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 aid, 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.
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, sure-ly."
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
you 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.
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 being
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, than?" 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? Well—there wasn't none. Just
blackness. I tell you, he's as black as my hat."
"My sakes!"
said Henfrey. "It's a rummy case altogether. Why,
his nose is as pink as paint!"
"That's
true," said Fearenside. "I knows that. And I tell
'ee what I'm thinking. That marn's a piebald, Teddy.
Black here and white there—in patches. And he's
ashamed of it. He's a kind of half-breed, and the
colour's come off patchy instead of mixing. I've
heard of such things before. And it's the common way
with horses, as any one can see."
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 choses 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."
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.
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.
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 limply 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.
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.
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."
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, 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 adolescent, 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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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
possess 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!"
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."
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."
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 everyone 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.
"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, not 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."
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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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.
"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!"
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."
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 to 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.
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.
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.
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 who's 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.
