Weldon's grasp on my wrists forced mine in some measure
to relax. I put forth all my strength, but in vain. The invisible man
used his chance and writhed away from me. I struggled afoot, casting
Weldon off, but too late. The door opened before our eyes and our
enemy, unseen, fled, banging the door behind him. I heard the patter of
feet as he departed. The Captain uttered an oath. "Oh! you fool, you
fool!" I cried at him. "By George!" gasped Weldon. "Did you see that door?" He rushed forward
and opened it again, peering out into the passage. I fell into a chair spent and panting. Presently Weldon came back. He picked up his sword and examined it. There was a great gap in the edge near the point where I had struck it
with the poker. "What is the meaning of all this?" he cried. I told
him as soon as I was able. But from the first he did not believe me,
and he was honest enough to say so. How could I blame him? The story
sounded incredible, even to me, while I was telling it. Weldon adopted
the most charitable possible view. I had dreamed everything and acted
the somnambulist. He admitted that it was a queer circumstance, the
door opening and shutting so unexpectedly. But no doubt one of the
other lodgers in the house had tried it in passing--some late bird
a bit under the weather, Weldon thought--and finding it yield had
banged it shut again. It was no use retorting that the door had been
locked--Weldon merely laughed and asked what more likely than that I
had turned the latch before smashing his best blade? He was quite upset
about his sword. It had been carried by his grandfather at Waterloo. He plainly considered the damage I had done to it was the only serious
occurrence of the night. But he strove, like a hero, to keep me from
realising just how bad he did feel about it. I ceased protesting
at last, and abandoned the vain task of trying to convince him of
the deadly peril that had menaced him. He returned the sword to its
scabbard and with a subdued sigh got back into bed again. Within ten
minutes he was fast asleep. As for me, I paced the floor till morning,
thinking, thinking, thinking. I have no shame in confessing that I was
horribly afraid; not of the immediate present, but the future. I did
not expect our mysterious assailant to return that night. But what of
the morrow? I am not a believer in the supernatural or I must have set
down the unseen marauder as a spirit. But I had felt and wrestled with
the thing, and knew it for a man. I had heard the patter of its feet. Moreover, the memory of the séance and Navarro's dramatic recitation
supplied me with a sort of clue. What if Navarro had not been acting,
but had really been clairvoyant? Who shall dare to define the limits of
the possible? Was it more marvellous that he should have heard and seen
things really happening in a trance, than that I--in full possession of
all my faculties--had wrestled with a man invisible in the bright glare
of an incandescent lamp? I said to myself: "It is necessary to assume
that Navarro is a true medium, if only for the sake of argument. Well,
in that case it is clear that Dr. Belleville and Sir Robert Ottley
had found in the tomb of Ptahmes a papyrus containing a tremendous
scientific secret. This secret is one which teaches its possessors
how to control forces of Nature, in a manner which my imagination
can only guess at, for the production of a physical result which I
have actually experienced. They have learned how to override the laws
of light. They have discovered a means of not only rendering opaque
objects transparent, but positively invisible. And they are using their
secret knowledge to further their nefarious designs. Sir Robert Ottley
is using it to increase his fortune by spying out the financial secrets
of his business rivals. Dr. Belleville is using it to accomplish
the destruction of Captain Weldon, his rival in love. And, in all
probability, they both intend it to remove me from their path because
they fear that I suspect them." It must not be supposed that I adopted these conclusions with any sort
of confidence. They entered my mind and remained there. But I received
them churlishly and treated them as unwelcome guests. And the only
reason that I did not expel them was because I could not discover, try
as I would, any more substantial or sensible explanation of an event
which they pretended to explain. When the dawn broke and the light of day began to steal into the room
between the shutters I looked around and shook my head. After all, had
I fallen asleep against my will and dreamed the whole thing, as Weldon
believed? It might be so. The intellect is a strange, elusive, shadowy
affair. It slips from one's control at times. The memory easily clogs. The imagination is easily overheated. And one is not the best judge of
one's own experiences. Science had taught me so much, at least, that
one cannot always accept the evidence of sense. I began to doubt, to
cast about me, and to vote myself absurd. With the rising of the sun,
I flung back the shutters and looked forth on a vista of chimneys
and leaded roofs. They were so manifestly real and solid and prosaic
that all my brain expanded to a sense of ridicule except one small
part, which began to shrivel up under the douche I poured upon it,
of what I called cold common-sense. But it did not entirely shrivel
up. It insisted on certain reservations. It said to me, "Pinsent, my
man, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of
in your philosophy. You have no right to ill-treat a part of your
intelligence which--even though it may have erred--served you to the
best of its ability. And can you be sure it erred? If it hap that it
did not, you would never forgive yourself for flouting it. Be wise in
time! Don't prejudge the case! Wait and watch! Take precautions! Guard
yourself--and, above all, guard your charge!" I determined to suspend judgment. Above all, I determined to guard my
charge. But I confess it was with a curling lip I made the resolution. There is something in sunlight, some all-subduing power which
irresistibly dries up the fountain springs of the imagination. I cannot
conceive a novelist writing a fanciful story in the sunlight. Can you? And the sunlight was pouring into the room when I came to my resolve. Chapter XIX

The First Victim


When Weldon woke he did one of the three things of which only gentlemen
of the finest sensitiveness are capable. He gave me one quick, laughing
glance, but perceiving in my solemn visage a predisposition to resent
badinage, he immediately said, "Good-morning, old chap. Hope you rested
well. As usual, I slept like a log--all night." Now, who could help
liking a man of that stamp? Not I, most certainly. And not satisfied
with pretending to have forgotten everything, he resolutely refrained
from so much as glancing at his treasured sword, which I had broken.