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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Invisible Man, by H. G. Wells
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: The Invisible Man
-
-Author: H. G. Wells
-
-Release Date: June 9, 2002 [eBook #5230]
-[Most recently updated: October 16, 2021]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-Produced by: Andrew Sly
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INVISIBLE MAN ***
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-The Invisible Man
-
-A Grotesque Romance
-
-by H. G. Wells
-
-
-Contents
-
- I. The strange Man’s Arrival
- II. Mr. Teddy Henfrey’s first Impressions
- III. The thousand and one Bottles
- IV. Mr. Cuss interviews the Stranger
- V. The Burglary at the Vicarage
- VI. The Furniture that went mad
- VII. The Unveiling of the Stranger
- VIII. In Transit
- IX. Mr. Thomas Marvel
- X. Mr. Marvel’s Visit to Iping
- XI. In the “Coach and Horses”
- XII. The invisible Man loses his Temper
- XIII. Mr. Marvel discusses his Resignation
- XIV. At Port Stowe
- XV. The Man who was running
- XVI. In the “Jolly Cricketers”
- XVII. Dr. Kemp’s Visitor
- XVIII. The invisible Man sleeps
- XIX. Certain first Principles
- XX. At the House in Great Portland Street
- XXI. In Oxford Street
- XXII. In the Emporium
- XXIII. In Drury Lane
- XXIV. The Plan that failed
- XXV. The Hunting of the invisible Man
- XXVI. The Wicksteed Murder
- XXVII. The Siege of Kemp’s House
- XXVIII. The Hunter hunted
- The Epilogue
-
-
-
-
-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 against 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?”
-
-“No,” 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 picking 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 nose. 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 feet. 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 they?”
-
-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 he’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 as 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 left 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
-speaking 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 understand,” 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 course, 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 disturbance, 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 puts 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
-Henfrey 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
-finished 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 at 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 sown 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 sheet 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 indeed, 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 Hall, 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 stranger 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
-extraordinary 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 wooden 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 crates 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 emphasis 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 that 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.
-
-All 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 multitude! 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? Wellâ��”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 festival 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 Mrs. 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 conscientiously 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 village 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 temporarily 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 imagination 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 either 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 compromisers. 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, the 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 occult 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. The 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 it.” 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 village 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
-cough. 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 bandaged 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 to 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. Bunting, 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, fiercely, 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. Bunting 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 candle,” 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 of 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 jauntily 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 the 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 beside 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 the 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 and 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
-parliamentary 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.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER 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 burglary 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 ready-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 the 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.
-
-“And 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 don’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 horrors, 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 towards 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 with 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 conflicting 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 tone 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
-gripped 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!” said 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 was 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 visible 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 upon
-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 did 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 still, 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. Thomas 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 him.
-
-“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 such 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 shoulder 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. Marvel. “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 neck.
-
-“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 fair 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 stuff 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 timorously 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
-_will—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 round.
-
-“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 you,” 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 not 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 considerations. 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
-ladies 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 considerable 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-making 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 apprehensive,
-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 Mr. 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
-fingers 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 larceny, 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 no 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, putting 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 Greek. 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, coughed
-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. Cuss, 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
-unavoidable.”
-
-“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. There’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 you 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 the 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.
-
-“‘Disgraceful,’” 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 astonished 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 went 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.
-Bunting 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-places. 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 shutters 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 out 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 out 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 despair 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 discouraging 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 that.”
-
-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, however, 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 books 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,” said 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 all 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
-Heaven, 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 detect 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!” said 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-going 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 mood
-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 approaching 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 peering 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 attracted 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. People 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 approached, 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 slammed. 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 quiet. “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.”
-
-“Not 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, and 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-knife 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 effort 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,
-someone, 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 of 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
-speculation 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. Kemp.
-
-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 shrillness 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 dark 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, looking 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 nothing 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 morning 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 towards 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 thrust 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.
-
-“Griffin,” 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 getting 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—hypnotism.
-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 wardrobe 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 bread,
-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 blunder 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 end.”
-
-“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?”
-
-“Can’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 the 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 shot 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 of 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 little 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 before 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
-swiftly.
-
-“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
-the 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
-sleepily, 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 Burdock. 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 vanished 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 corner, 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 aware 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 understand 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 four
-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
-far 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 appearance 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, because 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 the 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 powder 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 work
-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
-sometimes 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 window 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 Invisible 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 placed 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 emerging 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 cant 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 cistern 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 truckle-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. ‘Did 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 were 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,
-going 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 hadn’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 best 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 within 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 my 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 insisted 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 made 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 face 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 only 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 tossed 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 the 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 understand 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 fellow 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 unexpected 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 advantage.
-
-“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
-incontinently, 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 confusion. 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 its
-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 first
-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 out 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 advancing 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 Bloomsbury 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 youngsters 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 someone. ‘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 after 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
-incomprehensible 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 intuitions. 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
-shouting 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 nervously 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 rarity 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 outside, 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 multitudes 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 some 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 lace, 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, show-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 last 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, and 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 indeed—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 ‘Earth 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 in 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
-of 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, to 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 Kemp.
-
-“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 someone 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 watching 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, especially 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.
-IN 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 expose 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 Portland 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 Street, 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 my 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 movement 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 furnished 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 my 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 never 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 the 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 noisily 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 was 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 shelf. 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 fishmonger’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 storeroom, 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 so 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 help 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 heard 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?” said 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 wild—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 when 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 rest—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 approaching. 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 well 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 sound 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 Invisible 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 feet. 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 the
-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 grasp 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 must 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 station—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 what 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 Invisible 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 sheltering 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 that 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 train, 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
-cottage 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 necessity 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 provoke 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 bear 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 was 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 the 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 found 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 understand
-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
-announces 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 likes—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 notes, 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!” exclaimed 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 the 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 truthfulness, 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 do?” 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 watched 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 remained 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 the 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 resounded 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 frame 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 passage 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 give.
-
-“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 might 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 axe 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. Doctor 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 said, 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 was
-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 in 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 another 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
-front 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 discovered 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 behind 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 slamming 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 forward 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 playing 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. He 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 his 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 Kemp’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, holding 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 up 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 hazy 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 with 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 of 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 they 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 turns 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 water,
-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 sits 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. “Wonderful 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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