Latest / Classic Science Fiction Books / 09 - The Invisible Man - H G Wells

Transcript

09 - The Invisible Man - H G Wells · Classic Science Fiction Books

0:00
Speaker 1: Chapter twenty at the house in Great Portland Street. For
0:07
Speaker 1: a moment, Kemp sat in silence, staring at the back
0:10
Speaker 1: of the headless figure at the window. Then he started,
0:14
Speaker 1: struck by a thought. Rose took the invisible man's arm
0:18
Speaker 1: and turned him away from the outlook. You are tired,
0:22
Speaker 1: he said, and while I sit you walk about. Have
0:26
Speaker 1: my chair. He placed himself between Griffin and the nearest window.
0:33
Speaker 1: For a space, Griffin sat silent, then he resumed abruptly.
0:38
Speaker 1: I had left the Chesilstowe Cottage already, he said. When
0:41
Speaker 1: that happened, it was last December. I had taken a
0:45
Speaker 1: room in London, a large, unfurnished room with a big
0:48
Speaker 1: ill mannaged lodging house in a slum near Great Portland Street.
0:52
Speaker 1: The room was soon full of the appliances I had
0:54
Speaker 1: bought with his money, and the work was going on steadily, successfully,
0:58
Speaker 1: drawing near an end. I was like a man emerging
1:01
Speaker 1: from a thicket and suddenly coming on some unmeaning tragedy.
1:05
Speaker 1: I went to bury him. My mind was still on
1:08
Speaker 1: this research, and I did not lift a finger to
1:10
Speaker 1: save his character. I remember the funeral, the cheap hearst,
1:15
Speaker 1: the scant ceremony, the windy, frost bitten hillside, and the
1:19
Speaker 1: old college friend of his who read the service over him,
1:22
Speaker 1: a shabby, black, bent old man with a snivering cold.
1:26
Speaker 1: I remember walking back to the empty house, through the
1:29
Speaker 1: place that had once been a village and was now
1:31
Speaker 1: patched and tinkered by the jerry builders, into the ugly
1:34
Speaker 1: likeness of a town. Every way. The roads ran out
1:38
Speaker 1: at last into the desecrated fields and ended in rubble
1:41
Speaker 1: heaps and rank, wet weeds. I remembered myself as a
1:45
Speaker 1: gaunt black figure going along the slippery, shiny pavement, and
1:49
Speaker 1: the strange sense of detachment I felt from the squalid respectability,
1:52
Speaker 1: the sordid commercialism of the place. I did not feel
1:56
Speaker 1: a bit sorry for my father. He seemed to me
1:59
Speaker 1: to be the victim of his own foolish sentimentality. The
2:02
Speaker 1: current cant required my attendance at his funeral, but it
2:05
Speaker 1: was really not my affair. But going along the high street,
2:09
Speaker 1: my old life came back to me for a space
2:12
Speaker 1: for I met the girl I had known ten years
2:13
Speaker 1: since our eyes met. Something moved me to turn back
2:19
Speaker 1: and talk to her. She was a very ordinary person.
2:24
Speaker 1: It was all like a dream that visit to the
2:26
Speaker 1: old places. I did not feel then that I was lonely,
2:30
Speaker 1: that I had come out from the world into a
2:31
Speaker 1: desolate place. I appreciated my loss of sympathy, but I
2:36
Speaker 1: put it down to the general inanity of things. Re
2:39
Speaker 1: Entering my room seemed like the recovery of reality. They
2:42
Speaker 1: were the things I knew and loved. There stood the apparatus,
2:46
Speaker 1: the experiments arranged and waiting, And now there was scarcely
2:49
Speaker 1: a difficulty left beyond the planning of details. I will
2:54
Speaker 1: tell you camp sooner or later. All the complicated processes.
2:57
Speaker 1: We need not go into that now. For the most part,
3:00
Speaker 1: saving certain gaps, I chose to remember they are written
3:04
Speaker 1: in cipher in those books. The tramp has hidden. We
3:06
Speaker 1: must hunt him down. We must get those books again.
3:10
Speaker 1: But the essential phase was to place the transparent object,
3:12
Speaker 1: whose refractive index was to be lowered between two radiating
3:16
Speaker 1: centers of a sort of ethereal vibration of which I
3:18
Speaker 1: will tell you more fully later. No, not those oilancon vibrations.
3:23
Speaker 1: I don't know those. These others of mine have been
3:25
Speaker 1: described yet. They are obvious enough. I needed two little dynamos,
3:30
Speaker 1: and these I worked with a cheap gas engine. My
3:32
Speaker 1: first experiment was with a bit of white wool fabric.
3:36
Speaker 1: It was the strangest thing in the world to see
3:37
Speaker 1: it in the flicker of the flashes, soft and white,
3:40
Speaker 1: and then to watch it fade like a wreath of
3:42
Speaker 1: smoke and vanish. I could scarcely believe I had done it.
3:47
Speaker 1: I put my hand into the emptiness, and there was
3:49
Speaker 1: the thing, as solid as ever. I felt it awkwardly
3:52
Speaker 1: and threw it on the floor. I had a little
3:54
Speaker 1: trouble finding it again, and then came a curious experience.
4:00
Speaker 1: I heard her meow behind me, and turning saw a
4:03
Speaker 1: lean white cat, very dirty, on the cistern cover outside
4:06
Speaker 1: the window. A thought came into my head. Everything ready
4:11
Speaker 1: for you, I said, and I went to the window,
4:13
Speaker 1: opened it and called softly. She came in, purring. The
4:18
Speaker 1: poor beast was starving, and I gave her some milk.
4:21
Speaker 1: All my food was in a cupboard in the corner
4:23
Speaker 1: of the room. After that she went smelling round the room,
4:27
Speaker 1: evidently with the idea of making herself at home. The
4:29
Speaker 1: invisible rag upset her a bit. Who should have seen
4:32
Speaker 1: a spit at it? But I made her comfortable on
4:35
Speaker 1: the pillow of my truckle bed and I gave her
4:37
Speaker 1: butter to get her to wash, and you processed her.
4:42
Speaker 1: I processed her, but giving drugs to a cat is
4:45
Speaker 1: no joke, kemp, and the process failed. Failed in two particulars.
4:52
Speaker 1: These were the claws and the pigment stuff. What is
4:55
Speaker 1: it at the back of the eye in a cat,
4:57
Speaker 1: you know? Tap eatum? Yes, the eatum. It didn't go.
5:02
Speaker 1: After I'd gidden the stuff to bleach the blood and
5:04
Speaker 1: done certain other things to her, I gave the beast
5:07
Speaker 1: opium and put her in the little pillow she was
5:09
Speaker 1: sleeping on on the apparatus, And after all the rest
5:12
Speaker 1: had faded and vanished, there remained two little ghosts of
5:15
Speaker 1: her eyes. Odd, I can't explain it. She was bandaged
5:21
Speaker 1: and clamped, of course, so I had her safe. But
5:24
Speaker 1: she woke while she was still misty, and meowed dismally,
5:26
Speaker 1: and some one came knocking. It was an old woman
5:29
Speaker 1: from downstairs who suspected me of vivisecting a drink sodden
5:33
Speaker 1: old creature with only a white cat to care for
5:36
Speaker 1: in all the world. I whipped out some chloroform, applied
5:39
Speaker 1: it and answered the door. Did I hear a cat,
5:43
Speaker 1: She asked, my cat, not here, said I, very politely.
5:48
Speaker 1: She was a little doubtful, and tried to peer past
5:51
Speaker 1: me into the room, strange enough to her, no doubt,
5:53
Speaker 1: bare walls, uncurtained windows, truckle bed, with the gas engine vibrating,
5:58
Speaker 1: and the seethe of the radiant points, and that faint,
6:01
Speaker 1: ghastly stinging of chloroform in the air. She had to
6:04
Speaker 1: be satisfied at last, and went away again. How long
6:08
Speaker 1: did it take, asked Ken? Three or four hours? The cat,
6:13
Speaker 1: the bones and sign news and the fat were the
6:15
Speaker 1: last to go, and the tips of the colored hairs,
6:18
Speaker 1: and as I say, the back part of the eye,
6:21
Speaker 1: tough iridescent stuff that it is, wouldn't go at all.
6:25
Speaker 1: It was night outside, long before the business was over,
6:27
Speaker 1: and nothing was to be seen but the dim eyes
6:29
Speaker 1: and the claws. I stopped the gas engine, felt for
6:33
Speaker 1: and stroked the beast, which was still insensible, and then,
6:36
Speaker 1: being tired, left it sleeping on the invisible pillow and
6:39
Speaker 1: went to bed. I found it hard to sleep. I
6:43
Speaker 1: lay awake, thinking weak, aimless stuff, going over the experiment
6:46
Speaker 1: over and over again, or dreaming feverishly of things growing
6:49
Speaker 1: misty and vanishing. About me, until everything the ground I
6:52
Speaker 1: stood on vanished, and so I came to that sickly
6:55
Speaker 1: falling nightmare one gets about two. The cat began meowing
6:59
Speaker 1: at the room. I tried to hush it by talking
7:02
Speaker 1: to it, and then I decided to turn it out.
7:06
Speaker 1: I remember the shock when I had striking a light.
7:09
Speaker 1: They were just the round eyes, shining green, and nothing
7:12
Speaker 1: round them. I would have given it milk, but I
7:15
Speaker 1: hadn't any It wouldn't be quiet. It just sat down
7:17
Speaker 1: and meowed at the door. I tried to catch it,
7:20
Speaker 1: with the idea of putting it out of the window,
7:22
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't be caught. It vanished. Then it began
7:25
Speaker 1: meowing in different parts of the room. At last I
7:28
Speaker 1: opened the window and made a bustle. I suppose it
7:31
Speaker 1: went out. At last I never saw any more of it. Then,
7:36
Speaker 1: Heaven knows why I fell thinking of my father's funeral
7:39
Speaker 1: again and the dismal windy hillside. Until the day had
7:42
Speaker 1: come I found sleeping was hopeless, and locking my door
7:46
Speaker 1: after me wandered out into the morning streets. You don't
7:50
Speaker 1: mean to say there's an invisible cast at large, said Kemp.
7:54
Speaker 1: If it hasn't been killed, said the invisible man. Why not?
7:59
Speaker 1: Why not, said Kemp, I didn't mean to interrupt. It's
8:04
Speaker 1: very probably been killed. It was alive four days afterwards,
8:07
Speaker 1: I know, and down a grating in Great Titchfield Street
8:10
Speaker 1: because I saw a crowd around the place trying to
8:11
Speaker 1: see whence the meowing came. He was silent for the
8:15
Speaker 1: best part of a minute, then he resumed abruptly. I
8:20
Speaker 1: remember that morning before the change very vividly. I must
8:23
Speaker 1: have gone up Great Portland Street. I remember the barracks
8:27
Speaker 1: in Albany Street and the horse soldiers coming out, and
8:30
Speaker 1: at last I found the summit of Primrose Hill. It
8:33
Speaker 1: was a sunny day in January, one of those sunny,
8:35
Speaker 1: frosty days that come before the snow this year. My
8:39
Speaker 1: weary brain tried to formulate the position, to plot out
8:42
Speaker 1: a plan of action. I was surprised to find now
8:45
Speaker 1: that the prize was within my grasp, how inconclusive its
8:48
Speaker 1: attainment seemed. As a matter of fact, I was worked out.
8:53
Speaker 1: The intense stress of nearly four years continuous work left
8:56
Speaker 1: me incapable of any strength or feeling. I was apathetic,
8:59
Speaker 1: and I tried in vain to recover the enthusiasm of
9:02
Speaker 1: my first inquiries, the passion of discovery that had enabled
9:05
Speaker 1: me to compass even the downfall of my father's gray hairs.
9:09
Speaker 1: Nothing seemed to matter. I saw pretty clearly this was
9:12
Speaker 1: a transient mood due to overwork and want of sleep,
9:15
Speaker 1: and that either by drugs or rest, it would be
9:17
Speaker 1: possible to recover my energies. All I could think clearly
9:21
Speaker 1: was that the thing had to be carried through. The
9:23
Speaker 1: fixed idea still ruled me, and soon for the money
9:27
Speaker 1: I had was almost exhausted. I looked about me at
9:30
Speaker 1: the hillside, with children playing and girls watching them, and
9:33
Speaker 1: tried to think of all the fantastic advantages an invisible
9:36
Speaker 1: man would have in the world. After a time, I
9:40
Speaker 1: crawled home, took some food and a strong dose of strychnine,
9:43
Speaker 1: and went to sleep in my clothes on my unmade bed.
9:46
Speaker 1: Strychnine is a grand tonic ken to take the flabbiness
9:49
Speaker 1: out of a man. It's the devil, said keptiss the
9:52
Speaker 1: Paleolithic in a bottle. I awoke vastly invigorated and rather irritable.
9:58
Speaker 1: You know, ah, I know the stuff. And there was
10:02
Speaker 1: someone rapping at the door. It was my landlord with
10:06
Speaker 1: threats and inquiries. An old Polish jew in a long
10:08
Speaker 1: gray coat and greasy slippers. I had been tormenting a
10:12
Speaker 1: cat in the night. He was sure the old woman's
10:14
Speaker 1: tongue had been busy. He insisted on knowing all about it.
10:18
Speaker 1: The laws in this country against vivisection were very severe.
10:21
Speaker 1: He might be liable. I denied the cat. Then the
10:25
Speaker 1: vibration of the little gas engine could be felt all
10:27
Speaker 1: over the house. He said that was true. Certainly. He
10:31
Speaker 1: edged around me into the room, peering about over his
10:34
Speaker 1: German silver spectacles, and a sudden dread came into my
10:37
Speaker 1: mind that he might carry away something of my secret.
10:41
Speaker 1: I tried to keep between him and the concentrating apparatus
10:44
Speaker 1: I had arranged, and that only made him more curious.
10:47
Speaker 1: What was I doing? Why was I away alone and secretive?
10:50
Speaker 1: Was it legal? Was it dangerous? I paid nothing but
10:53
Speaker 1: the usual rent. His had always been a most respectable
10:57
Speaker 1: house in a disreputable neighborhood. Soddenly, my temper gave way.
11:01
Speaker 1: I told him to get out. He began to protest,
11:04
Speaker 1: to jabber of his right of entry. In a moment
11:07
Speaker 1: I had him by the collar. Something ripped, and he
11:09
Speaker 1: went spinning out into his own passage. I slammed and
11:12
Speaker 1: locked the door and sat down quivering. He made it
11:16
Speaker 1: fuss outside, which I disregarded, and after time he went away.
11:21
Speaker 1: But this brought matters to a crisis. I did not
11:24
Speaker 1: know what he would do, nor even what he had
11:26
Speaker 1: power to do. To move to fresh apartments would have
11:29
Speaker 1: meant delay Altogether. I had barely twenty pounds left in
11:32
Speaker 1: the world, for the most part in a bank, and
11:35
Speaker 1: I could not have thought that vanish it was irresistible.
11:40
Speaker 1: Then there would be an inquiry the sacking of my room.
11:43
Speaker 1: At the thought of the possibility of my work being
11:45
Speaker 1: exposed or interrupted its very climax, I became angry and active.
11:50
Speaker 1: I hurried out with my three books of notes my
11:52
Speaker 1: check book the tramp has them now, and directed them
11:56
Speaker 1: from the nearest post office to a house of call
11:58
Speaker 1: for letters and parcels in Great Portland Street. I tried
12:02
Speaker 1: to go out noiselessly. Coming in, I found my landlord
12:05
Speaker 1: going quietly upstairs. He had heard the door close. I
12:08
Speaker 1: suppose you would have laughed to see him jump aside
12:11
Speaker 1: on the landing as I came tearing up after him.
12:14
Speaker 1: He glad me as I went by him, and I
12:16
Speaker 1: made the house quiver with my slamming of the door.
12:19
Speaker 1: I heard him come shuffling up to my floor, hesitate,
12:21
Speaker 1: and go down. I set to work upon my preparations forthwith.
12:26
Speaker 1: It was all done that evening and night. While I
12:30
Speaker 1: was still sitting under the sickly drowsy influence of the
12:32
Speaker 1: drugs that decolorized blood, there came a repeated knocking at
12:35
Speaker 1: the door. It ceased, footsteps went away and returned, and
12:39
Speaker 1: the knocking was resumed. There was an attempt to push
12:42
Speaker 1: something under the door, a blue paper. Then, in a
12:46
Speaker 1: fit of irritation, I arose and went and flung the
12:49
Speaker 1: door wide open. Now then I said it was my landlord,
12:53
Speaker 1: with a notice of ejectment or something. He held it
12:56
Speaker 1: out to me. Saw something odd about my hands, I expected,
12:59
Speaker 1: and lifted his eyes to my face. For a moment
13:02
Speaker 1: he gaped. Then he gave a sort of inarticulate cry,
13:05
Speaker 1: dropped candle and writ together, and went blundering down the
13:08
Speaker 1: dark passage to the stairs. I shut the door, locked it,
13:12
Speaker 1: and went to the looking glass. Then I understood his terror.
13:17
Speaker 1: My face was white like white stone, but it was
13:21
Speaker 1: all horrible. I had not expected the suffering. A night
13:25
Speaker 1: of racking, anguish sickness and fainting. I set my teeth,
13:29
Speaker 1: though my skin was presently a fire, all my body afire.
13:32
Speaker 1: But I lay there like grim death. I understood now
13:35
Speaker 1: how it was that the cat had howled until I
13:37
Speaker 1: torraformed it. Lucky it was. I lived alone and untended
13:41
Speaker 1: in my room. There were times when I sobbed and
13:43
Speaker 1: groaned and talked, but I stuck to it. I became
13:47
Speaker 1: insensible and woke languid in the darkness. The pain had passed.
13:52
Speaker 1: I thought I was killing myself, and I did not care.
13:55
Speaker 1: I shall never forget that dawn, and the strange horror
13:58
Speaker 1: of seeing that my hands had become a clouded glass,
14:01
Speaker 1: and watching them grow clearer and thinner as the day
14:04
Speaker 1: went by, until at last I could see the sickly
14:06
Speaker 1: disorder of my room through them. Though I closed my
14:10
Speaker 1: transparent eyelids, my limbs became glassy, the bones and arteries faded, vanished,
14:18
Speaker 1: and the little white nerves went last. I gritted my
14:21
Speaker 1: teeth and stayed there to the end. At last, only
14:25
Speaker 1: the dead tips of the finger nails remained pallid and
14:27
Speaker 1: white and the brown stain of some acid upon my fingers.
14:32
Speaker 1: I struggled up. At first, I was as incapable as
14:35
Speaker 1: a swathed infant, stepping with limbs I could not see.
14:39
Speaker 1: I was weak and very hungry. I went and stared
14:42
Speaker 1: at nothing in my shaving glass, at nothing save where
14:45
Speaker 1: an attenuated pigment still remained behind the retina of my eyes.
14:49
Speaker 1: Fainter than mist. I had to hang on to the
14:52
Speaker 1: table and press my forehead against the glass. It was
14:56
Speaker 1: only by frantic effort of will that I dragged myself
14:58
Speaker 1: back to the apparatus and completely the process. I slept
15:02
Speaker 1: during the forenoon, pulling the sheet over my eyes to
15:05
Speaker 1: shut out the light, and about midday I was awakened
15:08
Speaker 1: again by a knocking. My strength had returned. I sat
15:12
Speaker 1: up and listened, and heard a whispering. I sprang to
15:15
Speaker 1: my feet, and as noiselessly as possible, began to detach
15:18
Speaker 1: the connections of my apparatus and to distribute it about
15:21
Speaker 1: the room, so as to destroy the suggestions of its arrangement. Presently,
15:26
Speaker 1: the knocking was renewed, and voices called, first my landlords
15:29
Speaker 1: and then two others. To gain time, I answered them.
15:33
Speaker 1: The invisible, rag and pillow came to hand, and I
15:36
Speaker 1: opened the window and pitched them out onto the cistern cover.
15:39
Speaker 1: As the window opened, a heavy crash came at the door.
15:42
Speaker 1: Someone had charged it with the idea of smashing the lock.
15:45
Speaker 1: But the stout bolts I had screwed up some days
15:48
Speaker 1: before stopped him. That startled me made me angry. I
15:52
Speaker 1: began to tremble and do things hurriedly. I tossed together
15:56
Speaker 1: some loose paper, straw, packing paper, and so forth in
15:58
Speaker 1: the middle of the room, and to and on the gas.
16:01
Speaker 1: Heavy blows began to rain upon the door. I could
16:04
Speaker 1: not find the matches. I beat my hands on the
16:07
Speaker 1: wall with rage. I turned the gas again, stepped out
16:10
Speaker 1: of the window on the cistern cover. They softly lowered
16:13
Speaker 1: the sash and sat down, secure and invisible, but quivering
16:16
Speaker 1: with anger to watch events. They split a panel I saw,
16:20
Speaker 1: and in another moment they had broken away the staples
16:22
Speaker 1: of the bolts and stood in the open doorway. It
16:25
Speaker 1: was the landlord and his two step sons, sturdy young
16:28
Speaker 1: men of three or four, and twenty behind them fluttered
16:31
Speaker 1: the old hag of a woman from downstairs. You may
16:35
Speaker 1: imagine their astonishment to find the room empty. One of
16:38
Speaker 1: the younger men rushed to the window at once, flung
16:41
Speaker 1: it up and stared out his staring eyes and thick lipped,
16:44
Speaker 1: bearded face came a foot from my face. I was
16:47
Speaker 1: half minded to hit his silly countenance, but I arrested
16:50
Speaker 1: my doubled fist. He stared right through me, so did
16:54
Speaker 1: the others as they joined him. The old man went
16:57
Speaker 1: and peered under the bed, and they all made a
16:59
Speaker 1: rush for the hubbard. They had to argue about it
17:02
Speaker 1: in length in Yiddish and cogny English. They concluded I
17:06
Speaker 1: had not answered them, that their imagination had deceived them.
17:10
Speaker 1: A feeling of extraordinary elation took the place of my
17:12
Speaker 1: anger as I sat outside the window and watched these
17:15
Speaker 1: four people. For the old lady came in, glancing suspiciously
17:18
Speaker 1: about like a cat, trying to understand the riddle of
17:22
Speaker 1: my behavior. The old man, so far as I could
17:27
Speaker 1: understand his patois, agreed with the old lady that I
17:30
Speaker 1: was a vivisectionist. The sons protested in garbled English that
17:34
Speaker 1: I was an electrician, and appealed to the dynamos and radiators.
17:37
Speaker 1: They were all nervous about my arrival, although I found
17:41
Speaker 1: subsequently that they had bolted the front door. The old
17:44
Speaker 1: lady peered into the cupboard and under the bed, and
17:47
Speaker 1: one of the young men pushed up the register and
17:48
Speaker 1: stared at the chimney. One of my fellow lodgers, a
17:52
Speaker 1: costermonger who shared the opposite room with a butcher, appeared
17:55
Speaker 1: on the landing, and he was called in and told
17:57
Speaker 1: incoherent things. It occurred to me that the radiators, if
18:02
Speaker 1: they fell into the hands of some acute, well educated person,
18:05
Speaker 1: would give me away too much. And watching my opportunity,
18:09
Speaker 1: I came into the room and tilted one of the
18:10
Speaker 1: little dynamos off its fellow on which it was standing,
18:13
Speaker 1: and smashed both apparatus. Then, while they were trying to
18:17
Speaker 1: explain the smash, I dodged out of the room and
18:19
Speaker 1: went softly downstairs. I went into one of the sitting
18:23
Speaker 1: rooms and waited until they came down, still speculating and argumentative,
18:27
Speaker 1: all a little disappointed at finding no horrors, and all
18:30
Speaker 1: a little puzzled how they stood legally towards me. Then
18:33
Speaker 1: I slipped up again with a box of matches, fired
18:36
Speaker 1: my heap of paper and rubbish, put the chairs and bedding,
18:39
Speaker 1: thereby led the gash to the affair by the means
18:41
Speaker 1: of an India rubber tube, and waving a farewell to
18:44
Speaker 1: the room, left it for the last time. You fired
18:48
Speaker 1: the house, exclaimed Kemp fired the house. It was the
18:53
Speaker 1: only way to cover my trail, and no doubt it was.
18:56
Speaker 1: In short I slipped the bolts of the front door
18:59
Speaker 1: quietly and went out into the street. I was invisible,
19:02
Speaker 1: and I was only just beginning to realize the extraordinary
19:05
Speaker 1: advantage my invisibility gave me. My head was already teeming
19:09
Speaker 1: with plans of all the wild and wonderful things I
19:11
Speaker 1: now had impunity to do. End of Chapter twenty