of him. “I knocked, but seemingly—” “Perhaps you did. But in my investigations—my
really very urgent and necessary investigations—the slightest disturbance, the jar of a door—I
must ask you—” “Certainly, sir. You can turn the lock if
you’re like that, you know. Any time.” “A very good idea,” said the stranger. “This stror, sir, if I might make so bold
as to remark—” “Don’t. If the straw makes trouble put
it down in the bill.” And he mumbled at her—words suspiciously
like curses. He was so odd, standing there, so aggressive
and explosive, bottle in one hand and test-tube in the other, that Mrs. Hall was quite alarmed.
But she was a resolute woman. “In which case, I should like to know, sir, what you
consider—” “A shilling—put down a shilling. Surely
a shilling’s enough?” “So be it,” said Mrs. Hall, taking up
the table-cloth and beginning to spread it over the table. “If you’re satisfied,
of course—” He turned and sat down, with his coat-collar
toward her. Al
l the afternoon he worked with the door
locked and, as Mrs. Hall testifies, for the most part in silence. But once there was a
concussion and a sound of bottles ringing together as though the table had been hit,
and the smash of a bottle flung violently down, and then a rapid pacing athwart the
room. Fearing “something was the matter,” she went to the door and listened, not caring
to knock. “I can’t go on,” he was raving. “I
can’t go on. Three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand! The huge mu
ltitude! Cheated!
All my life it may take me! ... Patience! Patience indeed! ... Fool! fool!” There was a noise of hobnails on the bricks
in the bar, and Mrs. Hall had very reluctantly to leave the rest of his soliloquy. When she
returned the room was silent again, save for the faint crepitation of his chair and the
occasional clink of a bottle. It was all over; the stranger had resumed work. When she took in his tea she saw broken glass
in the corner of the room under the concave mirror, and a
golden stain that had been carelessly
wiped. She called attention to it. “Put it down in the bill,” snapped her
visitor. “For God’s sake don’t worry me. If there’s damage done, put it down
in the bill,” and he went on ticking a list in the exercise book before him. “I’ll tell you something,” said Fearenside,
mysteriously. It was late in the afternoon, and they were in the little beer-shop of Iping
Hanger. “Well?” said Teddy Henfrey. “This chap you’re speaking of, what my
dog bit. Well—he’s black
. Leastways, his legs are. I seed through the tear of his trousers
and the tear of his glove. You’d have expected a sort of pinky to show, wouldn’t you? Well—there
wasn’t none. Just blackness. I tell you, he’s as black as my hat.” “My sakes!” said Henfrey. “It’s a
rummy case altogether. Why, his nose is as pink as paint!” “That’s true,” said Fearenside. “I
knows that. And I tell ’ee what I’m thinking. That marn’s a piebald, Teddy. Black here
and white there—in patches. And he’s ashamed of it. He
’s a kind of half-breed, and the
colour’s come off patchy instead of mixing. I’ve heard of such things before. And it’s
the common way with horses, as any one can see.” CHAPTER IV.
MR. CUSS INTERVIEWS THE STRANGER I have told the circumstances of the stranger’s
arrival in Iping with a certain fulness of detail, in order that the curious impression
he created may be understood by the reader. But excepting two odd incidents, the circumstances
of his stay until the extraordinary day of the club fes
tival may be passed over very
cursorily. There were a number of skirmishes with Mrs. Hall on matters of domestic discipline,
but in every case until late April, when the first signs of penury began, he over-rode
her by the easy expedient of an extra payment. Hall did not like him, and whenever he dared
he talked of the advisability of getting rid of him; but he showed his dislike chiefly
by concealing it ostentatiously, and avoiding his visitor as much as possible. “Wait till
the summer,” said M
rs. Hall sagely, “when the artisks are beginning to come. Then we’ll
see. He may be a bit overbearing, but bills settled punctual is bills settled punctual,
whatever you’d like to say.” The stranger did not go to church, and indeed
made no difference between Sunday and the irreligious days, even in costume. He worked,
as Mrs. Hall thought, very fitfully. Some days he would come down early and be continuously
busy. On others he would rise late, pace his room, fretting audibly for hours together,
smoke, sleep in the armchair by the fire. Communication with the world beyond the village
he had none. His temper continued very uncertain; for the most part his manner was that of a
man suffering under almost unendurable provocation, and once or twice things were snapped, torn,
crushed, or broken in spasmodic gusts of violence. He seemed under a chronic irritation of the
greatest intensity. His habit of talking to himself in a low voice grew steadily upon
him, but though Mrs. Hall listened cons
cientiously she could make neither head nor tail of what
she heard. He rarely went abroad by daylight, but at
twilight he would go out muffled up invisibly, whether the weather were cold or not, and
he chose the loneliest paths and those most overshadowed by trees and banks. His goggling
spectacles and ghastly bandaged face under the penthouse of his hat, came with a disagreeable
suddenness out of the darkness upon one or two home-going labourers, and Teddy Henfrey,
tumbling out of the “Scarlet
Coat” one night, at half-past nine, was scared shamefully
by the stranger’s skull-like head (he was walking hat in hand) lit by the sudden light
of the opened inn door. Such children as saw him at nightfall dreamt of bogies, and it
seemed doubtful whether he disliked boys more than they disliked him, or the reverse; but
there was certainly a vivid enough dislike on either side. It was inevitable that a person of so remarkable
an appearance and bearing should form a frequent topic in such a villa
ge as Iping. Opinion
was greatly divided about his occupation. Mrs. Hall was sensitive on the point. When
questioned, she explained very carefully that he was an “experimental investigator,”
going gingerly over the syllables as one who dreads pitfalls. When asked what an experimental
investigator was, she would say with a touch of superiority that most educated people knew
such things as that, and would thus explain that he “discovered things.” Her visitor
had had an accident, she said, which te
mporarily discoloured his face and hands, and being
of a sensitive disposition, he was averse to any public notice of the fact. Out of her hearing there was a view largely
entertained that he was a criminal trying to escape from justice by wrapping himself
up so as to conceal himself altogether from the eye of the police. This idea sprang from
the brain of Mr. Teddy Henfrey. No crime of any magnitude dating from the middle or end
of February was known to have occurred. Elaborated in the imaginat
ion of Mr. Gould, the probationary
assistant in the National School, this theory took the form that the stranger was an Anarchist
in disguise, preparing explosives, and he resolved to undertake such detective operations
as his time permitted. These consisted for the most part in looking very hard at the
stranger whenever they met, or in asking people who had never seen the stranger, leading questions
about him. But he detected nothing. Another school of opinion followed Mr. Fearenside,
and eithe
r accepted the piebald view or some modification of it; as, for instance, Silas
Durgan, who was heard to assert that “if he chooses to show enself at fairs he’d
make his fortune in no time,” and being a bit of a theologian, compared the stranger
to the man with the one talent. Yet another view explained the entire matter by regarding
the stranger as a harmless lunatic. That had the advantage of accounting for everything
straight away. Between these main groups there were waverers
and compromiser
s. Sussex folk have few superstitions, and it was only after the events of early
April that the thought of the supernatural was first whispered in the village. Even then
it was only credited among the women folk. But whatever they thought of him, people in
Iping, on the whole, agreed in disliking him. His irritability, though it might have been
comprehensible to an urban brain-worker, was an amazing thing to these quiet Sussex villagers.
The frantic gesticulations they surprised now and then, th
e headlong pace after nightfall
that swept him upon them round quiet corners, the inhuman bludgeoning of all tentative advances
of curiosity, the taste for twilight that led to the closing of doors, the pulling down
of blinds, the extinction of candles and lamps—who could agree with such goings on? They drew
aside as he passed down the village, and when he had gone by, young humourists would up
with coat-collars and down with hat-brims, and go pacing nervously after him in imitation
of his occul
t bearing. There was a song popular at that time called “The Bogey Man”. Miss
Statchell sang it at the schoolroom concert (in aid of the church lamps), and thereafter
whenever one or two of the villagers were gathered together and the stranger appeared,
a bar or so of this tune, more or less sharp or flat, was whistled in the midst of them.
Also belated little children would call “Bogey Man!” after him, and make off tremulously
elated. Cuss, the general practitioner, was devoured
by curiosity. T
he bandages excited his professional interest, the report of the thousand and one
bottles aroused his jealous regard. All through April and May he coveted an opportunity of
talking to the stranger, and at last, towards Whitsuntide, he could stand it no longer,
but hit upon the subscription-list for a village nurse as an excuse. He was surprised to find
that Mr. Hall did not know his guest’s name. “He give a name,” said Mrs. Hall—an
assertion which was quite unfounded—“but I didn’t rightly hear i
t.” She thought
it seemed so silly not to know the man’s name. Cuss rapped at the parlour door and entered.
There was a fairly audible imprecation from within. “Pardon my intrusion,” said Cuss,
and then the door closed and cut Mrs. Hall off from the rest of the conversation. She could hear the murmur of voices for the
next ten minutes, then a cry of surprise, a stirring of feet, a chair flung aside, a
bark of laughter, quick steps to the door, and Cuss appeared, his face white, his eyes
staring
over his shoulder. He left the door open behind him, and without looking at her
strode across the hall and went down the steps, and she heard his feet hurrying along the
road. He carried his hat in his hand. She stood behind the door, looking at the open
door of the parlour. Then she heard the stranger laughing quietly, and then his footsteps came
across the room. She could not see his face where she stood. The parlour door slammed,
and the place was silent again. Cuss went straight up the villa
ge to Bunting
the vicar. “Am I mad?” Cuss began abruptly, as he entered the shabby little study. “Do
I look like an insane person?” “What’s happened?” said the vicar, putting
the ammonite on the loose sheets of his forth-coming sermon. “That chap at the inn—” “Well?” “Give me something to drink,” said Cuss,
and he sat down. When his nerves had been steadied by a glass
of cheap sherry—the only drink the good vicar had available—he told him of the interview
he had just had. “Went in,” he gasped, “
and began to demand a subscription for
that Nurse Fund. He’d stuck his hands in his pockets as I came in, and he sat down
lumpily in his chair. Sniffed. I told him I’d heard he took an interest in scientific
things. He said yes. Sniffed again. Kept on sniffing all the time; evidently recently
caught an infernal cold. No wonder, wrapped up like that! I developed the nurse idea,
and all the while kept my eyes open. Bottles—chemicals—everywhere. Balance, test-tubes in stands, and a smell
of—evening
primrose. Would he subscribe? Said he’d consider it. Asked him, point-blank,
was he researching. Said he was. A long research? Got quite cross. ‘A damnable long research,’
said he, blowing the cork out, so to speak. ‘Oh,’ said I. And out came the grievance.
The man was just on the boil, and my question boiled him over. He had been given a prescription,
most valuable prescription—what for he wouldn’t say. Was it medical? ‘Damn you! What are
you fishing after?’ I apologised. Dignified sniff and c
ough. He resumed. He’d read it.
Five ingredients. Put it down; turned his head. Draught of air from window lifted the
paper. Swish, rustle. He was working in a room with an open fireplace, he said. Saw
a flicker, and there was the prescription burning and lifting chimneyward. Rushed towards
it just as it whisked up the chimney. So! Just at that point, to illustrate his story,
out came his arm.” “Well?” “No hand—just an empty sleeve. Lord! I
thought, that’s a deformity! Got a cork arm, I suppose,
and has taken it off. Then,
I thought, there’s something odd in that. What the devil keeps that sleeve up and open,
if there’s nothing in it? There was nothing in it, I tell you. Nothing down it, right
down to the joint. I could see right down it to the elbow, and there was a glimmer of
light shining through a tear of the cloth. ‘Good God!’ I said. Then he stopped. Stared
at me with those black goggles of his, and then at his sleeve.” “Well?” “That’s all. He never said a word; just
glared, and
put his sleeve back in his pocket quickly. ‘I was saying,’ said he, ‘that
there was the prescription burning, wasn’t I?’ Interrogative cough. ‘How the devil,’
said I, ‘can you move an empty sleeve like that?’ ‘Empty sleeve?’ ‘Yes,’ said
I, ‘an empty sleeve.’ “‘It’s an empty sleeve, is it? You saw
it was an empty sleeve?’ He stood up right away. I stood up too. He came towards me in
three very slow steps, and stood quite close. Sniffed venomously. I didn’t flinch, though
I’m hanged if that bandag
ed knob of his, and those blinkers, aren’t enough to unnerve
any one, coming quietly up to you. “‘You said it was an empty sleeve?’
he said. ‘Certainly,’ I said. At staring and saying nothing a barefaced man, unspectacled,
starts scratch. Then very quietly he pulled his sleeve out of his pocket again, and raised
his arm towards me as though he would show it to me again. He did it very, very slowly.
I looked at it. Seemed an age. ‘Well?’ said I, clearing my throat, ‘there’s nothing
in it.’ “Had t
o say something. I was beginning to
feel frightened. I could see right down it. He extended it straight towards me, slowly,
slowly—just like that—until the cuff was six inches from my face. Queer thing to see
an empty sleeve come at you like that! And then—” “Well?” “Something—exactly like a finger and thumb
it felt—nipped my nose.” Bunting began to laugh. “There wasn’t anything there!” said
Cuss, his voice running up into a shriek at the “there.” “It’s all very well for
you to laugh, but I tell
you I was so startled, I hit his cuff hard, and turned around, and
cut out of the room—I left him—” Cuss stopped. There was no mistaking the sincerity
of his panic. He turned round in a helpless way and took a second glass of the excellent
vicar’s very inferior sherry. “When I hit his cuff,” said Cuss, “I tell you,
it felt exactly like hitting an arm. And there wasn’t an arm! There wasn’t the ghost
of an arm!” Mr. Bunting thought it over. He looked suspiciously
at Cuss. “It’s a most remarkable
story,” he said. He looked very wise and grave indeed.
“It’s really,” said Mr. Bunting with judicial emphasis, “a most remarkable story.” CHAPTER V.
THE BURGLARY AT THE VICARAGE The facts of the burglary at the vicarage
came to us chiefly through the medium of the vicar and his wife. It occurred in the small
hours of Whit Monday, the day devoted in Iping to the Club festivities. Mrs. Bunting, it
seems, woke up suddenly in the stillness that comes before the dawn, with the strong impression
that
the door of their bedroom had opened and closed. She did not arouse her husband
at first, but sat up in bed listening. She then distinctly heard the pad, pad, pad of
bare feet coming out of the adjoining dressing-room and walking along the passage towards the
staircase. As soon as she felt assured of this, she aroused the Rev. Mr. Bunting as
quietly as possible. He did not strike a light, but putting on his spectacles, her dressing-gown
and his bath slippers, he went out on the landing to listen
. He heard quite distinctly
a fumbling going on at his study desk down-stairs, and then a violent sneeze. At that he returned to his bedroom, armed
himself with the most obvious weapon, the poker, and descended the staircase as noiselessly
as possible. Mrs. Bunting came out on the landing. The hour was about four, and the ultimate
darkness of the night was past. There was a faint shimmer of light in the hall, but
the study doorway yawned impenetrably black. Everything was still except the faint
creaking
of the stairs under Mr. Bunting’s tread, and the slight movements in the study. Then
something snapped, the drawer was opened, and there was a rustle of papers. Then came
an imprecation, and a match was struck and the study was flooded with yellow light. Mr.
Bunting was now in the hall, and through the crack of the door he could see the desk and
the open drawer and a candle burning on the desk. But the robber he could not see. He
stood there in the hall undecided what to do, and Mrs. Bu
nting, her face white and intent,
crept slowly downstairs after him. One thing kept Mr. Bunting’s courage; the persuasion
that this burglar was a resident in the village. They heard the chink of money, and realised
that the robber had found the housekeeping reserve of gold—two pounds ten in half sovereigns
altogether. At that sound Mr. Bunting was nerved to abrupt action. Gripping the poker
firmly, he rushed into the room, closely followed by Mrs. Bunting. “Surrender!” cried Mr.
Bunting, fiercel
y, and then stooped amazed. Apparently the room was perfectly empty. Yet their conviction that they had, that very
moment, heard somebody moving in the room had amounted to a certainty. For half a minute,
perhaps, they stood gaping, then Mrs. Bunting went across the room and looked behind the
screen, while Mr. Bunting, by a kindred impulse, peered under the desk. Then Mrs. Bunting turned
back the window-curtains, and Mr. Bunting looked up the chimney and probed it with the
poker. Then Mrs. Bunti
ng scrutinised the waste-paper basket and Mr. Bunting opened the lid of the
coal-scuttle. Then they came to a stop and stood with eyes interrogating each other. “I could have sworn—” said Mr. Bunting. “The candle!” said Mr. Bunting. “Who
lit the candle?” “The drawer!” said Mrs. Bunting. “And
the money’s gone!” She went hastily to the doorway. “Of all the strange occurrences—” There was a violent sneeze in the passage.
They rushed out, and as they did so the kitchen door slammed. “Bring the candl
e,” said
Mr. Bunting, and led the way. They both heard a sound of bolts being hastily shot back. As he opened the kitchen door he saw through
the scullery that the back door was just opening, and the faint light of early dawn displayed
the dark masses of the garden beyond. He is certain that nothing went out of the door.
It opened, stood open for a moment, and then closed with a slam. As it did so, the candle
Mrs. Bunting was carrying from the study flickered and flared. It was a minute or more
before
they entered the kitchen. The place was empty. They refastened the back
door, examined the kitchen, pantry, and scullery thoroughly, and at last went down into the
cellar. There was not a soul to be found in the house, search as they would. Daylight found the vicar and his wife, a quaintly-costumed
little couple, still marvelling about on their own ground floor by the unnecessary light
of a guttering candle. CHAPTER VI.
THE FURNITURE THAT WENT MAD Now it happened that in the early hours o
f
Whit Monday, before Millie was hunted out for the day, Mr. Hall and Mrs. Hall both rose
and went noiselessly down into the cellar. Their business there was of a private nature,
and had something to do with the specific gravity of their beer. They had hardly entered
the cellar when Mrs. Hall found she had forgotten to bring down a bottle of sarsaparilla from
their joint-room. As she was the expert and principal operator in this affair, Hall very
properly went upstairs for it. On the landing he
was surprised to see that
the stranger’s door was ajar. He went on into his own room and found the bottle as
he had been directed. But returning with the bottle, he noticed
that the bolts of the front door had been shot back, that the door was in fact simply
on the latch. And with a flash of inspiration he connected this with the stranger’s room
upstairs and the suggestions of Mr. Teddy Henfrey. He distinctly remembered holding
the candle while Mrs. Hall shot these bolts overnight. At the sight
he stopped, gaping,
then with the bottle still in his hand went upstairs again. He rapped at the stranger’s
door. There was no answer. He rapped again; then pushed the door wide open and entered. It was as he expected. The bed, the room also,
was empty. And what was stranger, even to his heavy intelligence, on the bedroom chair
and along the rail of the bed were scattered the garments, the only garments so far as
he knew, and the bandages of their guest. His big slouch hat even was cocked jaunti
ly
over the bed-post. As Hall stood there he heard his wife’s
voice coming out of the depth of the cellar, with that rapid telescoping of the syllables
and interrogative cocking up of the final words to a high note, by which the West Sussex
villager is wont to indicate a brisk impatience. “George! You gart whad a wand?” At that he turned and hurried down to her.
“Janny,” he said, over the rail of the cellar steps, “’tas the truth what Henfrey
sez. ’E’s not in uz room, ’e en’t. And the front door
’s onbolted.” At first Mrs. Hall did not understand, and
as soon as she did she resolved to see the empty room for herself. Hall, still holding
the bottle, went first. “If ’e en’t there,” he said, “’is close are. And
what’s ’e doin’ ’ithout ’is close, then? ’Tas a most curious business.” As they came up the cellar steps they both,
it was afterwards ascertained, fancied they heard the front door open and shut, but seeing
it closed and nothing there, neither said a word to the other about it at th
e time.
Mrs. Hall passed her husband in the passage and ran on first upstairs. Someone sneezed
on the staircase. Hall, following six steps behind, thought that he heard her sneeze.
She, going on first, was under the impression that Hall was sneezing. She flung open the
door and stood regarding the room. “Of all the curious!” she said. She heard a sniff close behind her head as
it seemed, and turning, was surprised to see Hall a dozen feet off on the topmost stair.
But in another moment he was be
side her. She bent forward and put her hand on the pillow
and then under the clothes. “Cold,” she said. “He’s been up this
hour or more.” As she did so, a most extraordinary thing
happened. The bed-clothes gathered themselves together, leapt up suddenly into a sort of
peak, and then jumped headlong over the bottom rail. It was exactly as if a hand had clutched
them in the centre and flung them aside. Immediately after, the stranger’s hat hopped off the
bed-post, described a whirling flight in th
e air through the better part of a circle, and
then dashed straight at Mrs. Hall’s face. Then as swiftly came the sponge from the washstand;
and then the chair, flinging the stranger’s coat and trousers carelessly aside, and laughing
drily in a voice singularly like the stranger’s, turned itself up with its four legs at Mrs.
Hall, seemed to take aim at her for a moment, and charged at her. She screamed and turned,
and then the chair legs came gently but firmly against her back and impelled her a
nd Hall
out of the room. The door slammed violently and was locked. The chair and bed seemed to
be executing a dance of triumph for a moment, and then abruptly everything was still. Mrs. Hall was left almost in a fainting condition
in Mr. Hall’s arms on the landing. It was with the greatest difficulty that Mr. Hall
and Millie, who had been roused by her scream of alarm, succeeded in getting her downstairs,
and applying the restoratives customary in such cases. “’Tas sperits,” said Mrs. Hall. “I
know ’tas sperits. I’ve read in papers of en. Tables and chairs leaping and dancing...” “Take a drop more, Janny,” said Hall.
“’Twill steady ye.” “Lock him out,” said Mrs. Hall. “Don’t
let him come in again. I half guessed—I might ha’ known. With them goggling eyes
and bandaged head, and never going to church of a Sunday. And all they bottles—more’n
it’s right for any one to have. He’s put the sperits into the furniture.... My good
old furniture! ’Twas in that very chair my poor dear mother used
to sit when I was
a little girl. To think it should rise up against me now!” “Just a drop more, Janny,” said Hall.
“Your nerves is all upset.” They sent Millie across the street through
the golden five o’clock sunshine to rouse up Mr. Sandy Wadgers, the blacksmith. Mr.
Hall’s compliments and the furniture upstairs was behaving most extraordinary. Would Mr.
Wadgers come round? He was a knowing man, was Mr. Wadgers, and very resourceful. He
took quite a grave view of the case. “Arm darmed if thet
ent witchcraft,” was the
view of Mr. Sandy Wadgers. “You warnt horseshoes for such gentry as he.” He came round greatly concerned. They wanted
him to lead the way upstairs to the room, but he didn’t seem to be in any hurry. He
preferred to talk in the passage. Over the way Huxter’s apprentice came out and began
taking down the shutters of the tobacco window. He was called over to join the discussion.
Mr. Huxter naturally followed over in the course of a few minutes. The Anglo-Saxon genius
for p
arliamentary government asserted itself; there was a great deal of talk and no decisive
action. “Let’s have the facts first,” insisted Mr. Sandy Wadgers. “Let’s be
sure we’d be acting perfectly right in bustin’ that there door open. A door onbust is always
open to bustin’, but ye can’t onbust a door once you’ve busted en.” And suddenly and most wonderfully the door
of the room upstairs opened of its own accord, and as they looked up in amazement, they saw
descending the stairs the muffled figure
of the stranger staring more blackly and blankly
than ever with those unreasonably large blue glass eyes of his. He came down stiffly and
slowly, staring all the time; he walked across the passage staring, then stopped. “Look there!” he said, and their eyes
followed the direction of his gloved finger and saw a bottle of sarsaparilla hard by the
cellar door. Then he entered the parlour, and suddenly, swiftly, viciously, slammed
the door in their faces. Not a word was spoken until the last echoes
of the slam had died away. They stared at one another. “Well, if that don’t lick
everything!” said Mr. Wadgers, and left the alternative unsaid. “I’d go in and ask’n ’bout it,”
said Wadgers, to Mr. Hall. “I’d d’mand an explanation.” It took some time to bring the landlady’s
husband up to that pitch. At last he rapped, opened the door, and got as far as, “Excuse
me—” “Go to the devil!” said the stranger in
a tremendous voice, and “Shut that door after you.” So that brief interview terminated. CH
APTER VII.
THE UNVEILING OF THE STRANGER The stranger went into the little parlour
of the “Coach and Horses” about half-past five in the morning, and there he remained
until near midday, the blinds down, the door shut, and none, after Hall’s repulse, venturing
near him. All that time he must have fasted. Thrice
he rang his bell, the third time furiously and continuously, but no one answered him.
“Him and his ‘go to the devil’ indeed!” said Mrs. Hall. Presently came an imperfect
rumour of the bur
glary at the vicarage, and two and two were put together. Hall, assisted
by Wadgers, went off to find Mr. Shuckleforth, the magistrate, and take his advice. No one
ventured upstairs. How the stranger occupied himself is unknown. Now and then he would
stride violently up and down, and twice came an outburst of curses, a tearing of paper,
and a violent smashing of bottles. The little group of scared but curious people
increased. Mrs. Huxter came over; some gay young fellows resplendent in black re
ady-made
jackets and piqué paper ties—for it was Whit Monday—joined the group with confused
interrogations. Young Archie Harker distinguished himself by going up the yard and trying to
peep under the window-blinds. He could see nothing, but gave reason for supposing that
he did, and others of the Iping youth presently joined him. It was the finest of all possible Whit Mondays,
and down the village street stood a row of nearly a dozen booths, a shooting gallery,
and on the grass by the forge were
three yellow and chocolate waggons and some picturesque
strangers of both sexes putting up a cocoanut shy. The gentlemen wore blue jerseys, the
ladies white aprons and quite fashionable hats with heavy plumes. Wodger, of the “Purple
Fawn,” and Mr. Jaggers, the cobbler, who also sold old second-hand ordinary bicycles,
were stretching a string of union-jacks and royal ensigns (which had originally celebrated
the first Victorian Jubilee) across the road. And inside, in the artificial darkness of
t
he parlour, into which only one thin jet of sunlight penetrated, the stranger, hungry
we must suppose, and fearful, hidden in his uncomfortable hot wrappings, pored through
his dark glasses upon his paper or chinked his dirty little bottles, and occasionally
swore savagely at the boys, audible if invisible, outside the windows. In the corner by the
fireplace lay the fragments of half a dozen smashed bottles, and a pungent twang of chlorine
tainted the air. So much we know from what was heard at
the time and from what was subsequently
seen in the room. About noon he suddenly opened his parlour
door and stood glaring fixedly at the three or four people in the bar. “Mrs. Hall,”
he said. Somebody went sheepishly and called for Mrs. Hall. Mrs. Hall appeared after an interval, a little
short of breath, but all the fiercer for that. Hall was still out. She had deliberated over
this scene, and she came holding a little tray with an unsettled bill upon it. “Is
it your bill you’re wanting, sir?”
she said. “Why wasn’t my breakfast laid? Why haven’t
you prepared my meals and answered my bell? Do you think I live without eating?” “Why isn’t my bill paid?” said Mrs.
Hall. “That’s what I want to know.” “I told you three days ago I was awaiting
a remittance—” “I told you two days ago I wasn’t going
to await no remittances. You can’t grumble if your breakfast waits a bit, if my bill’s
been waiting these five days, can you?” The stranger swore briefly but vividly. “Nar, nar!” from the bar. “An
d I’d thank you kindly, sir, if you’d
keep your swearing to yourself, sir,” said Mrs. Hall. The stranger stood looking more like an angry
diving-helmet than ever. It was universally felt in the bar that Mrs. Hall had the better
of him. His next words showed as much. “Look here, my good woman—” he began. “Don’t ‘good woman’ me,” said Mrs.
Hall. “I’ve told you my remittance hasn’t
come.” “Remittance indeed!” said Mrs. Hall. “Still, I daresay in my pocket—” “You told me three days ago that you hadn
’t
anything but a sovereign’s worth of silver upon you.” “Well, I’ve found some more—” “’Ul-lo!” from the bar. “I wonder where you found it,” said Mrs.
Hall. That seemed to annoy the stranger very much.
He stamped his foot. “What do you mean?” he said. “That I wonder where you found it,” said
Mrs. Hall. “And before I take any bills or get any breakfasts, or do any such things
whatsoever, you got to tell me one or two things I don’t understand, and what nobody
don’t understand, and what everybody
is very anxious to understand. I want to know
what you been doing t’my chair upstairs, and I want to know how ’tis your room was
empty, and how you got in again. Them as stops in this house comes in by the doors—that’s
the rule of the house, and that you didn’t do, and what I want to know is how you did
come in. And I want to know—” Suddenly the stranger raised his gloved hands
clenched, stamped his foot, and said, “Stop!” with such extraordinary violence that he silenced
her instantly. “You do
n’t understand,” he said, “who
I am or what I am. I’ll show you. By Heaven! I’ll show you.” Then he put his open palm
over his face and withdrew it. The centre of his face became a black cavity. “Here,”
he said. He stepped forward and handed Mrs. Hall something which she, staring at his metamorphosed
face, accepted automatically. Then, when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped
it, and staggered back. The nose—it was the stranger’s nose! pink and shining—rolled
on the floor. Then he
removed his spectacles, and everyone
in the bar gasped. He took off his hat, and with a violent gesture tore at his whiskers
and bandages. For a moment they resisted him. A flash of horrible anticipation passed through
the bar. “Oh, my Gard!” said some one. Then off they came. It was worse than anything. Mrs. Hall, standing
open-mouthed and horror-struck, shrieked at what she saw, and made for the door of the
house. Everyone began to move. They were prepared for scars, disfigurements, tangible h
orrors,
but nothing! The bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a
hobbledehoy jump to avoid them. Everyone tumbled on everyone else down the steps. For the man
who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the
coat-collar of him, and then—nothingness, no visible thing at all! People down the village heard shouts and shrieks,
and looking up the street saw the “Coach and Horses” violently firing out its humanity.
They saw
Mrs. Hall fall down and Mr. Teddy Henfrey jump to avoid tumbling over her, and
then they heard the frightful screams of Millie, who, emerging suddenly from the kitchen at
the noise of the tumult, had come upon the headless stranger from behind. These increased
suddenly. Forthwith everyone all down the street, the
sweetstuff seller, cocoanut shy proprietor and his assistant, the swing man, little boys
and girls, rustic dandies, smart wenches, smocked elders and aproned gipsies—began
running towa
rds the inn, and in a miraculously short space of time a crowd of perhaps forty
people, and rapidly increasing, swayed and hooted and inquired and exclaimed and suggested,
in front of Mrs. Hall’s establishment. Everyone seemed eager to talk at once, and the result
was Babel. A small group supported Mrs. Hall, who was picked up in a state of collapse.
There was a conference, and the incredible evidence of a vociferous eye-witness. “O
Bogey!” “What’s he been doin’, then?” “Ain’t hurt the girl, ’as
’e?” “Run
at en with a knife, I believe.” “No ’ed, I tell ye. I don’t mean no manner of speaking.
I mean marn ’ithout a ’ed!” “Narnsense! ’tis some conjuring trick.” “Fetched
off ’is wrapping, ’e did—” In its struggles to see in through the open
door, the crowd formed itself into a straggling wedge, with the more adventurous apex nearest
the inn. “He stood for a moment, I heerd the gal scream, and he turned. I saw her skirts
whisk, and he went after her. Didn’t take ten seconds. Back he comes w
ith a knife in
uz hand and a loaf; stood just as if he was staring. Not a moment ago. Went in that there
door. I tell ’e, ’e ain’t gart no ’ed at all. You just missed en—” There was a disturbance behind, and the speaker
stopped to step aside for a little procession that was marching very resolutely towards
the house; first Mr. Hall, very red and determined, then Mr. Bobby Jaffers, the village constable,
and then the wary Mr. Wadgers. They had come now armed with a warrant. People shouted conflic
ting information of
the recent circumstances. “’Ed or no ’ed,” said Jaffers, “I got to ’rest en, and
’rest en I will.” Mr. Hall marched up the steps, marched straight
to the door of the parlour and flung it open. “Constable,” he said, “do your duty.” Jaffers marched in. Hall next, Wadgers last.
They saw in the dim light the headless figure facing them, with a gnawed crust of bread
in one gloved hand and a chunk of cheese in the other. “That’s him!” said Hall. “What the devil’s this?” came in a t
one
of angry expostulation from above the collar of the figure. “You’re a damned rum customer, mister,”
said Mr. Jaffers. “But ’ed or no ’ed, the warrant says ‘body,’ and duty’s
duty—” “Keep off!” said the figure, starting
back. Abruptly he whipped down the bread and cheese,
and Mr. Hall just grasped the knife on the table in time to save it. Off came the stranger’s
left glove and was slapped in Jaffers’ face. In another moment Jaffers, cutting short some
statement concerning a warrant, had grip
ped him by the handless wrist and caught his invisible
throat. He got a sounding kick on the shin that made him shout, but he kept his grip.
Hall sent the knife sliding along the table to Wadgers, who acted as goal-keeper for the
offensive, so to speak, and then stepped forward as Jaffers and the stranger swayed and staggered
towards him, clutching and hitting in. A chair stood in the way, and went aside with a crash
as they came down together. “Get the feet,” said Jaffers between his
teeth. Mr.
Hall, endeavouring to act on instructions,
received a sounding kick in the ribs that disposed of him for a moment, and Mr. Wadgers,
seeing the decapitated stranger had rolled over and got the upper side of Jaffers, retreated
towards the door, knife in hand, and so collided with Mr. Huxter and the Sidderbridge carter
coming to the rescue of law and order. At the same moment down came three or four bottles
from the chiffonnier and shot a web of pungency into the air of the room. “I’ll surrender,”
cried the stranger,
though he had Jaffers down, and in another moment he stood up panting, a strange figure,
headless and handless—for he had pulled off his right glove now as well as his left.
“It’s no good,” he said, as if sobbing for breath. It was the strangest thing in the world to
hear that voice coming as if out of empty space, but the Sussex peasants are perhaps
the most matter-of-fact people under the sun. Jaffers got up also and produced a pair of
handcuffs. Then he stared. “I say!” s
aid Jaffers, brought up short
by a dim realization of the incongruity of the whole business, “Darn it! Can’t use
’em as I can see.” The stranger ran his arm down his waistcoat,
and as if by a miracle the buttons to which his empty sleeve pointed became undone. Then
he said something about his shin, and stooped down. He seemed to be fumbling with his shoes
and socks. “Why!” said Huxter, suddenly, “that’s
not a man at all. It’s just empty clothes. Look! You can see down his collar and the
linings
of his clothes. I could put my arm—” He extended his hand; it seemed to meet something
in mid-air, and he drew it back with a sharp exclamation. “I wish you’d keep your fingers
out of my eye,” said the aerial voice, in a tone of savage expostulation. “The fact
is, I’m all here—head, hands, legs, and all the rest of it, but it happens I’m invisible.
It’s a confounded nuisance, but I am. That’s no reason why I should be poked to pieces
by every stupid bumpkin in Iping, is it?” The suit of clothes,
now all unbuttoned and
hanging loosely upon its unseen supports, stood up, arms akimbo. Several other of the men folks had now entered
the room, so that it was closely crowded. “Invisible, eh?” said Huxter, ignoring
the stranger’s abuse. “Who ever heard the likes of that?” “It’s strange, perhaps, but it’s not
a crime. Why am I assaulted by a policeman in this fashion?” “Ah! that’s a different matter,” said
Jaffers. “No doubt you are a bit difficult to see in this light, but I got a warrant
and
it’s all correct. What I’m after ain’t no invisibility,—it’s burglary. There’s
a house been broke into and money took.” “Well?” “And circumstances certainly point—” “Stuff and nonsense!” said the Invisible
Man. “I hope so, sir; but I’ve got my instructions.” “Well,” said the stranger, “I’ll come.
I’ll come. But no handcuffs.” “It’s the regular thing,” said Jaffers. “No handcuffs,” stipulated the stranger. “Pardon me,” said Jaffers. Abruptly the figure sat down, and before any
one could realise w
as was being done, the slippers, socks, and trousers had been kicked
off under the table. Then he sprang up again and flung off his coat. “Here, stop that,” said Jaffers, suddenly
realising what was happening. He gripped at the waistcoat; it struggled, and the shirt
slipped out of it and left it limp and empty in his hand. “Hold him!” said Jaffers,
loudly. “Once he gets the things off—” “Hold him!” cried everyone, and there
was a rush at the fluttering white shirt which was now all that was visi
ble of the stranger. The shirt-sleeve planted a shrewd blow in
Hall’s face that stopped his open-armed advance, and sent him backward into old Toothsome
the sexton, and in another moment the garment was lifted up and became convulsed and vacantly
flapping about the arms, even as a shirt that is being thrust over a man’s head. Jaffers
clutched at it, and only helped to pull it off; he was struck in the mouth out of the
air, and incontinently threw his truncheon and smote Teddy Henfrey savagely up
on the
crown of his head. “Look out!” said everybody, fencing at
random and hitting at nothing. “Hold him! Shut the door! Don’t let him loose! I got
something! Here he is!” A perfect Babel of noises they made. Everybody, it seemed,
was being hit all at once, and Sandy Wadgers, knowing as ever and his wits sharpened by
a frightful blow in the nose, reopened the door and led the rout. The others, following
incontinently, were jammed for a moment in the corner by the doorway. The hitting continued.
Phipps, the Unitarian, had a front tooth broken, and Henfrey was injured in the cartilage of
his ear. Jaffers was struck under the jaw, and, turning, caught at something that intervened
between him and Huxter in the mêlée, and prevented their coming together. He felt a
muscular chest, and in another moment the whole mass of struggling, excited men shot
out into the crowded hall. “I got him!” shouted Jaffers, choking
and reeling through them all, and wrestling with purple face and swelling veins
against
his unseen enemy. Men staggered right and left as the extraordinary
conflict swayed swiftly towards the house door, and went spinning down the half-dozen
steps of the inn. Jaffers cried in a strangled voice—holding tight, nevertheless, and making
play with his knee—spun around, and fell heavily undermost with his head on the gravel.
Only then did his fingers relax. There were excited cries of “Hold him!”
“Invisible!” and so forth, and a young fellow, a stranger in the place whose name
d
id not come to light, rushed in at once, caught something, missed his hold, and fell
over the constable’s prostrate body. Half-way across the road a woman screamed as something
pushed by her; a dog, kicked apparently, yelped and ran howling into Huxter’s yard, and
with that the transit of the Invisible Man was accomplished. For a space people stood
amazed and gesticulating, and then came panic, and scattered them abroad through the village
as a gust scatters dead leaves. But Jaffers lay quite st
ill, face upward and
knees bent, at the foot of the steps of the inn. CHAPTER VIII.
IN TRANSIT The eighth chapter is exceedingly brief, and
relates that Gibbons, the amateur naturalist of the district, while lying out on the spacious
open downs without a soul within a couple of miles of him, as he thought, and almost
dozing, heard close to him the sound as of a man coughing, sneezing, and then swearing
savagely to himself; and looking, beheld nothing. Yet the voice was indisputable. It continued
to swear with that breadth and variety that distinguishes the swearing of a cultivated
man. It grew to a climax, diminished again, and died away in the distance, going as it
seemed to him in the direction of Adderdean. It lifted to a spasmodic sneeze and ended.
Gibbons had heard nothing of the morning’s occurrences, but the phenomenon was so striking
and disturbing that his philosophical tranquillity vanished; he got up hastily, and hurried down
the steepness of the hill towards the village, as
fast as he could go. CHAPTER IX.
MR. THOMAS MARVEL You must picture Mr. Thomas Marvel as a person
of copious, flexible visage, a nose of cylindrical protrusion, a liquorish, ample, fluctuating
mouth, and a beard of bristling eccentricity. His figure inclined to embonpoint; his short
limbs accentuated this inclination. He wore a furry silk hat, and the frequent substitution
of twine and shoe-laces for buttons, apparent at critical points of his costume, marked
a man essentially bachelor. Mr. Tho
mas Marvel was sitting with his feet
in a ditch by the roadside over the down towards Adderdean, about a mile and a half out of
Iping. His feet, save for socks of irregular open-work, were bare, his big toes were broad,
and pricked like the ears of a watchful dog. In a leisurely manner—he did everything
in a leisurely manner—he was contemplating trying on a pair of boots. They were the soundest
boots he had come across for a long time, but too large for him; whereas the ones he
had were, in dry
weather, a very comfortable fit, but too thin-soled for damp. Mr. Thomas
Marvel hated roomy shoes, but then he hated damp. He had never properly thought out which
he hated most, and it was a pleasant day, and there was nothing better to do. So he
put the four shoes in a graceful group on the turf and looked at them. And seeing them
there among the grass and springing agrimony, it suddenly occurred to him that both pairs
were exceedingly ugly to see. He was not at all startled by a voice behind h
im. “They’re boots, anyhow,” said the Voice. “They are—charity boots,” said Mr. Thomas
Marvel, with his head on one side regarding them distastefully; “and which is the ugliest
pair in the whole blessed universe, I’m darned if I know!” “H’m,” said the Voice. “I’ve worn worse—in fact, I’ve worn
none. But none so owdacious ugly—if you’ll allow the expression. I’ve been cadging
boots—in particular—for days. Because I was sick of them. They’re sound enough,
of course. But a gentleman on tramp sees s
uch a thundering lot of his boots. And if you’ll
believe me, I’ve raised nothing in the whole blessed country, try as I would, but them.
Look at ’em! And a good country for boots, too, in a general way. But it’s just my
promiscuous luck. I’ve got my boots in this country ten years or more. And then they treat
you like this.” “It’s a beast of a country,” said the
Voice. “And pigs for people.” “Ain’t it?” said Mr. Thomas Marvel.
“Lord! But them boots! It beats it.” He turned his head over his shou
lder to the
right, to look at the boots of his interlocutor with a view to comparisons, and lo! where
the boots of his interlocutor should have been were neither legs nor boots. He was irradiated
by the dawn of a great amazement. “Where are yer?” said Mr. Thomas Marvel over his
shoulder and coming on all fours. He saw a stretch of empty downs with the wind swaying
the remote green-pointed furze bushes. “Am I drunk?” said Mr. Marvel. “Have
I had visions? Was I talking to myself? What the—” “Don’t
be alarmed,” said a Voice. “None of your ventriloquising me,” said
Mr. Thomas Marvel, rising sharply to his feet. “Where are yer? Alarmed, indeed!” “Don’t be alarmed,” repeated the Voice. “You’ll be alarmed in a minute, you silly
fool,” said Mr. Thomas Marvel. “Where are yer? Lemme get my mark on yer... “Are yer buried?” said Mr. Thomas Marvel,
after an interval. There was no answer. Mr. Thomas Marvel stood
bootless and amazed, his jacket nearly thrown off. “Peewit,” said a peewit, very remote.
“Peewit, indeed!” said Mr. Thomas Marvel.
“This ain’t no time for foolery.” The down was desolate, east and west, north and
south; the road with its shallow ditches and white bordering stakes, ran smooth and empty
north and south, and, save for that peewit, the blue sky was empty too. “So help me,”
said Mr. Thomas Marvel, shuffling his coat on to his shoulders again. “It’s the drink!
I might ha’ known.” “It’s not the drink,” said the Voice.
“You keep your nerves steady.” “Ow!” said Mr. Marvel,
and his face grew
white amidst its patches. “It’s the drink!” his lips repeated noiselessly. He remained
staring about him, rotating slowly backwards. “I could have swore I heard a voice,”
he whispered. “Of course you did.” “It’s there again,” said Mr. Marvel,
closing his eyes and clasping his hand on his brow with a tragic gesture. He was suddenly
taken by the collar and shaken violently, and left more dazed than ever. “Don’t
be a fool,” said the Voice. “I’m—off—my—blooming—chump,”
said Mr. Mar
vel. “It’s no good. It’s fretting about them blarsted boots. I’m
off my blessed blooming chump. Or it’s spirits.” “Neither one thing nor the other,” said
the Voice. “Listen!” “Chump,” said Mr. Marvel. “One minute,” said the Voice, penetratingly,
tremulous with self-control. “Well?” said Mr. Thomas Marvel, with a
strange feeling of having been dug in the chest by a finger. “You think I’m just imagination? Just
imagination?” “What else can you be?” said Mr. Thomas
Marvel, rubbing the back of his n
eck. “Very well,” said the Voice, in a tone
of relief. “Then I’m going to throw flints at you till you think differently.” “But where are yer?” The Voice made no answer. Whizz came a flint,
apparently out of the air, and missed Mr. Marvel’s shoulder by a hair’s-breadth.
Mr. Marvel, turning, saw a flint jerk up into the air, trace a complicated path, hang for
a moment, and then fling at his feet with almost invisible rapidity. He was too amazed
to dodge. Whizz it came, and ricochetted from a bare
toe into the ditch. Mr. Thomas Marvel
jumped a foot and howled aloud. Then he started to run, tripped over an unseen obstacle, and
came head over heels into a sitting position. “Now,” said the Voice, as a third stone
curved upward and hung in the air above the tramp. “Am I imagination?” Mr. Marvel by way of reply struggled to his
feet, and was immediately rolled over again. He lay quiet for a moment. “If you struggle
any more,” said the Voice, “I shall throw the flint at your head.” “It’s a fai
r do,” said Mr. Thomas Marvel,
sitting up, taking his wounded toe in hand and fixing his eye on the third missile. “I
don’t understand it. Stones flinging themselves. Stones talking. Put yourself down. Rot away.
I’m done.” The third flint fell. “It’s very simple,” said the Voice.
“I’m an invisible man.” “Tell us something I don’t know,” said
Mr. Marvel, gasping with pain. “Where you’ve hid—how you do it—I don’t know. I’m
beat.” “That’s all,” said the Voice. “I’m
invisible. That’s what I want you
to understand.” “Anyone could see that. There is no need
for you to be so confounded impatient, mister. Now then. Give us a notion. How are you hid?” “I’m invisible. That’s the great point.
And what I want you to understand is this—” “But whereabouts?” interrupted Mr. Marvel. “Here! Six yards in front of you.” “Oh, come! I ain’t blind. You’ll be
telling me next you’re just thin air. I’m not one of your ignorant tramps—” “Yes, I am—thin air. You’re looking
through me.” “What! Ain’t there any stu
ff to you. Vox
et—what is it?—jabber. Is it that?” “I am just a human being—solid, needing
food and drink, needing covering too—But I’m invisible. You see? Invisible. Simple
idea. Invisible.” “What, real like?” “Yes, real.” “Let’s have a hand of you,” said Marvel,
“if you are real. It won’t be so darn out-of-the-way like, then—Lord!” he said,
“how you made me jump!—gripping me like that!” He felt the hand that had closed round his
wrist with his disengaged fingers, and his fingers went timorousl
y up the arm, patted
a muscular chest, and explored a bearded face. Marvel’s face was astonishment. “I’m dashed!” he said. “If this don’t
beat cock-fighting! Most remarkable!—And there I can see a rabbit clean through you,
’arf a mile away! Not a bit of you visible—except—” He scrutinised the apparently empty space
keenly. “You ’aven’t been eatin’ bread and cheese?” he asked, holding the invisible
arm. “You’re quite right, and it’s not quite
assimilated into the system.” “Ah!” said Mr. Marvel. “
Sort of ghostly,
though.” “Of course, all this isn’t half so wonderful
as you think.” “It’s quite wonderful enough for my modest
wants,” said Mr. Thomas Marvel. “Howjer manage it! How the dooce is it done?” “It’s too long a story. And besides—” “I tell you, the whole business fairly beats
me,” said Mr. Marvel. “What I want to say at present is this:
I need help. I have come to that—I came upon you suddenly. I was wandering, mad with
rage, naked, impotent. I could have murdered. And I saw you—” “
Lord!” said Mr. Marvel. “I came up behind you—hesitated—went
on—” Mr. Marvel’s expression was eloquent. “—then stopped. ‘Here,’ I said, ‘is
an outcast like myself. This is the man for me.’ So I turned back and came to you—you.
And—” “Lord!” said Mr. Marvel. “But I’m
all in a tizzy. May I ask—How is it? And what you may be requiring in the way of help?—Invisible!” “I want you to help me get clothes—and
shelter—and then, with other things. I’ve left them long enough. If you won’t—well!
But you wil
l—must.” “Look here,” said Mr. Marvel. “I’m
too flabbergasted. Don’t knock me about any more. And leave me go. I must get steady
a bit. And you’ve pretty near broken my toe. It’s all so unreasonable. Empty downs,
empty sky. Nothing visible for miles except the bosom of Nature. And then comes a voice.
A voice out of heaven! And stones! And a fist—Lord!” “Pull yourself together,” said the Voice,
“for you have to do the job I’ve chosen for you.” Mr. Marvel blew out his cheeks, and his eyes
were rou
nd. “I’ve chosen you,” said the Voice. “You
are the only man except some of those fools down there, who knows there is such a thing
as an invisible man. You have to be my helper. Help me—and I will do great things for you.
An invisible man is a man of power.” He stopped for a moment to sneeze violently. “But if you betray me,” he said, “if
you fail to do as I direct you—” He paused and tapped Mr. Marvel’s shoulder smartly.
Mr. Marvel gave a yelp of terror at the touch. “I don’t want to betray yo
u,” said Mr.
Marvel, edging away from the direction of the fingers. “Don’t you go a-thinking
that, whatever you do. All I want to do is to help you—just tell me what I got to do.
(Lord!) Whatever you want done, that I’m most willing to do.” CHAPTER X.
MR. MARVEL’S VISIT TO IPING After the first gusty panic had spent itself
Iping became argumentative. Scepticism suddenly reared its head—rather nervous scepticism,
not at all assured of its back, but scepticism nevertheless. It is so much easier no
t to
believe in an invisible man; and those who had actually seen him dissolve into air, or
felt the strength of his arm, could be counted on the fingers of two hands. And of these
witnesses Mr. Wadgers was presently missing, having retired impregnably behind the bolts
and bars of his own house, and Jaffers was lying stunned in the parlour of the “Coach
and Horses.” Great and strange ideas transcending experience often have less effect upon men
and women than smaller, more tangible consideration
s. Iping was gay with bunting, and everybody
was in gala dress. Whit Monday had been looked forward to for a month or more. By the afternoon
even those who believed in the Unseen were beginning to resume their little amusements
in a tentative fashion, on the supposition that he had quite gone away, and with the
sceptics he was already a jest. But people, sceptics and believers alike, were remarkably
sociable all that day. Haysman’s meadow was gay with a tent, in
which Mrs. Bunting and other ladi
es were preparing tea, while, without, the Sunday-school children
ran races and played games under the noisy guidance of the curate and the Misses Cuss
and Sackbut. No doubt there was a slight uneasiness in the air, but people for the most part had
the sense to conceal whatever imaginative qualms they experienced. On the village green
an inclined strong [rope?], down which, clinging the while to a pulley-swung handle, one could
be hurled violently against a sack at the other end, came in for con
siderable favour
among the adolescents, as also did the swings and the cocoanut shies. There was also promenading,
and the steam organ attached to a small roundabout filled the air with a pungent flavour of oil
and with equally pungent music. Members of the club, who had attended church in the morning,
were splendid in badges of pink and green, and some of the gayer-minded had also adorned
their bowler hats with brilliant-coloured favours of ribbon. Old Fletcher, whose conceptions
of holiday-mak
ing were severe, was visible through the jasmine about his window or through
the open door (whichever way you chose to look), poised delicately on a plank supported
on two chairs, and whitewashing the ceiling of his front room. About four o’clock a stranger entered the
village from the direction of the downs. He was a short, stout person in an extraordinarily
shabby top hat, and he appeared to be very much out of breath. His cheeks were alternately
limp and tightly puffed. His mottled face was a
pprehensive, and he moved with a sort
of reluctant alacrity. He turned the corner of the church, and directed his way to the
“Coach and Horses.” Among others old Fletcher remembers seeing him, and indeed the old gentleman
was so struck by his peculiar agitation that he inadvertently allowed a quantity of whitewash
to run down the brush into the sleeve of his coat while regarding him. This stranger, to the perceptions of the proprietor
of the cocoanut shy, appeared to be talking to himself, and M
r. Huxter remarked the same
thing. He stopped at the foot of the “Coach and Horses” steps, and, according to Mr.
Huxter, appeared to undergo a severe internal struggle before he could induce himself to
enter the house. Finally he marched up the steps, and was seen by Mr. Huxter to turn
to the left and open the door of the parlour. Mr. Huxter heard voices from within the room
and from the bar apprising the man of his error. “That room’s private!” said Hall,
and the stranger shut the door clumsily
and went into the bar. In the course of a few minutes he reappeared,
wiping his lips with the back of his hand with an air of quiet satisfaction that somehow
impressed Mr. Huxter as assumed. He stood looking about him for some moments, and then
Mr. Huxter saw him walk in an oddly furtive manner towards the gates of the yard, upon
which the parlour window opened. The stranger, after some hesitation, leant against one of
the gate-posts, produced a short clay pipe, and prepared to fill it. His fin
gers trembled
while doing so. He lit it clumsily, and folding his arms began to smoke in a languid attitude,
an attitude which his occasional glances up the yard altogether belied. All this Mr. Huxter saw over the canisters
of the tobacco window, and the singularity of the man’s behaviour prompted him to maintain
his observation. Presently the stranger stood up abruptly and
put his pipe in his pocket. Then he vanished into the yard. Forthwith Mr. Huxter, conceiving
he was witness of some petty l
arceny, leapt round his counter and ran out into the road
to intercept the thief. As he did so, Mr. Marvel reappeared, his hat askew, a big bundle
in a blue table-cloth in one hand, and three books tied together—as it proved afterwards
with the Vicar’s braces—in the other. Directly he saw Huxter he gave a sort of gasp,
and turning sharply to the left, began to run. “Stop, thief!” cried Huxter, and
set off after him. Mr. Huxter’s sensations were vivid but brief. He saw the man just
before him and
spurting briskly for the church corner and the hill road. He saw the village
flags and festivities beyond, and a face or so turned towards him. He bawled, “Stop!”
again. He had hardly gone ten strides before his shin was caught in some mysterious fashion,
and he was no longer running, but flying with inconceivable rapidity through the air. He
saw the ground suddenly close to his face. The world seemed to splash into a million
whirling specks of light, and subsequent proceedings interested him n
o more. CHAPTER XI.
IN THE “COACH AND HORSES” Now in order clearly to understand what had
happened in the inn, it is necessary to go back to the moment when Mr. Marvel first came
into view of Mr. Huxter’s window. At that precise moment Mr. Cuss and Mr. Bunting
were in the parlour. They were seriously investigating the strange occurrences of the morning, and
were, with Mr. Hall’s permission, making a thorough examination of the Invisible Man’s
belongings. Jaffers had partially recovered from his
fall and had gone home in the charge
of his sympathetic friends. The stranger’s scattered garments had been removed by Mrs.
Hall and the room tidied up. And on the table under the window where the stranger had been
wont to work, Cuss had hit almost at once on three big books in manuscript labelled
“Diary.” “Diary!” said Cuss, putting the three
books on the table. “Now, at any rate, we shall learn something.” The Vicar stood
with his hands on the table. “Diary,” repeated Cuss, sitting down,
putti
ng two volumes to support the third, and opening it. “H’m—no name on the
fly-leaf. Bother!—cypher. And figures.” The vicar came round to look over his shoulder. Cuss turned the pages over with a face suddenly
disappointed. “I’m—dear me! It’s all cypher, Bunting.” “There are no diagrams?” asked Mr. Bunting.
“No illustrations throwing light—” “See for yourself,” said Mr. Cuss. “Some
of it’s mathematical and some of it’s Russian or some such language (to judge by
the letters), and some of it’s Gree
k. Now the Greek I thought you—” “Of course,” said Mr. Bunting, taking
out and wiping his spectacles and feeling suddenly very uncomfortable—for he had no
Greek left in his mind worth talking about; “yes—the Greek, of course, may furnish
a clue.” “I’ll find you a place.” “I’d rather glance through the volumes
first,” said Mr. Bunting, still wiping. “A general impression first, Cuss, and then,
you know, we can go looking for clues.” He coughed, put on his glasses, arranged them
fastidiously, coug
hed again, and wished something would happen to avert the seemingly inevitable
exposure. Then he took the volume Cuss handed him in a leisurely manner. And then something
did happen. The door opened suddenly. Both gentlemen started violently, looked round,
and were relieved to see a sporadically rosy face beneath a furry silk hat. “Tap?”
asked the face, and stood staring. “No,” said both gentlemen at once. “Over the other side, my man,” said Mr.
Bunting. And “Please shut that door,” said Mr. Cus
s, irritably. “All right,” said the intruder, as it
seemed in a low voice curiously different from the huskiness of its first inquiry. “Right
you are,” said the intruder in the former voice. “Stand clear!” and he vanished
and closed the door. “A sailor, I should judge,” said Mr. Bunting.
“Amusing fellows, they are. Stand clear! indeed. A nautical term, referring to his
getting back out of the room, I suppose.” “I daresay so,” said Cuss. “My nerves
are all loose to-day. It quite made me jump—the
door opening like that.” Mr. Bunting smiled as if he had not jumped.
“And now,” he said with a sigh, “these books.” Someone sniffed as he did so. “One thing is indisputable,” said Bunting,
drawing up a chair next to that of Cuss. “There certainly have been very strange things happen
in Iping during the last few days—very strange. I cannot of course believe in this absurd
invisibility story—” “It’s incredible,” said Cuss—“incredible.
But the fact remains that I saw—I certainly saw right down his
sleeve—” “But did you—are you sure? Suppose a mirror,
for instance— hallucinations are so easily produced. I don’t know if you have ever
seen a really good conjuror—” “I won’t argue again,” said Cuss. “We’ve
thrashed that out, Bunting. And just now there’s these books—Ah! here’s some of what I
take to be Greek! Greek letters certainly.” He pointed to the middle of the page. Mr.
Bunting flushed slightly and brought his face nearer, apparently finding some difficulty
with his glasses. Suddenly he
became aware of a strange feeling at the nape of his neck.
He tried to raise his head, and encountered an immovable resistance. The feeling was a
curious pressure, the grip of a heavy, firm hand, and it bore his chin irresistibly to
the table. “Don’t move, little men,” whispered a voice, “or I’ll brain you
both!” He looked into the face of Cuss, close to his own, and each saw a horrified
reflection of his own sickly astonishment. “I’m sorry to handle you so roughly,”
said the Voice, “but it’s un
avoidable.” “Since when did you learn to pry into an
investigator’s private memoranda,” said the Voice; and two chins struck the table
simultaneously, and two sets of teeth rattled. “Since when did you learn to invade the
private rooms of a man in misfortune?” and the concussion was repeated. “Where have they put my clothes?” “Listen,” said the Voice. “The windows
are fastened and I’ve taken the key out of the door. I am a fairly strong man, and
I have the poker handy—besides being invisible. Th
ere’s not the slightest doubt that I could
kill you both and get away quite easily if I wanted to—do you understand? Very well.
If I let you go will you promise not to try any nonsense and do what I tell you?” The vicar and the doctor looked at one another,
and the doctor pulled a face. “Yes,” said Mr. Bunting, and the doctor repeated it. Then
the pressure on the necks relaxed, and the doctor and the vicar sat up, both very red
in the face and wriggling their heads. “Please keep sitting where yo
u are,” said
the Invisible Man. “Here’s the poker, you see.” “When I came into this room,” continued
the Invisible Man, after presenting the poker to the tip of the nose of each of his visitors,
“I did not expect to find it occupied, and I expected to find, in addition to my books
of memoranda, an outfit of clothing. Where is it? No—don’t rise. I can see it’s
gone. Now, just at present, though the days are quite warm enough for an invisible man
to run about stark, the evenings are quite chilly.
I want clothing—and other accommodation;
and I must also have those three books.” CHAPTER XII.
THE INVISIBLE MAN LOSES HIS TEMPER It is unavoidable that at this point the narrative
should break off again, for a certain very painful reason that will presently be apparent.
While these things were going on in the parlour, and while Mr. Huxter was watching Mr. Marvel
smoking his pipe against the gate, not a dozen yards away were Mr. Hall and Teddy Henfrey
discussing in a state of cloudy puzzlement t
he one Iping topic. Suddenly there came a violent thud against
the door of the parlour, a sharp cry, and then—silence. “Hul-lo!” said Teddy Henfrey. “Hul-lo!” from the Tap. Mr. Hall took things in slowly but surely.
“That ain’t right,” he said, and came round from behind the bar towards the parlour
door. He and Teddy approached the door together,
with intent faces. Their eyes considered. “Summat wrong,” said Hall, and Henfrey
nodded agreement. Whiffs of an unpleasant chemical odour met them, and
there was a muffled
sound of conversation, very rapid and subdued. “You all right thur?” asked Hall, rapping. The muttered conversation ceased abruptly,
for a moment silence, then the conversation was resumed, in hissing whispers, then a sharp
cry of “No! no, you don’t!” There came a sudden motion and the oversetting of a chair,
a brief struggle. Silence again. “What the dooce?” exclaimed Henfrey, sotto
voce. “You—all—right thur?” asked Mr. Hall,
sharply, again. The Vicar’s voice answered with
a curious
jerking intonation: “Quite ri-right. Please don’t—interrupt.” “Odd!” said Mr. Henfrey. “Odd!” said Mr. Hall. “Says, ‘Don’t interrupt,’” said
Henfrey. “I heerd’n,” said Hall. “And a sniff,” said Henfrey. They remained listening. The conversation
was rapid and subdued. “I can’t,” said Mr. Bunting, his voice rising; “I tell you,
sir, I will not.” “What was that?” asked Henfrey. “Says he wi’ nart,” said Hall. “Warn’t
speaking to us, wuz he?” “Disgraceful!” said Mr. Bunting, within. “‘Disgr
aceful,’” said Mr. Henfrey.
“I heard it—distinct.” “Who’s that speaking now?” asked Henfrey. “Mr. Cuss, I s’pose,” said Hall. “Can
you hear—anything?” Silence. The sounds within indistinct and
perplexing. “Sounds like throwing the table-cloth about,”
said Hall. Mrs. Hall appeared behind the bar. Hall made
gestures of silence and invitation. This aroused Mrs. Hall’s wifely opposition. “What yer
listenin’ there for, Hall?” she asked. “Ain’t you nothin’ better to do—busy
day like this?” Hall tried
to convey everything by grimaces
and dumb show, but Mrs. Hall was obdurate. She raised her voice. So Hall and Henfrey,
rather crestfallen, tiptoed back to the bar, gesticulating to explain to her. At first she refused to see anything in what
they had heard at all. Then she insisted on Hall keeping silence, while Henfrey told her
his story. She was inclined to think the whole business nonsense—perhaps they were just
moving the furniture about. “I heerd’n say ‘disgraceful’; that I did,” said
Hall.
“I heerd that, Mrs. Hall,” said Henfrey. “Like as not—” began Mrs. Hall. “Hsh!” said Mr. Teddy Henfrey. “Didn’t
I hear the window?” “What window?” asked Mrs. Hall. “Parlour window,” said Henfrey. Everyone stood listening intently. Mrs. Hall’s
eyes, directed straight before her, saw without seeing the brilliant oblong of the inn door,
the road white and vivid, and Huxter’s shop-front blistering in the June sun. Abruptly Huxter’s
door opened and Huxter appeared, eyes staring with excitement, arms
gesticulating. “Yap!”
cried Huxter. “Stop thief!” and he ran obliquely across the oblong towards the yard
gates, and vanished. Simultaneously came a tumult from the parlour,
and a sound of windows being closed. Hall, Henfrey, and the human contents of the
tap rushed out at once pell-mell into the street. They saw someone whisk round the corner
towards the road, and Mr. Huxter executing a complicated leap in the air that ended on
his face and shoulder. Down the street people were standing astoni
shed or running towards
them. Mr. Huxter was stunned. Henfrey stopped to
discover this, but Hall and the two labourers from the Tap rushed at once to the corner,
shouting incoherent things, and saw Mr. Marvel vanishing by the corner of the church wall.
They appear to have jumped to the impossible conclusion that this was the Invisible Man
suddenly become visible, and set off at once along the lane in pursuit. But Hall had hardly
run a dozen yards before he gave a loud shout of astonishment and w
ent flying headlong sideways,
clutching one of the labourers and bringing him to the ground. He had been charged just
as one charges a man at football. The second labourer came round in a circle, stared, and
conceiving that Hall had tumbled over of his own accord, turned to resume the pursuit,
only to be tripped by the ankle just as Huxter had been. Then, as the first labourer struggled
to his feet, he was kicked sideways by a blow that might have felled an ox. As he went down, the rush from the
direction
of the village green came round the corner. The first to appear was the proprietor of
the cocoanut shy, a burly man in a blue jersey. He was astonished to see the lane empty save
for three men sprawling absurdly on the ground. And then something happened to his rear-most
foot, and he went headlong and rolled sideways just in time to graze the feet of his brother
and partner, following headlong. The two were then kicked, knelt on, fallen over, and cursed
by quite a number of over-hasty
people. Now when Hall and Henfrey and the labourers
ran out of the house, Mrs. Hall, who had been disciplined by years of experience, remained
in the bar next the till. And suddenly the parlour door was opened, and Mr. Cuss appeared,
and without glancing at her rushed at once down the steps toward the corner. “Hold
him!” he cried. “Don’t let him drop that parcel.” He knew nothing of the existence of Marvel.
For the Invisible Man had handed over the books and bundle in the yard. The face of
Mr.
Cuss was angry and resolute, but his costume was defective, a sort of limp white kilt that
could only have passed muster in Greece. “Hold him!” he bawled. “He’s got my trousers!
And every stitch of the Vicar’s clothes!” “’Tend to him in a minute!” he cried
to Henfrey as he passed the prostrate Huxter, and, coming round the corner to join the tumult,
was promptly knocked off his feet into an indecorous sprawl. Somebody in full flight
trod heavily on his finger. He yelled, struggled to regain his
feet, was knocked against and
thrown on all fours again, and became aware that he was involved not in a capture, but
a rout. Everyone was running back to the village. He rose again and was hit severely behind
the ear. He staggered and set off back to the “Coach and Horses” forthwith, leaping
over the deserted Huxter, who was now sitting up, on his way. Behind him as he was halfway up the inn steps
he heard a sudden yell of rage, rising sharply out of the confusion of cries, and a sounding
smack
in someone’s face. He recognised the voice as that of the Invisible Man, and the
note was that of a man suddenly infuriated by a painful blow. In another moment Mr. Cuss was back in the
parlour. “He’s coming back, Bunting!” he said, rushing in. “Save yourself!” Mr. Bunting was standing in the window engaged
in an attempt to clothe himself in the hearth-rug and a West Surrey Gazette. “Who’s coming?”
he said, so startled that his costume narrowly escaped disintegration. “Invisible Man,” said Cuss,
and rushed
on to the window. “We’d better clear out from here! He’s fighting mad! Mad!” In another moment he was out in the yard. “Good heavens!” said Mr. Bunting, hesitating
between two horrible alternatives. He heard a frightful struggle in the passage of the
inn, and his decision was made. He clambered out of the window, adjusted his costume hastily,
and fled up the village as fast as his fat little legs would carry him. From the moment when the Invisible Man screamed
with rage and Mr. Bunti
ng made his memorable flight up the village, it became impossible
to give a consecutive account of affairs in Iping. Possibly the Invisible Man’s original
intention was simply to cover Marvel’s retreat with the clothes and books. But his temper,
at no time very good, seems to have gone completely at some chance blow, and forthwith he set
to smiting and overthrowing, for the mere satisfaction of hurting. You must figure the street full of running
figures, of doors slamming and fights for hiding-p
laces. You must figure the tumult
suddenly striking on the unstable equilibrium of old Fletcher’s planks and two chairs—with
cataclysmic results. You must figure an appalled couple caught dismally in a swing. And then
the whole tumultuous rush has passed and the Iping street with its gauds and flags is deserted
save for the still raging unseen, and littered with cocoanuts, overthrown canvas screens,
and the scattered stock in trade of a sweetstuff stall. Everywhere there is a sound of closing
sh
utters and shoving bolts, and the only visible humanity is an occasional flitting eye under
a raised eyebrow in the corner of a window pane. The Invisible Man amused himself for a little
while by breaking all the windows in the “Coach and Horses,” and then he thrust a street
lamp through the parlour window of Mrs. Gribble. He it must have been who cut the telegraph
wire to Adderdean just beyond Higgins’ cottage on the Adderdean road. And after that, as
his peculiar qualities allowed, he passed o
ut of human perceptions altogether, and he
was neither heard, seen, nor felt in Iping any more. He vanished absolutely. But it was the best part of two hours before
any human being ventured out again into the desolation of Iping street. CHAPTER XIII.
MR. MARVEL DISCUSSES HIS RESIGNATION When the dusk was gathering and Iping was
just beginning to peep timorously forth again upon the shattered wreckage of its Bank Holiday,
a short, thick-set man in a shabby silk hat was marching painfully through
the twilight
behind the beechwoods on the road to Bramblehurst. He carried three books bound together by some
sort of ornamental elastic ligature, and a bundle wrapped in a blue table-cloth. His
rubicund face expressed consternation and fatigue; he appeared to be in a spasmodic
sort of hurry. He was accompanied by a voice other than his own, and ever and again he
winced under the touch of unseen hands. “If you give me the slip again,” said
the Voice, “if you attempt to give me the slip again—” “
Lord!” said Mr. Marvel. “That shoulder’s
a mass of bruises as it is.” “On my honour,” said the Voice, “I will
kill you.” “I didn’t try to give you the slip,”
said Marvel, in a voice that was not far remote from tears. “I swear I didn’t. I didn’t
know the blessed turning, that was all! How the devil was I to know the blessed turning?
As it is, I’ve been knocked about—” “You’ll get knocked about a great deal
more if you don’t mind,” said the Voice, and Mr. Marvel abruptly became silent. He
blew ou
t his cheeks, and his eyes were eloquent of despair. “It’s bad enough to let these floundering
yokels explode my little secret, without your cutting off with my books. It’s lucky for
some of them they cut and ran when they did! Here am I ... No one knew I was invisible!
And now what am I to do?” “What am I to do?” asked Marvel, sotto
voce. “It’s all about. It will be in the papers!
Everybody will be looking for me; everyone on their guard—” The Voice broke off into
vivid curses and ceased. The d
espair of Mr. Marvel’s face deepened,
and his pace slackened. “Go on!” said the Voice. Mr. Marvel’s face assumed a greyish tint
between the ruddier patches. “Don’t drop those books, stupid,” said
the Voice, sharply—overtaking him. “The fact is,” said the Voice, “I shall
have to make use of you.... You’re a poor tool, but I must.” “I’m a miserable tool,” said Marvel. “You are,” said the Voice. “I’m the worst possible tool you could
have,” said Marvel. “I’m not strong,” he said after a discouragin
g
silence. “I’m not over strong,” he repeated. “No?” “And my heart’s weak. That little business—I
pulled it through, of course—but bless you! I could have dropped.” “Well?” “I haven’t the nerve and strength for
the sort of thing you want.” “I’ll stimulate you.” “I wish you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t like
to mess up your plans, you know. But I might—out of sheer funk and misery.” “You’d better not,” said the Voice,
with quiet emphasis. “I wish I was dead,” said Marvel. “It ain’t justice,” he said; “you
must admit.... It seems to me I’ve a perfect right—” “Get on!” said the Voice. Mr. Marvel mended his pace, and for a time
they went in silence again. “It’s devilish hard,” said Mr. Marvel. This was quite ineffectual. He tried another
tack. “What do I make by it?” he began again
in a tone of unendurable wrong. “Oh! shut up!” said the Voice, with sudden
amazing vigour. “I’ll see to you all right. You do what you’re told. You’ll do it
all right. You’re a fool and all that, but you’ll do—” “I tell
you, sir, I’m not the man for
it. Respectfully—but it is so—” “If you don’t shut up I shall twist your
wrist again,” said the Invisible Man. “I want to think.” Presently two oblongs of yellow light appeared
through the trees, and the square tower of a church loomed through the gloaming. “I
shall keep my hand on your shoulder,” said the Voice, “all through the village. Go
straight through and try no foolery. It will be the worse for you if you do.” “I know that,” sighed Mr. Marvel, “I
know all th
at.” The unhappy-looking figure in the obsolete
silk hat passed up the street of the little village with his burdens, and vanished into
the gathering darkness beyond the lights of the windows. CHAPTER XIV.
AT PORT STOWE Ten o’clock the next morning found Mr. Marvel,
unshaven, dirty, and travel-stained, sitting with the books beside him and his hands deep
in his pockets, looking very weary, nervous, and uncomfortable, and inflating his cheeks
at infrequent intervals, on the bench outside a little
inn on the outskirts of Port Stowe.
Beside him were the books, but now they were tied with string. The bundle had been abandoned
in the pine-woods beyond Bramblehurst, in accordance with a change in the plans of the
Invisible Man. Mr. Marvel sat on the bench, and although no one took the slightest notice
of him, his agitation remained at fever heat. His hands would go ever and again to his various
pockets with a curious nervous fumbling. When he had been sitting for the best part
of an hour, ho
wever, an elderly mariner, carrying a newspaper, came out of the inn and sat down
beside him. “Pleasant day,” said the mariner. Mr. Marvel glanced about him with something
very like terror. “Very,” he said. “Just seasonable weather for the time of
year,” said the mariner, taking no denial. “Quite,” said Mr. Marvel. The mariner produced a toothpick, and (saving
his regard) was engrossed thereby for some minutes. His eyes meanwhile were at liberty
to examine Mr. Marvel’s dusty figure, and the book
s beside him. As he had approached
Mr. Marvel he had heard a sound like the dropping of coins into a pocket. He was struck by the
contrast of Mr. Marvel’s appearance with this suggestion of opulence. Thence his mind
wandered back again to a topic that had taken a curiously firm hold of his imagination. “Books?” he said suddenly, noisily finishing
with the toothpick. Mr. Marvel started and looked at them. “Oh,
yes,” he said. “Yes, they’re books.” “There’s some extra-ordinary things in
books,” sai
d the mariner. “I believe you,” said Mr. Marvel. “And some extra-ordinary things out of ’em,”
said the mariner. “True likewise,” said Mr. Marvel. He eyed
his interlocutor, and then glanced about him. “There’s some extra-ordinary things in
newspapers, for example,” said the mariner. “There are.” “In this newspaper,” said the mariner. “Ah!” said Mr. Marvel. “There’s a story,” said the mariner,
fixing Mr. Marvel with an eye that was firm and deliberate; “there’s a story about
an Invisible Man, for
instance.” Mr. Marvel pulled his mouth askew and scratched
his cheek and felt his ears glowing. “What will they be writing next?” he asked faintly.
“Ostria, or America?” “Neither,” said the mariner. “Here.” “Lord!” said Mr. Marvel, starting. “When I say here,” said the mariner, to
Mr. Marvel’s intense relief, “I don’t of course mean here in this place, I mean
hereabouts.” “An Invisible Man!” said Mr. Marvel. “And
what’s he been up to?” “Everything,” said the mariner, controlling
Marvel with his
eye, and then amplifying, “every—blessed—thing.” “I ain’t seen a paper these four days,”
said Marvel. “Iping’s the place he started at,” said
the mariner. “In-deed!” said Mr. Marvel. “He started there. And where he came from,
nobody don’t seem to know. Here it is: ‘Pe-culiar Story from Iping.’ And it says in this paper
that the evidence is extra-ordinary strong—extra-ordinary.” “Lord!” said Mr. Marvel. “But then, it’s an extra-ordinary story.
There is a clergyman and a medical gent witnesses—saw
’im all right and proper—or leastways
didn’t see ’im. He was staying, it says, at the ‘Coach an’ Horses,’ and no one
don’t seem to have been aware of his misfortune, it says, aware of his misfortune, until in
an Altercation in the inn, it says, his bandages on his head was torn off. It was then ob-served
that his head was invisible. Attempts were At Once made to secure him, but casting off
his garments, it says, he succeeded in escaping, but not until after a desperate struggle,
in which he had
inflicted serious injuries, it says, on our worthy and able constable,
Mr. J. A. Jaffers. Pretty straight story, eh? Names and everything.” “Lord!” said Mr. Marvel, looking nervously
about him, trying to count the money in his pockets by his unaided sense of touch, and
full of a strange and novel idea. “It sounds most astonishing.” “Don’t it? Extra-ordinary, I call it.
Never heard tell of Invisible Men before, I haven’t, but nowadays one hears such a
lot of extra-ordinary things—that—” “That al
l he did?” asked Marvel, trying
to seem at his ease. “It’s enough, ain’t it?” said the
mariner. “Didn’t go Back by any chance?” asked
Marvel. “Just escaped and that’s all, eh?” “All!” said the mariner. “Why!—ain’t
it enough?” “Quite enough,” said Marvel. “I should think it was enough,” said the
mariner. “I should think it was enough.” “He didn’t have any pals—it don’t
say he had any pals, does it?” asked Mr. Marvel, anxious. “Ain’t one of a sort enough for you?”
asked the mariner. “No, thank Hea
ven, as one might say, he didn’t.” He nodded his head slowly. “It makes me
regular uncomfortable, the bare thought of that chap running about the country! He is
at present At Large, and from certain evidence it is supposed that he has—taken—took,
I suppose they mean—the road to Port Stowe. You see we’re right in it! None of your
American wonders, this time. And just think of the things he might do! Where’d you be,
if he took a drop over and above, and had a fancy to go for you? Suppose he wants
to
rob—who can prevent him? He can trespass, he can burgle, he could walk through a cordon
of policemen as easy as me or you could give the slip to a blind man! Easier! For these
here blind chaps hear uncommon sharp, I’m told. And wherever there was liquor he fancied—” “He’s got a tremenjous advantage, certainly,”
said Mr. Marvel. “And—well...” “You’re right,” said the mariner. “He
has.” All this time Mr. Marvel had been glancing
about him intently, listening for faint footfalls, trying to detec
t imperceptible movements.
He seemed on the point of some great resolution. He coughed behind his hand. He looked about him again, listened, bent
towards the mariner, and lowered his voice: “The fact of it is—I happen—to know
just a thing or two about this Invisible Man. From private sources.” “Oh!” said the mariner, interested. “You?” “Yes,” said Mr. Marvel. “Me.” “Indeed!” said the mariner. “And may
I ask—” “You’ll be astonished,” said Mr. Marvel
behind his hand. “It’s tremenjous.” “Indeed!” s
aid the mariner. “The fact is,” began Mr. Marvel eagerly
in a confidential undertone. Suddenly his expression changed marvellously. “Ow!”
he said. He rose stiffly in his seat. His face was eloquent of physical suffering. “Wow!”
he said. “What’s up?” said the mariner, concerned. “Toothache,” said Mr. Marvel, and put
his hand to his ear. He caught hold of his books. “I must be getting on, I think,”
he said. He edged in a curious way along the seat away from his interlocutor. “But you
was just a-go
ing to tell me about this here Invisible Man!” protested the mariner. Mr.
Marvel seemed to consult with himself. “Hoax,” said a Voice. “It’s a hoax,” said Mr.
Marvel. “But it’s in the paper,” said the mariner. “Hoax all the same,” said Marvel. “I
know the chap that started the lie. There ain’t no Invisible Man whatsoever—Blimey.” “But how ’bout this paper? D’you mean
to say—?” “Not a word of it,” said Marvel, stoutly. The mariner stared, paper in hand. Mr. Marvel
jerkily faced about. “Wait a bit
,” said the mariner, rising and speaking slowly, “D’you
mean to say—?” “I do,” said Mr. Marvel. “Then why did you let me go on and tell
you all this blarsted stuff, then? What d’yer mean by letting a man make a fool of himself
like that for? Eh?” Mr. Marvel blew out his cheeks. The mariner
was suddenly very red indeed; he clenched his hands. “I been talking here this ten
minutes,” he said; “and you, you little pot-bellied, leathery-faced son of an old
boot, couldn’t have the elementary manners—”
“Don’t you come bandying words with me,”
said Mr. Marvel. “Bandying words! I’m a jolly good mind—” “Come up,” said a Voice, and Mr. Marvel
was suddenly whirled about and started marching off in a curious spasmodic manner. “You’d
better move on,” said the mariner. “Who’s moving on?” said Mr. Marvel. He was receding
obliquely with a curious hurrying gait, with occasional violent jerks forward. Some way
along the road he began a muttered monologue, protests and recriminations. “Silly devil!” said
the mariner, legs
wide apart, elbows akimbo, watching the receding figure. “I’ll show you, you silly ass—hoaxing
me! It’s here—on the paper!” Mr. Marvel retorted incoherently and, receding,
was hidden by a bend in the road, but the mariner still stood magnificent in the midst
of the way, until the approach of a butcher’s cart dislodged him. Then he turned himself
towards Port Stowe. “Full of extra-ordinary asses,” he said softly to himself. “Just
to take me down a bit—that was his silly game—It’
s on the paper!” And there was another extraordinary thing
he was presently to hear, that had happened quite close to him. And that was a vision
of a “fist full of money” (no less) travelling without visible agency, along by the wall
at the corner of St. Michael’s Lane. A brother mariner had seen this wonderful sight that
very morning. He had snatched at the money forthwith and had been knocked headlong, and
when he had got to his feet the butterfly money had vanished. Our mariner was in the
moo
d to believe anything, he declared, but that was a bit too stiff. Afterwards, however,
he began to think things over. The story of the flying money was true. And
all about that neighbourhood, even from the august London and Country Banking Company,
from the tills of shops and inns—doors standing that sunny weather entirely open—money had
been quietly and dexterously making off that day in handfuls and rouleaux, floating quietly
along by walls and shady places, dodging quickly from the approachin
g eyes of men. And it had,
though no man had traced it, invariably ended its mysterious flight in the pocket of that
agitated gentleman in the obsolete silk hat, sitting outside the little inn on the outskirts
of Port Stowe. It was ten days after—and indeed only when
the Burdock story was already old—that the mariner collated these facts and began to
understand how near he had been to the wonderful Invisible Man. CHAPTER XV.
THE MAN WHO WAS RUNNING In the early evening time Dr. Kemp was sitting
in his study in the belvedere on the hill overlooking Burdock. It was a pleasant little
room, with three windows—north, west, and south—and bookshelves covered with books
and scientific publications, and a broad writing-table, and, under the north window, a microscope,
glass slips, minute instruments, some cultures, and scattered bottles of reagents. Dr. Kemp’s
solar lamp was lit, albeit the sky was still bright with the sunset light, and his blinds
were up because there was no offence of peerin
g outsiders to require them pulled down. Dr.
Kemp was a tall and slender young man, with flaxen hair and a moustache almost white,
and the work he was upon would earn him, he hoped, the fellowship of the Royal Society,
so highly did he think of it. And his eye, presently wandering from his
work, caught the sunset blazing at the back of the hill that is over against his own.
For a minute perhaps he sat, pen in mouth, admiring the rich golden colour above the
crest, and then his attention was attr
acted by the little figure of a man, inky black,
running over the hill-brow towards him. He was a shortish little man, and he wore a high
hat, and he was running so fast that his legs verily twinkled. “Another of those fools,” said Dr. Kemp.
“Like that ass who ran into me this morning round a corner, with the ‘’Visible Man
a-coming, sir!’ I can’t imagine what possesses people. One might think we were in the thirteenth
century.” He got up, went to the window, and stared
at the dusky hillside, and
the dark little figure tearing down it. “He seems in a confounded
hurry,” said Dr. Kemp, “but he doesn’t seem to be getting on. If his pockets were
full of lead, he couldn’t run heavier.” “Spurted, sir,” said Dr. Kemp. In another moment the higher of the villas
that had clambered up the hill from Burdock had occulted the running figure. He was visible
again for a moment, and again, and then again, three times between the three detached houses
that came next, and then the terrace hid him. “Asses
!” said Dr. Kemp, swinging round
on his heel and walking back to his writing-table. But those who saw the fugitive nearer, and
perceived the abject terror on his perspiring face, being themselves in the open roadway,
did not share in the doctor’s contempt. By the man pounded, and as he ran he chinked
like a well-filled purse that is tossed to and fro. He looked neither to the right nor
the left, but his dilated eyes stared straight downhill to where the lamps were being lit,
and the people were
crowded in the street. And his ill-shaped mouth fell apart, and a
glairy foam lay on his lips, and his breath came hoarse and noisy. All he passed stopped
and began staring up the road and down, and interrogating one another with an inkling
of discomfort for the reason of his haste. And then presently, far up the hill, a dog
playing in the road yelped and ran under a gate, and as they still wondered something—a
wind—a pad, pad, pad,—a sound like a panting breathing, rushed by. People screamed. P
eople sprang off the pavement:
It passed in shouts, it passed by instinct down the hill. They were shouting in the street
before Marvel was halfway there. They were bolting into houses and slamming the doors
behind them, with the news. He heard it and made one last desperate spurt. Fear came striding
by, rushed ahead of him, and in a moment had seized the town. “The Invisible Man is coming! The Invisible
Man!” CHAPTER XVI.
IN THE “JOLLY CRICKETERS” The “Jolly Cricketers” is just at the
bottom of
the hill, where the tram-lines begin. The barman leant his fat red arms on the counter
and talked of horses with an anaemic cabman, while a black-bearded man in grey snapped
up biscuit and cheese, drank Burton, and conversed in American with a policeman off duty. “What’s the shouting about!” said the
anaemic cabman, going off at a tangent, trying to see up the hill over the dirty yellow blind
in the low window of the inn. Somebody ran by outside. “Fire, perhaps,” said the
barman. Footsteps appr
oached, running heavily, the
door was pushed open violently, and Marvel, weeping and dishevelled, his hat gone, the
neck of his coat torn open, rushed in, made a convulsive turn, and attempted to shut the
door. It was held half open by a strap. “Coming!” he bawled, his voice shrieking
with terror. “He’s coming. The ’Visible Man! After me! For Gawd’s sake! ’Elp!
’Elp! ’Elp!” “Shut the doors,” said the policeman.
“Who’s coming? What’s the row?” He went to the door, released the strap, and
it slamm
ed. The American closed the other door. “Lemme go inside,” said Marvel, staggering
and weeping, but still clutching the books. “Lemme go inside. Lock me in—somewhere.
I tell you he’s after me. I give him the slip. He said he’d kill me and he will.” “You’re safe,” said the man with the
black beard. “The door’s shut. What’s it all about?” “Lemme go inside,” said Marvel, and shrieked
aloud as a blow suddenly made the fastened door shiver and was followed by a hurried
rapping and a shouting outside.
“Hullo,” cried the policeman, “who’s there?”
Mr. Marvel began to make frantic dives at panels that looked like doors. “He’ll
kill me—he’s got a knife or something. For Gawd’s sake—!” “Here you are,” said the barman. “Come
in here.” And he held up the flap of the bar. Mr. Marvel rushed behind the bar as the summons
outside was repeated. “Don’t open the door,” he screamed. “Please don’t open
the door. Where shall I hide?” “This, this Invisible Man, then?” asked
the man with the black beard, with
one hand behind him. “I guess it’s about time we
saw him.” The window of the inn was suddenly smashed
in, and there was a screaming and running to and fro in the street. The policeman had
been standing on the settee staring out, craning to see who was at the door. He got down with
raised eyebrows. “It’s that,” he said. The barman stood in front of the bar-parlour
door which was now locked on Mr. Marvel, stared at the smashed window, and came round to the
two other men. Everything was suddenly qu
iet. “I wish I
had my truncheon,” said the policeman, going irresolutely to the door. “Once we open,
in he comes. There’s no stopping him.” “Don’t you be in too much hurry about
that door,” said the anaemic cabman, anxiously. “Draw the bolts,” said the man with the
black beard, “and if he comes—” He showed a revolver in his hand. “That won’t do,” said the policeman;
“that’s murder.” “I know what country I’m in,” said the
man with the beard. “I’m going to let off at his legs. Draw the bolts.” “No
t with that blinking thing going off
behind me,” said the barman, craning over the blind. “Very well,” said the man with the black
beard, and stooping down, revolver ready, drew them himself. Barman, cabman, and policeman
faced about. “Come in,” said the bearded man in an
undertone, standing back and facing the unbolted doors with his pistol behind him. No one came
in, the door remained closed. Five minutes afterwards when a second cabman pushed his
head in cautiously, they were still waiting, a
nd an anxious face peered out of the bar-parlour
and supplied information. “Are all the doors of the house shut?” asked Marvel. “He’s
going round—prowling round. He’s as artful as the devil.” “Good Lord!” said the burly barman. “There’s
the back! Just watch them doors! I say—!” He looked about him helplessly. The bar-parlour
door slammed and they heard the key turn. “There’s the yard door and the private
door. The yard door—” He rushed out of the bar. In a minute he reappeared with a carving-kni
fe
in his hand. “The yard door was open!” he said, and his fat underlip dropped. “He
may be in the house now!” said the first cabman. “He’s not in the kitchen,” said the
barman. “There’s two women there, and I’ve stabbed every inch of it with this
little beef slicer. And they don’t think he’s come in. They haven’t noticed—” “Have you fastened it?” asked the first
cabman. “I’m out of frocks,” said the barman. The man with the beard replaced his revolver.
And even as he did so the flap of the bar
was shut down and the bolt clicked, and then
with a tremendous thud the catch of the door snapped and the bar-parlour door burst open.
They heard Marvel squeal like a caught leveret, and forthwith they were clambering over the
bar to his rescue. The bearded man’s revolver cracked and the looking-glass at the back
of the parlour starred and came smashing and tinkling down. As the barman entered the room he saw Marvel,
curiously crumpled up and struggling against the door that led to the yard and
kitchen.
The door flew open while the barman hesitated, and Marvel was dragged into the kitchen. There
was a scream and a clatter of pans. Marvel, head down, and lugging back obstinately, was
forced to the kitchen door, and the bolts were drawn. Then the policeman, who had been trying to
pass the barman, rushed in, followed by one of the cabmen, gripped the wrist of the invisible
hand that collared Marvel, was hit in the face and went reeling back. The door opened,
and Marvel made a frantic effo
rt to obtain a lodgment behind it. Then the cabman collared
something. “I got him,” said the cabman. The barman’s red hands came clawing at the
unseen. “Here he is!” said the barman. Mr. Marvel, released, suddenly dropped to
the ground and made an attempt to crawl behind the legs of the fighting men. The struggle
blundered round the edge of the door. The voice of the Invisible Man was heard for the
first time, yelling out sharply, as the policeman trod on his foot. Then he cried out passionately
and his fists flew round like flails. The cabman suddenly whooped and doubled up, kicked
under the diaphragm. The door into the bar-parlour from the kitchen slammed and covered Mr. Marvel’s
retreat. The men in the kitchen found themselves clutching at and struggling with empty air. “Where’s he gone?” cried the man with
the beard. “Out?” “This way,” said the policeman, stepping
into the yard and stopping. A piece of tile whizzed by his head and smashed
among the crockery on the kitchen table. “I
’ll show him,” shouted the man with
the black beard, and suddenly a steel barrel shone over the policeman’s shoulder, and
five bullets had followed one another into the twilight whence the missile had come.
As he fired, the man with the beard moved his hand in a horizontal curve, so that his
shots radiated out into the narrow yard like spokes from a wheel. A silence followed. “Five cartridges,”
said the man with the black beard. “That’s the best of all. Four aces and a joker. Get
a lantern, some
one, and come and feel about for his body.” CHAPTER XVII.
DR. KEMP’S VISITOR Dr. Kemp had continued writing in his study
until the shots aroused him. Crack, crack, crack, they came one after the other. “Hullo!” said Dr. Kemp, putting his pen
into his mouth again and listening. “Who’s letting off revolvers in Burdock? What are
the asses at now?” He went to the south window, threw it up,
and leaning out stared down on the network of windows, beaded gas-lamps and shops, with
its black interstices o
f roof and yard that made up the town at night. “Looks like a
crowd down the hill,” he said, “by ‘The Cricketers,’” and remained watching. Thence
his eyes wandered over the town to far away where the ships’ lights shone, and the pier
glowed—a little illuminated, facetted pavilion like a gem of yellow light. The moon in its
first quarter hung over the westward hill, and the stars were clear and almost tropically
bright. After five minutes, during which his mind
had travelled into a remote specula
tion of social conditions of the future, and lost
itself at last over the time dimension, Dr. Kemp roused himself with a sigh, pulled down
the window again, and returned to his writing desk. It must have been about an hour after this
that the front-door bell rang. He had been writing slackly, and with intervals of abstraction,
since the shots. He sat listening. He heard the servant answer the door, and waited for
her feet on the staircase, but she did not come. “Wonder what that was,” said Dr.
K
emp. He tried to resume his work, failed, got up,
went downstairs from his study to the landing, rang, and called over the balustrade to the
housemaid as she appeared in the hall below. “Was that a letter?” he asked. “Only a runaway ring, sir,” she answered. “I’m restless to-night,” he said to
himself. He went back to his study, and this time attacked his work resolutely. In a little
while he was hard at work again, and the only sounds in the room were the ticking of the
clock and the subdued sh
rillness of his quill, hurrying in the very centre of the circle
of light his lampshade threw on his table. It was two o’clock before Dr. Kemp had finished
his work for the night. He rose, yawned, and went downstairs to bed. He had already removed
his coat and vest, when he noticed that he was thirsty. He took a candle and went down
to the dining-room in search of a syphon and whiskey. Dr. Kemp’s scientific pursuits have made
him a very observant man, and as he recrossed the hall, he noticed a d
ark spot on the linoleum
near the mat at the foot of the stairs. He went on upstairs, and then it suddenly occurred
to him to ask himself what the spot on the linoleum might be. Apparently some subconscious
element was at work. At any rate, he turned with his burden, went back to the hall, put
down the syphon and whiskey, and bending down, touched the spot. Without any great surprise
he found it had the stickiness and colour of drying blood. He took up his burden again, and returned
upstairs, lo
oking about him and trying to account for the blood-spot. On the landing
he saw something and stopped astonished. The door-handle of his own room was blood-stained. He looked at his own hand. It was quite clean,
and then he remembered that the door of his room had been open when he came down from
his study, and that consequently he had not touched the handle at all. He went straight
into his room, his face quite calm—perhaps a trifle more resolute than usual. His glance,
wandering inquisitively,
fell on the bed. On the counterpane was a mess of blood, and
the sheet had been torn. He had not noticed this before because he had walked straight
to the dressing-table. On the further side the bedclothes were depressed as if someone
had been recently sitting there. Then he had an odd impression that he had
heard a low voice say, “Good Heavens!—Kemp!” But Dr. Kemp was no believer in voices. He stood staring at the tumbled sheets. Was
that really a voice? He looked about again, but noticed noth
ing further than the disordered
and blood-stained bed. Then he distinctly heard a movement across the room, near the
wash-hand stand. All men, however highly educated, retain some superstitious inklings. The feeling
that is called “eerie” came upon him. He closed the door of the room, came forward
to the dressing-table, and put down his burdens. Suddenly, with a start, he perceived a coiled
and blood-stained bandage of linen rag hanging in mid-air, between him and the wash-hand
stand. He stared
at this in amazement. It was an
empty bandage, a bandage properly tied but quite empty. He would have advanced to grasp
it, but a touch arrested him, and a voice speaking quite close to him. “Kemp!” said the Voice. “Eh?” said Kemp, with his mouth open. “Keep your nerve,” said the Voice. “I’m
an Invisible Man.” Kemp made no answer for a space, simply stared
at the bandage. “Invisible Man,” he said. “I am an Invisible Man,” repeated the
Voice. The story he had been active to ridicule only
that mor
ning rushed through Kemp’s brain. He does not appear to have been either very
much frightened or very greatly surprised at the moment. Realisation came later. “I thought it was all a lie,” he said.
The thought uppermost in his mind was the reiterated arguments of the morning. “Have
you a bandage on?” he asked. “Yes,” said the Invisible Man. “Oh!” said Kemp, and then roused himself.
“I say!” he said. “But this is nonsense. It’s some trick.” He stepped forward suddenly,
and his hand, extended towa
rds the bandage, met invisible fingers. He recoiled at the touch and his colour changed. “Keep steady, Kemp, for God’s sake! I
want help badly. Stop!” The hand gripped his arm. He struck at it. “Kemp!” cried the Voice. “Kemp! Keep
steady!” and the grip tightened. A frantic desire to free himself took possession
of Kemp. The hand of the bandaged arm gripped his shoulder, and he was suddenly tripped
and flung backwards upon the bed. He opened his mouth to shout, and the corner of the
sheet was thr
ust between his teeth. The Invisible Man had him down grimly, but his arms were
free and he struck and tried to kick savagely. “Listen to reason, will you?” said the
Invisible Man, sticking to him in spite of a pounding in the ribs. “By Heaven! you’ll
madden me in a minute! “Lie still, you fool!” bawled the Invisible
Man in Kemp’s ear. Kemp struggled for another moment and then
lay still. “If you shout, I’ll smash your face,”
said the Invisible Man, relieving his mouth. “I’m an Invisible Man. It
’s no foolishness,
and no magic. I really am an Invisible Man. And I want your help. I don’t want to hurt
you, but if you behave like a frantic rustic, I must. Don’t you remember me, Kemp? Griffin,
of University College?” “Let me get up,” said Kemp. “I’ll
stop where I am. And let me sit quiet for a minute.” He sat up and felt his neck. “I am Griffin, of University College, and
I have made myself invisible. I am just an ordinary man—a man you have known—made
invisible.” “Griffin?” said Kemp. “Gri
ffin,” answered the Voice. A younger
student than you were, almost an albino, six feet high, and broad, with a pink and white
face and red eyes, who won the medal for chemistry.” “I am confused,” said Kemp. “My brain
is rioting. What has this to do with Griffin?” “I am Griffin.” Kemp thought. “It’s horrible,” he said.
“But what devilry must happen to make a man invisible?” “It’s no devilry. It’s a process, sane
and intelligible enough—” “It’s horrible!” said Kemp. “How on
earth—?” “It’s horrible
enough. But I’m wounded
and in pain, and tired ... Great God! Kemp, you are a man. Take it steady. Give me some
food and drink, and let me sit down here.” Kemp stared at the bandage as it moved across
the room, then saw a basket chair dragged across the floor and come to rest near the
bed. It creaked, and the seat was depressed the quarter of an inch or so. He rubbed his
eyes and felt his neck again. “This beats ghosts,” he said, and laughed stupidly. “That’s better. Thank Heaven, you’re
gettin
g sensible!” “Or silly,” said Kemp, and knuckled his
eyes. “Give me some whiskey. I’m near dead.” “It didn’t feel so. Where are you? If
I get up shall I run into you? There! all right. Whiskey? Here. Where shall I give it
to you?” The chair creaked and Kemp felt the glass
drawn away from him. He let go by an effort; his instinct was all against it. It came to
rest poised twenty inches above the front edge of the seat of the chair. He stared at
it in infinite perplexity. “This is—this must be—hyp
notism. You have suggested you
are invisible.” “Nonsense,” said the Voice. “It’s frantic.” “Listen to me.” “I demonstrated conclusively this morning,”
began Kemp, “that invisibility—” “Never mind what you’ve demonstrated!—I’m
starving,” said the Voice, “and the night is chilly to a man without clothes.” “Food?” said Kemp. The tumbler of whiskey tilted itself. “Yes,”
said the Invisible Man rapping it down. “Have you a dressing-gown?” Kemp made some exclamation in an undertone.
He walked to a ward
robe and produced a robe of dingy scarlet. “This do?” he asked.
It was taken from him. It hung limp for a moment in mid-air, fluttered weirdly, stood
full and decorous buttoning itself, and sat down in his chair. “Drawers, socks, slippers
would be a comfort,” said the Unseen, curtly. “And food.” “Anything. But this is the insanest thing
I ever was in, in my life!” He turned out his drawers for the articles,
and then went downstairs to ransack his larder. He came back with some cold cutlets and b
read,
pulled up a light table, and placed them before his guest. “Never mind knives,” said his
visitor, and a cutlet hung in mid-air, with a sound of gnawing. “Invisible!” said Kemp, and sat down on
a bedroom chair. “I always like to get something about me
before I eat,” said the Invisible Man, with a full mouth, eating greedily. “Queer fancy!” “I suppose that wrist is all right,” said
Kemp. “Trust me,” said the Invisible Man. “Of all the strange and wonderful—” “Exactly. But it’s odd I should b
lunder
into your house to get my bandaging. My first stroke of luck! Anyhow I meant to sleep in
this house to-night. You must stand that! It’s a filthy nuisance, my blood showing,
isn’t it? Quite a clot over there. Gets visible as it coagulates, I see. It’s only
the living tissue I’ve changed, and only for as long as I’m alive.... I’ve been
in the house three hours.” “But how’s it done?” began Kemp, in
a tone of exasperation. “Confound it! The whole business—it’s unreasonable from
beginning to e
nd.” “Quite reasonable,” said the Invisible
Man. “Perfectly reasonable.” He reached over and secured the whiskey bottle.
Kemp stared at the devouring dressing gown. A ray of candle-light penetrating a torn patch
in the right shoulder, made a triangle of light under the left ribs. “What were the
shots?” he asked. “How did the shooting begin?” “There was a real fool of a man—a sort
of confederate of mine—curse him!—who tried to steal my money. Has done so.” “Is he invisible too?” “No.” “Well?” “Ca
n’t I have some more to eat before
I tell you all that? I’m hungry—in pain. And you want me to tell stories!” Kemp got up. “You didn’t do any shooting?”
he asked. “Not me,” said his visitor. “Some fool
I’d never seen fired at random. A lot of them got scared. They all got scared at me.
Curse them!—I say—I want more to eat than this, Kemp.” “I’ll see what there is to eat downstairs,”
said Kemp. “Not much, I’m afraid.” After he had done eating, and he made a heavy
meal, the Invisible Man demanded
a cigar. He bit the end savagely before Kemp could
find a knife, and cursed when the outer leaf loosened. It was strange to see him smoking;
his mouth, and throat, pharynx and nares, became visible as a sort of whirling smoke
cast. “This blessed gift of smoking!” he said,
and puffed vigorously. “I’m lucky to have fallen upon you, Kemp. You must help me. Fancy
tumbling on you just now! I’m in a devilish scrape—I’ve been mad, I think. The things
I have been through! But we will do things yet. Let
me tell you—” He helped himself to more whiskey and soda.
Kemp got up, looked about him, and fetched a glass from his spare room. “It’s wild—but
I suppose I may drink.” “You haven’t changed much, Kemp, these
dozen years. You fair men don’t. Cool and methodical—after the first collapse. I must
tell you. We will work together!” “But how was it all done?” said Kemp,
“and how did you get like this?” “For God’s sake, let me smoke in peace
for a little while! And then I will begin to tell you.” But th
e story was not told that night. The
Invisible Man’s wrist was growing painful; he was feverish, exhausted, and his mind came
round to brood upon his chase down the hill and the struggle about the inn. He spoke in
fragments of Marvel, he smoked faster, his voice grew angry. Kemp tried to gather what
he could. “He was afraid of me, I could see that he
was afraid of me,” said the Invisible Man many times over. “He meant to give me the
slip—he was always casting about! What a fool I was! “The cur!
“I should have killed him!” “Where did you get the money?” asked Kemp,
abruptly. The Invisible Man was silent for a space.
“I can’t tell you to-night,” he said. He groaned suddenly and leant forward, supporting
his invisible head on invisible hands. “Kemp,” he said, “I’ve had no sleep for near three
days, except a couple of dozes of an hour or so. I must sleep soon.” “Well, have my room—have this room.” “But how can I sleep? If I sleep—he will
get away. Ugh! What does it matter?” “What’s the sho
t wound?” asked Kemp,
abruptly. “Nothing—scratch and blood. Oh, God! How
I want sleep!” “Why not?” The Invisible Man appeared to be regarding
Kemp. “Because I’ve a particular objection to being caught by my fellow-men,” he said
slowly. Kemp started. “Fool that I am!” said the Invisible Man,
striking the table smartly. “I’ve put the idea into your head.” CHAPTER XVIII.
THE INVISIBLE MAN SLEEPS Exhausted and wounded as the Invisible Man
was, he refused to accept Kemp’s word that his freedom should
be respected. He examined
the two windows of the bedroom, drew up the blinds and opened the sashes, to confirm Kemp’s
statement that a retreat by them would be possible. Outside the night was very quiet
and still, and the new moon was setting over the down. Then he examined the keys of the
bedroom and the two dressing-room doors, to satisfy himself that these also could be made
an assurance of freedom. Finally he expressed himself satisfied. He stood on the hearth
rug and Kemp heard the sound o
f a yawn. “I’m sorry,” said the Invisible Man,
“if I cannot tell you all that I have done to-night. But I am worn out. It’s grotesque,
no doubt. It’s horrible! But believe me, Kemp, in spite of your arguments of this morning,
it is quite a possible thing. I have made a discovery. I meant to keep it to myself.
I can’t. I must have a partner. And you.... We can do such things ... But to-morrow. Now,
Kemp, I feel as though I must sleep or perish.” Kemp stood in the middle of the room staring
at the
headless garment. “I suppose I must leave you,” he said. “It’s—incredible.
Three things happening like this, overturning all my preconceptions—would make me insane.
But it’s real! Is there anything more that I can get you?” “Only bid me good-night,” said Griffin. “Good-night,” said Kemp, and shook an
invisible hand. He walked sideways to the door. Suddenly the dressing-gown walked quickly
towards him. “Understand me!” said the dressing-gown. “No attempts to hamper me,
or capture me! Or—” Kemp’s
face changed a little. “I thought
I gave you my word,” he said. Kemp closed the door softly behind him, and
the key was turned upon him forthwith. Then, as he stood with an expression of passive
amazement on his face, the rapid feet came to the door of the dressing-room and that
too was locked. Kemp slapped his brow with his hand. “Am I dreaming? Has the world
gone mad—or have I?” He laughed, and put his hand to the locked
door. “Barred out of my own bedroom, by a flagrant absurdity!” he said.
He walked to the head of the staircase, turned,
and stared at the locked doors. “It’s fact,” he said. He put his fingers to his
slightly bruised neck. “Undeniable fact! “But—” He shook his head hopelessly, turned, and
went downstairs. He lit the dining-room lamp, got out a cigar,
and began pacing the room, ejaculating. Now and then he would argue with himself. “Invisible!” he said. “Is there such a thing as an invisible animal?
... In the sea, yes. Thousands—millions. All the larvae, all the lit
tle nauplii and
tornarias, all the microscopic things, the jelly-fish. In the sea there are more things
invisible than visible! I never thought of that before. And in the ponds too! All those
little pond-life things—specks of colourless translucent jelly! But in air? No! “It can’t be. “But after all—why not? “If a man was made of glass he would still
be visible.” His meditation became profound. The bulk of
three cigars had passed into the invisible or diffused as a white ash over the carpet
befo
re he spoke again. Then it was merely an exclamation. He turned aside, walked out
of the room, and went into his little consulting-room and lit the gas there. It was a little room,
because Dr. Kemp did not live by practice, and in it were the day’s newspapers. The
morning’s paper lay carelessly opened and thrown aside. He caught it up, turned it over,
and read the account of a “Strange Story from Iping” that the mariner at Port Stowe
had spelt over so painfully to Mr. Marvel. Kemp read it swiftl
y. “Wrapped up!” said Kemp. “Disguised!
Hiding it! ‘No one seems to have been aware of his misfortune.’ What the devil is his
game?” He dropped the paper, and his eye went seeking.
“Ah!” he said, and caught up the St. James’ Gazette, lying folded up as it arrived. “Now
we shall get at the truth,” said Dr. Kemp. He rent the paper open; a couple of columns
confronted him. “An Entire Village in Sussex goes Mad” was the heading. “Good Heavens!” said Kemp, reading eagerly
an incredulous account of th
e events in Iping, of the previous afternoon, that have already
been described. Over the leaf the report in the morning paper had been reprinted. He re-read it. “Ran through the streets
striking right and left. Jaffers insensible. Mr. Huxter in great pain—still unable to
describe what he saw. Painful humiliation—vicar. Woman ill with terror! Windows smashed. This
extraordinary story probably a fabrication. Too good not to print—cum grano!” He dropped the paper and stared blankly in
front of him.
“Probably a fabrication!” He caught up the paper again, and re-read
the whole business. “But when does the Tramp come in? Why the deuce was he chasing a tramp?” He sat down abruptly on the surgical bench.
“He’s not only invisible,” he said, “but he’s mad! Homicidal!” When dawn came to mingle its pallor with the
lamp-light and cigar smoke of the dining-room, Kemp was still pacing up and down, trying
to grasp the incredible. He was altogether too excited to sleep. His
servants, descending sleepil
y, discovered him, and were inclined to think that over-study
had worked this ill on him. He gave them extraordinary but quite explicit instructions to lay breakfast
for two in the belvedere study—and then to confine themselves to the basement and
ground-floor. Then he continued to pace the dining-room until the morning’s paper came.
That had much to say and little to tell, beyond the confirmation of the evening before, and
a very badly written account of another remarkable tale from Port Burdoc
k. This gave Kemp the
essence of the happenings at the “Jolly Cricketers,” and the name of Marvel. “He
has made me keep with him twenty-four hours,” Marvel testified. Certain minor facts were
added to the Iping story, notably the cutting of the village telegraph-wire. But there was
nothing to throw light on the connexion between the Invisible Man and the Tramp; for Mr. Marvel
had supplied no information about the three books, or the money with which he was lined.
The incredulous tone had vanishe
d and a shoal of reporters and inquirers were already at
work elaborating the matter. Kemp read every scrap of the report and sent
his housemaid out to get every one of the morning papers she could. These also he devoured. “He is invisible!” he said. “And it
reads like rage growing to mania! The things he may do! The things he may do! And he’s
upstairs free as the air. What on earth ought I to do?” “For instance, would it be a breach of faith
if—? No.” He went to a little untidy desk in the corn
er,
and began a note. He tore this up half written, and wrote another. He read it over and considered
it. Then he took an envelope and addressed it to “Colonel Adye, Port Burdock.” The Invisible Man awoke even as Kemp was doing
this. He awoke in an evil temper, and Kemp, alert for every sound, heard his pattering
feet rush suddenly across the bedroom overhead. Then a chair was flung over and the wash-hand
stand tumbler smashed. Kemp hurried upstairs and rapped eagerly. CHAPTER XIX.
CERTAIN FIRST
PRINCIPLES “What’s the matter?” asked Kemp, when
the Invisible Man admitted him. “Nothing,” was the answer. “But, confound it! The smash?” “Fit of temper,” said the Invisible Man.
“Forgot this arm; and it’s sore.” “You’re rather liable to that sort of
thing.” “I am.” Kemp walked across the room and picked up
the fragments of broken glass. “All the facts are out about you,” said Kemp, standing
up with the glass in his hand; “all that happened in Iping, and down the hill. The
world has become awa
re of its invisible citizen. But no one knows you are here.” The Invisible Man swore. “The secret’s out. I gather it was a secret.
I don’t know what your plans are, but of course I’m anxious to help you.” The Invisible Man sat down on the bed. “There’s breakfast upstairs,” said Kemp,
speaking as easily as possible, and he was delighted to find his strange guest rose willingly.
Kemp led the way up the narrow staircase to the belvedere. “Before we can do anything else,” said
Kemp, “I must understa
nd a little more about this invisibility of yours.” He had sat
down, after one nervous glance out of the window, with the air of a man who has talking
to do. His doubts of the sanity of the entire business flashed and vanished again as he
looked across to where Griffin sat at the breakfast-table—a headless, handless dressing-gown,
wiping unseen lips on a miraculously held serviette. “It’s simple enough—and credible enough,”
said Griffin, putting the serviette aside and leaning the invisible head
on an invisible
hand. “No doubt, to you, but—” Kemp laughed. “Well, yes; to me it seemed wonderful at
first, no doubt. But now, great God! ... But we will do great things yet! I came on the
stuff first at Chesilstowe.” “Chesilstowe?” “I went there after I left London. You know
I dropped medicine and took up physics? No; well, I did. Light fascinated me.” “Ah!” “Optical density! The whole subject is a
network of riddles—a network with solutions glimmering elusively through. And being but
two-and
-twenty and full of enthusiasm, I said, ‘I will devote my life to this. This is
worth while.’ You know what fools we are at two-and-twenty?” “Fools then or fools now,” said Kemp. “As though knowing could be any satisfaction
to a man! “But I went to work—like a slave. And
I had hardly worked and thought about the matter six months before light came through
one of the meshes suddenly—blindingly! I found a general principle of pigments and
refraction—a formula, a geometrical expression involving fo
ur dimensions. Fools, common men,
even common mathematicians, do not know anything of what some general expression may mean to
the student of molecular physics. In the books—the books that tramp has hidden—there are marvels,
miracles! But this was not a method, it was an idea, that might lead to a method by which
it would be possible, without changing any other property of matter—except, in some
instances colours—to lower the refractive index of a substance, solid or liquid, to
that of air—so fa
r as all practical purposes are concerned.” “Phew!” said Kemp. “That’s odd! But
still I don’t see quite ... I can understand that thereby you could spoil a valuable stone,
but personal invisibility is a far cry.” “Precisely,” said Griffin. “But consider,
visibility depends on the action of the visible bodies on light. Either a body absorbs light,
or it reflects or refracts it, or does all these things. If it neither reflects nor refracts
nor absorbs light, it cannot of itself be visible. You see
an opaque red box, for instance,
because the colour absorbs some of the light and reflects the rest, all the red part of
the light, to you. If it did not absorb any particular part of the light, but reflected
it all, then it would be a shining white box. Silver! A diamond box would neither absorb
much of the light nor reflect much from the general surface, but just here and there where
the surfaces were favourable the light would be reflected and refracted, so that you would
get a brilliant app
earance of flashing reflections and translucencies—a sort of skeleton of
light. A glass box would not be so brilliant, nor so clearly visible, as a diamond box,
because there would be less refraction and reflection. See that? From certain points
of view you would see quite clearly through it. Some kinds of glass would be more visible
than others, a box of flint glass would be brighter than a box of ordinary window glass.
A box of very thin common glass would be hard to see in a bad light, becaus
e it would absorb
hardly any light and refract and reflect very little. And if you put a sheet of common white
glass in water, still more if you put it in some denser liquid than water, it would vanish
almost altogether, because light passing from water to glass is only slightly refracted
or reflected or indeed affected in any way. It is almost as invisible as a jet of coal
gas or hydrogen is in air. And for precisely the same reason!” “Yes,” said Kemp, “that is pretty plain
sailing.” “And here
is another fact you will know
to be true. If a sheet of glass is smashed, Kemp, and beaten into a powder, it becomes
much more visible while it is in the air; it becomes at last an opaque white powder.
This is because the powdering multiplies the surfaces of the glass at which refraction
and reflection occur. In the sheet of glass there are only two surfaces; in the powder
the light is reflected or refracted by each grain it passes through, and very little gets
right through the powder. But if t
he white powdered glass is put into water, it forthwith
vanishes. The powdered glass and water have much the same refractive index; that is, the
light undergoes very little refraction or reflection in passing from one to the other. “You make the glass invisible by putting
it into a liquid of nearly the same refractive index; a transparent thing becomes invisible
if it is put in any medium of almost the same refractive index. And if you will consider
only a second, you will see also that the powd
er of glass might be made to vanish in
air, if its refractive index could be made the same as that of air; for then there would
be no refraction or reflection as the light passed from glass to air.” “Yes, yes,” said Kemp. “But a man’s
not powdered glass!” “No,” said Griffin. “He’s more transparent!” “Nonsense!” “That from a doctor! How one forgets! Have
you already forgotten your physics, in ten years? Just think of all the things that are
transparent and seem not to be so. Paper, for instance,
is made up of transparent fibres,
and it is white and opaque only for the same reason that a powder of glass is white and
opaque. Oil white paper, fill up the interstices between the particles with oil so that there
is no longer refraction or reflection except at the surfaces, and it becomes as transparent
as glass. And not only paper, but cotton fibre, linen fibre, wool fibre, woody fibre, and
bone, Kemp, flesh, Kemp, hair, Kemp, nails and nerves, Kemp, in fact the whole fabric
of a man except
the red of his blood and the black pigment of hair, are all made up of
transparent, colourless tissue. So little suffices to make us visible one to the other.
For the most part the fibres of a living creature are no more opaque than water.” “Great Heavens!” cried Kemp. “Of course,
of course! I was thinking only last night of the sea larvae and all jelly-fish!” “Now you have me! And all that I knew and
had in mind a year after I left London—six years ago. But I kept it to myself. I had
to do my w
ork under frightful disadvantages. Oliver, my professor, was a scientific bounder,
a journalist by instinct, a thief of ideas—he was always prying! And you know the knavish
system of the scientific world. I simply would not publish, and let him share my credit.
I went on working; I got nearer and nearer making my formula into an experiment, a reality.
I told no living soul, because I meant to flash my work upon the world with crushing
effect and become famous at a blow. I took up the question of
pigments to fill up certain
gaps. And suddenly, not by design but by accident, I made a discovery in physiology.” “Yes?” “You know the red colouring matter of blood;
it can be made white—colourless—and remain with all the functions it has now!” Kemp gave a cry of incredulous amazement. The Invisible Man rose and began pacing the
little study. “You may well exclaim. I remember that night. It was late at night—in the
daytime one was bothered with the gaping, silly students—and I worked then somet
imes
till dawn. It came suddenly, splendid and complete in my mind. I was alone; the laboratory
was still, with the tall lights burning brightly and silently. In all my great moments I have
been alone. ‘One could make an animal—a tissue—transparent! One could make it invisible!
All except the pigments—I could be invisible!’ I said, suddenly realising what it meant to
be an albino with such knowledge. It was overwhelming. I left the filtering I was doing, and went
and stared out of the great wind
ow at the stars. ‘I could be invisible!’ I repeated. “To do such a thing would be to transcend
magic. And I beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility
might mean to a man—the mystery, the power, the freedom. Drawbacks I saw none. You have
only to think! And I, a shabby, poverty-struck, hemmed-in demonstrator, teaching fools in
a provincial college, might suddenly become—this. I ask you, Kemp if you ... Anyone, I tell
you, would have flung himself upon that research
. And I worked three years, and every mountain
of difficulty I toiled over showed another from its summit. The infinite details! And
the exasperation! A professor, a provincial professor, always prying. ‘When are you
going to publish this work of yours?’ was his everlasting question. And the students,
the cramped means! Three years I had of it— “And after three years of secrecy and exasperation,
I found that to complete it was impossible—impossible.” “How?” asked Kemp. “Money,” said the Invisibl
e Man, and went
again to stare out of the window. He turned around abruptly. “I robbed the
old man—robbed my father. “The money was not his, and he shot himself.” CHAPTER XX.
AT THE HOUSE IN GREAT PORTLAND STREET For a moment Kemp sat in silence, staring
at the back of the headless figure at the window. Then he started, struck by a thought,
rose, took the Invisible Man’s arm, and turned him away from the outlook. “You are tired,” he said, “and while
I sit, you walk about. Have my chair.” He plac
ed himself between Griffin and the
nearest window. For a space Griffin sat silent, and then he
resumed abruptly: “I had left the Chesilstowe cottage already,”
he said, “when that happened. It was last December. I had taken a room in London, a
large unfurnished room in a big ill-managed lodging-house in a slum near Great Portland
Street. The room was soon full of the appliances I had bought with his money; the work was
going on steadily, successfully, drawing near an end. I was like a man emergin
g from a thicket,
and suddenly coming on some unmeaning tragedy. I went to bury him. My mind was still on this
research, and I did not lift a finger to save his character. I remember the funeral, the
cheap hearse, the scant ceremony, the windy frost-bitten hillside, and the old college
friend of his who read the service over him—a shabby, black, bent old man with a snivelling
cold. “I remember walking back to the empty house,
through the place that had once been a village and was now patched and
tinkered by the jerry
builders into the ugly likeness of a town. Every way the roads ran out at last into the
desecrated fields and ended in rubble heaps and rank wet weeds. I remember myself as a
gaunt black figure, going along the slippery, shiny pavement, and the strange sense of detachment
I felt from the squalid respectability, the sordid commercialism of the place. “I did not feel a bit sorry for my father.
He seemed to me to be the victim of his own foolish sentimentality. The current ca
nt required
my attendance at his funeral, but it was really not my affair. “But going along the High Street, my old
life came back to me for a space, for I met the girl I had known ten years since. Our
eyes met. “Something moved me to turn back and talk
to her. She was a very ordinary person. “It was all like a dream, that visit to
the old places. I did not feel then that I was lonely, that I had come out from the world
into a desolate place. I appreciated my loss of sympathy, but I put it down
to the general
inanity of things. Re-entering my room seemed like the recovery of reality. There were the
things I knew and loved. There stood the apparatus, the experiments arranged and waiting. And
now there was scarcely a difficulty left, beyond the planning of details. “I will tell you, Kemp, sooner or later,
all the complicated processes. We need not go into that now. For the most part, saving
certain gaps I chose to remember, they are written in cypher in those books that tramp
has hidden.
We must hunt him down. We must get those books again. But the essential phase
was to place the transparent object whose refractive index was to be lowered between
two radiating centres of a sort of ethereal vibration, of which I will tell you more fully
later. No, not those Röntgen vibrations—I don’t know that these others of mine have
been described. Yet they are obvious enough. I needed two little dynamos, and these I worked
with a cheap gas engine. My first experiment was with a bit of white
wool fabric. It was
the strangest thing in the world to see it in the flicker of the flashes soft and white,
and then to watch it fade like a wreath of smoke and vanish. “I could scarcely believe I had done it.
I put my hand into the emptiness, and there was the thing as solid as ever. I felt it
awkwardly, and threw it on the floor. I had a little trouble finding it again. “And then came a curious experience. I heard
a miaow behind me, and turning, saw a lean white cat, very dirty, on the ciste
rn cover
outside the window. A thought came into my head. ‘Everything ready for you,’ I said,
and went to the window, opened it, and called softly. She came in, purring—the poor beast
was starving—and I gave her some milk. All my food was in a cupboard in the corner of
the room. After that she went smelling round the room, evidently with the idea of making
herself at home. The invisible rag upset her a bit; you should have seen her spit at it!
But I made her comfortable on the pillow of my truck
le-bed. And I gave her butter to get
her to wash.” “And you processed her?” “I processed her. But giving drugs to a
cat is no joke, Kemp! And the process failed.” “Failed!” “In two particulars. These were the claws
and the pigment stuff, what is it?—at the back of the eye in a cat. You know?” “Tapetum.” “Yes, the tapetum. It didn’t go. After
I’d given the stuff to bleach the blood and done certain other things to her, I gave
the beast opium, and put her and the pillow she was sleeping on, on the
apparatus. And
after all the rest had faded and vanished, there remained two little ghosts of her eyes.” “Odd!” “I can’t explain it. She was bandaged
and clamped, of course—so I had her safe; but she woke while she was still misty, and
miaowed dismally, and someone came knocking. It was an old woman from downstairs, who suspected
me of vivisecting—a drink-sodden old creature, with only a white cat to care for in all the
world. I whipped out some chloroform, applied it, and answered the door. ‘D
id I hear a
cat?’ she asked. ‘My cat?’ ‘Not here,’ said I, very politely. She was a little doubtful
and tried to peer past me into the room; strange enough to her no doubt—bare walls, uncurtained
windows, truckle-bed, with the gas engine vibrating, and the seethe of the radiant points,
and that faint ghastly stinging of chloroform in the air. She had to be satisfied at last
and went away again.” “How long did it take?” asked Kemp. “Three or four hours—the cat. The bones
and sinews and the fat we
re the last to go, and the tips of the coloured hairs. And, as
I say, the back part of the eye, tough, iridescent stuff it is, wouldn’t go at all. “It was night outside long before the business
was over, and nothing was to be seen but the dim eyes and the claws. I stopped the gas
engine, felt for and stroked the beast, which was still insensible, and then, being tired,
left it sleeping on the invisible pillow and went to bed. I found it hard to sleep. I lay
awake thinking weak aimless stuff, goi
ng over the experiment over and over again, or dreaming
feverishly of things growing misty and vanishing about me, until everything, the ground I stood
on, vanished, and so I came to that sickly falling nightmare one gets. About two, the
cat began miaowing about the room. I tried to hush it by talking to it, and then I decided
to turn it out. I remember the shock I had when striking a light—there were just the
round eyes shining green—and nothing round them. I would have given it milk, but I had
n’t
any. It wouldn’t be quiet, it just sat down and miaowed at the door. I tried to catch
it, with an idea of putting it out of the window, but it wouldn’t be caught, it vanished.
Then it began miaowing in different parts of the room. At last I opened the window and
made a bustle. I suppose it went out at last. I never saw any more of it. “Then—Heaven knows why—I fell thinking
of my father’s funeral again, and the dismal windy hillside, until the day had come. I
found sleeping was hopeless, and,
locking my door after me, wandered out into the morning
streets.” “You don’t mean to say there’s an invisible
cat at large!” said Kemp. “If it hasn’t been killed,” said the
Invisible Man. “Why not?” “Why not?” said Kemp. “I didn’t mean
to interrupt.” “It’s very probably been killed,” said
the Invisible Man. “It was alive four days after, I know, and down a grating in Great
Titchfield Street; because I saw a crowd round the place, trying to see whence the miaowing
came.” He was silent for the be
st part of a minute.
Then he resumed abruptly: “I remember that morning before the change
very vividly. I must have gone up Great Portland Street. I remember the barracks in Albany
Street, and the horse soldiers coming out, and at last I found the summit of Primrose
Hill. It was a sunny day in January—one of those sunny, frosty days that came before
the snow this year. My weary brain tried to formulate the position, to plot out a plan
of action. “I was surprised to find, now that my prize
was wi
thin my grasp, how inconclusive its attainment seemed. As a matter of fact I was
worked out; the intense stress of nearly four years’ continuous work left me incapable
of any strength of feeling. I was apathetic, and I tried in vain to recover the enthusiasm
of my first inquiries, the passion of discovery that had enabled me to compass even the downfall
of my father’s grey hairs. Nothing seemed to matter. I saw pretty clearly this was a
transient mood, due to overwork and want of sleep, and that
either by drugs or rest it
would be possible to recover my energies. “All I could think clearly was that the
thing had to be carried through; the fixed idea still ruled me. And soon, for the money
I had was almost exhausted. I looked about me at the hillside, with children playing
and girls watching them, and tried to think of all the fantastic advantages an invisible
man would have in the world. After a time I crawled home, took some food and a strong
dose of strychnine, and went to sleep in m
y clothes on my unmade bed. Strychnine is a
grand tonic, Kemp, to take the flabbiness out of a man.” “It’s the devil,” said Kemp. “It’s
the palaeolithic in a bottle.” “I awoke vastly invigorated and rather irritable.
You know?” “I know the stuff.” “And there was someone rapping at the door.
It was my landlord with threats and inquiries, an old Polish Jew in a long grey coat and
greasy slippers. I had been tormenting a cat in the night, he was sure—the old woman’s
tongue had been busy. He insiste
d on knowing all about it. The laws in this country against
vivisection were very severe—he might be liable. I denied the cat. Then the vibration
of the little gas engine could be felt all over the house, he said. That was true, certainly.
He edged round me into the room, peering about over his German-silver spectacles, and a sudden
dread came into my mind that he might carry away something of my secret. I tried to keep
between him and the concentrating apparatus I had arranged, and that only ma
de him more
curious. What was I doing? Why was I always alone and secretive? Was it legal? Was it
dangerous? I paid nothing but the usual rent. His had always been a most respectable house—in
a disreputable neighbourhood. Suddenly my temper gave way. I told him to get out. He
began to protest, to jabber of his right of entry. In a moment I had him by the collar;
something ripped, and he went spinning out into his own passage. I slammed and locked
the door and sat down quivering. “He made a fuss
outside, which I disregarded,
and after a time he went away. “But this brought matters to a crisis. I
did not know what he would do, nor even what he had the power to do. To move to fresh apartments
would have meant delay; altogether I had barely twenty pounds left in the world, for the most
part in a bank—and I could not afford that. Vanish! It was irresistible. Then there would
be an inquiry, the sacking of my room. “At the thought of the possibility of my
work being exposed or interrupted at
its very climax, I became very angry and active. I
hurried out with my three books of notes, my cheque-book—the tramp has them now—and
directed them from the nearest Post Office to a house of call for letters and parcels
in Great Portland Street. I tried to go out noiselessly. Coming in, I found my landlord
going quietly upstairs; he had heard the door close, I suppose. You would have laughed to
see him jump aside on the landing as I came tearing after him. He glared at me as I went
by him, and
I made the house quiver with the slamming of my door. I heard him come shuffling
up to my floor, hesitate, and go down. I set to work upon my preparations forthwith. “It was all done that evening and night.
While I was still sitting under the sickly, drowsy influence of the drugs that decolourise
blood, there came a repeated knocking at the door. It ceased, footsteps went away and returned,
and the knocking was resumed. There was an attempt to push something under the door—a
blue paper. Then in
a fit of irritation I rose and went and flung the door wide open.
‘Now then?’ said I. “It was my landlord, with a notice of ejectment
or something. He held it out to me, saw something odd about my hands, I expect, and lifted his
eyes to my face. “For a moment he gaped. Then he gave a sort
of inarticulate cry, dropped candle and writ together, and went blundering down the dark
passage to the stairs. I shut the door, locked it, and went to the looking-glass. Then I
understood his terror.... My fac
e was white—like white stone. “But it was all horrible. I had not expected
the suffering. A night of racking anguish, sickness and fainting. I set my teeth, though
my skin was presently afire, all my body afire; but I lay there like grim death. I understood
now how it was the cat had howled until I chloroformed it. Lucky it was I lived alone
and untended in my room. There were times when I sobbed and groaned and talked. But
I stuck to it.... I became insensible and woke languid in the darkness.
“The pain had passed. I thought I was killing
myself and I did not care. I shall never forget that dawn, and the strange horror of seeing
that my hands had become as clouded glass, and watching them grow clearer and thinner
as the day went by, until at last I could see the sickly disorder of my room through
them, though I closed my transparent eyelids. My limbs became glassy, the bones and arteries
faded, vanished, and the little white nerves went last. I gritted my teeth and stayed there
to the
end. At last only the dead tips of the fingernails remained, pallid and white,
and the brown stain of some acid upon my fingers. “I struggled up. At first I was as incapable
as a swathed infant—stepping with limbs I could not see. I was weak and very hungry.
I went and stared at nothing in my shaving-glass, at nothing save where an attenuated pigment
still remained behind the retina of my eyes, fainter than mist. I had to hang on to the
table and press my forehead against the glass. “It was onl
y by a frantic effort of will
that I dragged myself back to the apparatus and completed the process. “I slept during the forenoon, pulling the
sheet over my eyes to shut out the light, and about midday I was awakened again by a
knocking. My strength had returned. I sat up and listened and heard a whispering. I
sprang to my feet and as noiselessly as possible began to detach the connections of my apparatus,
and to distribute it about the room, so as to destroy the suggestions of its arrangement.
Presently the knocking was renewed and voices called, first my landlord’s, and then two
others. To gain time I answered them. The invisible rag and pillow came to hand and
I opened the window and pitched them out on to the cistern cover. As the window opened,
a heavy crash came at the door. Someone had charged it with the idea of smashing the lock.
But the stout bolts I had screwed up some days before stopped him. That startled me,
made me angry. I began to tremble and do things hurriedly. “I to
ssed together some loose paper, straw,
packing paper and so forth, in the middle of the room, and turned on the gas. Heavy
blows began to rain upon the door. I could not find the matches. I beat my hands on the
wall with rage. I turned down the gas again, stepped out of the window on the cistern cover,
very softly lowered the sash, and sat down, secure and invisible, but quivering with anger,
to watch events. They split a panel, I saw, and in another moment they had broken away
the staples of th
e bolts and stood in the open doorway. It was the landlord and his
two step-sons, sturdy young men of three or four and twenty. Behind them fluttered the
old hag of a woman from downstairs. “You may imagine their astonishment to find
the room empty. One of the younger men rushed to the window at once, flung it up and stared
out. His staring eyes and thick-lipped bearded face came a foot from my face. I was half
minded to hit his silly countenance, but I arrested my doubled fist. He stared right
through me. So did the others as they joined him. The old man went and peered under the
bed, and then they all made a rush for the cupboard. They had to argue about it at length
in Yiddish and Cockney English. They concluded I had not answered them, that their imagination
had deceived them. A feeling of extraordinary elation took the place of my anger as I sat
outside the window and watched these four people—for the old lady came in, glancing
suspiciously about her like a cat, trying to understa
nd the riddle of my behaviour. “The old man, so far as I could understand
his patois, agreed with the old lady that I was a vivisectionist. The sons protested
in garbled English that I was an electrician, and appealed to the dynamos and radiators.
They were all nervous about my arrival, although I found subsequently that they had bolted
the front door. The old lady peered into the cupboard and under the bed, and one of the
young men pushed up the register and stared up the chimney. One of my fel
low lodgers,
a coster-monger who shared the opposite room with a butcher, appeared on the landing, and
he was called in and told incoherent things. “It occurred to me that the radiators, if
they fell into the hands of some acute well-educated person, would give me away too much, and watching
my opportunity, I came into the room and tilted one of the little dynamos off its fellow on
which it was standing, and smashed both apparatus. Then, while they were trying to explain the
smash, I dodged out
of the room and went softly downstairs. “I went into one of the sitting-rooms and
waited until they came down, still speculating and argumentative, all a little disappointed
at finding no ‘horrors,’ and all a little puzzled how they stood legally towards me.
Then I slipped up again with a box of matches, fired my heap of paper and rubbish, put the
chairs and bedding thereby, led the gas to the affair, by means of an india-rubber tube,
and waving a farewell to the room left it for the last time.”
“You fired the house!” exclaimed Kemp. “Fired the house. It was the only way to
cover my trail—and no doubt it was insured. I slipped the bolts of the front door quietly
and went out into the street. I was invisible, and I was only just beginning to realise the
extraordinary advantage my invisibility gave me. My head was already teeming with plans
of all the wild and wonderful things I had now impunity to do.” CHAPTER XXI.
IN OXFORD STREET “In going downstairs the first time I found
an unexpect
ed difficulty because I could not see my feet; indeed I stumbled twice, and
there was an unaccustomed clumsiness in gripping the bolt. By not looking down, however, I
managed to walk on the level passably well. “My mood, I say, was one of exaltation.
I felt as a seeing man might do, with padded feet and noiseless clothes, in a city of the
blind. I experienced a wild impulse to jest, to startle people, to clap men on the back,
fling people’s hats astray, and generally revel in my extraordinary ad
vantage. “But hardly had I emerged upon Great Portland
Street, however (my lodging was close to the big draper’s shop there), when I heard a
clashing concussion and was hit violently behind, and turning saw a man carrying a basket
of soda-water syphons, and looking in amazement at his burden. Although the blow had really
hurt me, I found something so irresistible in his astonishment that I laughed aloud.
‘The devil’s in the basket,’ I said, and suddenly twisted it out of his hand. He
let go inco
ntinently, and I swung the whole weight into the air. “But a fool of a cabman, standing outside
a public house, made a sudden rush for this, and his extending fingers took me with excruciating
violence under the ear. I let the whole down with a smash on the cabman, and then, with
shouts and the clatter of feet about me, people coming out of shops, vehicles pulling up,
I realised what I had done for myself, and cursing my folly, backed against a shop window
and prepared to dodge out of the confus
ion. In a moment I should be wedged into a crowd
and inevitably discovered. I pushed by a butcher boy, who luckily did not turn to see the nothingness
that shoved him aside, and dodged behind the cab-man’s four-wheeler. I do not know how
they settled the business. I hurried straight across the road, which was happily clear,
and hardly heeding which way I went, in the fright of detection the incident had given
me, plunged into the afternoon throng of Oxford Street. “I tried to get into the stream
of people,
but they were too thick for me, and in a moment my heels were being trodden upon. I took to
the gutter, the roughness of which I found painful to my feet, and forthwith the shaft
of a crawling hansom dug me forcibly under the shoulder blade, reminding me that I was
already bruised severely. I staggered out of the way of the cab, avoided a perambulator
by a convulsive movement, and found myself behind the hansom. A happy thought saved me,
and as this drove slowly along I followed in i
ts immediate wake, trembling and astonished
at the turn of my adventure. And not only trembling, but shivering. It was a bright
day in January and I was stark naked and the thin slime of mud that covered the road was
freezing. Foolish as it seems to me now, I had not reckoned that, transparent or not,
I was still amenable to the weather and all its consequences. “Then suddenly a bright idea came into my
head. I ran round and got into the cab. And so, shivering, scared, and sniffing with the
firs
t intimations of a cold, and with the bruises in the small of my back growing upon
my attention, I drove slowly along Oxford Street and past Tottenham Court Road. My mood
was as different from that in which I had sallied forth ten minutes ago as it is possible
to imagine. This invisibility indeed! The one thought that possessed me was—how was
I to get out of the scrape I was in. “We crawled past Mudie’s, and there a
tall woman with five or six yellow-labelled books hailed my cab, and I sprang ou
t just
in time to escape her, shaving a railway van narrowly in my flight. I made off up the roadway
to Bloomsbury Square, intending to strike north past the Museum and so get into the
quiet district. I was now cruelly chilled, and the strangeness of my situation so unnerved
me that I whimpered as I ran. At the northward corner of the Square a little white dog ran
out of the Pharmaceutical Society’s offices, and incontinently made for me, nose down. “I had never realised it before, but the
nose
is to the mind of a dog what the eye is to the mind of a seeing man. Dogs perceive
the scent of a man moving as men perceive his vision. This brute began barking and leaping,
showing, as it seemed to me, only too plainly that he was aware of me. I crossed Great Russell
Street, glancing over my shoulder as I did so, and went some way along Montague Street
before I realised what I was running towards. “Then I became aware of a blare of music,
and looking along the street saw a number of people adv
ancing out of Russell Square,
red shirts, and the banner of the Salvation Army to the fore. Such a crowd, chanting in
the roadway and scoffing on the pavement, I could not hope to penetrate, and dreading
to go back and farther from home again, and deciding on the spur of the moment, I ran
up the white steps of a house facing the museum railings, and stood there until the crowd
should have passed. Happily the dog stopped at the noise of the band too, hesitated, and
turned tail, running back to Bl
oomsbury Square again. “On came the band, bawling with unconscious
irony some hymn about ‘When shall we see His face?’ and it seemed an interminable
time to me before the tide of the crowd washed along the pavement by me. Thud, thud, thud,
came the drum with a vibrating resonance, and for the moment I did not notice two urchins
stopping at the railings by me. ‘See ’em,’ said one. ‘See what?’ said the other.
‘Why—them footmarks—bare. Like what you makes in mud.’ “I looked down and saw the youngst
ers had
stopped and were gaping at the muddy footmarks I had left behind me up the newly whitened
steps. The passing people elbowed and jostled them, but their confounded intelligence was
arrested. ‘Thud, thud, thud, when, thud, shall we see, thud, his face, thud, thud.’
‘There’s a barefoot man gone up them steps, or I don’t know nothing,’ said one. ‘And
he ain’t never come down again. And his foot was a-bleeding.’ “The thick of the crowd had already passed.
‘Looky there, Ted,’ quoth the younger
of the detectives, with the sharpness of surprise
in his voice, and pointed straight to my feet. I looked down and saw at once the dim suggestion
of their outline sketched in splashes of mud. For a moment I was paralysed. “‘Why, that’s rum,’ said the elder.
‘Dashed rum! It’s just like the ghost of a foot, ain’t it?’ He hesitated and
advanced with outstretched hand. A man pulled up short to see what he was catching, and
then a girl. In another moment he would have touched me. Then I saw what to
do. I made
a step, the boy started back with an exclamation, and with a rapid movement I swung myself over
into the portico of the next house. But the smaller boy was sharp-eyed enough to follow
the movement, and before I was well down the steps and upon the pavement, he had recovered
from his momentary astonishment and was shouting out that the feet had gone over the wall. “They rushed round and saw my new footmarks
flash into being on the lower step and upon the pavement. ‘What’s up?’ asked so
meone.
‘Feet! Look! Feet running!’ “Everybody in the road, except my three
pursuers, was pouring along after the Salvation Army, and this blow not only impeded me but
them. There was an eddy of surprise and interrogation. At the cost of bowling over one young fellow
I got through, and in another moment I was rushing headlong round the circuit of Russell
Square, with six or seven astonished people following my footmarks. There was no time
for explanation, or else the whole host would have been af
ter me. “Twice I doubled round corners, thrice I
crossed the road and came back upon my tracks, and then, as my feet grew hot and dry, the
damp impressions began to fade. At last I had a breathing space and rubbed my feet clean
with my hands, and so got away altogether. The last I saw of the chase was a little group
of a dozen people perhaps, studying with infinite perplexity a slowly drying footprint that
had resulted from a puddle in Tavistock Square, a footprint as isolated and incomprehensib
le
to them as Crusoe’s solitary discovery. “This running warmed me to a certain extent,
and I went on with a better courage through the maze of less frequented roads that runs
hereabouts. My back had now become very stiff and sore, my tonsils were painful from the
cabman’s fingers, and the skin of my neck had been scratched by his nails; my feet hurt
exceedingly and I was lame from a little cut on one foot. I saw in time a blind man approaching
me, and fled limping, for I feared his subtle intui
tions. Once or twice accidental collisions
occurred and I left people amazed, with unaccountable curses ringing in their ears. Then came something
silent and quiet against my face, and across the Square fell a thin veil of slowly falling
flakes of snow. I had caught a cold, and do as I would I could not avoid an occasional
sneeze. And every dog that came in sight, with its pointing nose and curious sniffing,
was a terror to me. “Then came men and boys running, first one
and then others, and shou
ting as they ran. It was a fire. They ran in the direction of
my lodging, and looking back down a street I saw a mass of black smoke streaming up above
the roofs and telephone wires. It was my lodging burning; my clothes, my apparatus, all my
resources indeed, except my cheque-book and the three volumes of memoranda that awaited
me in Great Portland Street, were there. Burning! I had burnt my boats—if ever a man did!
The place was blazing.” The Invisible Man paused and thought. Kemp
glanced nerv
ously out of the window. “Yes?” he said. “Go on.” CHAPTER XXII.
IN THE EMPORIUM “So last January, with the beginning of
a snowstorm in the air about me—and if it settled on me it would betray me!—weary,
cold, painful, inexpressibly wretched, and still but half convinced of my invisible quality,
I began this new life to which I am committed. I had no refuge, no appliances, no human being
in the world in whom I could confide. To have told my secret would have given me away—made
a mere show and rar
ity of me. Nevertheless, I was half-minded to accost some passer-by
and throw myself upon his mercy. But I knew too clearly the terror and brutal cruelty
my advances would evoke. I made no plans in the street. My sole object was to get shelter
from the snow, to get myself covered and warm; then I might hope to plan. But even to me,
an Invisible Man, the rows of London houses stood latched, barred, and bolted impregnably. “Only one thing could I see clearly before
me—the cold exposure and misery
of the snowstorm and the night. “And then I had a brilliant idea. I turned
down one of the roads leading from Gower Street to Tottenham Court Road, and found myself
outside Omniums, the big establishment where everything is to be bought—you know the
place: meat, grocery, linen, furniture, clothing, oil paintings even—a huge meandering collection
of shops rather than a shop. I had thought I should find the doors open, but they were
closed, and as I stood in the wide entrance a carriage stopped ou
tside, and a man in uniform—you
know the kind of personage with ‘Omnium’ on his cap—flung open the door. I contrived
to enter, and walking down the shop—it was a department where they were selling ribbons
and gloves and stockings and that kind of thing—came to a more spacious region devoted
to picnic baskets and wicker furniture. “I did not feel safe there, however; people
were going to and fro, and I prowled restlessly about until I came upon a huge section in
an upper floor containing multitud
es of bedsteads, and over these I clambered, and found a resting-place
at last among a huge pile of folded flock mattresses. The place was already lit up and
agreeably warm, and I decided to remain where I was, keeping a cautious eye on the two or
three sets of shopmen and customers who were meandering through the place, until closing
time came. Then I should be able, I thought, to rob the place for food and clothing, and
disguised, prowl through it and examine its resources, perhaps sleep on so
me of the bedding.
That seemed an acceptable plan. My idea was to procure clothing to make myself a muffled
but acceptable figure, to get money, and then to recover my books and parcels where they
awaited me, take a lodging somewhere and elaborate plans for the complete realisation of the
advantages my invisibility gave me (as I still imagined) over my fellow-men. “Closing time arrived quickly enough. It
could not have been more than an hour after I took up my position on the mattresses before
I
noticed the blinds of the windows being drawn, and customers being marched doorward.
And then a number of brisk young men began with remarkable alacrity to tidy up the goods
that remained disturbed. I left my lair as the crowds diminished, and prowled cautiously
out into the less desolate parts of the shop. I was really surprised to observe how rapidly
the young men and women whipped away the goods displayed for sale during the day. All the
boxes of goods, the hanging fabrics, the festoons of l
ace, the boxes of sweets in the grocery
section, the displays of this and that, were being whipped down, folded up, slapped into
tidy receptacles, and everything that could not be taken down and put away had sheets
of some coarse stuff like sacking flung over them. Finally all the chairs were turned up
on to the counters, leaving the floor clear. Directly each of these young people had done,
he or she made promptly for the door with such an expression of animation as I have
rarely observed in a
shop assistant before. Then came a lot of youngsters scattering sawdust
and carrying pails and brooms. I had to dodge to get out of the way, and as it was, my ankle
got stung with the sawdust. For some time, wandering through the swathed and darkened
departments, I could hear the brooms at work. And at last a good hour or more after the
shop had been closed, came a noise of locking doors. Silence came upon the place, and I
found myself wandering through the vast and intricate shops, galleries, s
how-rooms of
the place, alone. It was very still; in one place I remember passing near one of the Tottenham
Court Road entrances and listening to the tapping of boot-heels of the passers-by. “My first visit was to the place where I
had seen stockings and gloves for sale. It was dark, and I had the devil of a hunt after
matches, which I found at last in the drawer of the little cash desk. Then I had to get
a candle. I had to tear down wrappings and ransack a number of boxes and drawers, but
at la
st I managed to turn out what I sought; the box label called them lambswool pants,
and lambswool vests. Then socks, a thick comforter, and then I went to the clothing place and
got trousers, a lounge jacket, an overcoat and a slouch hat—a clerical sort of hat
with the brim turned down. I began to feel a human being again, and my next thought was
food. “Upstairs was a refreshment department,
and there I got cold meat. There was coffee still in the urn, and I lit the gas and warmed
it up again, an
d altogether I did not do badly. Afterwards, prowling through the place in
search of blankets—I had to put up at last with a heap of down quilts—I came upon a
grocery section with a lot of chocolate and candied fruits, more than was good for me
indeed—and some white burgundy. And near that was a toy department, and I had a brilliant
idea. I found some artificial noses—dummy noses, you know, and I thought of dark spectacles.
But Omniums had no optical department. My nose had been a difficulty ind
eed—I had
thought of paint. But the discovery set my mind running on wigs and masks and the like.
Finally I went to sleep in a heap of down quilts, very warm and comfortable. “My last thoughts before sleeping were the
most agreeable I had had since the change. I was in a state of physical serenity, and
that was reflected in my mind. I thought that I should be able to slip out unobserved in
the morning with my clothes upon me, muffling my face with a white wrapper I had taken,
purchase, with the
money I had taken, spectacles and so forth, and so complete my disguise.
I lapsed into disorderly dreams of all the fantastic things that had happened during
the last few days. I saw the ugly little Jew of a landlord vociferating in his rooms; I
saw his two sons marvelling, and the wrinkled old woman’s gnarled face as she asked for
her cat. I experienced again the strange sensation of seeing the cloth disappear, and so I came
round to the windy hillside and the sniffing old clergyman mumbling ‘E
arth to earth,
ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ at my father’s open grave. “‘You also,’ said a voice, and suddenly
I was being forced towards the grave. I struggled, shouted, appealed to the mourners, but they
continued stonily following the service; the old clergyman, too, never faltered droning
and sniffing through the ritual. I realised I was invisible and inaudible, that overwhelming
forces had their grip on me. I struggled in vain, I was forced over the brink, the coffin
rang hollow as I fell
upon it, and the gravel came flying after me in spadefuls. Nobody
heeded me, nobody was aware of me. I made convulsive struggles and awoke. “The pale London dawn had come, the place
was full of a chilly grey light that filtered round the edges of the window blinds. I sat
up, and for a time I could not think where this ample apartment, with its counters, its
piles of rolled stuff, its heap of quilts and cushions, its iron pillars, might be.
Then, as recollection came back to me, I heard voices i
n conversation. “Then far down the place, in the brighter
light of some department which had already raised its blinds, I saw two men approaching.
I scrambled to my feet, looking about me for some way of escape, and even as I did so the
sound of my movement made them aware of me. I suppose they saw merely a figure moving
quietly and quickly away. ‘Who’s that?’ cried one, and ‘Stop there!’ shouted the
other. I dashed around a corner and came full tilt—a faceless figure, mind you!—on a
lanky lad o
f fifteen. He yelled and I bowled him over, rushed past him, turned another
corner, and by a happy inspiration threw myself behind a counter. In another moment feet went
running past and I heard voices shouting, ‘All hands to the doors!’ asking what
was ‘up,’ and giving one another advice how to catch me. “Lying on the ground, I felt scared out
of my wits. But—odd as it may seem—it did not occur to me at the moment to take
off my clothes as I should have done. I had made up my mind, I suppose, t
o get away in
them, and that ruled me. And then down the vista of the counters came a bawling of ‘Here
he is!’ “I sprang to my feet, whipped a chair off
the counter, and sent it whirling at the fool who had shouted, turned, came into another
round a corner, sent him spinning, and rushed up the stairs. He kept his footing, gave a
view hallo, and came up the staircase hot after me. Up the staircase were piled a multitude
of those bright-coloured pot things—what are they?” “Art pots,” suggested Kem
p. “That’s it! Art pots. Well, I turned at
the top step and swung round, plucked one out of a pile and smashed it on his silly
head as he came at me. The whole pile of pots went headlong, and I heard shouting and footsteps
running from all parts. I made a mad rush for the refreshment place, and there was a
man in white like a man cook, who took up the chase. I made one last desperate turn
and found myself among lamps and ironmongery. I went behind the counter of this, and waited
for my cook, and
as he bolted in at the head of the chase, I doubled him up with a lamp.
Down he went, and I crouched down behind the counter and began whipping off my clothes
as fast as I could. Coat, jacket, trousers, shoes were all right, but a lambswool vest
fits a man like a skin. I heard more men coming, my cook was lying quiet on the other side
of the counter, stunned or scared speechless, and I had to make another dash for it, like
a rabbit hunted out of a wood-pile. “‘This way, policeman!’ I heard some
one
shouting. I found myself in my bedstead storeroom again, and at the end of a wilderness of wardrobes.
I rushed among them, went flat, got rid of my vest after infinite wriggling, and stood
a free man again, panting and scared, as the policeman and three of the shopmen came round
the corner. They made a rush for the vest and pants, and collared the trousers. ‘He’s
dropping his plunder,’ said one of the young men. ‘He must be somewhere here.’ “But they did not find me all the same. “I stood wa
tching them hunt for me for a
time, and cursing my ill-luck in losing the clothes. Then I went into the refreshment-room,
drank a little milk I found there, and sat down by the fire to consider my position. “In a little while two assistants came in
and began to talk over the business very excitedly and like the fools they were. I heard a magnified
account of my depredations, and other speculations as to my whereabouts. Then I fell to scheming
again. The insurmountable difficulty of the place, es
pecially now it was alarmed, was
to get any plunder out of it. I went down into the warehouse to see if there was any
chance of packing and addressing a parcel, but I could not understand the system of checking.
About eleven o’clock, the snow having thawed as it fell, and the day being finer and a
little warmer than the previous one, I decided that the Emporium was hopeless, and went out
again, exasperated at my want of success, with only the vaguest plans of action in my
mind.” CHAPTER XXIII.
I
N DRURY LANE “But you begin now to realise,” said the
Invisible Man, “the full disadvantage of my condition. I had no shelter—no covering—to
get clothing was to forego all my advantage, to make myself a strange and terrible thing.
I was fasting; for to eat, to fill myself with unassimilated matter, would be to become
grotesquely visible again.” “I never thought of that,” said Kemp. “Nor had I. And the snow had warned me of
other dangers. I could not go abroad in snow—it would settle on me and ex
pose me. Rain, too,
would make me a watery outline, a glistening surface of a man—a bubble. And fog—I should
be like a fainter bubble in a fog, a surface, a greasy glimmer of humanity. Moreover, as
I went abroad—in the London air—I gathered dirt about my ankles, floating smuts and dust
upon my skin. I did not know how long it would be before I should become visible from that
cause also. But I saw clearly it could not be for long. “Not in London at any rate. “I went into the slums towards Great P
ortland
Street, and found myself at the end of the street in which I had lodged. I did not go
that way, because of the crowd halfway down it opposite to the still smoking ruins of
the house I had fired. My most immediate problem was to get clothing. What to do with my face
puzzled me. Then I saw in one of those little miscellaneous shops—news, sweets, toys,
stationery, belated Christmas tomfoolery, and so forth—an array of masks and noses.
I realised that problem was solved. In a flash I saw my
course. I turned about, no longer
aimless, and went—circuitously in order to avoid the busy ways, towards the back streets
north of the Strand; for I remembered, though not very distinctly where, that some theatrical
costumiers had shops in that district. “The day was cold, with a nipping wind down
the northward running streets. I walked fast to avoid being overtaken. Every crossing was
a danger, every passenger a thing to watch alertly. One man as I was about to pass him
at the top of Bedford S
treet, turned upon me abruptly and came into me, sending me into
the road and almost under the wheel of a passing hansom. The verdict of the cab-rank was that
he had had some sort of stroke. I was so unnerved by this encounter that I went into Covent
Garden Market and sat down for some time in a quiet corner by a stall of violets, panting
and trembling. I found I had caught a fresh cold, and had to turn out after a time lest
my sneezes should attract attention. “At last I reached the object of m
y quest,
a dirty, fly-blown little shop in a by-way near Drury Lane, with a window full of tinsel
robes, sham jewels, wigs, slippers, dominoes and theatrical photographs. The shop was old-fashioned
and low and dark, and the house rose above it for four storeys, dark and dismal. I peered
through the window and, seeing no one within, entered. The opening of the door set a clanking
bell ringing. I left it open, and walked round a bare costume stand, into a corner behind
a cheval glass. For a minute
or so no one came. Then I heard heavy feet striding across
a room, and a man appeared down the shop. “My plans were now perfectly definite. I
proposed to make my way into the house, secrete myself upstairs, watch my opportunity, and
when everything was quiet, rummage out a wig, mask, spectacles, and costume, and go into
the world, perhaps a grotesque but still a credible figure. And incidentally of course
I could rob the house of any available money. “The man who had just entered the shop was
a
short, slight, hunched, beetle-browed man, with long arms and very short bandy legs.
Apparently I had interrupted a meal. He stared about the shop with an expression of expectation.
This gave way to surprise, and then to anger, as he saw the shop empty. ‘Damn the boys!’
he said. He went to stare up and down the street. He came in again in a minute, kicked
the door to with his foot spitefully, and went muttering back to the house door. “I came forward to follow him, and at the
noise of my moveme
nt he stopped dead. I did so too, startled by his quickness of ear.
He slammed the house door in my face. “I stood hesitating. Suddenly I heard his
quick footsteps returning, and the door reopened. He stood looking about the shop like one who
was still not satisfied. Then, murmuring to himself, he examined the back of the counter
and peered behind some fixtures. Then he stood doubtful. He had left the house door open
and I slipped into the inner room. “It was a queer little room, poorly furnishe
d
and with a number of big masks in the corner. On the table was his belated breakfast, and
it was a confoundedly exasperating thing for me, Kemp, to have to sniff his coffee and
stand watching while he came in and resumed his meal. And his table manners were irritating.
Three doors opened into the little room, one going upstairs and one down, but they were
all shut. I could not get out of the room while he was there; I could scarcely move
because of his alertness, and there was a draught down m
y back. Twice I strangled a
sneeze just in time. “The spectacular quality of my sensations
was curious and novel, but for all that I was heartily tired and angry long before he
had done his eating. But at last he made an end and putting his beggarly crockery on the
black tin tray upon which he had had his teapot, and gathering all the crumbs up on the mustard
stained cloth, he took the whole lot of things after him. His burden prevented his shutting
the door behind him—as he would have done; I n
ever saw such a man for shutting doors—and
I followed him into a very dirty underground kitchen and scullery. I had the pleasure of
seeing him begin to wash up, and then, finding no good in keeping down there, and the brick
floor being cold on my feet, I returned upstairs and sat in his chair by the fire. It was burning
low, and scarcely thinking, I put on a little coal. The noise of this brought him up at
once, and he stood aglare. He peered about the room and was within an ace of touching
me.
Even after that examination, he scarcely seemed satisfied. He stopped in the doorway
and took a final inspection before he went down. “I waited in the little parlour for an age,
and at last he came up and opened the upstairs door. I just managed to get by him. “On the staircase he stopped suddenly, so
that I very nearly blundered into him. He stood looking back right into my face and
listening. ‘I could have sworn,’ he said. His long hairy hand pulled at his lower lip.
His eye went up and down t
he staircase. Then he grunted and went on up again. “His hand was on the handle of a door, and
then he stopped again with the same puzzled anger on his face. He was becoming aware of
the faint sounds of my movements about him. The man must have had diabolically acute hearing.
He suddenly flashed into rage. ‘If there’s anyone in this house—’ he cried with an
oath, and left the threat unfinished. He put his hand in his pocket, failed to find what
he wanted, and rushing past me went blundering nois
ily and pugnaciously downstairs. But I
did not follow him. I sat on the head of the staircase until his return. “Presently he came up again, still muttering.
He opened the door of the room, and before I could enter, slammed it in my face. “I resolved to explore the house, and spent
some time in doing so as noiselessly as possible. The house was very old and tumble-down, damp
so that the paper in the attics was peeling from the walls, and rat infested. Some of
the door handles were stiff and I wa
s afraid to turn them. Several rooms I did inspect
were unfurnished, and others were littered with theatrical lumber, bought second-hand,
I judged, from its appearance. In one room next to his I found a lot of old clothes.
I began routing among these, and in my eagerness forgot again the evident sharpness of his
ears. I heard a stealthy footstep and, looking up just in time, saw him peering in at the
tumbled heap and holding an old-fashioned revolver in his hand. I stood perfectly still
while he
stared about open-mouthed and suspicious. ‘It must have been her,’ he said slowly.
‘Damn her!’ “He shut the door quietly, and immediately
I heard the key turn in the lock. Then his footsteps retreated. I realised abruptly that
I was locked in. For a minute I did not know what to do. I walked from door to window and
back, and stood perplexed. A gust of anger came upon me. But I decided to inspect the
clothes before I did anything further, and my first attempt brought down a pile from
an upper sh
elf. This brought him back, more sinister than ever. That time he actually
touched me, jumped back with amazement and stood astonished in the middle of the room. “Presently he calmed a little. ‘Rats,’
he said in an undertone, fingers on lips. He was evidently a little scared. I edged
quietly out of the room, but a plank creaked. Then the infernal little brute started going
all over the house, revolver in hand and locking door after door and pocketing the keys. When
I realised what he was up to I
had a fit of rage—I could hardly control myself sufficiently
to watch my opportunity. By this time I knew he was alone in the house, and so I made no
more ado, but knocked him on the head.” “Knocked him on the head?” exclaimed Kemp. “Yes—stunned him—as he was going downstairs.
Hit him from behind with a stool that stood on the landing. He went downstairs like a
bag of old boots.” “But—I say! The common conventions of
humanity—” “Are all very well for common people. But
the point was, Kemp, that
I had to get out of that house in a disguise without his seeing
me. I couldn’t think of any other way of doing it. And then I gagged him with a Louis
Quatorze vest and tied him up in a sheet.” “Tied him up in a sheet!” “Made a sort of bag of it. It was rather
a good idea to keep the idiot scared and quiet, and a devilish hard thing to get out of—head
away from the string. My dear Kemp, it’s no good your sitting glaring as though I was
a murderer. It had to be done. He had his revolver. If once
he saw me he would be able
to describe me—” “But still,” said Kemp, “in England—to-day.
And the man was in his own house, and you were—well, robbing.” “Robbing! Confound it! You’ll call me
a thief next! Surely, Kemp, you’re not fool enough to dance on the old strings. Can’t
you see my position?” “And his too,” said Kemp. The Invisible Man stood up sharply. “What
do you mean to say?” Kemp’s face grew a trifle hard. He was about
to speak and checked himself. “I suppose, after all,” he said with a
sudden change
of manner, “the thing had to be done. You were in a fix. But still—” “Of course I was in a fix—an infernal
fix. And he made me wild too—hunting me about the house, fooling about with his revolver,
locking and unlocking doors. He was simply exasperating. You don’t blame me, do you?
You don’t blame me?” “I never blame anyone,” said Kemp. “It’s
quite out of fashion. What did you do next?” “I was hungry. Downstairs I found a loaf
and some rank cheese—more than sufficient to satisfy my
hunger. I took some brandy and
water, and then went up past my impromptu bag—he was lying quite still—to the room
containing the old clothes. This looked out upon the street, two lace curtains brown with
dirt guarding the window. I went and peered out through their interstices. Outside the
day was bright—by contrast with the brown shadows of the dismal house in which I found
myself, dazzlingly bright. A brisk traffic was going by, fruit carts, a hansom, a four-wheeler
with a pile of boxes, a fis
hmonger’s cart. I turned with spots of colour swimming before
my eyes to the shadowy fixtures behind me. My excitement was giving place to a clear
apprehension of my position again. The room was full of a faint scent of benzoline, used,
I suppose, in cleaning the garments. “I began a systematic search of the place.
I should judge the hunchback had been alone in the house for some time. He was a curious
person. Everything that could possibly be of service to me I collected in the clothes
storeroo
m, and then I made a deliberate selection. I found a handbag I thought a suitable possession,
and some powder, rouge, and sticking-plaster. “I had thought of painting and powdering
my face and all that there was to show of me, in order to render myself visible, but
the disadvantage of this lay in the fact that I should require turpentine and other appliances
and a considerable amount of time before I could vanish again. Finally I chose a mask
of the better type, slightly grotesque but not more s
o than many human beings, dark glasses,
greyish whiskers, and a wig. I could find no underclothing, but that I could buy subsequently,
and for the time I swathed myself in calico dominoes and some white cashmere scarfs. I
could find no socks, but the hunchback’s boots were rather a loose fit and sufficed.
In a desk in the shop were three sovereigns and about thirty shillings’ worth of silver,
and in a locked cupboard I burst in the inner room were eight pounds in gold. I could go
forth into the
world again, equipped. “Then came a curious hesitation. Was my
appearance really credible? I tried myself with a little bedroom looking-glass, inspecting
myself from every point of view to discover any forgotten chink, but it all seemed sound.
I was grotesque to the theatrical pitch, a stage miser, but I was certainly not a physical
impossibility. Gathering confidence, I took my looking-glass down into the shop, pulled
down the shop blinds, and surveyed myself from every point of view with the h
elp of
the cheval glass in the corner. “I spent some minutes screwing up my courage
and then unlocked the shop door and marched out into the street, leaving the little man
to get out of his sheet again when he liked. In five minutes a dozen turnings intervened
between me and the costumier’s shop. No one appeared to notice me very pointedly.
My last difficulty seemed overcome.” He stopped again. “And you troubled no more about the hunchback?”
said Kemp. “No,” said the Invisible Man. “Nor have
I h
eard what became of him. I suppose he untied himself or kicked himself out. The knots were
pretty tight.” He became silent and went to the window and
stared out. “What happened when you went out into the
Strand?” “Oh!—disillusionment again. I thought
my troubles were over. Practically I thought I had impunity to do whatever I chose, everything—save
to give away my secret. So I thought. Whatever I did, whatever the consequences might be,
was nothing to me. I had merely to fling aside my garments
and vanish. No person could hold
me. I could take my money where I found it. I decided to treat myself to a sumptuous feast,
and then put up at a good hotel, and accumulate a new outfit of property. I felt amazingly
confident; it’s not particularly pleasant recalling that I was an ass. I went into a
place and was already ordering lunch, when it occurred to me that I could not eat unless
I exposed my invisible face. I finished ordering the lunch, told the man I should be back in
ten minutes, and
went out exasperated. I don’t know if you have ever been disappointed in
your appetite.” “Not quite so badly,” said Kemp, “but
I can imagine it.” “I could have smashed the silly devils.
At last, faint with the desire for tasteful food, I went into another place and demanded
a private room. ‘I am disfigured,’ I said. ‘Badly.’ They looked at me curiously,
but of course it was not their affair—and so at last I got my lunch. It was not particularly
well served, but it sufficed; and when I had had it
, I sat over a cigar, trying to plan
my line of action. And outside a snowstorm was beginning. “The more I thought it over, Kemp, the more
I realised what a helpless absurdity an Invisible Man was—in a cold and dirty climate and
a crowded civilised city. Before I made this mad experiment I had dreamt of a thousand
advantages. That afternoon it seemed all disappointment. I went over the heads of the things a man
reckons desirable. No doubt invisibility made it possible to get them, but it made it
impossible
to enjoy them when they are got. Ambition—what is the good of pride of place when you cannot
appear there? What is the good of the love of woman when her name must needs be Delilah?
I have no taste for politics, for the blackguardisms of fame, for philanthropy, for sport. What
was I to do? And for this I had become a wrapped-up mystery, a swathed and bandaged caricature
of a man!” He paused, and his attitude suggested a roving
glance at the window. “But how did you get to Iping?” sai
d Kemp,
anxious to keep his guest busy talking. “I went there to work. I had one hope. It
was a half idea! I have it still. It is a full blown idea now. A way of getting back!
Of restoring what I have done. When I choose. When I have done all I mean to do invisibly.
And that is what I chiefly want to talk to you about now.” “You went straight to Iping?” “Yes. I had simply to get my three volumes
of memoranda and my cheque-book, my luggage and underclothing, order a quantity of chemicals
to work
out this idea of mine—I will show you the calculations as soon as I get my books—and
then I started. Jove! I remember the snowstorm now, and the accursed bother it was to keep
the snow from damping my pasteboard nose.” “At the end,” said Kemp, “the day before
yesterday, when they found you out, you rather—to judge by the papers—” “I did. Rather. Did I kill that fool of
a constable?” “No,” said Kemp. “He’s expected to
recover.” “That’s his luck, then. I clean lost my
temper, the fools! Why couldn
’t they leave me alone? And that grocer lout?” “There are no deaths expected,” said Kemp. “I don’t know about that tramp of mine,”
said the Invisible Man, with an unpleasant laugh. “By Heaven, Kemp, you don’t know what
rage is! ... To have worked for years, to have planned and plotted, and then to get
some fumbling purblind idiot messing across your course! ... Every conceivable sort of
silly creature that has ever been created has been sent to cross me. “If I have much more of it, I shall go wi
ld—I
shall start mowing ’em. “As it is, they’ve made things a thousand
times more difficult.” “No doubt it’s exasperating,” said Kemp,
drily. CHAPTER XXIV.
THE PLAN THAT FAILED “But now,” said Kemp, with a side glance
out of the window, “what are we to do?” He moved nearer his guest as he spoke in such
a manner as to prevent the possibility of a sudden glimpse of the three men who were
advancing up the hill road—with an intolerable slowness, as it seemed to Kemp. “What were you planning to do wh
en you were
heading for Port Burdock? Had you any plan?” “I was going to clear out of the country.
But I have altered that plan rather since seeing you. I thought it would be wise, now
the weather is hot and invisibility possible, to make for the South. Especially as my secret
was known, and everyone would be on the lookout for a masked and muffled man. You have a line
of steamers from here to France. My idea was to get aboard one and run the risks of the
passage. Thence I could go by train into
Spain, or else get to Algiers. It would not be difficult.
There a man might always be invisible—and yet live. And do things. I was using that
tramp as a money box and luggage carrier, until I decided how to get my books and things
sent over to meet me.” “That’s clear.” “And then the filthy brute must needs try
and rob me! He has hidden my books, Kemp. Hidden my books! If I can lay my hands on
him!” “Best plan to get the books out of him first.” “But where is he? Do you know?” “He’s in the town
police station, locked
up, by his own request, in the strongest cell in the place.” “Cur!” said the Invisible Man. “But that hangs up your plans a little.” “We must get those books; those books are
vital.” “Certainly,” said Kemp, a little nervously,
wondering if he heard footsteps outside. “Certainly we must get those books. But that won’t
be difficult, if he doesn’t know they’re for you.” “No,” said the Invisible Man, and thought. Kemp tried to think of something to keep the
talk going, but the
Invisible Man resumed of his own accord. “Blundering into your house, Kemp,” he
said, “changes all my plans. For you are a man that can understand. In spite of all
that has happened, in spite of this publicity, of the loss of my books, of what I have suffered,
there still remain great possibilities, huge possibilities—” “You have told no one I am here?” he asked
abruptly. Kemp hesitated. “That was implied,” he
said. “No one?” insisted Griffin. “Not a soul.” “Ah! Now—” The Invisible Man stood up
,
and sticking his arms akimbo began to pace the study. “I made a mistake, Kemp, a huge mistake,
in carrying this thing through alone. I have wasted strength, time, opportunities. Alone—it
is wonderful how little a man can do alone! To rob a little, to hurt a little, and there
is the end. “What I want, Kemp, is a goal-keeper, a
helper, and a hiding-place, an arrangement whereby I can sleep and eat and rest in peace,
and unsuspected. I must have a confederate. With a confederate, with food and re
st—a
thousand things are possible. “Hitherto I have gone on vague lines. We
have to consider all that invisibility means, all that it does not mean. It means little
advantage for eavesdropping and so forth—one makes sounds. It’s of little help—a little
help perhaps—in housebreaking and so forth. Once you’ve caught me you could easily imprison
me. But on the other hand I am hard to catch. This invisibility, in fact, is only good in
two cases: It’s useful in getting away, it’s useful in approachin
g. It’s particularly
useful, therefore, in killing. I can walk round a man, whatever weapon he has, choose
my point, strike as I like. Dodge as I like. Escape as I like.” Kemp’s hand went to his moustache. Was that
a movement downstairs? “And it is killing we must do, Kemp.” “It is killing we must do,” repeated Kemp.
“I’m listening to your plan, Griffin, but I’m not agreeing, mind. Why killing?” “Not wanton killing, but a judicious slaying.
The point is, they know there is an Invisible Man—as we
ll as we know there is an Invisible
Man. And that Invisible Man, Kemp, must now establish a Reign of Terror. Yes; no doubt
it’s startling. But I mean it. A Reign of Terror. He must take some town like your Burdock
and terrify and dominate it. He must issue his orders. He can do that in a thousand ways—scraps
of paper thrust under doors would suffice. And all who disobey his orders he must kill,
and kill all who would defend them.” “Humph!” said Kemp, no longer listening
to Griffin but to the sou
nd of his front door opening and closing. “It seems to me, Griffin,” he said, to
cover his wandering attention, “that your confederate would be in a difficult position.” “No one would know he was a confederate,”
said the Invisible Man, eagerly. And then suddenly, “Hush! What’s that downstairs?” “Nothing,” said Kemp, and suddenly began
to speak loud and fast. “I don’t agree to this, Griffin,” he said. “Understand
me, I don’t agree to this. Why dream of playing a game against the race? How can you
hope to gain happiness? Don’t be a lone wolf. Publish your results; take the world—take
the nation at least—into your confidence. Think what you might do with a million helpers—” The Invisible Man interrupted—arm extended.
“There are footsteps coming upstairs,” he said in a low voice. “Nonsense,” said Kemp. “Let me see,” said the Invisible Man,
and advanced, arm extended, to the door. And then things happened very swiftly. Kemp
hesitated for a second and then moved to intercept him. The Invisib
le Man started and stood still.
“Traitor!” cried the Voice, and suddenly the dressing-gown opened, and sitting down
the Unseen began to disrobe. Kemp made three swift steps to the door, and forthwith the
Invisible Man—his legs had vanished—sprang to his feet with a shout. Kemp flung the door
open. As it opened, there came a sound of hurrying
feet downstairs and voices. With a quick movement Kemp thrust the Invisible
Man back, sprang aside, and slammed the door. The key was outside and ready. In
another
moment Griffin would have been alone in the belvedere study, a prisoner. Save for one
little thing. The key had been slipped in hastily that morning. As Kemp slammed the
door it fell noisily upon the carpet. Kemp’s face became white. He tried to grip
the door handle with both hands. For a moment he stood lugging. Then the door gave six inches.
But he got it closed again. The second time it was jerked a foot wide, and the dressing-gown
came wedging itself into the opening. His throat was
gripped by invisible fingers, and
he left his hold on the handle to defend himself. He was forced back, tripped and pitched heavily
into the corner of the landing. The empty dressing-gown was flung on the top of him. Halfway up the staircase was Colonel Adye,
the recipient of Kemp’s letter, the chief of the Burdock police. He was staring aghast
at the sudden appearance of Kemp, followed by the extraordinary sight of clothing tossing
empty in the air. He saw Kemp felled, and struggling to his fee
t. He saw him rush forward,
and go down again, felled like an ox. Then suddenly he was struck violently. By
nothing! A vast weight, it seemed, leapt upon him, and he was hurled headlong down the staircase,
with a grip on his throat and a knee in his groin. An invisible foot trod on his back,
a ghostly patter passed downstairs, he heard the two police officers in the hall shout
and run, and the front door of the house slammed violently. He rolled over and sat up staring. He saw,
staggering down t
he staircase, Kemp, dusty and disheveled, one side of his face white
from a blow, his lip bleeding, and a pink dressing-gown and some underclothing held
in his arms. “My God!” cried Kemp, “the game’s
up! He’s gone!” CHAPTER XXV.
THE HUNTING OF THE INVISIBLE MAN For a space Kemp was too inarticulate to make
Adye understand the swift things that had just happened. They stood on the landing,
Kemp speaking swiftly, the grotesque swathings of Griffin still on his arm. But presently
Adye began to gras
p something of the situation. “He is mad,” said Kemp; “inhuman. He
is pure selfishness. He thinks of nothing but his own advantage, his own safety. I have
listened to such a story this morning of brutal self-seeking.... He has wounded men. He will
kill them unless we can prevent him. He will create a panic. Nothing can stop him. He is
going out now—furious!” “He must be caught,” said Adye. “That
is certain.” “But how?” cried Kemp, and suddenly became
full of ideas. “You must begin at once. You m
ust set every available man to work;
you must prevent his leaving this district. Once he gets away, he may go through the countryside
as he wills, killing and maiming. He dreams of a reign of terror! A reign of terror, I
tell you. You must set a watch on trains and roads and shipping. The garrison must help.
You must wire for help. The only thing that may keep him here is the thought of recovering
some books of notes he counts of value. I will tell you of that! There is a man in your
police stat
ion—Marvel.” “I know,” said Adye, “I know. Those
books—yes. But the tramp....” “Says he hasn’t them. But he thinks the
tramp has. And you must prevent him from eating or sleeping; day and night the country must
be astir for him. Food must be locked up and secured, all food, so that he will have to
break his way to it. The houses everywhere must be barred against him. Heaven send us
cold nights and rain! The whole country-side must begin hunting and keep hunting. I tell
you, Adye, he is a danger,
a disaster; unless he is pinned and secured, it is frightful
to think of the things that may happen.” “What else can we do?” said Adye. “I
must go down at once and begin organising. But why not come? Yes—you come too! Come,
and we must hold a sort of council of war—get Hopps to help—and the railway managers.
By Jove! it’s urgent. Come along—tell me as we go. What else is there we can do?
Put that stuff down.” In another moment Adye was leading the way
downstairs. They found the front door open
and the policemen standing outside staring
at empty air. “He’s got away, sir,” said one. “We must go to the central station at once,”
said Adye. “One of you go on down and get a cab to come up and meet us—quickly. And
now, Kemp, what else?” “Dogs,” said Kemp. “Get dogs. They don’t
see him, but they wind him. Get dogs.” “Good,” said Adye. “It’s not generally
known, but the prison officials over at Halstead know a man with bloodhounds. Dogs. What else?” “Bear in mind,” said Kemp, “his food
shows.
After eating, his food shows until it is assimilated. So that he has to hide
after eating. You must keep on beating. Every thicket, every quiet corner. And put all weapons—all
implements that might be weapons, away. He can’t carry such things for long. And what
he can snatch up and strike men with must be hidden away.” “Good again,” said Adye. “We shall have
him yet!” “And on the roads,” said Kemp, and hesitated. “Yes?” said Adye. “Powdered glass,” said Kemp. “It’s
cruel, I know. But think of wh
at he may do!” Adye drew the air in sharply between his teeth.
“It’s unsportsmanlike. I don’t know. But I’ll have powdered glass got ready.
If he goes too far....” “The man’s become inhuman, I tell you,”
said Kemp. “I am as sure he will establish a reign of terror—so soon as he has got
over the emotions of this escape—as I am sure I am talking to you. Our only chance
is to be ahead. He has cut himself off from his kind. His blood be upon his own head.” CHAPTER XXVI.
THE WICKSTEED MURDER The Invi
sible Man seems to have rushed out
of Kemp’s house in a state of blind fury. A little child playing near Kemp’s gateway
was violently caught up and thrown aside, so that its ankle was broken, and thereafter
for some hours the Invisible Man passed out of human perceptions. No one knows where he
went nor what he did. But one can imagine him hurrying through the hot June forenoon,
up the hill and on to the open downland behind Port Burdock, raging and despairing at his
intolerable fate, and shelter
ing at last, heated and weary, amid the thickets of Hintondean,
to piece together again his shattered schemes against his species. That seems the most probable
refuge for him, for there it was he re-asserted himself in a grimly tragical manner about
two in the afternoon. One wonders what his state of mind may have
been during that time, and what plans he devised. No doubt he was almost ecstatically exasperated
by Kemp’s treachery, and though we may be able to understand the motives that led to
t
hat deceit, we may still imagine and even sympathise a little with the fury the attempted
surprise must have occasioned. Perhaps something of the stunned astonishment of his Oxford
Street experiences may have returned to him, for he had evidently counted on Kemp’s co-operation
in his brutal dream of a terrorised world. At any rate he vanished from human ken about
midday, and no living witness can tell what he did until about half-past two. It was a
fortunate thing, perhaps, for humanity, but for
him it was a fatal inaction. During that time a growing multitude of men
scattered over the countryside were busy. In the morning he had still been simply a
legend, a terror; in the afternoon, by virtue chiefly of Kemp’s drily worded proclamation,
he was presented as a tangible antagonist, to be wounded, captured, or overcome, and
the countryside began organising itself with inconceivable rapidity. By two o’clock even
he might still have removed himself out of the district by getting aboard a t
rain, but
after two that became impossible. Every passenger train along the lines on a great parallelogram
between Southampton, Manchester, Brighton and Horsham, travelled with locked doors,
and the goods traffic was almost entirely suspended. And in a great circle of twenty
miles round Port Burdock, men armed with guns and bludgeons were presently setting out in
groups of three and four, with dogs, to beat the roads and fields. Mounted policemen rode along the country lanes,
stopping at every c
ottage and warning the people to lock up their houses, and keep indoors
unless they were armed, and all the elementary schools had broken up by three o’clock,
and the children, scared and keeping together in groups, were hurrying home. Kemp’s proclamation—signed
indeed by Adye—was posted over almost the whole district by four or five o’clock in
the afternoon. It gave briefly but clearly all the conditions of the struggle, the necessity
of keeping the Invisible Man from food and sleep, the necess
ity for incessant watchfulness
and for a prompt attention to any evidence of his movements. And so swift and decided
was the action of the authorities, so prompt and universal was the belief in this strange
being, that before nightfall an area of several hundred square miles was in a stringent state
of siege. And before nightfall, too, a thrill of horror went through the whole watching
nervous countryside. Going from whispering mouth to mouth, swift and certain over the
length and breadth of the
country, passed the story of the murder of Mr. Wicksteed. If our supposition that the Invisible Man’s
refuge was the Hintondean thickets, then we must suppose that in the early afternoon he
sallied out again bent upon some project that involved the use of a weapon. We cannot know
what the project was, but the evidence that he had the iron rod in hand before he met
Wicksteed is to me at least overwhelming. Of course we can know nothing of the details
of that encounter. It occurred on the edge of
a gravel pit, not two hundred yards from
Lord Burdock’s lodge gate. Everything points to a desperate struggle—the trampled ground,
the numerous wounds Mr. Wicksteed received, his splintered walking-stick; but why the
attack was made, save in a murderous frenzy, it is impossible to imagine. Indeed the theory
of madness is almost unavoidable. Mr. Wicksteed was a man of forty-five or forty-six, steward
to Lord Burdock, of inoffensive habits and appearance, the very last person in the world
to prov
oke such a terrible antagonist. Against him it would seem the Invisible Man used an
iron rod dragged from a broken piece of fence. He stopped this quiet man, going quietly home
to his midday meal, attacked him, beat down his feeble defences, broke his arm, felled
him, and smashed his head to a jelly. Of course, he must have dragged this rod out
of the fencing before he met his victim—he must have been carrying it ready in his hand.
Only two details beyond what has already been stated seem to bea
r on the matter. One is
the circumstance that the gravel pit was not in Mr. Wicksteed’s direct path home, but
nearly a couple of hundred yards out of his way. The other is the assertion of a little
girl to the effect that, going to her afternoon school, she saw the murdered man “trotting”
in a peculiar manner across a field towards the gravel pit. Her pantomime of his action
suggests a man pursuing something on the ground before him and striking at it ever and again
with his walking-stick. She w
as the last person to see him alive. He passed out of her sight
to his death, the struggle being hidden from her only by a clump of beech trees and a slight
depression in the ground. Now this, to the present writer’s mind at
least, lifts the murder out of the realm of the absolutely wanton. We may imagine that
Griffin had taken the rod as a weapon indeed, but without any deliberate intention of using
it in murder. Wicksteed may then have come by and noticed this rod inexplicably moving
through t
he air. Without any thought of the Invisible Man—for Port Burdock is ten miles
away—he may have pursued it. It is quite conceivable that he may not even have heard
of the Invisible Man. One can then imagine the Invisible Man making off—quietly in
order to avoid discovering his presence in the neighbourhood, and Wicksteed, excited
and curious, pursuing this unaccountably locomotive object—finally striking at it. No doubt the Invisible Man could easily have
distanced his middle-aged pursuer under
ordinary circumstances, but the position in which Wicksteed’s
body was found suggests that he had the ill luck to drive his quarry into a corner between
a drift of stinging nettles and the gravel pit. To those who appreciate the extraordinary
irascibility of the Invisible Man, the rest of the encounter will be easy to imagine. But this is pure hypothesis. The only undeniable
facts—for stories of children are often unreliable—are the discovery of Wicksteed’s
body, done to death, and of the blood-
stained iron rod flung among the nettles. The abandonment
of the rod by Griffin, suggests that in the emotional excitement of the affair, the purpose
for which he took it—if he had a purpose—was abandoned. He was certainly an intensely egotistical
and unfeeling man, but the sight of his victim, his first victim, bloody and pitiful at his
feet, may have released some long pent fountain of remorse which for a time may have flooded
whatever scheme of action he had contrived. After the murder of Mr.
Wicksteed, he would
seem to have struck across the country towards the downland. There is a story of a voice
heard about sunset by a couple of men in a field near Fern Bottom. It was wailing and
laughing, sobbing and groaning, and ever and again it shouted. It must have been queer
hearing. It drove up across the middle of a clover field and died away towards the hills. That afternoon the Invisible Man must have
learnt something of the rapid use Kemp had made of his confidences. He must have fou
nd
houses locked and secured; he may have loitered about railway stations and prowled about inns,
and no doubt he read the proclamations and realised something of the nature of the campaign
against him. And as the evening advanced, the fields became dotted here and there with
groups of three or four men, and noisy with the yelping of dogs. These men-hunters had
particular instructions in the case of an encounter as to the way they should support
one another. But he avoided them all. We may under
stand something of his exasperation,
and it could have been none the less because he himself had supplied the information that
was being used so remorselessly against him. For that day at least he lost heart; for nearly
twenty-four hours, save when he turned on Wicksteed, he was a hunted man. In the night,
he must have eaten and slept; for in the morning he was himself again, active, powerful, angry,
and malignant, prepared for his last great struggle against the world. CHAPTER XXVII.
THE SIEGE
OF KEMP’S HOUSE Kemp read a strange missive, written in pencil
on a greasy sheet of paper. “You have been amazingly energetic and clever,”
this letter ran, “though what you stand to gain by it I cannot imagine. You are against
me. For a whole day you have chased me; you have tried to rob me of a night’s rest.
But I have had food in spite of you, I have slept in spite of you, and the game is only
beginning. The game is only beginning. There is nothing for it, but to start the Terror.
This announc
es the first day of the Terror. Port Burdock is no longer under the Queen,
tell your Colonel of Police, and the rest of them; it is under me—the Terror! This
is day one of year one of the new epoch—the Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am Invisible
Man the First. To begin with the rule will be easy. The first day there will be one execution
for the sake of example—a man named Kemp. Death starts for him to-day. He may lock himself
away, hide himself away, get guards about him, put on armour if he lik
es—Death, the
unseen Death, is coming. Let him take precautions; it will impress my people. Death starts from
the pillar box by midday. The letter will fall in as the postman comes along, then off!
The game begins. Death starts. Help him not, my people, lest Death fall upon you also.
To-day Kemp is to die.” Kemp read this letter twice, “It’s no
hoax,” he said. “That’s his voice! And he means it.” He turned the folded sheet over and saw on
the addressed side of it the postmark Hintondean, and the
prosaic detail “2d. to pay.” He got up slowly, leaving his lunch unfinished—the
letter had come by the one o’clock post—and went into his study. He rang for his housekeeper,
and told her to go round the house at once, examine all the fastenings of the windows,
and close all the shutters. He closed the shutters of his study himself. From a locked
drawer in his bedroom he took a little revolver, examined it carefully, and put it into the
pocket of his lounge jacket. He wrote a number of brief not
es, one to Colonel Adye, gave
them to his servant to take, with explicit instructions as to her way of leaving the
house. “There is no danger,” he said, and added a mental reservation, “to you.”
He remained meditative for a space after doing this, and then returned to his cooling lunch. He ate with gaps of thought. Finally he struck
the table sharply. “We will have him!” he said; “and I am the bait. He will come
too far.” He went up to the belvedere, carefully shutting
every door after him. “It’
s a game,” he said, “an odd game—but the chances
are all for me, Mr. Griffin, in spite of your invisibility. Griffin contra mundum ... with
a vengeance.” He stood at the window staring at the hot
hillside. “He must get food every day—and I don’t envy him. Did he really sleep last
night? Out in the open somewhere—secure from collisions. I wish we could get some
good cold wet weather instead of the heat. “He may be watching me now.” He went close to the window. Something rapped
smartly against the
brickwork over the frame, and made him start violently back. “I’m getting nervous,” said Kemp. But
it was five minutes before he went to the window again. “It must have been a sparrow,”
he said. Presently he heard the front-door bell ringing,
and hurried downstairs. He unbolted and unlocked the door, examined the chain, put it up, and
opened cautiously without showing himself. A familiar voice hailed him. It was Adye. “Your servant’s been assaulted, Kemp,”
he said round the door. “What!” exclai
med Kemp. “Had that note of yours taken away from
her. He’s close about here. Let me in.” Kemp released the chain, and Adye entered
through as narrow an opening as possible. He stood in the hall, looking with infinite
relief at Kemp refastening the door. “Note was snatched out of her hand. Scared her horribly.
She’s down at the station. Hysterics. He’s close here. What was it about?” Kemp swore. “What a fool I was,” said Kemp. “I might
have known. It’s not an hour’s walk from Hintondean. Already
?” “What’s up?” said Adye. “Look here!” said Kemp, and led the way
into his study. He handed Adye the Invisible Man’s letter. Adye read it and whistled
softly. “And you—?” said Adye. “Proposed a trap—like a fool,” said
Kemp, “and sent my proposal out by a maid servant. To him.” Adye followed Kemp’s profanity. “He’ll clear out,” said Adye. “Not he,” said Kemp. A resounding smash of glass came from upstairs.
Adye had a silvery glimpse of a little revolver half out of Kemp’s pocket. “It’s a window,
upstairs!” said Kemp, and led the way up. There came a second smash while they were
still on the staircase. When they reached the study they found two of the three windows
smashed, half the room littered with splintered glass, and one big flint lying on the writing
table. The two men stopped in the doorway, contemplating the wreckage. Kemp swore again,
and as he did so the third window went with a snap like a pistol, hung starred for a moment,
and collapsed in jagged, shivering triangles into t
he room. “What’s this for?” said Adye. “It’s a beginning,” said Kemp. “There’s no way of climbing up here?” “Not for a cat,” said Kemp. “No shutters?” “Not here. All the downstairs rooms—Hullo!” Smash, and then whack of boards hit hard came
from downstairs. “Confound him!” said Kemp. “That must be—yes—it’s one of
the bedrooms. He’s going to do all the house. But he’s a fool. The shutters are up, and
the glass will fall outside. He’ll cut his feet.” Another window proclaimed its destruction.
The
two men stood on the landing perplexed. “I have it!” said Adye. “Let me have
a stick or something, and I’ll go down to the station and get the bloodhounds put on.
That ought to settle him! They’re hard by—not ten minutes—” Another window went the way of its fellows. “You haven’t a revolver?” asked Adye. Kemp’s hand went to his pocket. Then he
hesitated. “I haven’t one—at least to spare.” “I’ll bring it back,” said Adye, “you’ll
be safe here.” Kemp, ashamed of his momentary lapse from
truthfulnes
s, handed him the weapon. “Now for the door,” said Adye. As they stood hesitating in the hall, they
heard one of the first-floor bedroom windows crack and clash. Kemp went to the door and
began to slip the bolts as silently as possible. His face was a little paler than usual. “You
must step straight out,” said Kemp. In another moment Adye was on the doorstep and the bolts
were dropping back into the staples. He hesitated for a moment, feeling more comfortable with
his back against the door. Then
he marched, upright and square, down the steps. He crossed
the lawn and approached the gate. A little breeze seemed to ripple over the grass. Something
moved near him. “Stop a bit,” said a Voice, and Adye stopped dead and his hand tightened
on the revolver. “Well?” said Adye, white and grim, and
every nerve tense. “Oblige me by going back to the house,”
said the Voice, as tense and grim as Adye’s. “Sorry,” said Adye a little hoarsely,
and moistened his lips with his tongue. The Voice was on his
left front, he thought. Suppose
he were to take his luck with a shot? “What are you going for?” said the Voice,
and there was a quick movement of the two, and a flash of sunlight from the open lip
of Adye’s pocket. Adye desisted and thought. “Where I go,”
he said slowly, “is my own business.” The words were still on his lips, when an
arm came round his neck, his back felt a knee, and he was sprawling backward. He drew clumsily
and fired absurdly, and in another moment he was struck in the mouth
and the revolver
wrested from his grip. He made a vain clutch at a slippery limb, tried to struggle up and
fell back. “Damn!” said Adye. The Voice laughed. “I’d kill you now if it wasn’t
the waste of a bullet,” it said. He saw the revolver in mid-air, six feet off, covering
him. “Well?” said Adye, sitting up. “Get up,” said the Voice. Adye stood up. “Attention,” said the Voice, and then
fiercely, “Don’t try any games. Remember I can see your face if you can’t see mine.
You’ve got to go back to
the house.” “He won’t let me in,” said Adye. “That’s a pity,” said the Invisible
Man. “I’ve got no quarrel with you.” Adye moistened his lips again. He glanced
away from the barrel of the revolver and saw the sea far off very blue and dark under the
midday sun, the smooth green down, the white cliff of the Head, and the multitudinous town,
and suddenly he knew that life was very sweet. His eyes came back to this little metal thing
hanging between heaven and earth, six yards away. “What am I to d
o?” he said sullenly. “What am I to do?” asked the Invisible
Man. “You will get help. The only thing is for you to go back.” “I will try. If he lets me in will you promise
not to rush the door?” “I’ve got no quarrel with you,” said
the Voice. Kemp had hurried upstairs after letting Adye
out, and now crouching among the broken glass and peering cautiously over the edge of the
study window sill, he saw Adye stand parleying with the Unseen. “Why doesn’t he fire?”
whispered Kemp to himself. Then the
revolver moved a little and the glint of the sunlight
flashed in Kemp’s eyes. He shaded his eyes and tried to see the source of the blinding
beam. “Surely!” he said, “Adye has given up
the revolver.” “Promise not to rush the door,” Adye was
saying. “Don’t push a winning game too far. Give a man a chance.” “You go back to the house. I tell you flatly
I will not promise anything.” Adye’s decision seemed suddenly made. He
turned towards the house, walking slowly with his hands behind him. Kemp wat
ched him—puzzled.
The revolver vanished, flashed again into sight, vanished again, and became evident
on a closer scrutiny as a little dark object following Adye. Then things happened very
quickly. Adye leapt backwards, swung around, clutched at this little object, missed it,
threw up his hands and fell forward on his face, leaving a little puff of blue in the
air. Kemp did not hear the sound of the shot. Adye writhed, raised himself on one arm, fell
forward, and lay still. For a space Kemp rema
ined staring at the quiet
carelessness of Adye’s attitude. The afternoon was very hot and still, nothing seemed stirring
in all the world save a couple of yellow butterflies chasing each other through the shrubbery between
the house and the road gate. Adye lay on the lawn near the gate. The blinds of all the
villas down the hill-road were drawn, but in one little green summer-house was a white
figure, apparently an old man asleep. Kemp scrutinised the surroundings of the house
for a glimpse of t
he revolver, but it had vanished. His eyes came back to Adye. The
game was opening well. Then came a ringing and knocking at the front
door, that grew at last tumultuous, but pursuant to Kemp’s instructions the servants had
locked themselves into their rooms. This was followed by a silence. Kemp sat listening
and then began peering cautiously out of the three windows, one after another. He went
to the staircase head and stood listening uneasily. He armed himself with his bedroom
poker, and went
to examine the interior fastenings of the ground-floor windows again. Everything
was safe and quiet. He returned to the belvedere. Adye lay motionless over the edge of the gravel
just as he had fallen. Coming along the road by the villas were the housemaid and two policemen. Everything was deadly still. The three people
seemed very slow in approaching. He wondered what his antagonist was doing. He started. There was a smash from below.
He hesitated and went downstairs again. Suddenly the house r
esounded with heavy blows and the
splintering of wood. He heard a smash and the destructive clang of the iron fastenings
of the shutters. He turned the key and opened the kitchen door. As he did so, the shutters,
split and splintering, came flying inward. He stood aghast. The window frame, save for
one crossbar, was still intact, but only little teeth of glass remained in the frame. The
shutters had been driven in with an axe, and now the axe was descending in sweeping blows
upon the window fram
e and the iron bars defending it. Then suddenly it leapt aside and vanished.
He saw the revolver lying on the path outside, and then the little weapon sprang into the
air. He dodged back. The revolver cracked just too late, and a splinter from the edge
of the closing door flashed over his head. He slammed and locked the door, and as he
stood outside he heard Griffin shouting and laughing. Then the blows of the axe with its
splitting and smashing consequences, were resumed. Kemp stood in the pass
age trying to think.
In a moment the Invisible Man would be in the kitchen. This door would not keep him
a moment, and then— A ringing came at the front door again. It
would be the policemen. He ran into the hall, put up the chain, and drew the bolts. He made
the girl speak before he dropped the chain, and the three people blundered into the house
in a heap, and Kemp slammed the door again. “The Invisible Man!” said Kemp. “He
has a revolver, with two shots—left. He’s killed Adye. Shot him anyhow
. Didn’t you
see him on the lawn? He’s lying there.” “Who?” said one of the policemen. “Adye,” said Kemp. “We came in the back way,” said the girl. “What’s that smashing?” asked one of
the policemen. “He’s in the kitchen—or will be. He
has found an axe—” Suddenly the house was full of the Invisible
Man’s resounding blows on the kitchen door. The girl stared towards the kitchen, shuddered,
and retreated into the dining-room. Kemp tried to explain in broken sentences. They heard
the kitchen door g
ive. “This way,” said Kemp, starting into activity,
and bundled the policemen into the dining-room doorway. “Poker,” said Kemp, and rushed to the
fender. He handed the poker he had carried to the policeman and the dining-room one to
the other. He suddenly flung himself backward. “Whup!” said one policeman, ducked, and
caught the axe on his poker. The pistol snapped its penultimate shot and ripped a valuable
Sidney Cooper. The second policeman brought his poker down on the little weapon, as one
m
ight knock down a wasp, and sent it rattling to the floor. At the first clash the girl screamed, stood
screaming for a moment by the fireplace, and then ran to open the shutters—possibly with
an idea of escaping by the shattered window. The axe receded into the passage, and fell
to a position about two feet from the ground. They could hear the Invisible Man breathing.
“Stand away, you two,” he said. “I want that man Kemp.” “We want you,” said the first policeman,
making a quick step forward and
wiping with his poker at the Voice. The Invisible Man
must have started back, and he blundered into the umbrella stand. Then, as the policeman staggered with the
swing of the blow he had aimed, the Invisible Man countered with the axe, the helmet crumpled
like paper, and the blow sent the man spinning to the floor at the head of the kitchen stairs.
But the second policeman, aiming behind the axe with his poker, hit something soft that
snapped. There was a sharp exclamation of pain and then the a
xe fell to the ground.
The policeman wiped again at vacancy and hit nothing; he put his foot on the axe, and struck
again. Then he stood, poker clubbed, listening intent for the slightest movement. He heard the dining-room window open, and
a quick rush of feet within. His companion rolled over and sat up, with the blood running
down between his eye and ear. “Where is he?” asked the man on the floor. “Don’t know. I’ve hit him. He’s standing
somewhere in the hall. Unless he’s slipped past you. Doc
tor Kemp—sir.” Pause. “Doctor Kemp,” cried the policeman again. The second policeman began struggling to his
feet. He stood up. Suddenly the faint pad of bare feet on the kitchen stairs could be
heard. “Yap!” cried the first policeman, and incontinently flung his poker. It smashed
a little gas bracket. He made as if he would pursue the Invisible
Man downstairs. Then he thought better of it and stepped into the dining-room. “Doctor Kemp—” he began, and stopped
short. “Doctor Kemp’s a hero,” he sa
id, as
his companion looked over his shoulder. The dining-room window was wide open, and
neither housemaid nor Kemp was to be seen. The second policeman’s opinion of Kemp was
terse and vivid. CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE HUNTER HUNTED Mr. Heelas, Mr. Kemp’s nearest neighbour
among the villa holders, was asleep in his summer house when the siege of Kemp’s house
began. Mr. Heelas was one of the sturdy minority who refused to believe “in all this nonsense”
about an Invisible Man. His wife, however, as he wa
s subsequently to be reminded, did.
He insisted upon walking about his garden just as if nothing was the matter, and he
went to sleep in the afternoon in accordance with the custom of years. He slept through
the smashing of the windows, and then woke up suddenly with a curious persuasion of something
wrong. He looked across at Kemp’s house, rubbed his eyes and looked again. Then he
put his feet to the ground, and sat listening. He said he was damned, but still the strange
thing was visible. The
house looked as though it had been deserted for weeks—after a violent
riot. Every window was broken, and every window, save those of the belvedere study, was blinded
by the internal shutters. “I could have sworn it was all right”—he
looked at his watch—“twenty minutes ago.” He became aware of a measured concussion and
the clash of glass, far away in the distance. And then, as he sat open-mouthed, came a still
more wonderful thing. The shutters of the drawing-room window were flung open violently
,
and the housemaid in her outdoor hat and garments, appeared struggling in a frantic manner to
throw up the sash. Suddenly a man appeared beside her, helping her—Dr. Kemp! In another
moment the window was open, and the housemaid was struggling out; she pitched forward and
vanished among the shrubs. Mr. Heelas stood up, exclaiming vaguely and vehemently at all
these wonderful things. He saw Kemp stand on the sill, spring from the window, and reappear
almost instantaneously running along a path i
n the shrubbery and stooping as he ran, like
a man who evades observation. He vanished behind a laburnum, and appeared again clambering
over a fence that abutted on the open down. In a second he had tumbled over and was running
at a tremendous pace down the slope towards Mr. Heelas. “Lord!” cried Mr. Heelas, struck with
an idea; “it’s that Invisible Man brute! It’s right, after all!” With Mr. Heelas to think things like that
was to act, and his cook watching him from the top window was amazed to
see him come
pelting towards the house at a good nine miles an hour. There was a slamming of doors, a
ringing of bells, and the voice of Mr. Heelas bellowing like a bull. “Shut the doors,
shut the windows, shut everything!—the Invisible Man is coming!” Instantly the house was
full of screams and directions, and scurrying feet. He ran himself to shut the French windows
that opened on the veranda; as he did so Kemp’s head and shoulders and knee appeared over
the edge of the garden fence. In anoth
er moment Kemp had ploughed through the asparagus, and
was running across the tennis lawn to the house. “You can’t come in,” said Mr. Heelas,
shutting the bolts. “I’m very sorry if he’s after you, but you can’t come in!” Kemp appeared with a face of terror close
to the glass, rapping and then shaking frantically at the French window. Then, seeing his efforts
were useless, he ran along the veranda, vaulted the end, and went to hammer at the side door.
Then he ran round by the side gate to the fro
nt of the house, and so into the hill-road.
And Mr. Heelas staring from his window—a face of horror—had scarcely witnessed Kemp
vanish, ere the asparagus was being trampled this way and that by feet unseen. At that
Mr. Heelas fled precipitately upstairs, and the rest of the chase is beyond his purview.
But as he passed the staircase window, he heard the side gate slam. Emerging into the hill-road, Kemp naturally
took the downward direction, and so it was he came to run in his own person the very
race he had watched with such a critical eye from the belvedere study only four days ago.
He ran it well, for a man out of training, and though his face was white and wet, his
wits were cool to the last. He ran with wide strides, and wherever a patch of rough ground
intervened, wherever there came a patch of raw flints, or a bit of broken glass shone
dazzling, he crossed it and left the bare invisible feet that followed to take what
line they would. For the first time in his life Kemp discovere
d
that the hill-road was indescribably vast and desolate, and that the beginnings of the
town far below at the hill foot were strangely remote. Never had there been a slower or more
painful method of progression than running. All the gaunt villas, sleeping in the afternoon
sun, looked locked and barred; no doubt they were locked and barred—by his own orders.
But at any rate they might have kept a lookout for an eventuality like this! The town was
rising up now, the sea had dropped out of sight b
ehind it, and people down below were
stirring. A tram was just arriving at the hill foot. Beyond that was the police station.
Was that footsteps he heard behind him? Spurt. The people below were staring at him, one
or two were running, and his breath was beginning to saw in his throat. The tram was quite near
now, and the “Jolly Cricketers” was noisily barring its doors. Beyond the tram were posts
and heaps of gravel—the drainage works. He had a transitory idea of jumping into the
tram and slamm
ing the doors, and then he resolved to go for the police station. In another moment
he had passed the door of the “Jolly Cricketers,” and was in the blistering fag end of the street,
with human beings about him. The tram driver and his helper—arrested by the sight of
his furious haste—stood staring with the tram horses unhitched. Further on the astonished
features of navvies appeared above the mounds of gravel. His pace broke a little, and then he heard
the swift pad of his pursuer, and leapt fo
rward again. “The Invisible Man!” he cried to
the navvies, with a vague indicative gesture, and by an inspiration leapt the excavation
and placed a burly group between him and the chase. Then abandoning the idea of the police
station he turned into a little side street, rushed by a greengrocer’s cart, hesitated
for the tenth of a second at the door of a sweetstuff shop, and then made for the mouth
of an alley that ran back into the main Hill Street again. Two or three little children
were playin
g here, and shrieked and scattered at his apparition, and forthwith doors and
windows opened and excited mothers revealed their hearts. Out he shot into Hill Street
again, three hundred yards from the tram-line end, and immediately he became aware of a
tumultuous vociferation and running people. He glanced up the street towards the hill.
Hardly a dozen yards off ran a huge navvy, cursing in fragments and slashing viciously
with a spade, and hard behind him came the tram conductor with his fists
clenched. Up
the street others followed these two, striking and shouting. Down towards the town, men and
women were running, and he noticed clearly one man coming out of a shop-door with a stick
in his hand. “Spread out! Spread out!” cried some one. Kemp suddenly grasped the
altered condition of the chase. He stopped, and looked round, panting. “He’s close
here!” he cried. “Form a line across—” He was hit hard under the ear, and went reeling,
trying to face round towards his unseen antagonist. H
e just managed to keep his feet, and he struck
a vain counter in the air. Then he was hit again under the jaw, and sprawled headlong
on the ground. In another moment a knee compressed his diaphragm, and a couple of eager hands
gripped his throat, but the grip of one was weaker than the other; he grasped the wrists,
heard a cry of pain from his assailant, and then the spade of the navvy came whirling
through the air above him, and struck something with a dull thud. He felt a drop of moisture
on h
is face. The grip at his throat suddenly relaxed, and with a convulsive effort, Kemp
loosed himself, grasped a limp shoulder, and rolled uppermost. He gripped the unseen elbows
near the ground. “I’ve got him!” screamed Kemp. “Help! Help—hold! He’s down! Hold
his feet!” In another second there was a simultaneous
rush upon the struggle, and a stranger coming into the road suddenly might have thought
an exceptionally savage game of Rugby football was in progress. And there was no shouting
after Kem
p’s cry—only a sound of blows and feet and heavy breathing. Then came a mighty effort, and the Invisible
Man threw off a couple of his antagonists and rose to his knees. Kemp clung to him in
front like a hound to a stag, and a dozen hands gripped, clutched, and tore at the Unseen.
The tram conductor suddenly got the neck and shoulders and lugged him back. Down went the heap of struggling men again
and rolled over. There was, I am afraid, some savage kicking. Then suddenly a wild scream
of “Mercy
! Mercy!” that died down swiftly to a sound like choking. “Get back, you fools!” cried the muffled
voice of Kemp, and there was a vigorous shoving back of stalwart forms. “He’s hurt, I
tell you. Stand back!” There was a brief struggle to clear a space,
and then the circle of eager faces saw the doctor kneeling, as it seemed, fifteen inches
in the air, and holding invisible arms to the ground. Behind him a constable gripped
invisible ankles. “Don’t you leave go of en,” cried the
big navvy, holdin
g a blood-stained spade; “he’s shamming.” “He’s not shamming,” said the doctor,
cautiously raising his knee; “and I’ll hold him.” His face was bruised and already
going red; he spoke thickly because of a bleeding lip. He released one hand and seemed to be
feeling at the face. “The mouth’s all wet,” he said. And then, “Good God!” He stood up abruptly and then knelt down on
the ground by the side of the thing unseen. There was a pushing and shuffling, a sound
of heavy feet as fresh people turned u
p to increase the pressure of the crowd. People
now were coming out of the houses. The doors of the “Jolly Cricketers” stood suddenly
wide open. Very little was said. Kemp felt about, his hand seeming to pass
through empty air. “He’s not breathing,” he said, and then, “I can’t feel his heart.
His side—ugh!” Suddenly an old woman, peering under the arm
of the big navvy, screamed sharply. “Looky there!” she said, and thrust out a wrinkled
finger. And looking where she pointed, everyone saw,
faint
and transparent as though it was made of glass, so that veins and arteries and bones
and nerves could be distinguished, the outline of a hand, a hand limp and prone. It grew
clouded and opaque even as they stared. “Hullo!” cried the constable. “Here’s
his feet a-showing!” And so, slowly, beginning at his hands and
feet and creeping along his limbs to the vital centres of his body, that strange change continued.
It was like the slow spreading of a poison. First came the little white nerves, a haz
y
grey sketch of a limb, then the glassy bones and intricate arteries, then the flesh and
skin, first a faint fogginess, and then growing rapidly dense and opaque. Presently they could
see his crushed chest and his shoulders, and the dim outline of his drawn and battered
features. When at last the crowd made way for Kemp to
stand erect, there lay, naked and pitiful on the ground, the bruised and broken body
of a young man about thirty. His hair and brow were white—not grey with age, but white
wi
th the whiteness of albinism—and his eyes were like garnets. His hands were clenched,
his eyes wide open, and his expression was one of anger and dismay. “Cover his face!” said a man. “For Gawd’s
sake, cover that face!” and three little children, pushing forward through the crowd,
were suddenly twisted round and sent packing off again. Someone brought a sheet from the “Jolly
Cricketers,” and having covered him, they carried him into that house. And there it
was, on a shabby bed in a tawdry, ill-
lighted bedroom, surrounded by a crowd of ignorant
and excited people, broken and wounded, betrayed and unpitied, that Griffin, the first of all
men to make himself invisible, Griffin, the most gifted physicist the world has ever seen,
ended in infinite disaster his strange and terrible career. THE EPILOGUE
So ends the story of the strange and evil experiments of the Invisible Man. And if you
would learn more of him you must go to a little inn near Port Stowe and talk to the landlord.
The sign o
f the inn is an empty board save for a hat and boots, and the name is the title
of this story. The landlord is a short and corpulent little man with a nose of cylindrical
proportions, wiry hair, and a sporadic rosiness of visage. Drink generously, and he will tell
you generously of all the things that happened to him after that time, and of how the lawyers
tried to do him out of the treasure found upon him. “When they found they couldn’t prove whose
money was which, I’m blessed,” he says, “if th
ey didn’t try to make me out a blooming
treasure trove! Do I look like a Treasure Trove? And then a gentleman gave me a guinea
a night to tell the story at the Empire Music ’All—just to tell ’em in my own words—barring
one.” And if you want to cut off the flow of his
reminiscences abruptly, you can always do so by asking if there weren’t three manuscript
books in the story. He admits there were and proceeds to explain, with asseverations that
everybody thinks he has ’em! But bless you! he hasn’t
. “The Invisible Man it was took
’em off to hide ’em when I cut and ran for Port Stowe. It’s that Mr. Kemp put people
on with the idea of my having ’em.” And then he subsides into a pensive state,
watches you furtively, bustles nervously with glasses, and presently leaves the bar. He is a bachelor man—his tastes were ever
bachelor, and there are no women folk in the house. Outwardly he buttons—it is expected
of him—but in his more vital privacies, in the matter of braces for example, he still
tu
rns to string. He conducts his house without enterprise, but with eminent decorum. His
movements are slow, and he is a great thinker. But he has a reputation for wisdom and for
a respectable parsimony in the village, and his knowledge of the roads of the South of
England would beat Cobbett. And on Sunday mornings, every Sunday morning,
all the year round, while he is closed to the outer world, and every night after ten,
he goes into his bar parlour, bearing a glass of gin faintly tinged with wat
er, and having
placed this down, he locks the door and examines the blinds, and even looks under the table.
And then, being satisfied of his solitude, he unlocks the cupboard and a box in the cupboard
and a drawer in that box, and produces three volumes bound in brown leather, and places
them solemnly in the middle of the table. The covers are weather-worn and tinged with
an algal green—for once they sojourned in a ditch and some of the pages have been washed
blank by dirty water. The landlord s
its down in an armchair, fills a long clay pipe slowly—gloating
over the books the while. Then he pulls one towards him and opens it, and begins to study
it—turning over the leaves backwards and forwards. His brows are knit and his lips move painfully.
“Hex, little two up in the air, cross and a fiddle-de-dee. Lord! what a one he was for
intellect!” Presently he relaxes and leans back, and blinks
through his smoke across the room at things invisible to other eyes. “Full of secrets,”
he says. “Wo
nderful secrets!” “Once I get the haul of them—Lord!” “I wouldn’t do what he did; I’d just—well!”
He pulls at his pipe. So he lapses into a dream, the undying wonderful
dream of his life. And though Kemp has fished unceasingly, no human being save the landlord
knows those books are there, with the subtle secret of invisibility and a dozen other strange
secrets written therein. And none other will know of them until he dies.
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“All men, however highly educated, retain some superstitious inklings.” ― H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man