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The Invisible Man Chapter 20 · The H. G. Wells Library

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