-chapter xviiithe invisible man sleeps exhausted and wounded as the invisible manwas, 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 retreatby 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 bedroomand the two dressing-room doors, to satisfy himself that these also could be made anassurance of freedom. finally he expressed himself satisfied.
he stood on the hearth rug and kemp heardthe sound of a yawn. "i'm sorry," said the invisible man, "if icannot 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 yourarguments 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 orperish." kemp stood in the middle of the roomstaring at the headless garment. "i suppose i must leave you," he said. "it's--incredible.three things happening like this, overturning all my preconceptions--wouldmake 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 aninvisible hand. he walked sideways to the door. suddenly the dressing-gown walked quicklytowards 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, andthe key was turned upon him forthwith. then, as he stood with an expression ofpassive amazement on his face, the rapid feet came to the door of the dressing-roomand 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 lockeddoor. "barred out of my own bedroom, by aflagrant 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 bruisedneck. "undeniable fact!"but--" he shook his head hopelessly, turned, andwent downstairs.
he lit the dining-room lamp, got out acigar, and began pacing the room, ejaculating. now and then he would argue with himself."invisible!" he said. "is there such a thing as an invisibleanimal? ... in the sea, yes.thousands--millions. all the larvae, all the little nauplii andtornarias, all the microscopic things, the jelly-fish. in the sea there are more things invisiblethan visible!
i never thought of that before.and in the ponds too! all those little pond-life things--specksof 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 intothe 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 didnot 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 readthe account of a "strange story from iping" that the mariner at port stowe had speltover 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 columnsconfronted him. "an entire village in sussex goes mad" wasthe heading. "good heavens!" said kemp, reading eagerlyan incredulous account of the events in iping, of the previous afternoon, that havealready been described.
over the leaf the report in the morningpaper 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 infront 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 thedining-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 thinkthat over-study had worked this ill on him. he gave them extraordinary but quiteexplicit instructions to lay breakfast for two in the belvedere study--and then toconfine themselves to the basement and ground-floor. then he continued to pace the dining-roomuntil 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 ofanother remarkable tale from port burdock. this gave kemp the essence of thehappenings 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 ipingstory, notably the cutting of the village telegraph-wire. but there was nothing to throw light on theconnexion between the invisible man and the tramp; for mr. marvel had supplied noinformation about the three books, or the money with which he was lined. the incredulous tone had vanished and ashoal of reporters and inquirers were already at work elaborating the matter. kemp read every scrap of the report andsent 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 offaith if--? no."he went to a little untidy desk in the corner, and began a note. he tore this up half written, and wroteanother.
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 wasdoing this. he awoke in an evil temper, and kemp, alertfor every sound, heard his pattering feet rush suddenly across the bedroom overhead. then a chair was flung over and the wash-hand stand tumbler smashed. kemp hurried upstairs and rapped eagerly. chapter xixcertain first principles "what's the matter?" asked kemp, when theinvisible 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 ofthing." "i am." kemp walked across the room and picked upthe fragments of broken glass. "all the facts are out about you," saidkemp, standing up with the glass in his hand; "all that happened in iping, and downthe hill. the world has become aware of its invisiblecitizen.
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 rosewillingly. kemp led the way up the narrow staircase tothe belvedere. "before we can do anything else," saidkemp, "i must understand a little more about this invisibility of yours."
he had sat down, after one nervous glanceout of the window, with the air of a man who has talking to do. his doubts of the sanity of the entirebusiness flashed and vanished again as he looked across to where griffin sat at thebreakfast-table--a headless, handless dressing-gown, wiping unseen lips on amiraculously held serviette. "it's simple enough--and credible enough,"said griffin, putting the serviette aside and leaning the invisible head on aninvisible hand. "no doubt, to you, but--" kemp laughed. "well, yes; to me it seemed wonderful atfirst, 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 ofenthusiasm, 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 camethrough one of the meshes suddenly-- blindingly! i found a general principle of pigments andrefraction--a formula, a geometrical
expression involving four dimensions. fools, common men, even commonmathematicians, do not know anything of what some general expression may mean tothe student of molecular physics. in the books--the books that tramp hashidden--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 anyother property of matter--except, in some instances colours--to lower the refractive index of a substance, solid or liquid, tothat 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 personalinvisibility is a far cry." "precisely," said griffin. "but consider, visibility depends on theaction of the visible bodies on light. either a body absorbs light, or it reflectsor refracts it, or does all these things. if it neither reflects nor refracts norabsorbs 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 redpart of the light, to you. if it did not absorb any particular part ofthe light, but reflected it all, then it would be a shining white box.silver! a diamond box would neither absorb much ofthe light nor reflect much from the general surface, but just here and there where thesurfaces were favourable the light would be reflected and refracted, so that you would get a brilliant appearance of flashingreflections and translucencies--a sort of skeleton of light. a glass box would not be so brilliant, notso clearly visible, as a diamond box,
because there would be less refraction andreflection. see that? from certain points of view you would seequite clearly through it. some kinds of glass would be more visiblethan others, a box of flint glass would be brighter than a box of ordinary windowglass. a box of very thin common glass would behard to see in a bad light, because it would absorb hardly any light and refractand reflect very little. and if you put a sheet of common whiteglass in water, still more if you put it in some denser liquid than water, it wouldvanish almost altogether, because light
passing from water to glass is only slightly refracted or reflected or indeedaffected in any way. it is almost as invisible as a jet of coalgas or hydrogen is in air. and for precisely the same reason!" "yes," said kemp, "that is pretty plainsailing." "and here is another fact you will know tobe true. if a sheet of glass is smashed, kemp, andbeaten into a powder, it becomes much more visible while it is in the air; it becomesat last an opaque white powder. this is because the powdering multipliesthe surfaces of the glass at which
refraction and reflection occur. in the sheet of glass there are only twosurfaces; in the powder the light is reflected or refracted by each grain itpasses through, and very little gets right through the powder. but if the white powdered glass is put intowater, it forthwith vanishes. the powdered glass and water have much thesame refractive index; that is, the light undergoes very little refraction orreflection in passing from one to the other. "you make the glass invisible by putting itinto a liquid of nearly the same refractive
index; a transparent thing becomesinvisible if it is put in any medium of almost the same refractive index. and if you will consider only a second, youwill see also that the powder of glass might be made to vanish in air, if itsrefractive index could be made the same as that of air; for then there would be no refraction or reflection as the lightpassed 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, inten years? just think of all the things that aretransparent and seem not to be so. paper, for instance, is made up oftransparent fibres, and it is white and opaque only for the same reason that apowder of glass is white and opaque. oil white paper, fill up the intersticesbetween the particles with oil so that there is no longer refraction or reflectionexcept at the surfaces, and it becomes as transparent as glass. and not only paper, but cotton fibre, linenfibre, wool fibre, woody fibre, and bone,
kemp, flesh, kemp, hair, kemp, nails andnerves, 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 oftransparent, colourless tissue. so little suffices to make us visible oneto the other. for the most part the fibres of a livingcreature are no more opaque than water." "great heavens!" cried kemp."of course, of course! i was thinking only last night of the sealarvae 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 scientificbounder, 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 himshare my credit. i went on working; i got nearer and nearermaking my formula into an experiment, a reality. i told no living soul, because i meant toflash 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 byaccident, i made a discovery in physiology.""yes?" "you know the red colouring matter ofblood; it can be made white--colourless-- and remain with all the functions it hasnow!" kemp gave a cry of incredulous amazement. the invisible man rose and began pacing thelittle study. "you may well exclaim.i remember that night.
it was late at night--in the daytime onewas bothered with the gaping, silly students--and i worked then sometimes tilldawn. it came suddenly, splendid and complete inmy mind. i was alone; the laboratory was still, withthe 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 beinvisible!' i said, suddenly realising what it meant tobe an albino with such knowledge.
it was overwhelming. i left the filtering i was doing, and wentand stared out of the great window at the stars.'i could be invisible!' i repeated. "to do such a thing would be to transcendmagic. and i beheld, unclouded by doubt, amagnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man--the mystery, thepower, the freedom. drawbacks i saw none. you have only to think!and i, a shabby, poverty-struck, hemmed-in
demonstrator, teaching fools in aprovincial 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 everymountain of difficulty i toiled over showed another from its summit.the infinite details! and the exasperation! a professor, a provincial professor, alwaysprying. 'when are you going to publish this work ofyours?' 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 itwas impossible--impossible." "how?" asked kemp. "money," said the invisible man, and wentagain 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 shothimself." > -chapter xxat the house in great portland street
for a moment kemp sat in silence, staringat 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 cottagealready," he said, "when that happened.
it was last december. i had taken a room in london, a largeunfurnished room in a big ill-managed lodging-house in a slum near great portlandstreet. the room was soon full of the appliances ihad bought with his money; the work was going on steadily, successfully, drawingnear 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 idid 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 hiswho read the service over him--a shabby, black, bent old man with a snivelling cold. "i remember walking back to the emptyhouse, through the place that had once been a village and was now patched and tinkeredby the jerry builders into the ugly likeness of a town. every way the roads ran out at last intothe 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 feltfrom 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 athis funeral, but it was really not my affair. "but going along the high street, my oldlife 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 talkto 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, thati had come out from the world into a desolate place. i appreciated my loss of sympathy, but iput 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 ichose to remember, they are written in cypher in those books that tramp hashidden. we must hunt him down. we must get those books again. but the essential phase was to place thetransparent object whose refractive index was to be lowered between two radiatingcentres of a sort of ethereal vibration, of
which i will tell you more fully later. no, not those roentgen vibrations--i don'tknow that these others of mine have been described.yet they are obvious enough. i needed two little dynamos, and these iworked with a cheap gas engine. my first experiment was with a bit of whitewool fabric. it was the strangest thing in the world tosee it in the flicker of the flashes soft and white, and then to watch it fade like awreath of smoke and vanish. "i could scarcely believe i had done it. i put my hand into the emptiness, and therewas the thing as solid as ever.
i felt it awkwardly, and threw it on thefloor. 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 thecistern cover outside the window. a thought came into my head. 'everything ready for you,' i said, andwent 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 cornerof the room.
after that she went smelling round theroom, evidently with the idea of making herself at home. the invisible rag upset her a bit; youshould have seen her spit at it! but i made her comfortable on the pillow ofmy 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 acat. you know?" "tapetum.""yes, the tapetum. it didn't go. after i'd given the stuff to bleach theblood and done certain other things to her, i gave the beast opium, and put her and thepillow she was sleeping on, on the apparatus. and after all the rest had faded andvanished, there remained two little ghosts of her eyes.""odd!"
"i can't explain it. she was bandaged and clamped, of course--soi had her safe; but she woke while she was still misty, and miaowed dismally, andsomeone came knocking. it was an old woman from downstairs, whosuspected me of vivisecting--a drink-sodden old creature, with only a white cat to carefor 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 peerpast me into the room; strange enough to
her no doubt--bare walls, uncurtainedwindows, truckle-bed, with the gas engine vibrating, and the seethe of the radiant points, and that faint ghastly stinging ofchloroform in the air. she had to be satisfied at last and wentaway 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 colouredhairs. 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 thebusiness was over, and nothing was to be seen but the dim eyes and the claws. i stopped the gas engine, felt for andstroked the beast, which was still insensible, and then, being tired, left itsleeping 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 thingsgrowing misty and vanishing about me, until everything, the ground i stood on,
vanished, and so i came to that sicklyfalling nightmare one gets. about two, the cat began miaowing about theroom. i tried to hush it by talking to it, andthen i decided to turn it out. i remember the shock i had when striking alight--there were just the round eyes shining green--and nothing round them. i would have given it milk, but i hadn'tany. it wouldn't be quiet, it just sat down andmiaowed at the door. i tried to catch it, with an idea ofputting 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 abustle. i suppose it went out at last.i never saw any more of it. "then--heaven knows why--i fell thinking ofmy father's funeral again, and the dismal windy hillside, until the day had come. i found sleeping was hopeless, and, lockingmy 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 theinvisible man.
"why not?""why not?" said kemp. "i didn't mean to interrupt." "it's very probably been killed," said theinvisible man. "it was alive four days after, i know, anddown 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 aminute. 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 atlast i found the summit of primrose hill. it was a sunny day in january--one of thosesunny, 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 prizewas within my grasp, how inconclusive its attainment seemed. as a matter of fact i was worked out; theintense stress of nearly four years' continuous work left me incapable of anystrength of feeling. i was apathetic, and i tried in vain torecover the enthusiasm of my first
inquiries, the passion of discovery thathad 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 thething 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, withchildren playing and girls watching them,
and tried to think of all the fantasticadvantages an invisible man would have in the world. after a time i crawled home, took some foodand 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 ratherirritable. "i know the stuff.""and there was someone rapping at the door. it was my landlord with threats andinquiries, 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 againstvivisection were very severe--he might be liable.i denied the cat. then the vibration of the little gas enginecould be felt all over the house, he said. that was true, certainly. he edged round me into the room, peeringabout over his german-silver spectacles, and a sudden dread came into my mind thathe might carry away something of my secret.
i tried to keep between him and theconcentrating 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 rightof 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 idisregarded, 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 havemeant delay; altogether i had barely twenty pounds left in the world, for the most partin 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 mywork being exposed or interrupted at its very climax, i became very angry andactive. i hurried out with my three books of notes,my cheque-book--the tramp has them now--and directed them from the nearest post officeto 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 doorclose, i suppose. you would have laughed to see him jumpaside on the landing as i came tearing
after him. he glared at me as i went by him, and imade 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 preparationsforthwith. "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 repeatedknocking at the door. it ceased, footsteps went away andreturned, and the knocking was resumed.
there was an attempt to push somethingunder the door--a blue paper. then in a fit of irritation i rose and wentand 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 oddabout 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 thestairs. i shut the door, locked it, and went to thelooking-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 waspresently 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 inmy room. there were times when i sobbed and groanedand talked.
but i stuck to it.... i became insensible and woke languid in thedarkness. "the pain had passed.i thought i was killing myself and i did not care. i shall never forget that dawn, and thestrange horror of seeing that my hands had become as clouded glass, and watching themgrow clearer and thinner as the day went by, until at last i could see the sickly disorder of my room through them, though iclosed my transparent eyelids. my limbs became glassy, the bones andarteries faded, vanished, and the little
white nerves went last. i gritted my teeth and stayed there to theend. at last only the dead tips of thefingernails remained, pallid and white, and the brown stain of some acid upon myfingers. "i struggled up. at first i was as incapable as a swathedinfant--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 ofmy eyes, fainter than mist.
i had to hang on to the table and press myforehead against the glass. "it was only by a frantic effort of willthat i dragged myself back to the apparatus and completed the process. "i slept during the forenoon, pulling thesheet over my eyes to shut out the light, and about midday i was awakened again by aknocking. my strength had returned. i sat up and listened and heard awhispering. i sprang to my feet and as noiselessly aspossible began to detach the connections of my apparatus, and to distribute it aboutthe room, so as to destroy the suggestions
of its arrangement. presently the knocking was renewed andvoices called, first my landlord's, and then two others.to gain time i answered them. the invisible rag and pillow came to handand 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 ofsmashing the lock. but the stout bolts i had screwed up somedays 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 middleof 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 ofthe 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 anothermoment 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 findthe room empty. one of the younger men rushed to the windowat once, flung it up and stared out. his staring eyes and thick-lipped beardedface came a foot from my face. i was half minded to hit his sillycountenance, 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 inyiddish and cockney english. they concluded i had not answered them,that their imagination had deceived them. a feeling of extraordinary elation took theplace of my anger as i sat outside the window and watched these four people--forthe old lady came in, glancing suspiciously about her like a cat, trying to understandthe riddle of my behaviour. "the old man, so far as i could understandhis patois, agreed with the old lady that i was a vivisectionist.
the sons protested in garbled english thati 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 andunder the bed, and one of the young men pushed up the register and stared up thechimney. one of my fellow lodgers, a coster-mongerwho shared the opposite room with a butcher, appeared on the landing, and hewas called in and told incoherent things. "it occurred to me that the radiators, ifthey fell into the hands of some acute
well-educated person, would give me awaytoo much, and watching my opportunity, i came into the room and tilted one of the little dynamos off its fellow on which itwas standing, and smashed both apparatus. then, while they were trying to explain thesmash, i dodged out of the room and went softly downstairs. "i went into one of the sitting-rooms andwaited until they came down, still speculating and argumentative, all a littledisappointed at finding no 'horrors,' and all a little puzzled how they stood legallytowards me. then i slipped up again with a box ofmatches, fired my heap of paper and
rubbish, put the chairs and beddingthereby, led the gas to the affair, by means of an india-rubber tube, and waving a farewell to the room left it for the lasttime." "you fired the house!" exclaimed kemp."fired the house. it was the only way to cover my trail--andno doubt it was insured. i slipped the bolts of the front doorquietly and went out into the street. i was invisible, and i was only justbeginning to realise the extraordinary advantage my invisibility gave me. my head was already teeming with plans ofall the wild and wonderful things i had now
impunity to do." -chapter xxiin oxford street "in going downstairs the first time i foundan 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 towalk on the level passably well. "my mood, i say, was one of exaltation. i felt as a seeing man might do, withpadded feet and noiseless clothes, in a city of the blind.
i experienced a wild impulse to jest, tostartle people, to clap men on the back, fling people's hats astray, and generallyrevel in my extraordinary advantage. "but hardly had i emerged upon greatportland street, however (my lodging was close to the big draper's shop there), wheni 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, ifound something so irresistible in his astonishment that i laughed aloud. 'the devil's in the basket,' i said, andsuddenly twisted it out of his hand.
he let go incontinently, and i swung thewhole weight into the air. "but a fool of a cabman, standing outside apublic house, made a sudden rush for this, and his extending fingers took me withexcruciating violence under the ear. i let the whole down with a smash on thecabman, and then, with shouts and the clatter of feet about me, people coming outof shops, vehicles pulling up, i realised what i had done for myself, and cursing my folly, backed against a shop window andprepared to dodge out of the confusion. in a moment i should be wedged into a crowdand inevitably discovered. i pushed by a butcher boy, who luckily didnot turn to see the nothingness that shoved
him aside, and dodged behind the cab-man'sfour-wheeler. i do not know how they settled thebusiness, i hurried straight across the road, which was happily clear, and hardlyheeding which way i went, in the fright of detection the incident had given me, plunged into the afternoon throng of oxfordstreet. "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 ofwhich i found painful to my feet, and forthwith the shaft of a crawling hansomdug me forcibly under the shoulder blade,
reminding me that i was already bruisedseverely. i staggered out of the way of the cab,avoided a perambulator by a convulsive movement, and found myself behind thehansom. a happy thought saved me, and as this droveslowly along i followed in its immediate wake, trembling and astonished at the turnof my adventure. and not only trembling, but shivering. it was a bright day in january and i wasstark naked and the thin slime of mud that covered the road was freezing. foolish as it seems to me now, i had notreckoned that, transparent or not, i was
still amenable to the weather and all itsconsequences. "then suddenly a bright idea came into myhead. i ran round and got into the cab. and so, shivering, scared, and sniffingwith the first intimations of a cold, and with the bruises in the small of my backgrowing upon my attention, i drove slowly along oxford street and past tottenhamcourt road. my mood was as different from that in whichi 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 tallwoman with five or six yellow-labelled books hailed my cab, and i sprang out justin time to escape her, shaving a railway van narrowly in my flight. i made off up the roadway to bloomsburysquare, intending to strike north past the museum and so get into the quiet district. i was now cruelly chilled, and thestrangeness of my situation so unnerved me that i whimpered as i ran. at the northward corner of the square alittle white dog ran out of the
pharmaceutical society's offices, andincontinently made for me, nose down. "i had never realised it before, but thenose 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, glancingover my shoulder as i did so, and went some way along montague street before i realisedwhat 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 andscoffing on the pavement, i could not hope to penetrate, and dreading to go back andfarther from home again, and deciding on the spur of the moment, i ran up the white steps of a house facing the museumrailings, and stood there until the crowd should have passed. happily the dog stopped at the noise of theband too, hesitated, and turned tail, running back to bloomsbury square again.
"on came the band, bawling with unconsciousirony some hymn about 'when shall we see his face?' and it seemed an interminabletime to me before the tide of the crowd washed along the pavement by me. thud, thud, thud, came the drum with avibrating resonance, and for the moment i did not notice two urchins stopping at therailings 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 hadstopped and were gaping at the muddy
footmarks i had left behind me up the newlywhitened steps. the passing people elbowed and jostledthem, 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 ofthe detectives, with the sharpness of surprise in his voice, and pointed straightto my feet.
i looked down and saw at once the dimsuggestion 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 wascatching, 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 anexclamation, and with a rapid movement i
swung myself over into the portico of thenext house. but the smaller boy was sharp-eyed enoughto 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 thefeet had gone over the wall. "they rushed round and saw my new footmarksflash 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 threepursuers, was pouring along after the
salvation army, and this blow not onlyimpeded me but them. there was an eddy of surprise andinterrogation. at the cost of bowling over one youngfellow i got through, and in another moment i was rushing headlong round the circuit ofrussell square, with six or seven astonished people following my footmarks. there was no time for explanation, or elsethe whole host would have been after me. "twice i doubled round corners, thrice icrossed the road and came back upon my tracks, and then, as my feet grew hot anddry, the damp impressions began to fade. at last i had a breathing space and rubbedmy feet clean with my hands, and so got
away altogether. the last i saw of the chase was a littlegroup of a dozen people perhaps, studying with infinite perplexity a slowly dryingfootprint that had resulted from a puddle in tavistock square, a footprint as isolated and incomprehensible to them ascrusoe's solitary discovery. "this running warmed me to a certainextent, and i went on with a better courage through the maze of less frequented roadsthat 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 beenscratched by his nails; my feet hurt
exceedingly and i was lame from a littlecut 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 collisionsoccurred and i left people amazed, with unaccountable curses ringing in their ears. then came something silent and quietagainst my face, and across the square fell a thin veil of slowly falling flakes ofsnow. i had caught a cold, and do as i would icould not avoid an occasional sneeze. and every dog that came in sight, with itspointing nose and curious sniffing, was a
terror to me. "then came men and boys running, first oneand 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 roofsand telephone wires. it was my lodging burning; my clothes, myapparatus, all my resources indeed, except my cheque-book and the three volumes ofmemoranda that awaited me in great portland street, were there. burning!i had burnt my boats--if ever a man did!
the place was blazing."the invisible man paused and thought. kemp glanced nervously out of the window. "yes?" he said."go on." chapter xxiiin the emporium "so last january, with the beginning of asnowstorm 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 iam committed. i had no refuge, no appliances, no humanbeing in the world in whom i could confide.
to have told my secret would have given meaway--made a mere show and rarity of me. nevertheless, i was half-minded to accostsome passer-by and throw myself upon his mercy. but i knew too clearly the terror andbrutal cruelty my advances would evoke. i made no plans in the street. my sole object was to get shelter from thesnow, to get myself covered and warm; then i might hope to plan. but even to me, an invisible man, the rowsof london houses stood latched, barred, and bolted impregnably.
"only one thing could i see clearly beforeme--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 fromgower street to tottenham court road, and found myself outside omniums, the bigestablishment where everything is to be bought--you know the place: meat, grocery, linen, furniture, clothing, oil paintingseven--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--flungopen the door. i contrived to enter, and walking down theshop--it was a department where they were selling ribbons and gloves and stockingsand that kind of thing--came to a more spacious region devoted to picnic basketsand wicker furniture. "i did not feel safe there, however; peoplewere going to and fro, and i prowled restlessly about until i came upon a hugesection in an upper floor containing multitudes of bedsteads, and over these i clambered, and found a resting-place atlast among a huge pile of folded flock mattresses.
the place was already lit up and agreeablywarm, and i decided to remain where i was, keeping a cautious eye on the two or threesets of shopmen and customers who were meandering through the place, until closingtime came. then i should be able, i thought, to robthe place for food and clothing, and disguised, prowl through it and examine itsresources, perhaps sleep on some of the bedding. that seemed an acceptable plan. my idea was to procure clothing to makemyself a muffled but acceptable figure, to get money, and then to recover my books andparcels where they awaited me, take a
lodging somewhere and elaborate plans for the complete realisation of the advantagesmy invisibility gave me (as i still imagined) over my fellow-men."closing time arrived quickly enough. it could not have been more than an hourafter i took up my position on the mattresses before i noticed the blinds ofthe windows being drawn, and customers being marched doorward. and then a number of brisk young men beganwith 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 howrapidly the young men and women whipped away the goods displayed for sale duringthe day. all the boxes of goods, the hangingfabrics, the festoons of lace, the boxes of sweets in the grocery section, the displaysof this and that, were being whipped down, folded up, slapped into tidy receptacles, and everything that could not be taken downand 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 haddone, he or she made promptly for the door with such an expression of animation as ihave rarely observed in a shop assistant before. then came a lot of youngsters scatteringsawdust and carrying pails and brooms. i had to dodge to get out of the way, andas it was, my ankle got stung with the sawdust. for some time, wandering through theswathed and darkened departments, i could hear the brooms at work. and at last a good hour or more after theshop had been closed, came a noise of
locking doors. silence came upon the place, and i foundmyself wandering through the vast and intricate shops, galleries, show-rooms ofthe place, alone. it was very still; in one place i rememberpassing near one of the tottenham court road entrances and listening to the tappingof boot-heels of the passers-by. "my first visit was to the place where ihad seen stockings and gloves for sale. it was dark, and i had the devil of a huntafter 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 anumber of boxes and drawers, but at last i managed to turn out what i sought; the boxlabel called them lambswool pants, and lambswool vests. then socks, a thick comforter, and then iwent to the clothing place and got trousers, a lounge jacket, an overcoat anda slouch hat--a clerical sort of hat with the brim turned down. i began to feel a human being again, and mynext thought was food. "upstairs was a refreshment department, andthere i got cold meat. there was coffee still in the urn, and ilit the gas and warmed it up again, and
altogether i did not do badly. afterwards, prowling through the place insearch of blankets--i had to put up at last with a heap of down quilts--i came upon agrocery section with a lot of chocolate and candied fruits, more than was good for meindeed--and some white burgundy. and near that was a toy department, and ihad 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 onwigs and masks and the like.
finally i went to sleep in a heap of downquilts, very warm and comfortable. "my last thoughts before sleeping were themost agreeable i had had since the change. i was in a state of physical serenity, andthat was reflected in my mind. i thought that i should be able to slip outunobserved in the morning with my clothes upon me, muffling my face with a whitewrapper 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 thefantastic things that had happened during the last few days. i saw the ugly little jew of a landlordvociferating in his rooms; i saw his two
sons marvelling, and the wrinkled oldwoman's gnarled face as she asked for her cat. i experienced again the strange sensationof seeing the cloth disappear, and so i came round to the windy hillside and thesniffing old clergyman mumbling 'earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,' at myfather's open grave. "'you also,' said a voice, and suddenly iwas being forced towards the grave. i struggled, shouted, appealed to themourners, 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 thebrink, the coffin rang hollow as i fell upon it, and the gravel came flying afterme 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 thatfiltered round the edges of the window blinds. i sat up, and for a time i could not thinkwhere this ample apartment, with its
counters, its piles of rolled stuff, itsheap of quilts and cushions, its iron pillars, might be. then, as recollection came back to me, iheard voices in conversation. "then far down the place, in the brighterlight of some department which had already raised its blinds, i saw two menapproaching. i scrambled to my feet, looking about mefor some way of escape, and even as i did so the sound of my movement made them awareof me. i suppose they saw merely a figure movingquietly and quickly away. 'who's that?' cried one, and 'stop there!'shouted the other.
i dashed around a corner and came fulltilt--a faceless figure, mind you!--on a lanky lad of fifteen. he yelled and i bowled him over, rushedpast him, turned another corner, and by a happy inspiration threw myself behind acounter. in another moment feet went running pastand i heard voices shouting, 'all hands to the doors!' asking what was 'up,' andgiving one another advice how to catch me. "lying on the ground, i felt scared out ofmy wits. but--odd as it may seem--it did not occurto me at the moment to take off my clothes as i should have done.
i had made up my mind, i suppose, to getaway in them, and that ruled me. and then down the vista of the counterscame a bawling of 'here he is!' "i sprang to my feet, whipped a chair offthe counter, and sent it whirling at the fool who had shouted, turned, came intoanother round a corner, sent him spinning, and rushed up the stairs. he kept his footing, gave a view hallo, andcame up the staircase hot after me. up the staircase were piled a multitude ofthose bright-coloured pot things--what are they?" "art pots," suggested kemp."that's it!
art pots. well, i turned at the top step and swunground, plucked one out of a pile and smashed it on his silly head as he came atme. the whole pile of pots went headlong, and iheard shouting and footsteps running from all parts. i made a mad rush for the refreshmentplace, 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, andwaited for my cook, and as he bolted in at
the head of the chase, i doubled him upwith a lamp. down he went, and i crouched down behindthe counter and began whipping off my clothes as fast as i could. coat, jacket, trousers, shoes were allright, but a lambswool vest fits a man like a skin. i heard more men coming, my cook was lyingquiet on the other side of the counter, stunned or scared speechless, and i had tomake 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 storeroomagain, and at the end of a wilderness of wardrobes. i rushed among them, went flat, got rid ofmy vest after infinite wriggling, and stood a free man again, panting and scared, asthe 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 ofthe 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 theclothes. 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 inand began to talk over the business very excitedly and like the fools they were. i heard a magnified account of mydepredations, 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 ifthere was any chance of packing and addressing a parcel, but i could notunderstand the system of checking. about eleven o'clock, the snow havingthawed 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 ofaction in my mind." -chapter xxiiiin drury lane "but you begin now to realise," said theinvisible man, "the full disadvantage of my condition.
i had no shelter--no covering--to getclothing was to forego all my advantage, to make myself a strange and terrible thing. i was fasting; for to eat, to fill myselfwith 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 otherdangers. i could not go abroad in snow--it wouldsettle 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 bubblein a fog, a surface, a greasy glimmer of
humanity. moreover, as i went abroad--in the londonair--i gathered dirt about my ankles, floating smuts and dust upon my skin. i did not know how long it would be beforei 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 greatportland street, and found myself at the end of the street in which i had lodged. i did not go that way, because of the crowdhalfway 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, andwent--circuitously in order to avoid the busy ways, towards the back streets northof the strand; for i remembered, though not very distinctly where, that some theatricalcostumiers had shops in that district.
"the day was cold, with a nipping wind downthe northward running streets. i walked fast to avoid being overtaken. every crossing was a danger, everypassenger a thing to watch alertly. one man as i was about to pass him at thetop of bedford street, turned upon me abruptly and came into me, sending me intothe road and almost under the wheel of a passing hansom. the verdict of the cab-rank was that he hadhad some sort of stroke. i was so unnerved by this encounter that iwent into covent garden market and sat down for some time in a quiet corner by a stallof violets, panting and trembling.
i found i had caught a fresh cold, and hadto 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 oftinsel robes, sham jewels, wigs, slippers, dominoes and theatrical photographs. the shop was old-fashioned and low anddark, 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 bellringing.
i left it open, and walked round a barecostume 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 agrotesque but still a credible figure. and incidentally of course i could rob thehouse of any available money. "the man who had just entered the shop wasa short, slight, hunched, beetle-browed
man, with long arms and very short bandylegs. apparently i had interrupted a meal. he stared about the shop with an expressionof expectation. this gave way to surprise, and then toanger, 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 wentmuttering back to the house door. "i came forward to follow him, and at thenoise of my movement he stopped dead. i did so too, startled by his quickness ofear.
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 theback of the counter and peered behind some fixtures.then he stood doubtful. he had left the house door open and islipped into the inner room. "it was a queer little room, poorlyfurnished and with a number of big masks in the corner.
on the table was his belated breakfast, andit was a confoundedly exasperating thing for me, kemp, to have to sniff his coffeeand 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 theywere all shut. i could not get out of the room while hewas there; i could scarcely move because of his alertness, and there was a draught downmy back. twice i strangled a sneeze just in time. "the spectacular quality of my sensationswas curious and novel, but for all that i
was heartily tired and angry long before hehad done his eating. but at last he made an end and putting hisbeggarly crockery on the black tin tray upon which he had had his teapot, andgathering all the crumbs up on the mustard stained cloth, he took the whole lot ofthings after him. his burden prevented his shutting the doorbehind him--as he would have done; i never saw such a man for shutting doors--and ifollowed him into a very dirty underground kitchen and scullery. i had the pleasure of seeing him begin towash up, and then, finding no good in keeping down there, and the brick floorbeing 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 anace of touching me. even after that examination, he scarcelyseemed satisfied. he stopped in the doorway and took a finalinspection 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, andthen 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 acutehearing.
he suddenly flashed into rage. 'if there's anyone in this house--' hecried with an oath, and left the threat unfinished. he put his hand in his pocket, failed tofind what he wanted, and rushing past me went blundering noisily and pugnaciouslydownstairs. but i did not follow him. i sat on the head of the staircase untilhis return. "presently he came up again, stillmuttering. he opened the door of the room, and beforei could enter, slammed it in my face.
"i resolved to explore the house, and spentsome 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 wereunfurnished, and others were littered with theatrical lumber, bought second-hand, ijudged, from its appearance. in one room next to his i found a lot ofold clothes. i began routing among these, and in myeagerness forgot again the evident
sharpness of his ears. i heard a stealthy footstep and, looking upjust in time, saw him peering in at the tumbled heap and holding an old-fashionedrevolver in his hand. i stood perfectly still while he staredabout open-mouthed and suspicious. 'it must have been her,' he said slowly.'damn her!' "he shut the door quietly, and immediatelyi 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, andstood perplexed.
a gust of anger came upon me. but i decided to inspect the clothes beforei did anything further, and my first attempt brought down a pile from an uppershelf. this brought him back, more sinister thanever. that time he actually touched me, jumpedback 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 aplank creaked.
then the infernal little brute startedgoing all over the house, revolver in hand and locking door after door and pocketingthe keys. when i realised what he was up to i had afit of rage--i could hardly control myself sufficiently to watch my opportunity. by this time i knew he was alone in thehouse, 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 goingdownstairs. hit him from behind with a stool that stoodon the landing. he went downstairs like a bag of oldboots."
"but--i say!the common conventions of humanity--" "are all very well for common people. but the point was, kemp, that i had to getout 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 quatorzevest 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 idiotscared 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 todescribe me--" "but still," said kemp, "in england--to-day. and the man was in his own house, and youwere--well, robbing." "robbing! confound it!you'll call me a thief next! surely, kemp, you're not fool enough todance 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 asudden 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 myhunger. i took some brandy and water, and then wentup past my impromptu bag--he was lying quite still--to the room containing the oldclothes. this looked out upon the street, two lacecurtains brown with dirt guarding the window.i went and peered out through their
interstices. outside the day was bright--by contrastwith 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 swimmingbefore 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 ofbenzoline, used, i suppose, in cleaning the
garments."i began a systematic search of the place. i should judge the hunchback had been alonein the house for some time. he was a curious person. everything that could possibly be ofservice to me i collected in the clothes storeroom, and then i made a deliberateselection. i found a handbag i thought a suitablepossession, and some powder, rouge, and sticking-plaster. "i had thought of painting and powdering myface and all that there was to show of me, in order to render myself visible, but thedisadvantage of this lay in the fact that i
should require turpentine and other appliances and a considerable amount oftime 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, greyishwhiskers, and a wig. i could find no underclothing, but that icould buy subsequently, and for the time i swathed myself in calico dominoes and somewhite cashmere scarfs. i could find no socks, but the hunchback'sboots were rather a loose fit and sufficed. in a desk in the shop were three sovereignsand about thirty shillings' worth of silver, and in a locked cupboard i burst inthe 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 bedroomlooking-glass, inspecting myself from every point of view to discover any forgottenchink, but it all seemed sound. i was grotesque to the theatrical pitch, astage 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 everypoint of view with the help of the cheval glass in the corner.
"i spent some minutes screwing up mycourage and then unlocked the shop door and marched out into the street, leaving thelittle man to get out of his sheet again when he liked. in five minutes a dozen turnings intervenedbetween me and the costumier's shop. no one appeared to notice me verypointedly. 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 kickedhimself out. the knots were pretty tight."he became silent and went to the window and stared out. "what happened when you went out into thestrand?" "oh!--disillusionment again.i thought my troubles were over. practically i thought i had impunity to dowhatever i chose, everything--save to give away my secret.so i thought. whatever i did, whatever the consequencesmight be, was nothing to me. i had merely to fling aside my garments andvanish.
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, andaccumulate a new outfit of property. i felt amazingly confident; it's notparticularly pleasant recalling that i was an ass. i went into a place and was alreadyordering lunch, when it occurred to me that i could not eat unless i exposed myinvisible face. i finished ordering the lunch, told the mani 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 canimagine it." "i could have smashed the silly devils. at last, faint with the desire for tastefulfood, i went into another place and demanded a private room.'i am disfigured,' i said. 'badly.' they looked at me curiously, but of courseit was not their affair--and so at last i got my lunch. it was not particularly well served, but itsufficed; 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 morei realised what a helpless absurdity an invisible man was--in a cold and dirtyclimate and a crowded civilised city. before i made this mad experiment i haddreamt of a thousand advantages. that afternoon it seemed alldisappointment. i went over the heads of the things a manreckons desirable. no doubt invisibility made it possible toget them, but it made it impossible to enjoy them when they are got. ambition--what is the good of pride ofplace when you cannot appear there?
what is the good of the love of woman whenher name must needs be delilah? i have no taste for politics, for theblackguardisms of fame, for philanthropy, for sport.what was i to do? and for this i had become a wrapped-upmystery, 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 doinvisibly. and that is what i chiefly want to talk toyou about now." "you went straight to iping?" "yes. i had simply to get my three volumes ofmemoranda and my cheque-book, my luggage and underclothing, order a quantity ofchemicals to work out this idea of mine--i
will show you the calculations as soon as iget my books--and then i started. jove! i remember the snowstorm now, and theaccursed bother it was to keep the snow from damping my pasteboard nose." "at the end," said kemp, "the day beforeyesterday, 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 fumblingpurblind idiot messing across your course! every conceivable sort of silly creaturethat 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 thousandtimes more difficult." "no doubt it's exasperating," said kemp,drily. -chapter xxivthe plan that failed "but now," said kemp, with a side glanceout of the window, "what are we to do?" he moved nearer his guest as he spoke insuch a manner as to prevent the possibility of a sudden glimpse of the three men whowere advancing up the hill road--with an intolerable slowness, as it seemed to kemp.
"what were you planning to do when you wereheading for port burdock? had you any plan?""i was going to clear out of the country. but i have altered that plan rather sinceseeing you. i thought it would be wise, now the weatheris hot and invisibility possible, to make for the south. especially as my secret was known, andeveryone 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 therisks of the passage.
thence i could go by train into spain, orelse get to algiers. it would not be difficult. there a man might always be invisible--andyet live. and do things. i was using that tramp as a money box andluggage 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 tryand 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 himfirst." "but where is he?do you know?" "he's in the town police station, lockedup, 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 arevital." "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'tknow they're for you."
"no," said the invisible man, and thought. kemp tried to think of something to keepthe 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 askedabruptly. kemp hesitated."that was implied," he said.
"no one?" insisted griffin. "not a soul.""ah! now--" the invisible man stood up, andsticking his arms akimbo began to pace the study. "i made a mistake, kemp, a huge mistake, incarrying this thing through alone. i have wasted strength, time,opportunities. alone--it is wonderful how little a man cando alone! to rob a little, to hurt a little, andthere is the end. "what i want, kemp, is a goal-keeper, ahelper, and a hiding-place, an arrangement
whereby i can sleep and eat and rest inpeace, and unsuspected. i must have a confederate. with a confederate, with food and rest--athousand 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 eavesdroppingand 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 easilyimprison me. but on the other hand i am hard to catch.
this invisibility, in fact, is only good intwo 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 hehas, 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 aninvisible 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 togriffin but to the sound of his front door opening and closing. "it seems to me, griffin," he said, tocover his wandering attention, "that your confederate would be in a difficultposition." "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 tospeak 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 therace? how can you hope to gain happiness?don't be a lone wolf. publish your results; take the world--takethe nation at least--into your confidence. think what you might do with a millionhelpers--" the invisible man interrupted--armextended. "there are footsteps coming upstairs," hesaid in a low voice. "nonsense," said kemp. "let me see," said the invisible man, andadvanced, 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 downthe 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 ashout. kemp flung the door open. as it opened, there came a sound ofhurrying feet downstairs and voices. with a quick movement kemp thrust theinvisible 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 thatmorning. as kemp slammed the door it fell noisilyupon the carpet. kemp's face became white. he tried to grip the door handle with bothhands. 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 invisiblefingers, 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 thetop 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 suddenappearance of kemp, followed by the
extraordinary sight of clothing tossingempty in the air. he saw kemp felled, and struggling to hisfeet. 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 thestaircase, with a grip on his throat and a knee in his groin. an invisible foot trod on his back, aghostly patter passed downstairs, he heard the two police officers in the hall shoutand run, and the front door of the house
slammed violently. he rolled over and sat up staring. he saw, staggering down the staircase,kemp, dusty and disheveled, one side of his face white from a blow, his lip bleeding,and a pink dressing-gown and some underclothing held in his arms. "my god!" cried kemp, "the game's up!he's gone!" chapter xxvthe hunting of the invisible man for a space kemp was too inarticulate tomake adye understand the swift things that had just happened.
they stood on the landing, kemp speakingswiftly, 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 thismorning 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 becamefull 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 thecountryside 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 roadsand shipping.
the garrison must help.you must wire for help. the only thing that may keep him here isthe 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 orsleeping; day and night the country must be astir for him.
food must be locked up and secured, allfood, 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, adisaster; unless he is pinned and secured, it is frightful to think of the things thatmay happen." "what else can we do?" said adye. "i must go down at once and beginorganising.
but why not come?yes--you come too! come, and we must hold a sort of council ofwar--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 waydownstairs. they found the front door open and thepolicemen standing outside staring at empty air."he's got away, sir," said one. "we must go to the central station atonce," said adye.
"one of you go on down and get a cab tocome 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 prisonofficials 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 menwith must be hidden away." "good again," said adye."we shall have him yet!" "and on the roads," said kemp, andhesitated. "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 ofterror--so soon as he has got over the emotions of this escape--as i am sure i amtalking to you. our only chance is to be ahead. he has cut himself off from his kind.his blood be upon his own head."
chapter xxvithe wicksteed murder the invisible man seems to have rushed outof kemp's house in a state of blind fury. a little child playing near kemp's gatewaywas violently caught up and thrown aside, so that its ankle was broken, andthereafter 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 throughthe 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, topiece 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 theafternoon. one wonders what his state of mind may havebeen during that time, and what plans he devised. no doubt he was almost ecstaticallyexasperated by kemp's treachery, and though we may be able to understand the motivesthat led to that deceit, we may still imagine and even sympathise a little with
the fury the attempted surprise must haveoccasioned. perhaps something of the stunnedastonishment of his oxford street experiences may have returned to him, forhe had evidently counted on kemp's co- operation in his brutal dream of aterrorised world. at any rate he vanished from human kenabout midday, and no living witness can tell what he did until about half-past two. it was a fortunate thing, perhaps, forhumanity, 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 alegend, a terror; in the afternoon, by virtue chiefly of kemp's drily wordedproclamation, he was presented as a tangible antagonist, to be wounded, captured, or overcome, and the countrysidebegan organising itself with inconceivable rapidity. by two o'clock even he might still haveremoved himself out of the district by getting aboard a train, but after two thatbecame impossible. every passenger train along the lines on agreat parallelogram between southampton, manchester, brighton and horsham, travelledwith locked doors, and the goods traffic
was almost entirely suspended. and in a great circle of twenty miles roundport burdock, men armed with guns and bludgeons were presently setting out ingroups of three and four, with dogs, to beat the roads and fields. mounted policemen rode along the countrylanes, 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 theconditions of the struggle, the necessity of keeping the invisible man from food andsleep, the necessity for incessant watchfulness and for a prompt attention toany evidence of his movements. and so swift and decided was the action ofthe authorities, so prompt and universal was the belief in this strange being, thatbefore nightfall an area of several hundred square miles was in a stringent state ofsiege. and before nightfall, too, a thrill ofhorror went through the whole watching
nervous countryside. going from whispering mouth to mouth, swiftand certain over the length and breadth of the country, passed the story of the murderof mr. wicksteed. if our supposition that the invisible man'srefuge was the hintondean thickets, then we must suppose that in the early afternoon hesallied out again bent upon some project that involved the use of a weapon. we cannot know what the project was, butthe evidence that he had the iron rod in hand before he met wicksteed is to me atleast overwhelming. of course we can know nothing of thedetails 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 splinteredwalking-stick; but why the attack was made, save in a murderous frenzy, it isimpossible to imagine. indeed the theory of madness is almostunavoidable. mr. wicksteed was a man of forty-five orforty-six, steward to lord burdock, of inoffensive habits and appearance, the verylast person in the world to provoke such a terrible antagonist.
against him it would seem the invisible manused an iron rod dragged from a broken piece of fence. he stopped this quiet man, going quietlyhome 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 rodout of the fencing before he met his victim--he must have been carrying it readyin his hand. only two details beyond what has alreadybeen stated seem to bear on the matter. one is the circumstance that the gravel pitwas not in mr. wicksteed's direct path
home, but nearly a couple of hundred yardsout of his way. the other is the assertion of a little girlto 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 manpursuing something on the ground before him and striking at it ever and again with hiswalking-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 slightdepression in the ground.
now this, to the present writer's mind atleast, lifts the murder out of the realm of the absolutely wanton. we may imagine that griffin had taken therod as a weapon indeed, but without any deliberate intention of using it in murder. wicksteed may then have come by and noticedthis 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 manmaking off--quietly in order to avoid discovering his presence in theneighbourhood, and wicksteed, excited and curious, pursuing this unaccountablylocomotive object--finally striking at it. no doubt the invisible man could easilyhave distanced his middle-aged pursuer under ordinary circumstances, but theposition in which wicksteed's body was found suggests that he had the ill luck to drive his quarry into a corner between adrift of stinging nettles and the gravel pit. to those who appreciate the extraordinaryirascibility 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 ofchildren are often unreliable--are the discovery of wicksteed's body, done todeath, 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 hetook it--if he had a purpose--was abandoned. he was certainly an intensely egotisticaland unfeeling man, but the sight of his victim, his first victim, bloody andpitiful at his feet, may have released some
long pent fountain of remorse which for a time may have flooded whatever scheme ofaction he had contrived. after the murder of mr. wicksteed, he wouldseem to have struck across the country towards the downland. there is a story of a voice heard aboutsunset 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 havelearnt something of the rapid use kemp had made of his confidences. he must have found houses locked andsecured; he may have loitered about railway stations and prowled about inns, and nodoubt he read the proclamations and realised something of the nature of thecampaign against him. and as the evening advanced, the fieldsbecame dotted here and there with groups of three or four men, and noisy with theyelping of dogs. these men-hunters had particularinstructions 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 hisexasperation, and it could have been none the less because he himself had suppliedthe information that was being used so remorselessly against him. for that day at least he lost heart; fornearly twenty-four hours, save when he turned on wicksteed, he was a hunted man. in the night, he must have eaten and slept;for in the morning he was himself again, active, powerful, angry, and malignant,prepared for his last great struggle against the world. -chapter xxviithe siege of kemp's house
kemp read a strange missive, written inpencil on a greasy sheet of paper. "you have been amazingly energetic andclever," 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 haveslept in spite of you, and the game is only beginning.the game is only beginning. there is nothing for it, but to start theterror. 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 executionfor the sake of example--a man named kemp. death starts for him to-day. he may lock himself away, hide himselfaway, get guards about him, put on armour if he likes--death, the unseen death, iscoming. let him take precautions; it will impressmy 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 fallupon you also. to-day kemp is to die." kemp read this letter twice, "it's nohoax," he said. "that's his voice!and he means it." he turned the folded sheet over and saw onthe addressed side of it the postmark hintondean, and the prosaic detail "2d. topay."
he got up slowly, leaving his lunchunfinished--the letter had come by the one o'clock post--and went into his study. he rang for his housekeeper, and told herto go round the house at once, examine all the fastenings of the windows, and closeall the shutters. he closed the shutters of his studyhimself. from a locked drawer in his bedroom he tooka little revolver, examined it carefully, and put it into the pocket of his loungejacket. he wrote a number of brief notes, one tocolonel adye, gave them to his servant to take, with explicit instructions as to herway of leaving the house.
"there is no danger," he said, and added amental reservation, "to you." he remained meditative for a space afterdoing 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 thebait. he will come too far." he went up to the belvedere, carefullyshutting every door after him. "it's a game," he said, "an odd game--butthe chances are all for me, mr. griffin, in spite of your invisibility.
griffin contra mundum ... with avengeance." he stood at the window staring at the hothillside. "he must get food every day--and i don'tenvy him. did he really sleep last night?out in the open somewhere--secure from collisions. i wish we could get some good cold wetweather instead of the heat. "he may be watching me now."he went close to the window. something rapped smartly against thebrickwork over the frame, and made him start violently back."i'm getting nervous," said kemp.
but it was five minutes before he went tothe 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, examinedthe chain, put it up, and opened cautiously without showing himself.a familiar voice hailed him. it was adye. "your servant's been assaulted, kemp," hesaid 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 enteredthrough as narrow an opening as possible. he stood in the hall, looking with infiniterelief 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 wayinto 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 fromupstairs.
adye had a silvery glimpse of a littlerevolver half out of kemp's pocket. "it's a window, upstairs!" said kemp, andled the way up. there came a second smash while they werestill on the staircase. when they reached the study they found twoof the three windows smashed, half the room littered with splintered glass, and one bigflint lying on the writing table. the two men stopped in the doorway,contemplating the wreckage. kemp swore again, and as he did so thethird window went with a snap like a pistol, hung starred for a moment, andcollapsed 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 hardcame from downstairs. "confound him!" said kemp. "that must be--yes--it's one of thebedrooms. he's going to do all the house.but he's a fool. the shutters are up, and the glass willfall 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 thebloodhounds 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 bedroomwindows crack and clash. kemp went to the door and began to slip thebolts 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 doorstepand 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, downthe steps. he crossed the lawn and approached thegate. a little breeze seemed to ripple over thegrass. something moved near him. "stop a bit," said a voice, and adyestopped 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, hethought. suppose he were to take his luck with ashot? "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 lipof adye's pocket. adye desisted and thought. "where i go," he said slowly, "is my ownbusiness." the words were still on his lips, when anarm came round his neck, his back felt a knee, and he was sprawling backward.
he drew clumsily and fired absurdly, and inanother 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 ofa bullet," it said. he saw the revolver in mid-air, six feetoff, covering him. "well?" said adye, sitting up."get up," said the voice. adye stood up. "attention," said the voice, and thenfiercely, "don't try any games.
remember i can see your face if you can'tsee 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 therevolver and saw the sea far off very blue and dark under the midday sun, the smoothgreen down, the white cliff of the head, and the multitudinous town, and suddenly heknew that life was very sweet. his eyes came back to this little metalthing 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 torush the door?" "i've got no quarrel with you," said thevoice. kemp had hurried upstairs after lettingadye out, and now crouching among the broken glass and peering cautiously overthe edge of the study window sill, he saw adye stand parleying with the unseen. "why doesn't he fire?" whispered kemp tohimself.
then the revolver moved a little and theglint of the sunlight flashed in kemp's eyes. he shaded his eyes and tried to see thesource of the blinding beam. "surely!" he said, "adye has given up therevolver." "promise not to rush the door," adye wassaying. "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 promiseanything." 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 evidenton 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 hisface, leaving a little puff of blue in the 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 chasingeach 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 greensummer-house was a white figure, apparently an old man asleep. kemp scrutinised the surroundings of thehouse 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 thefront door, that grew at last tumultuous, but pursuant to kemp's instructions theservants 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, oneafter another. he went to the staircase head and stoodlistening 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 thegravel just as he had fallen. coming along the road by the villas werethe 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 heavyblows and the splintering of wood. he heard a smash and the destructive clangof the iron fastenings of the shutters.
he turned the key and opened the kitchendoor. as he did so, the shutters, split andsplintering, 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 anaxe, and now the axe was descending in sweeping blows upon the window frame andthe iron bars defending it. then suddenly it leapt aside and vanished. he saw the revolver lying on the pathoutside, and then the little weapon sprang
into the air.he dodged back. the revolver cracked just too late, and asplinter from the edge of the closing door flashed over his head. he slammed and locked the door, and as hestood outside he heard griffin shouting and laughing. then the blows of the axe with itssplitting and smashing consequences, were resumed.kemp stood in the passage trying to think. in a moment the invisible man would be inthe kitchen. this door would not keep him a moment, andthen--
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 droppedthe chain, and the three people blundered into the house in a heap, and kemp slammedthe 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 theinvisible 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 intoactivity, 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 thepoliceman and the dining-room one to the other.he suddenly flung himself backward. "whup!" said one policeman, ducked, andcaught the axe on his poker. the pistol snapped its penultimate shot andripped a valuable sidney cooper. the second policeman brought his poker downon the little weapon, as one might knock down a wasp, and sent it rattling to thefloor.
at the first clash the girl screamed, stoodscreaming for a moment by the fireplace, and then ran to open the shutters--possiblywith an idea of escaping by the shattered the axe receded into the passage, and fellto 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 theswing of the blow he had aimed, the invisible man countered with the axe, thehelmet crumpled like paper, and the blow sent the man spinning to the floor at thehead of the kitchen stairs. but the second policeman, aiming behind theaxe with his poker, hit something soft that snapped. there was a sharp exclamation of pain andthen the axe fell to the ground. the policeman wiped again at vacancy andhit nothing; he put his foot on the axe, and struck again. then he stood, poker clubbed, listeningintent for the slightest movement.
he heard the dining-room window open, and aquick rush of feet within. his companion rolled over and sat up, withthe 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 thekitchen stairs could be heard. "yap!" cried the first policeman, andincontinently flung his poker. it smashed a little gas bracket. he made as if he would pursue the invisibleman downstairs. then he thought better of it and steppedinto the dining-room. "doctor kemp--" he began, and stoppedshort. "doctor kemp's a hero," he said, as hiscompanion looked over his shoulder. the dining-room window was wide open, andneither housemaid nor kemp was to be seen. the second policeman's opinion of kemp wasterse and vivid.
chapter xxviiithe hunter hunted mr. heelas, mr. kemp's nearest neighbouramong the villa holders, was asleep in his summer house when the siege of kemp's housebegan. mr. heelas was one of the sturdy minoritywho 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 gardenjust as if nothing was the matter, and he went to sleep in the afternoon inaccordance with the custom of years. he slept through the smashing of thewindows, 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 satlistening. he said he was damned, but still thestrange thing was visible. the house looked as though it had beendeserted 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"--helooked at his watch--"twenty minutes ago." he became aware of a measured concussionand the clash of glass, far away in the
distance. and then, as he sat open-mouthed, came astill more wonderful thing. the shutters of the drawing-room windowwere 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, helpingher--dr. kemp! in another moment the window was open, andthe housemaid was struggling out; she pitched forward and vanished among theshrubs. mr. heelas stood up, exclaiming vaguely andvehemently at all these wonderful things.
he saw kemp stand on the sill, spring fromthe window, and reappear almost instantaneously running along a path in theshrubbery and stooping as he ran, like a man who evades observation. he vanished behind a laburnum, and appearedagain clambering over a fence that abutted on the open down. in a second he had tumbled over and wasrunning 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 thatwas to act, and his cook watching him from the top window was amazed to see him comepelting towards the house at a good nine miles an hour. there was a slamming of doors, a ringing ofbells, 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 anddirections, and scurrying feet. he ran himself to shut the french windowsthat opened on the veranda; as he did so kemp's head and shoulders and knee appearedover the edge of the garden fence.
in another moment kemp had ploughed throughthe 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 youcan't come in!" kemp appeared with a face of terror closeto the glass, rapping and then shaking frantically at the french window. then, seeing his efforts were useless, heran along the veranda, vaulted the end, and went to hammer at the side door. then he ran round by the side gate to thefront of the house, and so into the hill-
road. and mr. heelas staring from his window--aface of horror--had scarcely witnessed kemp vanish, ere the asparagus was beingtrampled this way and that by feet unseen. at that mr. heelas fled precipitatelyupstairs, 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 naturallytook the downward direction, and so it was he came to run in his own person the veryrace he had watched with such a critical eye from the belvedere study only four daysago.
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 apatch of rough ground intervened, wherever there came a patch of raw flints, or a bitof broken glass shone dazzling, he crossed it and left the bare invisible feet thatfollowed to take what line they would. for the first time in his life kempdiscovered that the hill-road was indescribably vast and desolate, and thatthe beginnings of the town far below at the hill foot were strangely remote. never had there been a slower or morepainful method of progression than running.
all the gaunt villas, sleeping in theafternoon sun, looked locked and barred; no doubt they were locked and barred--by hisown orders. but at any rate they might have kept alookout for an eventuality like this! the town was rising up now, the sea haddropped 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, oneor 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 ofgravel--the drainage works. he had a transitory idea of jumping intothe tram and slamming the doors, and then he resolved to go for the police station. in another moment he had passed the door ofthe "jolly cricketers," and was in the blistering fag end of the street, withhuman beings about him. the tram driver and his helper--arrested bythe sight of his furious haste--stood staring with the tram horses unhitched. further on the astonished features ofnavvies appeared above the mounds of
gravel. his pace broke a little, and then he heardthe swift pad of his pursuer, and leapt forward again. "the invisible man!" he cried to thenavvies, with a vague indicative gesture, and by an inspiration leapt the excavationand placed a burly group between him and the chase. then abandoning the idea of the policestation 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 backinto the main hill street again. two or three little children were playinghere, and shrieked and scattered at his apparition, and forthwith doors and windowsopened and excited mothers revealed their hearts. out he shot into hill street again, threehundred yards from the tram-line end, and immediately he became aware of a tumultuousvociferation 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 thetram conductor with his fists clenched.
up the street others followed these two,striking and shouting. down towards the town, men and women wererunning, and he noticed clearly one man coming out of a shop-door with a stick inhis 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 hisunseen antagonist.
he just managed to keep his feet, and hestruck a vain counter in the air. then he was hit again under the jaw, andsprawled headlong on the ground. in another moment a knee compressed hisdiaphragm, and a couple of eager hands gripped his throat, but the grip of one wasweaker than the other; he grasped the wrists, heard a cry of pain from his assailant, and then the spade of the navvycame 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, androlled uppermost.
he gripped the unseen elbows near theground. "i've got him!" screamed kemp."help! help--hold! he's down!hold his feet!" in another second there was a simultaneousrush upon the struggle, and a stranger coming into the road suddenly might havethought 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 then came a mighty effort, and theinvisible man threw off a couple of his
antagonists and rose to his knees. kemp clung to him in front like a hound toa 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 againand rolled over. there was, i am afraid, some savagekicking. then suddenly a wild scream of "mercy! mercy!" that died down swiftly to a soundlike choking. "get back, you fools!" cried the muffledvoice 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 aspace, 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 invisibleankles. "don't you leave go of en," cried the bignavvy, 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 befeeling at the face. "the mouth's all wet," he said.and then, "good god!" he stood up abruptly and then knelt down onthe ground by the side of the thing unseen. there was a pushing and shuffling, a soundof 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 passthrough empty air. "he's not breathing," he said, and then, "ican't feel his heart. his side--ugh!" suddenly an old woman, peering under thearm of the big navvy, screamed sharply. "looky there!" she said, and thrust out awrinkled finger. and looking where she pointed, everyonesaw, faint and transparent as though it was made of glass, so that veins and arteriesand bones and nerves could be distinguished, the outline of a hand, ahand limp and prone. it grew clouded and opaque even as theystared.
"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 thevital centres of his body, that strange change continued. it was like the slow spreading of a poison. first came the little white nerves, a hazygrey sketch of a limb, then the glassy bones and intricate arteries, then theflesh and skin, first a faint fogginess, and then growing rapidly dense and opaque. presently they could see his crushed chestand his shoulders, and the dim outline of
his drawn and battered features. when at last the crowd made way for kemp tostand erect, there lay, naked and pitiful on the ground, the bruised and broken bodyof a young man about thirty. his hair and brow were white--not grey withage, but white with the whiteness of albinism--and his eyes were like garnets. his hands were clenched, his eyes wideopen, and his expression was one of anger and dismay."cover his face!" said a man. "for gawd's sake, cover that face!" andthree little children, pushing forward through the crowd, were suddenly twistedround and sent packing off again.
someone brought a sheet from the "jollycricketers," and having covered him, they carried him into that house. and there it was, on a shabby bed in atawdry, 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 giftedphysicist the world has ever seen, ended in infinite disaster his strange and terriblecareer. the epilogue so ends the story of the strange and evilexperiments of the invisible man.
and if you would learn more of him you mustgo to a little inn near port stowe and talk to the landlord. the sign of the inn is an empty board savefor a hat and boots, and the name is the title of this story. the landlord is a short and corpulentlittle man with a nose of cylindrical proportions, wiry hair, and a sporadicrosiness of visage. drink generously, and he will tell yougenerously of all the things that happened to him after that time, and of how thelawyers tried to do him out of the treasure found upon him.
"when they found they couldn't prove who'smoney was which, i'm blessed," he says, "if they didn't try to make me out a bloomingtreasure trove! do i look like a treasure trove? and then a gentleman gave me a guinea anight 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 hisreminiscences abruptly, you can always do so by asking if there weren't threemanuscript books in the story. he admits there were and proceeds toexplain, with asseverations that everybody thinks he has 'em!but bless you! he hasn't.
"the invisible man it was took 'em off tohide 'em when i cut and ran for port stowe. it's that mr. kemp put people on with theidea 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 everbachelor, and there are no women folk in the house. outwardly he buttons--it is expected ofhim--but in his more vital privacies, in the matter of braces for example, he stillturns to string. he conducts his house without enterprise,but with eminent decorum.
his movements are slow, and he is a greatthinker. but he has a reputation for wisdom and fora respectable parsimony in the village, and his knowledge of the roads of the south ofengland would beat cobbett. and on sunday mornings, every sundaymorning, all the year round, while he is closed to the outer world, and every nightafter ten, he goes into his bar parlour, bearing a glass of gin faintly tinged with water, and having placed this down, helocks 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, andproduces three volumes bound in brown leather, and places them solemnly in themiddle of the table. the covers are weather-worn and tinged withan algal green--for once they sojourned in a ditch and some of the pages have beenwashed 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 afiddle-de-dee. lord! what a one he was for intellect!" presently he relaxes and leans back, andblinks 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 undyingwonderful dream of his life. and though kemp has fished unceasingly, nohuman being save the landlord knows those
books are there, with the subtle secret ofinvisibility and a dozen other strange secrets written therein. and none other will know of them until hedies.