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The Invisible Man · The Invisible Man

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  The Invisible Matten by H. G. Wells, Chapter one, The Strange
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  Man's Arrival. The Stranger came early in February one wintry day, through a
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  biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over
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  the down, Walking from Bramblehurst Railway station and carrying a little black portmanteau in
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  his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and
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  the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but the
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  shiny tip of his nose. The snow had piled itself against his shoulders and
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  chest, and added a white crest to the burden he carried. He staggered
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  into the coach and horses more dead than alive, and flung his portmanteau down
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  a fire. He cried, in the name of human charity, a room
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  and a fire. He stamped and shook the snow from off himself in the
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  bar, and followed Missus Hall into her guest parlor to strike his bargain.
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  And with that much introduction, that and a couple of sovereigns flung upon the
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  table, he took up his quarters in the inn. Missus Hall lit the
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  fire and left him there while she went to prepare him a meal with her
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  own hands. A guest to stop at iping in the winter time was an
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  unheard of piece of luck, let alone a guest who was no haggler,
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  and she resolved to show herself worthy of her good fortune. As soon as
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  the bacon was well under way, and Milly her lymphatic aid had been brisked
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  up a bit by a few deftly chosen expressions of contempt, she carried the
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  cloth, plates and glasses into the parlor and began to lay them with the
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  utmost igler. Although the fire was burning up briskly. She was surprised to
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  see that her visitor still wore his hat and coat, standing with his back
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  to her and staring out of the window at the falling snow in the yard.
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  His gloved hands were clasped behind him, and he seemed to be lost
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  in thought. She noticed that the melting snows that still sprinkled his shoulders dripped
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  upon her carpet. Can I take your hat and coat, sir, she
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  said, and give them a good dry in the kitchen, No, he
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  said, without turning. She was not sure she had heard him, and
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  was about to repeat her question. He turned his head and looked at her
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  over his shoulder. I prefer to keep them on, he said, with
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  emphasis, and she noticed that he wore big blue spectacles with sidelights, and
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  had a bush side whisker over his coat collar that completely hid his cheeks and
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  face. Very well, sir, she said, as you like. In
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  a bit, the room will be warmer. He made no answer and had
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  turned his face away from her again, and missus Hall, feeling that her
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  conversational advances were ill timed, laid the rest of the table things in a
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  quick staccato and whisked out of the room. When she returned, he was
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  still standing there like a man of stone, his back hunched, his collar
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  turned up, his dripping hat brim turned down, hiding his face and ears
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  completely. She put down the eggs and bacon with conscer dable emphasis and called,
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  rather than said, to him, your lunch is served. Her Thank
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  you, he said at the same time, and did not stir until she
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  was closing the door. Then he swung round and approached the table with a
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  certain eager quickness. As she went behind the bar to the kitchen, she
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  heard a sound repeated at regular intervals cherk, cherk, cherk. It went
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  the sound of a spoon being rapidly whisked around a basin. That girl,
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  she said there, I'd clean forgot it, it's her being so long.
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  And while she herself finished mixing the mustard, she gave Milly a few verbal
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  stabs for her excessive slowness. She had cooked the ham and eggs, laid
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  the table, and done everything while Milly help indeed, had only succeeded in
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  delaying the mustard and him a new guest and wanting to stay. Then she
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  filled the mustard pot, and putting it with a certain stateliness upon a golden
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  black tea tray, carried it into the parlor. She rapped and entered promptly.
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  As she did so, her visitor moved quickly, so that she got
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  but a glimpse of a white object disappearing behind the table. It would seem
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  he was picking something from the floor. She rapped down the mustard pot on
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  the table. Then she noticed the overcoat and hat had been taken off and
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  put over a chair in front of the fire, and a pair of wet
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  boots threatened rust to her steel fender. She went to these things resolutely.
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  I suppose I may have them to dry now, she said, in a
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  voice that brooked no denial. Leave the hat, said her visitor in a
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  muffled voice, and turning she saw he had raised his head and was sitting
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  and looking at her. For a moment she stood gaping at him, too
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  surprised to speak. He held a white cloth. It was a serviette he
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  had brought with him over the lower part of his face, so that his
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  mouth and jaws were completely hidden, and that was the reason of his muffled
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  voice. But it was not that which startled missus Hall. It was the
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  fact that all his forehead above his blue glasses was covered by a white bandage,
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  and that another covered his ears, leaving not a scrap of his face
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  exposed, excepting only his pink peaked nose. It was bright, pink and
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  shiny, just as it had been at first. He wore a dark brown
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  velvet jacket with a high black linen lined collar, turned up about his neck.
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  The thick black hair escaping as it could below and between the cross bandages,
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  projected in curious tails and horns, giving him the strangest appearance conceivable.
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  This muffled and bandaged head was so unlike what she had anticipated, that for
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  a moment she was rigid. He did not remove the serviette, but remained
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  holding it, as she saw now, with a brown gloved hand and regarding
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  her with his inscrutable blue glasses. Leave the hat, he said, speaking
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  very distinctly through the white cloth. Her nerves began to recover from the shock
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  that they had received. She placed the hat on the chair again by the
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  fire. I I didn't know, sir, she began that, and she
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  stopped, embarrassed. Thank you, he said, dryly, glancing from her
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  to the door, then at her again. I'll have them nicely dried,
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  so at once, she said, and carried his clothes out of the room.
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  She glanced at his white swathed head and blue goggles again as she was
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  going out of the door, but his napkin was still in front of his
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  face. She shivered a little as she closed the door behind her, and
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  her face was eloquent of her surprising perplexity. I never she whispered. There.
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  She went quite softly to the kitchen and was too preoccupied to ask merely
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  what she was messing about with now. When she got there, the visitor
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  sat and listened to her retreating feet. He glanced inquiringly at the window before
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  he removed his serviette and was resumed his meal. He took a mouthful,
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  glanced suspiciously at the window, took another mouthful, then rose, and,
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  taking the serviette in his hand, walked across the room and pulled the blind
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  down to the top of the white muslin that obscured the lower panes. This
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  left the room in a twilight. This done, he returned with an easier
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  air to the table than his meal. The poor soles had an accident,
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  or an operation or something, said missus Hall. What a turn, then,
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  bandages did give me? To be sure, she put on some more
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  coal, unfolded the clothes horse, and extended the traveler's coat upon this,
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  and they goggles while he looked more like a diving helmet than a human man.
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  She hung his muffler on a corner of the horse, and holding that
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  handkerchief over his mouth all the time talking through it. Perhaps his mouth was
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  hurt too, Maybe she turned round as one who suddenly remembers. Bless my
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  soul alive, she said, going off at a tangent. Ain't you done
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  them tat as yet? Milly when missus Hall went to clear away the stranger's
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  lunch, her idea that his mouth must also have been cut or disfigured in
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  the accident she supposed him to have suffered was confirmed, for he was smoking
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  a pipe, and all the time that she was in the room, he
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  never loosened the silk muffler he had wrapped around the lower part of his face
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  to put the mouthpiece to his lips. Yet it was not forgetfulness, for
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  she saw he glanced at it as it smolded out. He sat in the
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  corner with his back to the window blind and spoke, now, having eaten
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  and drunk, and being comfortably warmed through with less aggressive brevity than before.
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  The reflection of the fire lent a kind of red animation to his big spectacles
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  that they had lacked. Hitherto, I have some luggage, she said at
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  Bramblehurst's station, and he asked her how he could have its sent. He
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  bowed his bandaged head quite politely in acknowledgment of her explanation to morrow. He
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  said, there is no speedier delivery, and seemed quite disappointed when she answered
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  no. Was she quite sure no man with a trap could go over missus
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  Hall nothing loth, answered his questions and developed a conversation. It's a steep
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  road by the down, sir, she said, in answer to the question
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  about a trap, and then, snatching at an opening, said it was
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  there. A carriage was up settled a year ago or more. A gentleman
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  killed besides his coachman. Accidents, sir, happen in a moment, don't
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  they. But the visitor was not to be drawn so easily they do,
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  he said, through his muffler, eyeing her quietly through his impenetrable glasses.
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  But they take long enough to get well, don't they. There was my
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  sister's son, Tom Jest cut his arm with a scythe and tumbled on it
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  in the ayfield, and blessed me. He was three months tied up her.
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  You hardly believe it. It's regular given a dread of a scythe sir,
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  I can quite understand that, said the visitor. He was afraid one
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  time that he'd have to have an operation. He was that, sir.
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  The visitor laughed abruptly, a bark of a laugh that he seemed to bite
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  and kill in his mouth. Was he? He said, he was,
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  sir, And no laughing matter to them, as had for doing for him,
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  as I had my sister being took up with her little one so much.
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  There was bandages to do, sir, and bandages to undo. So
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  that if I might be so bold as to say, sir, will you
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  get me some matches? Said the visitor quite abruptly. My pipe is out,
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  missus Hall was pulled up suddenly. It was certainly rude of him.
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  After telling him all she had done, she gasped at him for a moment,
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  and then remembered the two sovereigns, and she went for the matches.
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  Thanks, he said concisely as she put them down, and turned his shoulder
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  upon her and stared out of the window again. It was altogether too discouraging.
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  Evidently he was sensitive on the topic of operations and bandages. She did
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  not make so bold as to say, however, after all, but his
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  snubbing way had irritated her, and Milly had a hot time of it that
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  afternoon. The visitor remained in the parlor until four o'clock, without giving the
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  ghost of an excuse for an intrusion. For the most part, he was
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  quite still during that time, As it would seem he sat in the growing
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  darkness, smoking in the firelight, perhaps dozing. Once or twice. A
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  curious listener might have heard him at the coals, and for the space of
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  five minutes he was audible, pacing the room. He seemed to be talking
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  to himself. Then the arm chair creaked as he sat down again. Chapter
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  two, Mister Teddy Henfrey's first impressions. At four o'clock, when it was
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  fairly dark and Missus Hall was screwing up her courage to go in and ask
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  her visitor if he would take some tea, Teddy Henfrey, the clock dropper,
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  came into the bar. My sakes, Missus Hall said he but this
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  is terrible weather for thin boots. The snow outside was falling faster. Missus
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  Hall agreed, and then noticed he had his bag with him. Now you're
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  here, mister Teddy said she. I'd be glad if you'd give the old
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  clock in the par a bit of a look tis going, and it strikes
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  well and hearty. But the hour hand won't do nothing but point at six
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  and leading the way, She went across to the parlor door and rapped and
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  entered her visitors. She saw as she opened the door was seated in the
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  arm chair before the fire, dozing, it would seem, with his bandaged
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  head drooping on one side. The only light in the room was the red
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  glow from the fire, which lit his eyes like adverse railway signals, but
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  left his downcast face in darkness, and the scanty vestiges of the day that
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  came in through the open door. Everything was ruddy, shadowy and indistinct to
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  her, though more so since she had just been lighting the bar lamp and
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  her eyes were dazzled. But for a second it seemed to her that the
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  man she looked at had an enormous mouth wide open, a vast and incredible
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  mouth that swallowed the whole of the lower portion of his face. It was
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  the sensation of a moment, the white bound head, the monstrous goggle eyes,
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  and this huge yawn below it. Then he stirred, started up in
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  his chair, put up his hand. She opened the door wide so that
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  the room was lighter, and she saw him more clearly with the muffler held
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  up to his face, just as she had seen him hold the serviette before
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  the shadows, she fancied had tricked her. Would you mind, sir,
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  this manner coming to look at the clock, sir, she said, recovering
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  from the momentary shock. Look at the clock, he said, staring round
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  in a drowsing manner and speaking over his head, and then getting more fully
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  awake. Certainly, Missus Hall went away to get a lamp, and he
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  rose and stretched himself. Then came the light, and mister Teddy Henfry,
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  entering, was confronted by this bandaged person. He was, he says,
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  taken aback good afternoon, said the stranger, regarding him as mister Henfrey says,
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  with a vivid sense of the dark spectacles like a lobster. I hope,
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  said mister Henfrey. That it's no intrusion. Uh, none, whatever,
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  said the stranger, though I understand, he said, turning to missus
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  Hall, that this room is really to be mine for my own private use,
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  I thought, sir, said Missus Hall, you'd prefer the clock,
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  certainly, said the stranger. Certainly, but as a rule I like to
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  be alone and undisturbed. But I'm really glad to have the clock, seemed
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  to he said, seeing a certain hesitation in mister Henfrey's manner, very glad.
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  Mister Henfrey had intended to apologize and withdraw, but this anticipation reassured him.
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  The stranger turned round with his back to the fireplace and put his hands
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  behind his back, and presently he said, when the clock mending is over,
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  I think I should like to have some tea, But not till the
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  clock mending is over. Missus Hall was about to leave the room. She
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  made no conversational advances this time, because she did not want to be snubbed
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  in front of mister Henry. When her visitor asked her if she had made
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  any arrangements about his boxes at Bramblehurst, she told him she had mentioned the
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  matter to the postman and that the carrier could bring them over on the morrow.
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  You are certain that that is the earliest, he said. She was
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  certain, with a marked coldness. I should explain, he added, what
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  I was really too cold and fatigued to do before that. I am an
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  experimental investigator, indeed, sir, said Missus Hall. Much impressed. And
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  my baggage contains apparatus and appliances very useful things. Indeed they are, sir,
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  said Missus Hall, and I am very naturally anxious to get on with
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  my inquiries. Of course, Sir, my reason for coming to iping he
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  proceeded with a certain deliberation of manner was a desire for solitude. I do
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  not wish to be disturbed in my work. In addition to my work,
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  an accident, I thought as much, said Missus Hall to herself. An
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  accident necessitates a certain retirement. My eyes are sometimes so weak and painful that
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  I have shut myself up in the dark for hours together. Lock myself up
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  sometimes now and then, not at present, certainly, but at such times
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  the slightest disturbance, the entry of a stranger into the room, is a
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  source of excruciating annoyance to me. It is well these things should be understood,
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  certainly, sir, said missus Hall. And if I might make so
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  bold as to ask that, I think is all, said the stranger,
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  with that quietly irresistible air of finality he could assume at will. Missus Hall
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  reserved her question and sympathy for a better occasion. After Missus Hall had left
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  the room, he remained standing in front of the fire glaring. So mister
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  Henry puts it at the clock mending. Mister Henfrey not only took off the
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  hands of the clock and the face, but extracted the works, and he
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  tried to work in a slow and quiet and unassuming manner as possible. He
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  worked with the lamp close to him, and the green shade threw a brilliant
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  light upon his hands and upon the frame and wheels, and left the rest
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  of the room shadowy. When he looked up, colored patches swam in his
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  eyes. Being constitutionally of a curious nature, he had removed the works a
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  quite unnecessary proceeding, with the idea of delaying his departure and perhaps falling into
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  conversation with the stranger. But the stranger stood there, perfectly, silent and
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  still, so still it got on Henfrey's nerves. He felt alone in the
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  room and looked up, and there, gray and dim was the bandaged head
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  and huge blue lenses, staring fixedly, with a mist of green spots drifting
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  in front of them. It was so uncanny to Henfrey that for a minute
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  they remained staring blankly at one another. Then Henry looked down again, very
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  uncomfortable position. One would like to say something, should he remark that the
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  weather was very cold for the time of the year. He looked up,
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  as if to take aim with that introductory shot the weather. He began,
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  why don't you finish and go? Said the rigid figure, evidently in a
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  state of painfully suppressed rage. All you've got to do is fix the hour
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  hand on its axle. You're simply humbugging, certainly, sir. One minute
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  more I overlooked, and mister Henry finished and went. But he was feeling
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  excessively annoyed. Damn it, said mister Henfrey to himself, trudging down the
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  village through the thawing snow. A man must do o'clock at times? Surely?
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  And again can't a man look at you? Ugly? And yet again
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  seemingly not? If the police was wanting you, you wouldn't be more wrapped
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  and bandaged. At Gleaston's corner he saw Hall, who had recently married the
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  stranger's hostess at the Coach and Horses, and who now drove the iping conveyance
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  when occasional people required it to cid abridge junction, coming towards him. On
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  his return from that place, Hall had evidently been stopping a bit at Ciderbridge,
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  to judge by his driving, How do Teddy, he said, passing
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  You've got a rumman up at home, said Teddy Hall, very socially pulled
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  up? Was that? He said, rum looking customer stopping at the coach
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  and horses, said Teddy, my sakes, and he proceeded to give Hall
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  a vivid description of his grotesque guest. Looks a bit like a disguise,
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  don't it. I'd like to see a man's face if I had him stopping
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  in my place, said Henry. But women are that trustful when strangers are
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  concerned. He's took your rooms and he ain't even given a name. Hall,
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  You don't say so, said Hall, who was a man of sluggish
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  apprehension. Yes, said Teddy. By the week. Wherever he is,
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  you can't get rid of him under the week. And he's got a lot
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  of luggage coming tomorrow, so he says, let's hope it won't be stones
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  in boxes. Howl. He told Hall how his aunt at Hastings had been
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  swindled by a stranger with empty portmanteau. Altogether, he left Hall vaguely suspicious.
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  Get up, old girl, said Hall. I suppose I must see
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  about this. Teddy trudged on his way with his mind considerably relieved, instead
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  of seeing about it. However, Hall, on his return was severely rated
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  by his wife On the length of time he had spent in Ciderbridge, and
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  his mild inquiries were answered snappishly and in a manner not to the point.
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  But the seed of suspicion Teddy had sown germinated in the mind of mister Hall.
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  In spite of these discouragements. You win don't know anything, said mister
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  Hall. Resolved to ascertain more about the personality of his guests at the earliest
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  possible opportunity, and after the stranger had gone to bed, which he did
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  about half past nine, mister Hall went very aggressively into the parlor and looked
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  very hard at his wife's furniture, just to show that the stranger wasn't master
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  there, and scrutinized closely and a little contentiously a sheet of mathematical computations the
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  stranger had left. When retiring for the night, he instructed Missus Hall to
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  look very closely at the stranger's luggage when it came the next day. You
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  mind your own business, hall said Missus Hall, and I'll mind mine.
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  She was all the more inclined to snap it Hall, because the stranger was
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  undoubtedly an unusually strange sort of stranger, and she was by no means assured
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  about him in her own mind. In the middle of the night, she
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  woke up dreaming of huge white heads like turnips that came trailing after it at
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  the end of interminable necks, and with vast black eyes. But being a
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  sensible woman, she subdued her terrors and turned over and went to sleep again.
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  End of Chapter two, Chapter three, The thousand and one Bottles.
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  So it was that on the twenty ninth day of February, at the beginning
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  of the thaw, this singular person fell out of infinity into Iping village.
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  Next day his luggage arrived through the slush, and very remarkable luggage it was.
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  There were a couple of trunks, indeed such as a rational man might
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  need. But in addition there were a box of books, big fat books,
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  of which some were just in an incomprehensible handwriting, and a dozen or
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  more crates, boxes and cases containing objects packed in straw. As it seemed
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  a haul tugging with a casual curiosity at the straw glass bottles, the stranger,
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  muffled in hat, coat, gloves and wrapper, came out impatiently to
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  meet Fearnside's cart, while Hall, who was having a word or so of
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  gossip preparatory to helping them in out. He came, not noticing Fearnside's dog,
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  who was sniffing in a diletant spirit at Hall's legs. Come along with
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  those boxes, he said, I've been waiting long enough, and he came
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  down the steps towards the tail of the cart, as if to lay hands
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  on the smaller crate. No sooner had fear Inside's dog caught sight of him,
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  however, than it began to bristle and growl savagely, and when he
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  rushed down the steps, it gave an undecided hop, and then sprang straight
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  at his hand. Whew, cried Hall, jumping back, for he was
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  no hero with dogs, and fear Inside howled lie down and snatched his whip.
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  They saw the dog's teeth had slipped the hand, heard a kick,
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  saw the dog excute a flanking jub and get home on the stranger's leg,
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  and heard the rip of his trousering. Then the finer end of fear Inside's
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  whip reached his property, and the dog, yelping with dismay, retreated under
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  the wheels of the wagon. All the business of a swift half minute.
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  No one spoke, Everyone shouted. The stranger glanced swiftly at his torn glove
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  and at his leg, made as if he would stoop to the latter,
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  then turned and rushed swiftly up the steps into the inn. They heard him
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  go headlong across the passage and up the uncarpeted steps to his bedroom. You
• 24:19
  brute, you, said Fearnside, climbing off the wagon with his whip in
• 24:22
  his hand, while the dog watched him through the wheel. Come here,
• 24:26
  said Fearnside. You'd better Hall had stood gaping. He was bit, said
• 24:32
  Hall, I'd better go to see to him, and he trotted after the
• 24:36
  stranger. He met missus Hall in the passage. Carriers dug he said,
• 24:41
  bitten. He went straight upstairs, and the stranger's door, being ajar,
• 24:45
  he pushed it open and was entering without any ceremony, Being of a naturally
• 24:49
  sympathetic turn of mind. The blind was down and the room dim. He
• 24:56
  caught a glimpse of a most singular thing, what seemed handless arm waving towards
• 25:00
  him, and a face of three huge indeterminate spots on white, very like
• 25:04
  the face of a pale pansy. Then he was struck violently in the chest,
• 25:08
  hurled back, and the door slammed in his face and locked. It
• 25:12
  was so rapid that he gave him no time to observe a waving of indecipherable
• 25:18
  shapes, a blow, and a concussion. There he stood on the dark
• 25:22
  little landing, wondering what it might have been that he had seen. A
• 25:27
  couple of minutes later he rejoined the little group that had formed outside the coach
• 25:30
  and horses. There was fear inside, telling about it all over again for
• 25:34
  the second time. There was missus Hall saying his dog didn't have no business
• 25:38
  to bite her guests. There was Huckster, the general dealer from over the
• 25:41
  road, interrogative, and Sandy Wedges from the forge judicial, besides women and
• 25:48
  children, all of them saying fatuities. I wouldn't let him bite me.
• 25:52
  I knows it hasn't right to have such dogs. What are he biten for?
• 25:56
  Then? And so forth, Miss Hall, staring at them from the
• 26:00
  steps and listening, found it incredible that he had seen anything so very remarkable
• 26:04
  happen at says, besides, his vocabulary was altogether too limited to express his
• 26:10
  impressions. He don't want no help, He says he said, in answer
• 26:15
  to his wife's inquiry, we'd better be taken of his luggage in yourtabit quterized
• 26:21
  at once, said mister Huckster, especially if it's all inflamed, I'd shoot,
• 26:23
  and That's what I'd do, said her lady in the group. Suddenly
• 26:27
  the dog began growling again. Come along, cried an angry voice in the
• 26:32
  doorway, and there stood the muffled stranger, with his collar turned up and
• 26:34
  his hat brim bent down. The sooner you get those things in, the
• 26:37
  better I'll be pleased. It is stated by an anonymous bystander that his trousers
• 26:44
  and gloves had been changed. Was you urt, sir, said fearnside.
• 26:48
  I'm rare sorry that I'd not a bit, said the stranger. Never broke
• 26:52
  the skin. Hurry up with those things, he then swore to himself,
• 26:56
  said mister Hall asserts directly. The first crate was in in accordance with his
• 27:03
  directions, carried into the parlor. The stranger flung himself upon it with extraordinary
• 27:07
  eagerness and began to unpack it, scattering the straw with an utter disregard of
• 27:11
  missus Hall's carpet, and from it, he began to produce bottles, little
• 27:17
  fat bottles containing powders, small and slender bottles containing colored and white fluids,
• 27:22
  fluted blue bottles, labeled poison, bottles with round bodies and slender necks,
• 27:27
  large green glass bottles, large white glass bottles, bottles with glass stoppers and
• 27:32
  frosted labels, bottles with fine corks, bottles with bungs, bottles with wooden
• 27:37
  caps, wine bottles, salad oil bottles, putting them in rows on the
• 27:41
  chiffonnier, on the mantle, on the table, under the window, round
• 27:45
  the floor, on the bookshelf, everywhere. The chemist's shop in Bramblehurst could
• 27:49
  not boast half so many. Quite a sight. It was. Crate after
• 27:53
  crate yielded bottles, until all six were empty and the table high with straw.
• 27:59
  The only things that came out of these crates beside the bottles were a
• 28:02
  number of test tubes and a carefully packed balance, And directly the crates were
• 28:07
  unpacked. The stranger went to the window and set to work, not troubling
• 28:11
  in the least about the litter of straw, the fire which had gone out,
• 28:15
  the box of books outside, nor for the trunks and other luggage that
• 28:18
  had gone upstairs. When missus Hall took his dinner to him, he was
• 28:22
  already so absorbed in his work pouring little drops out of the bottles in test
• 28:27
  tubes, that he did not hear her until she had swept away the bulk
• 28:30
  of the straw and put the tray on the table with some little emphasis,
• 28:34
  perhaps seeing the state that her floor was in. Then he half turned his
• 28:38
  head and immediately turned it away again. But she saw he had removed his
• 28:44
  glasses. They were beside him on the table, and it seemed to her
• 28:47
  that his eye sockets were extraordinarily hollow. He put on his spectacles again,
• 28:52
  and then turned and faced her. She was about to complain of the straw
• 28:56
  on the floor when he anticipated her. I wish you wouldn't come in without
• 29:00
  knocking, he said, in the tone of abnormal exasperation that seemed so characteristic
• 29:04
  of him. I noted, but seemingly perhaps you did. But in my
• 29:10
  investigations, my really very urgent and necessary investigations, the slightest disturbance the jar
• 29:17
  of a door. I must ask you, certainly, sir, you can
• 29:21
  turn the lock if you're like that, You know, any time a very
• 29:26
  good idea, said the stranger. This straw, sir, If I can
• 29:30
  be so bold as to remark, don't if the straw makes trouble, put
• 29:33
  it down in the bill. And he mumbled at her words suspiciously like curses.
• 29:41
  He was so odd standing there, so aggressive and explosive, bottle in
• 29:45
  one hand and test tube in the other, that Missus Hall was quite alarmed.
• 29:51
  But she was a resolute woman, in which case I should like to
• 29:53
  know her. What you consider a shilling? Put down a shilling. Surely
• 29:57
  a shilling's enough, So be it, said missus Hall, taking up the
• 30:02
  tablecloth and beginning to spread it over the table. If you're satisfied, of
• 30:06
  course, he turned and sat down with his coat collar to water. All
• 30:11
  the afternoon he worked with the door locked, and, as missus Hall testifies,
• 30:15
  for the most part, in silence. But once there was a concussion
• 30:19
  and a sound of bottles ringing together as though the table had been hit,
• 30:22
  and the smash of a bottle it flung violently down, and then a rapid
• 30:27
  pacing athwart the room. Fearing something was the matter, she went to the
• 30:33
  door and listened, not caring to knock. I can't go on, he
• 30:37
  was raving, I can't go on three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand.
• 30:42
  The huge multitude cheated all my life. It may take me patience, patience
• 30:48
  indeed full fool. There was a noise of hob nails on the bricks in
• 30:55
  the bar, and missus Hall had very reluctantly to leave the rest of his
• 30:57
  soliloquy. When she returned, the room was silent again, save for the
• 31:03
  faint crepitation of his chair and the occasional clink of a bottle. It was
• 31:07
  all over. The stranger had resumed his work. When she took in his
• 31:12
  tea, she saw broken glass in the corner of the room, under the
• 31:15
  concave mirror, and a golden stain that had been carelessly wiped. She called
• 31:21
  attention to it. Put it down in the bill, snapped her visitor.
• 31:26
  For God's sake, don't worry me if there's damage done. Put it down
• 31:29
  in the bill, and he went on ticking a list in the exercise book
• 31:33
  before him. I'll tell you something, said Fernside mysteriously. It was late
• 31:38
  in the afternoon, and they were in a little beer shop of eyepink hanger.
• 31:42
  Well, said Teddy Henry. This chap, you're speaking of what my
• 31:47
  dog bit. Well, he's black leastways his legs are I seed, through
• 31:51
  the terear of his trousers and the tear of his glove. You'd have expected
• 31:55
  a sort of pinky to show, wouldn't you. Well, there wasn't none,
• 31:57
  just blackness. I tell you he's as black as my hat, my
• 32:02
  sex, said Henfrey. It's a rummy case altogether. Why his nose is
• 32:06
  as pink as paint, that's true, said Vernside. I knows that,
• 32:10
  and I tell you why. I'm thinking that man's a pie bold teddy,
• 32:14
  black here and white there in patches, and he's ashamed of it. He's
• 32:17
  a kind of art breed, and the colors come off patchy instead of mixing.
• 32:21
  I've heard of such things before, and it's the common way with horses,
• 32:23
  as anyone can see. Chapter four, mister Cuss interviews the Stranger.
• 32:35
  I have told the circumstances of the Stranger's arrival in Iping with a certain fullness
• 32:39
  of detail, in order that the curious impression he created may be understood by
• 32:44
  the reader. But accepting two odd incidents, the circumstances of his stay until
• 32:49
  the extraordinary day of the club festival may be passed over very cursorily. There
• 32:53
  were a number of skirmishes with missus Hall on matters of domestic discipline, but
• 32:58
  in every case until late eighth, when the first signs of penury began,
• 33:01
  he overwrote her by the easy expedient of an extra payment. Hall did not
• 33:07
  like him, and whenever he dared, he talked of the advisability of getting
• 33:12
  rid of him. But he showed his dislike chiefly by concealing it ostentatiously and
• 33:17
  avoiding his visitor as much as possible. Wait till the summer, said missus
• 33:22
  Hall, sagely, when the artists are beginning to come. Then we'll see.
• 33:27
  He may be a bit overbearing, but Bill's settled punctual. Is Bill
• 33:30
  settled punctual? Whatever you'd like to say. The stranger did not go to
• 33:36
  church, and indeed made no difference between Sunday and the irreligious days, even
• 33:40
  in costume. He worked, as Missus Hall thought, very fitfully. Some
• 33:45
  days he would come down early and be continuously busy. On others he would
• 33:50
  rise late, pace his room, fretting audibly for hours together, smoke sleep
• 33:53
  in the armchair by the fire, communication with the world beyond the village,
• 33:59
  he had none. His temper continued very uncertain. For the most part.
• 34:02
  His manner was that of a man suffering under almost unendurable provocation, and once
• 34:07
  or twice things were snapped, torn, crushed, or broken in spasmodic gusts
• 34:13
  of violence. He seemed under a chronic irritation of the greatest intensity. His
• 34:19
  habit of talking to himself in a low voice grew steadily upon him. But
• 34:22
  though missus Hall listened conscientiously, as she could make neither head nor tail of
• 34:27
  what she heard. He rarely went abroad by daylight, but at twilight he
• 34:32
  would go out, muffled up invisibly, whether the weather were cold or not,
• 34:37
  and he chose the loneliest paths and those most overshadowed by trees and banks.
• 34:42
  His goggling spectacles and ghastly bandaged face under the penthouse of his hat came
• 34:46
  with a disagreeable suddenness out of the darkness upon one or two home going laborers,
• 34:51
  and Teddy Henry, tumbling out of the scarlet coat one night at half
• 34:54
  past nine, was scared shamefully by the stranger's skull like head. He was
• 34:59
  walking, hat in hand lit by the sudden light of the opened inn door.
• 35:05
  Such children as saw him at nightfall dreamt of bogies. And it seemed
• 35:08
  doubtful whether he disliked boys more than they disliked him, or the reverse,
• 35:13
  But there was certainly a vivid enough dislike on either side. It was inevitable
• 35:19
  that a person of so remarkable an appearance and bearing should form a frequent topic
• 35:22
  in such a village as iping opinion was greatly divided about his occupation. Missus
• 35:30
  Hall was sensitive on the point. When questioned, she explained very carefully that
• 35:34
  he was an experimental investigator, going gingerly over the syllables as one who dreads
• 35:38
  pitfalls. When asked what an experimental investigator was, she would say, with
• 35:45
  a touch of superiority, that most educated people knew such things as that,
• 35:49
  and would thus explain that he'd discovered things. Her visitor had had an accident,
• 35:53
  she said, which temporarily discolored his face and hands, and being of
• 35:58
  a sensitive disposition, he was averse to any public notice of the fact.
• 36:04
  Out of her hearing, there was a view largely entertained that he was a
• 36:07
  criminal trying to escape from justice by wrapping himself up so as to conceal himself
• 36:12
  altogether from the eye of the police. This idea sprang from the brain of
• 36:15
  mister Teddy Henfrey. No crime of any magnitude dating from the middle or end
• 36:20
  of February was known to have occurred. Elaborated in the imagination of mister Gould,
• 36:24
  the probationary assistant in the National School. This theory took the form that
• 36:29
  the stranger was an anarchist in disguise preparing explosives, and he resolved to undertake
• 36:35
  such detective operations as his time permitted. These consisted, for the most part,
• 36:39
  in looking very hard at the stranger whenever they met, or in asking
• 36:43
  people who had never seen the stranger leading questions about him, but he detected
• 36:47
  nothing. Another school of opinion followed mister Fernside and either accepted the Piebald view
• 36:54
  or some modification of it, as for instance, Silas Durgan, who was
• 36:58
  heard to assert, if he chose to show himself at fairs, he'll make
• 37:01
  his fortune in no time, and being a bit of a theologian, compared
• 37:05
  the stranger to the man with the one talent. Yet another view explained the
• 37:09
  entire man by regarding the stranger as a harmless lunatic that had the advantage of
• 37:15
  accounting for everything straight away. Between these main groups there were waverers and compromises.
• 37:22
  Sussex folk have few superstitions, and it was only after the events of
• 37:25
  early April that the thought of the supernatural was first whispered in the village.
• 37:30
  Even then it was only credited among the womenfolk. But whatever they thought of
• 37:37
  him, people in iping on the whole agreed in disliking him. His irritability,
• 37:43
  though it might have been comprehensible to an urban brain worker, was an
• 37:45
  amazing thing to these quiet Sussex villagers. The frantic gesticulations they surprised now and
• 37:52
  then, the headlong pace after nightfall that swept him upon them round quiet corners,
• 37:58
  the inhuman bludgeoning of all tense of advances of curiosity, the taste for
• 38:01
  twilight that led to the closing of doors, the pulling of blinds, the
• 38:05
  extinction of candles and lamps. Who could agree with such goings on, they
• 38:10
  drew aside as he passed down the village, and when he had gone by,
• 38:15
  young humorists would go up with coat collars and down with hat brims,
• 38:19
  and go pacing nervously after him, in imitation of his occult bearing. There
• 38:23
  was a song popular at that time called the Bogie Man. Miss Satchell sang
• 38:28
  it in the schoolroom concert in aid of the church lamps, and thereafter,
• 38:31
  whenever one of the two villages were gathered together and the stranger appeared, a
• 38:36
  bar or so of this tune, more or less sharp or flat, was
• 38:39
  whistled in the midst of them. Also, belated little children would call bogie
• 38:45
  Man after him and make off tremulously elated. Cuss the general practitioner was devoured
• 38:52
  by curiosity. The bandages excited his professional interest. The report of the thousand
• 38:58
  and one bottles aroused his jealous regard. All through April and May he coveted
• 39:04
  an opportunity of talking to the stranger, and at last, towards whitsuntide,
• 39:07
  he could stand it no longer, but hit upon the subscription list for a
• 39:12
  village nurse as an excuse. He was surprised to find that mister Hall did
• 39:15
  not know his guest's name. He give a name, said missus Hall,
• 39:21
  an assertion which was quite unfounded. But I didn't rightly hear it. She
• 39:25
  thought it seemed so silly, not to know the man's name. Cuss rapped
• 39:30
  at the parlor door and entered. There was a fairly audible imprecation from within.
• 39:37
  Pardon my intrusion, said Cuss, and then the door closed and cut
• 39:40
  missus Hall off from the rest of the conversation. She could hear the murmur
• 39:45
  of voices for the next ten minutes. Then a cry of surprise, a
• 39:50
  stirring of feet, a chair flung aside, a bark of laughter. Quick
• 39:53
  steps to the door, and Cuss appeared, his face white, his eyes
• 39:58
  staring over his shoulder. He left the door open behind him, and without
• 40:01
  looking at her, strode across the hall and went down the steps, and
• 40:06
  she heard his feet hurrying along the road. He carried his hat in his
• 40:09
  hand. She stood behind the door, looking at the open door of the
• 40:14
  parlor. Then she heard the stranger laughing quietly, and his footsteps came across
• 40:17
  the room. She could not see his face where she stood. The parlor
• 40:22
  door slammed and the place was silent again. Cuss went straight up to the
• 40:28
  village to bunting the vicar. Am I mad, Cuss began abruptly as he
• 40:32
  entered the shabby little study. Do I look like an insane person. What's
• 40:37
  happened, said the vicar, putting the ammonite on the loose sheets of his
• 40:40
  forthcoming salmon the chap at the inn. Well, give me something to drink,
• 40:47
  said cuss, and he sat down. When his nerves had been steadied
• 40:52
  by a glass of cheap sherry, the only drink the good vicar had available.
• 40:57
  He told him of the interview he had just had. Went in.
• 41:00
  He gasped and began to demand a subscription for that nurse fund. He'd stuck
• 41:06
  his hands in his pockets as I came in, and he sat down lumpily
• 41:07
  in his chair, sniffed. I told him I'd heard he took an interest
• 41:13
  in scientific things. He said yes, sniffed again, kept on sniffing all
• 41:17
  the time, evidently recently caught an infernal cold. When no wonder wrapped up
• 41:22
  like that, I developed the nurse idea, and all the while kept my
• 41:25
  eyes open. Bottles chemicals everywhere, balance test tubes in stands, and a
• 41:31
  smell of evening primrose. Would he subscribe? Said he'd considered him. Asked
• 41:38
  him point blank what he researching? Said he was a long research got quite
• 41:44
  cross, a damnable long research said, he blowing the cork out so to
• 41:46
  speak, Oh, said I, and out came the grievance. The man
• 41:51
  was just on the boil, and my question boiled him over. He had
• 41:54
  been given a prescription, a most valuable prescription, although what for he wouldn't
• 41:59
  say. Was it medical? Damn you? What are you fishing? After
• 42:04
  I apologized, dignified sniff and cough, he resumed he'd read it five ingredients,
• 42:10
  put it down, turned his head, draft of air from window,
• 42:14
  lifted the paper swish rustle. He was working in a room with an open
• 42:17
  fireplace. He saw saw a flicker, and there was the prescription burning and
• 42:22
  lifting chimneywood rushed towards it, just as it whisked up the chimney. So,
• 42:29
  just at that point, to illustrate his story, out came his arm.
• 42:32
  Well, no hand, just an empty sleeve. Lord. I thought,
• 42:40
  that's a deformity. Got a cork arm, I suppose, and has
• 42:44
  taken it off. Then I thought, there's something odd in that. What
• 42:47
  the devil keeps the sleeve up and open if there's nothing in it? There
• 42:52
  was nothing in it, I tell you, nothing down it right down to
• 42:54
  the joint. I could see right down it to the elbow, and there
• 42:58
  was a glimmer of light shining in through a tear of cloth. Good God,
• 43:02
  I said. Then he stopped, stared at me with those black goggles
• 43:07
  of his, and then at his sleeve. Well that's all. He never
• 43:14
  said a word, just glared and put his sleeve back in his pocket.
• 43:17
  Quietly, I was saying, said he that there was the prescription burning,
• 43:22
  wasn't I interrogative? Cough? How the devil said, I can you move
• 43:30
  an empty sleeve like that? Empty sleeve? Yes, said I, an
• 43:36
  empty sleeve. It's an empty sleeve, is it? You saw it as
• 43:39
  an empty sleeve? He stood up right away. I stood up too.
• 43:45
  He came towards me in three very slow steps, and stood quite close sniffed
• 43:50
  venomously. I didn't flinch, though I'm hanged if that bandage knob of his
• 43:53
  and those blinkers aren't enough to unnerve anyone coming quietly up to you. You
• 44:00
  said it was an empty sleeve, he said, certainly, I said,
• 44:02
  At staring and saying nothing, A bare faced man, unspectacled starts scratch.
• 44:09
  Then very quietly he pulled his sleeve out of his pocket again and raised his
• 44:14
  arm towards me, as though he would show it to me again. He
• 44:16
  did it very, very slowly. I looked at it. Seemed an age,
• 44:22
  well, said I, clearing my throat. There's nothing in it.
• 44:28
  I had to say something. I was beginning to feel frightened. I could
• 44:30
  see right down it. He extended it straight towards me, slowly, slowly,
• 44:35
  just like that, until the cuff was six inches from my face.
• 44:39
  Queer thing to see an empty sleeve come at you like that. And then
• 44:45
  well, something exactly like a finger and thumb. It felt nipped my nose
• 44:52
  bunting. Began to laugh. There wasn't anything there, said Cuss, his
• 44:57
  voice running up into a shriek at the there. It's all very well for
• 45:00
  you to laugh, but I tell you, I was so startled. I
• 45:02
  hit his cuff hard and turned around and cut out of the room. I
• 45:06
  left him. Cuss stopped. There was no mistaking the sincerity of his panic.
• 45:13
  He turned round in a helpless way and took a second glass of the
• 45:15
  excellent Vicars very inferior sherry. When I hit his cuff, said Cuss,
• 45:22
  I tell you, it felt exactly like hitting an arm. And there wasn't
• 45:25
  an arm. There wasn't the ghost of an arm. Mister Bunting thought it
• 45:31
  over. He looked suspiciously at cuss. It's a most remarkable story, he
• 45:38
  said. He looked very wise and grave. Indeed, it's really, said
• 45:44
  mister Bunting, with judicial emphasis, a most remarkable story. End of Chapter
• 45:52
  four, Chapter five, The burglary at the Vicarage. The facts of the
• 46:01
  burglary at the Vicarage came to us chiefly through the medium of the vicar and
• 46:06
  his wife. It occurred in the small hours of whit Monday, the day
• 46:09
  devoted in iping to the club festivities. Missus Bunting, it seems, woke
• 46:15
  up suddenly, in the stillness that comes before the dawn, with the strong
• 46:17
  impression that the door of their bedroom had opened and closed. She did not
• 46:22
  arouse her husband at first, but sat up in bed listening. She then
• 46:27
  distinctly heard the pad pad of bare feet coming out of the adjoining dressing room
• 46:31
  and walking along the passage towards the staircase. As soon as she felt assured
• 46:36
  of this, she roused the reverend mister Bunting as quietly as possible. He
• 46:40
  did not strike a light, but putting on his spectacles her dressing gown and
• 46:44
  his bath slippers. He went out on to the landing to listen. He
• 46:49
  heard quite distinctly a fumbling going on at his study desk downstairs, and then
• 46:52
  a violent sneeze. At that he returned to his bedroom, armed himself with
• 46:58
  the most obvious weapon, the poker, and descended the staircase as noiselessly as
• 47:02
  possible. Mister Bunting came out on the landing. The hour was about four
• 47:08
  and the ultimate darkness of the night was past. There was a faint shimmer
• 47:12
  of light in the hall, but the study doorway yawned impenetrably black. Everything
• 47:17
  was still except the faint creaking of the stairs under mister Bunting's tread, and
• 47:22
  the slight movements in the study. Then something snapped. The drawer was open,
• 47:25
  and there was a rustle of papers. Then came in an imprecation,
• 47:30
  and a match was struck, and the study was flooded with yellow light.
• 47:34
  Mister Bunting was now in the hall, and through the crack in the door
• 47:37
  he could see the desk and the open drawer, and a candle burning on
• 47:39
  the desk, but the robber he could not see. He stood there in
• 47:44
  the hall undecided what to do, and Missus Bunting, her face white and
• 47:49
  intent, crept slowly downstairs after him. One thing kept mister Bunting's courage,
• 47:54
  the persuasion that this burglar was a resident in the village. They heard the
• 48:00
  chink of money and realized that the robber had found the housekeeping reserve of gold
• 48:04
  two pounds ten in half sovereigns altogether. At that sound, mister Bunting was
• 48:08
  nerved to abrupt action. Gripping the poker firmly, he rushed into the room,
• 48:13
  closely followed by Missus Bunting. Surrender, cried mister Bunting fiercely, and
• 48:17
  then stooped amazed. Apparently the room was perfectly empty, yet their conviction that
• 48:24
  they had that very moment heard someone moving in the room had amounted to a
• 48:28
  certainty. For half a minute, perhaps they stood gaping. Then Missus Bunting
• 48:32
  went across the room and looked behind the screen, while mister Bunting, by
• 48:35
  a kindred impulse, peered under the desk. Then Missus Bunting turned back the
• 48:39
  window curtains, and mister Bunting looked up the chimney and probed it with the
• 48:43
  poker. Then Missus Bunting scrutinized the waste paper pocket and mister Bunting opened the
• 48:47
  lid of the coalscuttle. Then they came to a stop and stood with eyes
• 48:52
  interrogating each other. I could have sworn, said mister Bunting. The candle,
• 48:58
  said Missus Bunting, who lit the candle? The drawer, said mister
• 49:01
  Bunting, And the money's gone. She went hastily to the doorway Off all
• 49:07
  the strange occurrences. There was a violent sneeze in the passage. They rushed
• 49:14
  out, and as they did so, the kitchen door slammed. Bring the
• 49:16
  candle, said mister Bunting, and led the way. They both heard a
• 49:21
  sound of bolts being hastily shot back. As he opened the kitchen door,
• 49:24
  he saw through the scullery that the back door was just opening, and the
• 49:28
  faint light of early dawn displayed the dark masses of the garden beyond. He's
• 49:32
  certain that nothing went out of the door. It opened, stood open for
• 49:37
  a moment, and then closed with a slam. As it did so,
• 49:40
  the candle Missus Bunting was carrying from the study flickered and flared. It was
• 49:45
  a moment or more before they entered the kitchen, the place was empty.
• 49:51
  They refastened the back door, examined the kitchen, pantry and scullery thoroughly,
• 49:54
  and at last went down into the cellar. There was not a soul to
• 49:59
  be found in the ha search as they would. Daylight found the vicar and
• 50:04
  his wife, a quaintly costumed little couple, still marveling about on their own
• 50:08
  ground floor by the unnecessary light of her guttering candle. Chapter six. The
• 50:16
  Furniture that Went Mad. Now it happened that in the early hours of whit
• 50:23
  Monday, before Milly was hunted out for the day, mister Hall and Missus
• 50:28
  Hall both rose and went noiselessly down into the cellar. Their business there was
• 50:31
  of a private nature and had something to do with the specific gravity of their
• 50:36
  beer. They had hardly entered the cellar when Missus Hall found she had forgotten
• 50:40
  to bring down a bottle of sasparilla from their joint room. As she was
• 50:45
  the expert and principal operator in this affair, Hall, they properly went upstairs
• 50:50
  for it. On the landing, he was surprised to see that the stranger's
• 50:53
  door was a jarm. He went on into his own room and found the
• 50:57
  bottle as he had been directed. But returning with the bottle, he noticed
• 51:01
  that the bolts of the front door had been shot back, that the door
• 51:05
  was in fact simply on the latch, And with a flash of inspiration,
• 51:08
  he connected this with the stranger's room upstairs and the suggestions of mister Teddy Henry.
• 51:14
  He distinctly remembered holding the candle while missus Hall shot these bolts over night.
• 51:19
  At the sight, he stopped gaping, then, with the bottle still
• 51:22
  in his hand, went upstairs again. He rapped at the stranger's door.
• 51:25
  There was no answer. He rapped again, then pushed the door wide open
• 51:29
  and entered. It was as he had expected the bed the room also was
• 51:35
  empty, and what was stranger even to his heavy intelligence. On the bedroom
• 51:40
  chair and along the rail of the bed were scattered the garments, the only
• 51:45
  garments so far as he knew, and the bandages of their guest. His
• 51:49
  big slouch hat even was cocked jauntily over the bed post. As Hall stood
• 51:54
  there, he heard his wife's voice coming out of the depth of the cellar.
• 51:58
  With that rapid test scoping of the syllables and interrogative cocking up of the
• 52:01
  final words to have high note by which the West Sussex villager is wont to
• 52:06
  indicate a brisk impatience. George, you go why want at that? He
• 52:13
  turned and hurried down to it. Janny, he staid over the rail of
• 52:15
  the cellar steps, TuS the truth. Why every says he's not in his
• 52:19
  roomy end and the front door is unbolted. At first Missus Hall did not
• 52:23
  understand, and as soon as she did she resolved to see the empty room
• 52:28
  for herself. Hall, still holding the bottle, went first. If he
• 52:31
  ain't there, he said, his clothes are? And what was he doing
• 52:35
  without his clothes? Then to the most curious business. As they came up
• 52:39
  the cellar steps, they both it was afterwards ascertained, fancied. They heard
• 52:44
  the front door open and shut, but seeing it closed and nothing there,
• 52:47
  neither said a word to the other about it. At the time. Missus
• 52:51
  Hall passed her husband in the passage and ran on first upstairs. Someone sneezed
• 52:55
  on the staircase. Hall, following six steps behind, thought that he heard
• 53:00
  her sneeze. She going on first, was under the pression that Hall was
• 53:04
  sneezing. She flung open the door and stood regarding the room of all A
• 53:08
  curious she said, she heard a sniff close behind her head, as it
• 53:14
  seemed in turning, was surprised to see Hall a dozen feet off on the
• 53:16
  topmost stair, But in another moment he was beside her. She bent forward
• 53:22
  and put her hand on the pillow, and then under the clothes cold she
• 53:25
  said, he's been up this hour or more. As she did so,
• 53:30
  a most extraordinary thing happened. The bedclothes gathered themselves together, leaped suddenly into
• 53:36
  a sort of peak, and then jumped headlong over the bottom rail. It
• 53:39
  was exactly as if a hand had clutched them in the center and flung them
• 53:43
  aside. Immediately after, the Stranger's hat hopped off the bedpost described a whirling
• 53:47
  flight in the air through the better part of a circle, and then dashed
• 53:51
  straight at missus Hall's face. Then as swiftly came the sponge from the washstand,
• 53:55
  and then the chair, flinging the Stranger's coat and trousers carelessly, as
• 54:00
  and laughing dryly in a voice singularly like the Strangers turned itself up with its
• 54:05
  four legs at Missus Hall seemed to take aim at her for a moment,
• 54:08
  and then charged at her. She screamed and turned, and then the chair
• 54:13
  legs came gently but firmly against her back and impelled her and Hall out of
• 54:17
  the room. The door slammed violently and was locked. The chair and bed
• 54:22
  seemed to be executing a dance of triumph for a moment, then abruptly everything
• 54:27
  was still. Missus Hall was left almost in a fainting condition in mister Hall's
• 54:32
  arms on the landings. It was with the greatest difficulty that mister Hall and
• 54:37
  Milly, who had been roused by her scream of alarm, succeeded in getting
• 54:42
  her down stairs and implying the rectitives customary in such cases. Tis spirits,
• 54:47
  said missus Hall. I noticed spirits. I read in papers and tables and
• 54:52
  chairs, leaping and dancing. Take a drop more, Jenny, said Hall.
• 54:57
  Twell, steady, lock him out, said missus Hall. Don't let
• 55:00
  him come in again. I half guessed I might have known, with them
• 55:04
  goggling eyes and bandaged head, and never going to church of a Sunday and
• 55:07
  all day bottles morn. It's right for anyone to have he's put the spirits
• 55:12
  into the furniture, my good old furniture. Twas in that chair my very
• 55:15
  dear poor mother used to sit when I was a little girl, to think
• 55:19
  it should rise up against me. Now, just to drop more, Janny
• 55:23
  said, Hall, your nerves is all upset. They sent Millie across the
• 55:30
  street through the golden five o'clock sunshine to rouse up mister Sandy Wadgers, the
• 55:34
  blacksmith. Mister Hall's compliments, and the furniture upstairs was behaving most extraordinary.
• 55:38
  Would mister Wadgers come round? He was a knowing man, was mister Watchers,
• 55:43
  and very resourceful. He took quite a grave view of the case.
• 55:46
  I am damned if that in witchcraft was the view of mister Sandy Wadgers.
• 55:52
  You want oars shoes for such gentry as he. He came round, greatly
• 55:58
  concerned. They want him to lead the way upstairs to the room, but
• 56:00
  he didn't seem to be in any hurry. He preferred to talk in the
• 56:05
  passage over the way. Huckster's apprentice came out and began taking down the shutters
• 56:10
  of the tobacco window. He was called over to join the discussion. Mister
• 56:15
  Huxton naturally followed over. In the course of a few minutes, the Anglo
• 56:19
  Saxon genius for parliamentary Government asserted itself. There was a great deal of talk
• 56:23
  and no decisive action. Let's have the facts first, insisted mister Sandy Wadgers.
• 56:30
  Let's be sure we be acting perfectly right in busting that their door open.
• 56:34
  A door onbust is always open to busting, but you can't onbust the
• 56:37
  door once you've busted in. And suddenly, and most wonderfully, the door
• 56:43
  of the room upstairs opened of its own accord, And as they looked up
• 56:45
  in amazement, they saw descending the stairs the muffled figure of the stranger,
• 56:50
  staring more blankly and blankly than ever before, with those unreasonably large blue glass
• 56:54
  eyes of his. He came down, stiffly and slowly, staring all the
• 56:59
  time. He walked across the passage, staring, and then stopped. Look
• 57:05
  there, he said, And their eyes followed the direction of his gloved finger,
• 57:07
  and saw a bottle of sasparilla hard by the cellar door. Then he
• 57:13
  entered the parlor and suddenly, swiftly, viciously slammed the door in their faces.
• 57:19
  Not a word was spoken until the last echoes of the slam had died
• 57:22
  away. They stared at one another. Well, if that don't lick everything,
• 57:29
  said mister Wadgers, and left the alternative unsaid. I'd go in and
• 57:34
  ask about it, said Wadgers to mister Hall, I'd demand an explanation.
• 57:39
  It took some time to bring the landlady's husband up to that pitch. At
• 57:44
  last he rapped, opened the door and got as far as excuse me,
• 57:49
  go to the devil, said the stranger, in a tremendous voice, and
• 57:52
  shut that door after you. Or so. That brief interview terminated Chapter seven,
• 58:01
  The Unveiling of the Stranger. The stranger went into the little parlor of
• 58:07
  the Coach and Horses about half past five in the morning, and there he
• 58:10
  remained until near midday, the blinds down, the door shut, and none
• 58:15
  after Haul's repulse venturing near him all that time. He must have fasted thrice.
• 58:22
  He rang his bell, the third time furiously and continuously, but no
• 58:27
  one answered him. M And as go to the devil, indeed, said
• 58:30
  missus Hall. Presently came an imperfect rumor of the burglary at the vicarage,
• 58:36
  and two and two were put together. Hall, assisted by wadgers, went
• 58:39
  off to find mister Shuckleforth, the magistrate, and take his advice. No
• 58:45
  one ventured upstairs. How the stranger occupied himself is unknown now. And then
• 58:50
  he would stride violently up and down, and twice came an outburst of curses,
• 58:53
  a tearing of paper, and a violent smashing of bottles. The little
• 58:59
  group of sc gared but curious people increased. Missus Huckster came over some gay
• 59:04
  young fellow's respondent in black, ready made jackets and pek paper ties. For
• 59:07
  it was whit Monday joined the group with confused interrogations. Young Archie Harker distinguished
• 59:14
  himself by going up the yard and trying to peep under the window blinds.
• 59:17
  He could see nothing, but gave reason for supposing that he did, and
• 59:22
  others of the iping youth presently joined him. It was the finest of all
• 59:27
  possible whit mondays. And down the village street stood a row of nearly a
• 59:30
  dozen booths, a shooting gallery, and on the grass by the forge were
• 59:35
  three yellow and chocolate wagons, and some picturesque strangers of both sexes putting up
• 59:39
  a coconut sigh. A gentleman wore blue jerseys, the ladies white aprons,
• 59:45
  and quite fashionable hats with heavy plumes. Wadger of the Purple Fawn, and
• 59:51
  mister Jaggers, the cobbler who also sold old second hand ordinary bicycles, were
• 59:55
  stretching a string of Union Jack's and Royal ensigns, which had originally celebrated the
• 1:00:00
  first Victorian Jubilee across the road and inside, in the artificial darkness of the
• 1:00:06
  parlor, into which only one thin jet of sunlight penetrated. The stranger,
• 1:00:10
  hungry, we must suppose, and fearful, hidden in his uncomfortable hot trappings,
• 1:00:15
  poured through his dark glasses upon his paper, or chinked his dirty little
• 1:00:19
  bottles, and occasionally swore savagely at the boys. Audible, if invisible outside
• 1:00:23
  the windows. In the corner by the fireplace lay the fragments of half a
• 1:00:29
  dozen smashed bottles, and a pungent twang of chlorine tainted the air. So
• 1:00:34
  much we know from what was heard at the time and from what was subsequently
• 1:00:37
  seen in the room. At noon, he suddenly opened his parlor door and
• 1:00:42
  stood glaring fixedly at the three or four people in the bar, Missus Hall,
• 1:00:46
  he said. Somebody went sheepishly and called for Missus Hall. Missus Hall
• 1:00:52
  appeared after an interval, a little short of breath, but all the fiercer
• 1:00:57
  for that Hall was still out. She had deliberated over this scene, and
• 1:01:00
  she came holding a little tray with an unsettled bill upon it. Is it
• 1:01:06
  your bill you're wanting, sir? She said? Why wasn't my breakfast laid?
• 1:01:10
  Why haven't you prepared my meals? And answered my bell? Do you
• 1:01:14
  think I live without eating? Why isn't my bill paid? Said missus Hall.
• 1:01:17
  That's what I want to know. I told you three days ago I
• 1:01:22
  was awaiting a remittance. I told you three days ago I wasn't gonna await
• 1:01:25
  no remittances. You can't grumble if your breakfast waits a bit, if my
• 1:01:30
  bill's been waiting these five days, can you? The stranger swore briefly but
• 1:01:36
  vividly, Nah nar from the bar, and I'd thank you kindly, sir,
• 1:01:42
  if you'd keep your swearing to yourself, sir, said Missus Hall.
• 1:01:46
  The stranger stood, looking more like an angry diving helmet than ever it was
• 1:01:51
  universally felt in the bar that Missus Hall had the better of him. His
• 1:01:54
  next words showed as much. Look here, my good woman, he began.
• 1:02:00
  Don't good woman me, said missus Hall. I've told you my remittance
• 1:02:05
  hasn't come. Remittance indeed, said missus Hall. Still, I daresay in
• 1:02:09
  my pocket you told me three days ago that you hadn't anything but a sovereign's
• 1:02:14
  worth of silver upon you. Well, I've found some more ullo from the
• 1:02:20
  bar. I wonder where you found it, said missus Hall. That seemed
• 1:02:25
  to annoy the stranger very much. He stamped his foot. What do you
• 1:02:30
  mean, he said that, I wonder where you found it, said missus
• 1:02:34
  Hall. And before I take any bills, or get any breakfast, or
• 1:02:37
  do any such things whatsoever, you've got to tell me two things I don't
• 1:02:39
  understand, and what nobody don't understand, and what everybody is very anxious to
• 1:02:44
  understand. I want to know what you've been doing to my chair upstairs.
• 1:02:47
  And I want to know how tis your room was empty, and how you
• 1:02:50
  got in again. Them as stops in this house comes in by the doors,
• 1:02:53
  that's the roll of the house, and that you didn't do. And
• 1:02:57
  what I want to know is how you did come in, and I want
• 1:02:59
  to know. Suddenly the stranger raised his gloved hands, clenched, stamped his
• 1:03:05
  foot, and said stop, with such extraordinary violence that he silenced her instantly.
• 1:03:10
  You don't understand, he said, who I am or what I am?
• 1:03:15
  I'll show you. By Heaven, I'll show you. Then he put
• 1:03:19
  his open palm over his face and withdrew it. The center of his face
• 1:03:22
  became a black cavity. Here, he said. He stepped forward and handed
• 1:03:28
  Missus Hall something, which she staring at his metamorphosed face, except automatically.
• 1:03:34
  Then when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it and
• 1:03:38
  staggered back the nose. It was the Stranger's nose, pink and shining,
• 1:03:45
  rolled on the floor. Then he removed his spectacles, and everyone in the
• 1:03:50
  bar gasped. He took off his hat and with a violent gesture, tore
• 1:03:53
  at his whiskers and bandages. For a moment they resisted him, a flash
• 1:03:58
  of horrible anti disipation passed through the bar. Oh my god, said someone.
• 1:04:05
  Then off they came. It was worse than anything. Missus Hall,
• 1:04:12
  standing open mouthed and horror struck, shrieked at what she saw and made for
• 1:04:15
  the door of the house. Everyone began to move. They were prepared for
• 1:04:20
  scars, disfigurements, tangible horrors, but nothing. The bandages and false hair
• 1:04:27
  flew across the passage into their bar, making a hobbledehoy jump to avoid them.
• 1:04:31
  Everyone tumbled on everyone else down the steps. For the man who stood
• 1:04:35
  there, shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid, gesticulating figure up to
• 1:04:41
  the coat collar of him, and then nothingness, no visible thing at all.
• 1:04:48
  People down the village heard shouts and shrieks, and looking up the street,
• 1:04:51
  saw the coach and horses violently firing out its humanity. Then they saw
• 1:04:57
  missus Hall fall down and mister Teddy Henfrey jump to avoid tumbling over her.
• 1:05:01
  And then they heard the frightful screams of Milly, who emerging suddenly from the
• 1:05:04
  kitchen at the noise of the tumult, had come across the headless stranger from
• 1:05:10
  behind. These increased suddenly forthwith everyone all down the street. The sweet stuff
• 1:05:16
  seller, cocoanut shy proprietor and his assistant, the swingman, little boys and
• 1:05:21
  girls, rustic dandies, smart wrenches, smocked elders and apron gypsies began running
• 1:05:28
  towards the inn, and in a miraculously short space of time, a crowd
• 1:05:31
  of perhaps forty people and rapidly increasing swayed and hooted and inquired and exclaimed and
• 1:05:38
  suggested in front of Missus Hall's establishment. Everyone seemed eager to talk at once,
• 1:05:44
  and the result was babel. A small group supported Missus Hall, who
• 1:05:47
  was picked up in a state of collapse. There was a conference and the
• 1:05:51
  incredible evidence of a vociferous eyewitness. Oh bogey, what's he been doing?
• 1:05:57
  Then? Ain't hurt the girl? As he run at an with a knife.
• 1:06:00
  I believe no head, I tell ye. It didn't mean no manner
• 1:06:03
  of speaking. I meant man without a head, nonsense to some gunjuring trick
• 1:06:10
  fetched off his rapin he did. In its struggles to see in through the
• 1:06:15
  open door, the crowd formed itself into a straggling wedge, with the more
• 1:06:19
  venturous Apex nearest the inn. He stood for a moment. I heard the
• 1:06:24
  girl scream, and he turned. I saw her skirts whisk and he went
• 1:06:28
  after. He didn't take ten seconds back. He comes with a knife in
• 1:06:30
  his hand and a loaf stood just as if he were staring not a moment
• 1:06:33
  ago when in that there door, I tell ye, he ain't got no
• 1:06:36
  head at all. You just missed an There was a disturbance behind, and
• 1:06:44
  the speaker stopped to step aside for a little procession that was marching very resolutely
• 1:06:48
  towards the house. First mister Hall, very red and determined. Then mister
• 1:06:54
  Bobby Jaffers, the village constable. Then the wary mister Wadgers. They had
• 1:06:59
  come, now armed with a warrant. People shouted conflicting information of the recent
• 1:07:04
  circumstances. Ed or no, ed, said Jaffers. I got a restin,
• 1:07:10
  and restin I will. Mister Hall marched up the steps, marched straight
• 1:07:15
  to the door of the parlor and flung it open. Constable, he said,
• 1:07:19
  do your duty. Jaffers marched in Hall, next, Wadgers. Last
• 1:07:26
  they saw in the dim light the headless figure facing them, with a gnawed
• 1:07:29
  crust of bed in one gloved hand and a chunk of cheese in the other.
• 1:07:33
  That's him, said Hall, what's the devil's This came in a tone
• 1:07:38
  of angry expostulation from above the collar of the figure. You're a damned rum
• 1:07:43
  customer, mister said mister Jaffers but ed or no ed the warrants his body
• 1:07:47
  and duty's duty keep off, said the figure, starting back abruptly, he
• 1:07:53
  whipped down the bread and cheese, and mister Hall just grasped the knife on
• 1:07:56
  the table in time to save it. Off came the strangers left gloves and
• 1:08:00
  were slapped in Jaffer's face. In another moment, Jaffers, cutting short some
• 1:08:03
  statement concerning a warrant, had gripped him by the handless wrist and caught his
• 1:08:08
  invisible throat. He got a sounding kick on the shin that made him shout,
• 1:08:13
  but kept his grip. Hall sent the knife sliding along the table to
• 1:08:15
  Wadgers, who acted as goalkeeper for the offensive, so to speak, and
• 1:08:19
  then stepped forward as Jaffers and the stranger swayed and staggered towards him, clutching
• 1:08:24
  and hitting in a chair, stood in the way and went aside with a
• 1:08:27
  crash as they came down together. Get the feet, said Jaffers, between
• 1:08:31
  his teeth. Mister Hall, endeavoring to act on instructions, received a sounding
• 1:08:38
  kick in the ribs that disposed of him for a moment, and mister Wadgers,
• 1:08:42
  seeing the decapitated stranger, had rolled over and got the upper side of
• 1:08:45
  Jaffers, retreated towards the door, knife in hand, and so collided with
• 1:08:49
  mister Huckster and the citabridge carter coming to the rescue of order. At the
• 1:08:55
  same moment, down came three or four bottles from the chiffonnier and shot a
• 1:08:59
  web of pungency in the air of the room. I'll surrender, cried the
• 1:09:02
  stranger, though he had Jaffers down, and in another moment he stood up,
• 1:09:06
  panting, a strange figure, headless and handless, for he had pulled
• 1:09:11
  off his right glove now as well as his left. It's no good,
• 1:09:14
  he said, as if sobbing for breath. It was the strangest thing in
• 1:09:17
  the world to hear that voice, coming as if out of empty space.
• 1:09:21
  But the Sussex peasants are perhaps the most matter of fact people under the sun.
• 1:09:26
  Jaffers got up also and produced a pair of handcuffs. Then he stared,
• 1:09:31
  I say, said Jaffers, brought up short by a dim realization of
• 1:09:35
  the incongruity of the whole business. Darn it can't use him, as I
• 1:09:40
  can see the stranger ran his arm down his waistcoat, and as if by
• 1:09:45
  a miracle, the buttons to which his empty sleeve pointed became undone. Then
• 1:09:49
  he said something about his shin and stooped down. He seemed to be fumbling
• 1:09:54
  with his shoes and socks. Why, said huckster suddenly, that's not a
• 1:09:59
  man at all all, it's just empty clothes. Look, you can see
• 1:10:02
  down his collar in the linings of his clothes. I could put my arm.
• 1:10:06
  He extended his hand. It seemed to meet something in mid air,
• 1:10:10
  and he drew it back with a sharp exclamation. I wish you'd keep your
• 1:10:14
  fingers out of my eye, said the aerial voice, in a tone of
• 1:10:17
  savage expostulation. The fact is I am all here, head, hands,
• 1:10:21
  legs, and all the rest. But it happens I'm invisible. It's a
• 1:10:27
  confounded nuisance. But I am. There's no reason why I should be poched
• 1:10:30
  to pieces by every stupid bumpkin in iping. Is it? The suit of
• 1:10:35
  clothes, now all unbuttoned and hanging loosely upon its unseen supports stood up arms
• 1:10:41
  akimbo. Several other of the men folks now entered the room, so that
• 1:10:45
  it was closely crowded. Invisible, eh, said Huckster, ignoring the stranger's
• 1:10:51
  abuse. Whoever heard the likes of that? It's strange perhaps, but it's
• 1:10:57
  not a crime. Why am I assaulted by a policeman in this fashion?
• 1:11:00
  Ah, that's a different matter, said Jaafers. No doubt, you're a
• 1:11:04
  bit difficult to see in this light. But I got a warrant and it's
• 1:11:06
  all correct. What I'm after ain't no invisibility. Is burglary as a house
• 1:11:12
  being broken into and money took well, and circumstances certainly point stuff and nonsense,
• 1:11:19
  said the invisible man. I hope so, sir, But I've got
• 1:11:23
  my instructions. Well, said the stranger. I'll come, I'll come,
• 1:11:28
  But no handcuffs. It's the regular thing, said Chaffers. No handcuffs,
• 1:11:33
  stipulated the stranger. Pardon me, said Chaffers. Abruptly. The figure sat
• 1:11:40
  down, and before anyone could realize what was being done, the slippers,
• 1:11:43
  socks and trousers being kicked off under the table. Then he sprang up again
• 1:11:46
  and flung off his coat. Here stop that, said Jaffers. Suddenly realizing
• 1:11:50
  what was happening, he gripped at the waistcoat. It struggled, and the
• 1:11:55
  shirt slipped out off it and left it limply and empty in his hand.
• 1:11:58
  Hold him, said Jaffer as loudly. Once he gets the things off,
• 1:12:01
  hold him, cried everyone, and there was a rush at the fluttering white
• 1:12:04
  shirt, which was now all that was visible of the stranger. The shirt
• 1:12:09
  sleeves planted a shrewd blow in Hall's face that stopped his opened armed advance and
• 1:12:13
  sent him backward into old tutsum the sexton, and in another moment the garment
• 1:12:17
  was lifted up became convulsed and vacantly flapping about the arms, even as a
• 1:12:21
  shirt that is being thrust over a man's head. Jaffers clutched at it and
• 1:12:26
  only helped to pull it off. He was struck in the mouth, out
• 1:12:29
  of the air, and incontinently threw his truncheon and smote Teddy Henfrey savagely upon
• 1:12:32
  the crown of his head. Look Out, said everybody, fencing at random
• 1:12:36
  and hitting at nothing. Hold him, shut the door, don't let him
• 1:12:40
  loose. I got something here. He is a perfect babel of noises.
• 1:12:45
  They made. Everybody, it seemed, was being hit all at once,
• 1:12:47
  and sandy wadgers knowing as ever, and his wits sharpened by a frightful blow
• 1:12:53
  in the nose, reopened the door and led the rout. The others following
• 1:12:57
  incontinently were jammed for a moment in the court by the doorway. The hitting
• 1:13:01
  continued. Phipps the Unitarian had a front tooth broken, and Henfrey was injured
• 1:13:06
  in the cartilage of his ear. Jaffers was struck under the jaw, and
• 1:13:10
  turning caught at something that intervened between him and Huckster in the melee and prevented
• 1:13:14
  their coming together. He felt a muscular chest, and in another moment the
• 1:13:18
  whole mass of struggling, excited men shot out into the crowded hall. I
• 1:13:24
  got him, shouted, Jaffers, choking and reeling through them all and wrestling
• 1:13:28
  with purple face and swelling veins against his unseen enemy. Men staggered right and
• 1:13:32
  left, as the extraordinary conflict swayed swiftly towards the house door and went spinning
• 1:13:38
  down the half dozen steps of the inn. Jaffers cried in a strangled voice,
• 1:13:43
  holding tight nevertheless and making play with his knee, spun around and fell
• 1:13:46
  heavily undermost with his head on the gravel. Only then did his fingers relax.
• 1:13:53
  There were excited cries of hold him invisible, and so forth, and
• 1:13:56
  a young fellow, a stranger in the place whose name did not come to
• 1:13:59
  light, rushed in at once, caught something, missed his hold, and
• 1:14:02
  fell over the constable's prostrate body. Half way across the road, a woman
• 1:14:06
  screamed as something pushed by her. A dog kicked, apparently yelped, and
• 1:14:12
  ran howling into Huckster's yard. And with that the transit of the invisible man
• 1:14:15
  was accomplished. For a space people stood amazed and gesticulating, and then came
• 1:14:21
  panic and scattered them abroad through the village as a gust scatters dead leaves,
• 1:14:27
  but chaffers lay quite still, face upward and knees bent at the foot of
• 1:14:31
  the steps of the inn. End of chapter seven. Chapter eight. In
• 1:14:40
  transit. The eighth chapter is exceedingly brief and relates that Gibbons, the amateur
• 1:14:46
  naturalist of the district, while lying out on the spacious open downs without a
• 1:14:50
  soul within a couple of miles of him, as he thought and almost dozing,
• 1:14:56
  heard close to him the sound of a man coughing, sneezing, and
• 1:15:00
  then swearing savagely to himself, and looking beheld nothing. Yet the voice was
• 1:15:06
  indisputable. It continued to swear with that breadth and variety that distinguished the swearing
• 1:15:12
  of a cultivated man. It grew to a climax, diminished again, and
• 1:15:16
  died away in the distance, going, as it seemed to him, in
• 1:15:18
  the direction of Adadein. It lifted to a spasmodic sneeze and ended. Gibbons
• 1:15:26
  had heard nothing of the morning's occurrences, but the phenomenon was so striking and
• 1:15:29
  disturbing that his philosophical tranquility vanished. He got up hastily and hurried down the
• 1:15:34
  steepness of the hill towards the village as fast as he could go. Chapter
• 1:15:43
  nine. Mister Thomas Marvel. You must picture mister Thomas Marvel as a person
• 1:15:49
  of copious flexible visage, a nose of cylindrical protrusion, a licorice ample fluctuating
• 1:15:57
  mouth, and a beard of bristling eccentric. His figure inclined to en bompois.
• 1:16:02
  His short limbs accentuated this inclination. He wore a furry silk hat and
• 1:16:08
  the frequent substitution of twine and shoelaces for buttons apparent at critical points of his
• 1:16:13
  costume, marked a man essentially bachelor. Mister Thomas Marvel was sitting with his
• 1:16:19
  feet in a ditch by the roadside over the down towards Anderdean, about a
• 1:16:24
  mile and a half out of Iping. His feet, save for socks of
• 1:16:28
  irregular open work, were bare. His big toes were broad and pricked,
• 1:16:31
  like the ears of a watchful dog. In a leisurely manner. He did
• 1:16:36
  everything in a leisurely manner. He was contemplating trying on a pair of boots.
• 1:16:42
  They were the soundest boots he had come across for a long time,
• 1:16:45
  but too large for him, whereas the ones he had were in dry weather,
• 1:16:48
  a very comfortable fit, but too thin sold for damp. Mister Thomas
• 1:16:53
  Marvel hated roomy shoes, but then he hated damp. He had never properly
• 1:16:58
  thought out which he hated most. And it was a pleasant day, and
• 1:17:00
  there was nothing better to do. So he put the four shoes in a
• 1:17:04
  graceful group on the turf and looked at them, and seeing them there among
• 1:17:08
  the grass and springing agrimony, it suddenly occurred to him that both pairs were
• 1:17:13
  exceedingly ugly to see, he was not at all startled by a voice behind
• 1:17:17
  him. They're boots, anyhow, said the voice. They are charity boots,
• 1:17:24
  said mister Thomas Marvel, with his head on one side, regarding them
• 1:17:27
  distastefully. And which is the ugliest pair in this whole blessed universe. I'm
• 1:17:30
  darned if I know, hum, said the voice. I've worn worse.
• 1:17:35
  In fact, I've worn none, but none so audacious ugly, if you'll
• 1:17:39
  allow the expression. I've been catching boots in particular for days because I was
• 1:17:44
  sick of them. They're sound enough, of course, but a gentleman on
• 1:17:46
  tramp sees such a thundering lot of his boots. And if you'll believe me,
• 1:17:49
  I've raised nothing in the whole blessed country our try as I would,
• 1:17:53
  but them look at them. And a good country for boots too, in
• 1:17:56
  a general way. But it's just my promiscuous luck. I get my boots
• 1:18:00
  in this country ten years or more, and they treat you like this.
• 1:18:03
  It's a beast of a country, said the voice. And pigs for people,
• 1:18:08
  ain't it, said mister Thomas Marvel. Lord, but them boots.
• 1:18:11
  It beats it. He turned his head over to his shoulder at the right
• 1:18:15
  to look at the boots of his interlocutor with a view to comparisons, and
• 1:18:18
  lo Where the boots of his interlocutor should have been were neither legs nor boots.
• 1:18:25
  He was irradiated by the dawn of a great amazement. Where are ye,
• 1:18:29
  said mister Thomas Marvel, over his shoulder, and coming on all fours,
• 1:18:32
  he saw a stretch of empty downs, with the wind swaying and remote,
• 1:18:35
  green pointed furze bushes. Am I drunk? Said mister Marvel. Have
• 1:18:40
  I had visions? Was I talking to myself? What the Don't be alarmed,
• 1:18:45
  said a voice. None of your ventraloquizing me, said mister Thomas Marvel,
• 1:18:49
  rising sharply to his feet. Where are ye alarmed? Indeed, don't
• 1:18:55
  be alarmed, repeated the voice. You'll be alarmed in a minute, you
• 1:18:59
  silly fool, said mister Thomas Marvel. Where are ye? Let me get
• 1:19:01
  my mark on yer? Are ye buried? Said mister Thomas Marvel. After
• 1:19:06
  an interval, there was no answer. Mister Thomas Marvel stood bootless and amazed,
• 1:19:14
  his jacket nearly thrown off peeweat, said a Peewitt, very remote Peewit,
• 1:19:18
  indeed, said mister Thomas Marvel. This ain't no time for foolery.
• 1:19:23
  The down was desolate east and west, north and south. The road,
• 1:19:27
  with its shallow ditches and white bordering stakes, ran smooth and empty north and
• 1:19:30
  south. And save for that peewit, the blue sky was empty too.
• 1:19:34
  So help me, said mister Thomas Marvel, shuffling his coat on to his
• 1:19:38
  shoulders. Again. It's the drink. I might have known. It's not
• 1:19:42
  the drink, said the voice. You keep your nerves steady, oh,
• 1:19:46
  said mister Marvel, and his face grew white amidst its patches. It's the
• 1:19:50
  drink, his lips repeated, noiselessly. He remained staring about him, rotating
• 1:19:56
  slowly backwards. He could have swore I heard a voice, he whispered.
• 1:20:00
  Of course you did. It's there again, said mister Marvel, closing his
• 1:20:04
  eyes and clasping his hand on his brow with a tragic gesture. He was
• 1:20:09
  suddenly taken by the collar and shaken violently, and left more dazed than ever.
• 1:20:14
  Don't be a fool, said the voice. I'm off my bloomin chump,
• 1:20:19
  said mister Marvel. It's no good. It's fretting about them blasted boots.
• 1:20:24
  I'm off my blessed bloom in chump, or it's spirits. Neither one
• 1:20:30
  thing nor the other, said the voice. Listen, chump, said mister
• 1:20:32
  Marvel. One minute, said the voice, penetratingly tremulous with self control,
• 1:20:39
  Well, said mister Thomas Marvel, with a strange feeling of having been dug
• 1:20:43
  in the chest by a finger. You think I'm just imagination, Just imagination,
• 1:20:49
  What else can you be, said mister Thomas Marvel, rubbing the back
• 1:20:53
  of his neck. Very well, said the voice, in a tone of
• 1:20:57
  relief. Then I'm going to throw flints at you until you think differently.
• 1:21:00
  But what are yer? The voice made no answer. Whiz came a flint,
• 1:21:06
  apparently out of the air, and missed mister Marvell's shoulder by a hair's
• 1:21:10
  breadth. Mister Marvell, turning, saw a flint jerk up into the air,
• 1:21:14
  trace a complicated path, hang for a moment, then fling at his
• 1:21:16
  feet with almost invisible rapidity. He was too amazed to dodge. Whizz It
• 1:21:23
  came and ricocheted from a bare toe into the ditch. Mister Thomas Marvell jumped
• 1:21:27
  a foot and howled aloud. Then he started to run, tripped over an
• 1:21:30
  unseen obstacle, and came head overheeled into a sitting position. Now, said
• 1:21:35
  the voice, as a third stone curved upward and hung in the air above
• 1:21:39
  the tramp, am I imagination? Mister Marvel, by way of reply,
• 1:21:45
  struggled to his feet and was immediately rolled over again. He lay quiet for
• 1:21:48
  a moment. If you struggle any more, said the voice, I shall
• 1:21:53
  throw the flint at your head. It's a fair ado, said mister Thomas
• 1:21:58
  Marvel, sitting up, taking his wounded toe in hand and fixing his eye
• 1:22:01
  on the third missile. I don't understand it. Stones flinging themselves, stones
• 1:22:06
  talking, Put yourself down, rot away. I'm done. The third flint
• 1:22:12
  fell. It's very simple, said the voice. I'm an invisible man.
• 1:22:17
  Tell us something I don't know, said mister Marvel, gasping with pain.
• 1:22:21
  Where you've hit? How you I? I don't know. I'm beat,
• 1:22:26
  that's all, said the voice. I'm invisible. That's what I want you
• 1:22:30
  to understand. Anyone could see that. There's no need for you to be
• 1:22:33
  so confounded impatient mister. Now, then give us a notion. How are
• 1:22:39
  you hid. I'm invisible. That's the great point. And what I want
• 1:22:44
  you to understand is this, But whereabouts interrupted, mister Marvel? Here six
• 1:22:49
  yards in front of you. Oh come, I ain't blind. You'll be
• 1:22:54
  telling me next you're just thin air. I'm not one of your ignorant tramps.
• 1:22:58
  Yes, I am thin air. You're looking through me? What ain't
• 1:23:02
  any stuff? Do you? Voxett? Oh? Why is it? Jabber?
• 1:23:06
  Is that it? I'm just a human being, solid, needing food
• 1:23:12
  and drink, needing covering too. But I'm invisible. You see invisible?
• 1:23:16
  Simple idea? Invisible? What reel like? Yes? Real? Let's have
• 1:23:25
  a hand of you, said Marvel. If you are a real, won't
• 1:23:28
  be so darn out of the way like then? Lord, he said,
• 1:23:31
  how you made me jump? Gripping me like that? He felt the hand
• 1:23:36
  that had closed round his wrist with his disengaged fingers, and his fingers went
• 1:23:41
  timorously up the arm, patted a muscular chest, and explored a bearded face.
• 1:23:45
  Marvel's face was astonishment. I'm dashed, he said, if this don't
• 1:23:50
  be cock fighting, most remarkable. And there I can see a rabbit clean
• 1:23:55
  through you are a mile away, not a bit of you visible, except
• 1:24:00
  he scrutinized the apparently empty space. Keenly, you haven't been eating bread and
• 1:24:04
  cheese, he asked, holding the invisible arm. You're quite right, and
• 1:24:09
  it's not quite assimilated into the system, ah, said mister Marvel, A
• 1:24:14
  sort of ghostly though. Of course, all this isn't half wonderful as you
• 1:24:17
  think. It's quite wonderful enough for my modest ones, said mister Thomas Marvel.
• 1:24:25
  Oh you manage it. Oh the deuce? Is it done? It's
• 1:24:28
  too long a story. And besides, I tell you, the old business
• 1:24:31
  fairly beats me, said mister Marvel. What I want to say at present
• 1:24:35
  is this. I need help. I have come to that. I came
• 1:24:40
  upon you suddenly. I was wandering, mad with rage, naked, impotent,
• 1:24:44
  I could have murdered. And I saw you, Lord, said mister
• 1:24:48
  Marvel. I came up behind you, hesitated, went on. Mister Marvell's
• 1:24:55
  expression was eloquent. Then stopped here, I said, is an outcast like
• 1:25:00
  myself? This is the man for me? So I turned back and came
• 1:25:04
  to you. You and Lord, said mister Marvel. But I'm all in
• 1:25:10
  a tizzy. I ask, how is it? And what you may be
• 1:25:15
  requiring in the way of help invisible. I want you to help me get
• 1:25:18
  clothes and shelter, and then with other things. I've left them long enough.
• 1:25:25
  If you won't, well, but you will. Must look here,
• 1:25:30
  said mister Marvel. I'm too flabbergasted. Don't knock me about any more and
• 1:25:33
  leave me go. I must steady a bit, and you've pretty near broken
• 1:25:38
  my toe. It's also unreasonable. Empty down's empty sky, nothing visible for
• 1:25:44
  miles except the bosom of nature. And then comes a voice, a voice
• 1:25:47
  out of heaven and stones and a fist. Lord, pull yourself together,
• 1:25:53
  said the voice, for you have to do the job I've chosen for you.
• 1:25:58
  Mister Marvel blew out his cheeks and his eyes were round. I've chosen
• 1:26:01
  you, said the voice. You are the only man, except some of
• 1:26:04
  those fools down there, who knows there is such a thing as an invisible
• 1:26:09
  man. You have to be my helper, help me, and I will
• 1:26:13
  do great things for you. An invisible man is a man of power.
• 1:26:16
  He stopped for a moment to sneeze violently. But if you betray me,
• 1:26:21
  he said, if you fail to do as I direct you, he paused
• 1:26:26
  and tapped mister Marvell's shoulder smartly. Mister Marvell gave a yelp of terror at
• 1:26:30
  the touch. I don't want to betray you, said mister Marvell, edging
• 1:26:34
  away from the direction of the fingers. Don't you go a think in that
• 1:26:38
  wherever you do. All I want to do is help you. Just tell
• 1:26:41
  me what I got to do to hoard Whatever you want done, that I'm
• 1:26:45
  most willing to do. Chapter ten, mister Marvell's visit to Iping. After
• 1:26:55
  the first gusty panic had spent itself, Iping became argumentative. Skepticism suddenly reared
• 1:27:01
  its head, rather nervous, skepticism not at all assured of its back,
• 1:27:05
  but skepticism none the less. It is so much easier not to believe in
• 1:27:11
  an invisible man, and those who had actually seen him dissolve into air or
• 1:27:15
  felt the strength of his arm could be counted on the fingers of two hands.
• 1:27:18
  And of those witnesses, mister Wadgers was presently missing, having retired impregnably
• 1:27:24
  behind the bolts and bars of his own house, and Jaffers was lying stunned
• 1:27:28
  in the parlor of the coach and horses. Great and strange ideas transcending experience
• 1:27:33
  often have less effect upon men and women than smaller, more tangible considerations.
• 1:27:39
  Iping was gay with Bunting, and everybody was in gala dress, whit Monday
• 1:27:44
  had been looked forward to for a month or more. By the afternoon,
• 1:27:47
  even those who believed in the unseen were beginning to resume their little amusements in
• 1:27:51
  a tentative fashion, and on the supposition that he had gone quite away,
• 1:27:56
  and with the skeptics he was already adjessed. But people, skeptics and believers
• 1:28:00
  alike, were remarkably sociable All that day. Hayesman's meadow was gay, with
• 1:28:05
  a tent in which Missus Bunting and other ladies were preparing tea, while without
• 1:28:11
  the Sunday school children ran races and played games under the noisy guidance of the
• 1:28:15
  Curate and the Missus Cuss and Sackbut no doubt there was a slight uneasiness in
• 1:28:19
  the air, but people, for the most part had the sense to conceal
• 1:28:24
  whatever imaginative qualms they experienced. On the village Green an inclined string down which,
• 1:28:30
  clinging the while to a pulley swung handle, one could be hurled violently
• 1:28:32
  against a sack at the other end, came in for considerable favour among the
• 1:28:36
  adolescent, as also did the swings and the coconut shies. There was also
• 1:28:42
  promenading, and the steam organ attached to a small roundabout, filled the air
• 1:28:45
  with a plungent flavor of oil and with equally pungent music. Members of the
• 1:28:50
  club who had attended church in the morning were splendid in badges of pink and
• 1:28:55
  green, and some of the gayer mind it had adorned their bowler hats with
• 1:28:58
  brilliant colored flowers of river. Old Fletcher, whose conceptions of holiday making were
• 1:29:03
  severe, was visible through the jasmine about his window or through the open door,
• 1:29:08
  whichever way you chose to look, poised delicately on a plank, supported
• 1:29:12
  on two chairs, and whitewashing the ceiling of his front room. About four
• 1:29:17
  o'clock a stranger entered the village from the direction of the Downs. He was
• 1:29:21
  a short, stout person in an extraordinarily shabby top hat, and he appeared
• 1:29:26
  to be very much out of breath. His cheeks were alternately limp and tightly
• 1:29:30
  puffed. His mottled face was apprehensive, and he moved with a sort of
• 1:29:34
  reluctant alacrity. He turned the corner of the church and directed his way to
• 1:29:40
  the Coach and Horses, among others. Old Fletcher remembered seeing him, and
• 1:29:45
  indeed the old gentleman was so struck by his peculiar agitation that he inadvertently allowed
• 1:29:48
  a quantity of whitewash to run down the brush into the sleeve of his coat.
• 1:29:53
  Whilst regarding him. This stranger, to the perceptions of the proprietor of
• 1:29:58
  the Coconut Shy, appeared to be took talking to himself, and mister Huxter
• 1:30:01
  remarked the same thing. He stopped at the foot of the Coach and Horses
• 1:30:05
  steps, and, according to mister Huckster, appeared to undergo a severe internal
• 1:30:10
  struggle before he could induce himself to enter the house. Finally, he marched
• 1:30:15
  up the steps and was seen by mister Huxter to turn to the left and
• 1:30:17
  open the door of the parlor. Mister Huckster heard voices from within the room
• 1:30:23
  and from the bar, apprising the man of his error. That room's private
• 1:30:27
  said hall, and the stranger shut the door clumsily and went into the bar.
• 1:30:32
  In the course of a few minutes, he reappeared, wiping his lips
• 1:30:35
  with the back of his hand, with an air of quiet satisfaction that somehow
• 1:30:39
  impressed mister Huckster, as he assumed he stood looking about him for some moments,
• 1:30:45
  and then mister Huckster saw him walk in an oddly furtive manner towards the
• 1:30:47
  gates of the yard upon which the parlor window opened. The stranger, after
• 1:30:53
  some hesitation, leant against one of the gate posts, produced a short clay
• 1:30:57
  pipe, and prepared to fill it. His finger trembled while doing so.
• 1:31:01
  He lit it clumsily and folded his arms began to smoke in a languid attitude,
• 1:31:06
  an attitude which his occasional glances up the yard altogether belied. All this,
• 1:31:13
  mister Huxter saw over the canisters of the tobacco window, and the singularity
• 1:31:16
  of the man's behavior prompted him to maintain his observation. Presently, the stranger
• 1:31:23
  stood up abruptly and put his pipe in his pocket. Then he vanished into
• 1:31:27
  the yard forthwith mister Huckster, conceiving he was witness of some petty larceny,
• 1:31:32
  leaped around his counter and ran out into the road to intercept the thief.
• 1:31:35
  As he did so, mister Marvel reappeared his hat askew a big bundle in
• 1:31:40
  a blue tablecloth in one hand, and three books tied together as it proved
• 1:31:44
  afterwards, with the vicar's braces in the other. Directly he saw Huckster.
• 1:31:49
  He gave a sort of gasp, and, turning sharply to the left,
• 1:31:53
  began to run. Stop thief, cried Huxter, and set off after him.
• 1:31:58
  Mister Huxter's sensations were vivid but brief. He saw the man just before
• 1:32:01
  him, and spurting briskly for the church corner and the hill road, he
• 1:32:05
  saw the village flags and festivities beyond, and a face or so turned towards
• 1:32:10
  him. He bawled stop again. He had hardly gone ten strides before his
• 1:32:15
  shin was caught in some mysterious fashion, and he was no longer running,
• 1:32:17
  but flying with inconceivable rapidity through the air. He saw the ground suddenly close
• 1:32:24
  to his face. The world seemed to splash into a million whirling specks of
• 1:32:28
  light, and subsequent proceedings interested him no more. End of chapter ten,
• 1:32:38
  Chapter eleven in the Coach and Horses, Now in order to clearly understand what
• 1:32:45
  had happened in the inn, it is necessary to go back to the moment
• 1:32:48
  when mister Marvell first came into view of mister Huckster's window. At that precise
• 1:32:54
  moment, mister Cuss and mister Bunting were in the parlor. They were seriously
• 1:32:58
  investigating the strange occurrences of the morning, and were, with mister Hall's permission,
• 1:33:02
  making a thorough examination of the invisible man's belongings. Jaffers had partially recovered
• 1:33:08
  from his fall and had gone home in charge of his sympathetic friends. The
• 1:33:13
  stranger's scattered garments had been removed by Missus Hall, and the room tidied up,
• 1:33:17
  and on the table under the window where the stranger had been wont to
• 1:33:20
  work, Cuss had hit almost at once on three big books in manuscript labeled
• 1:33:26
  diary. Diary, said Cus, putting the three books on the table.
• 1:33:31
  Now, at any rate we shall learn something. The vicar stood with his
• 1:33:35
  hands on the table, Diary repeated Cus, sitting down, putting two volumes
• 1:33:41
  to support the third and opening it hum no name on the fly leaf,
• 1:33:46
  bother cipher and figures. The vicar came round to look over his shoulder,
• 1:33:54
  Cuss turned the pages over with a face suddenly disappointed. I'm dear me,
• 1:33:58
  it's all cipher hunting. There are no diagrams, asked mister Bunting, no
• 1:34:03
  illustrations throwing light. See for yourself, said mister Cuss. Some of it's
• 1:34:09
  mathematical, and some of its Russian or some such language, to judge by
• 1:34:13
  the letters, and some of its Greek. Now the Greek, I thought
• 1:34:15
  you, of course, said mister Bunting, taking out and wiping his spectacles,
• 1:34:19
  and feeling suddenly very uncomfortable, for he had no Greek left in his
• 1:34:25
  mind worth talking about. Yes, the Greek, of course, may furnish
• 1:34:29
  a clue. I'll find you a place. I'd rather glance through the volumes
• 1:34:33
  first, said mister Bunting, still wiping a general impression, first, Cuss,
• 1:34:39
  and then you know, we can go looking for clues. He coughed,
• 1:34:44
  put on his glasses, arranged them fastidiously, coughed again, and wished
• 1:34:48
  something would happen to avert the seemingly inevitable exposure. Then he took the volume
• 1:34:54
  Cuss handed him in a leisurely manner, and then something did happen. The
• 1:34:58
  door opened suddenly, both gentlemen started violently, looked around, and were relieved
• 1:35:04
  to see a sporadically rosy face beneath the furry's hillk hat Tap asked the face
• 1:35:11
  and stood staring. No, said both gentlemen at once. Over the other
• 1:35:15
  side, my man, said mister Bunting, And please shut that door,
• 1:35:20
  said mister Cuss irritably. All right, said the intruder, as it seemed,
• 1:35:27
  in a low voice, curiously different from the huskiness of its first inquiry.
• 1:35:30
  Right you are, said the intruder in the former voice. Stand clear,
• 1:35:36
  and he vanished and closed the door. A sailor, I should judge,
• 1:35:42
  said mister Bunting, amusing fellows. They are stand clear. Indeed an
• 1:35:46
  aautical term referring to his getting back out of the room. I suppose I
• 1:35:50
  dare say so, said Cuss. My nerves are all loose to day.
• 1:35:54
  It made me quite jump the door opening like that. Mister Bunting smiled as
• 1:35:59
  if he had not jumped. And now he said, with a sigh,
• 1:36:03
  these books someone sniffed as he did. So. One thing is indisputable,
• 1:36:11
  said Bunting, drawing a chair up next to that of mister Cuss. There
• 1:36:15
  certainly have been very strange things happening at Iping during the last few days,
• 1:36:19
  very strange. I cannot, of course, believe in this absurd invisibility story.
• 1:36:26
  It's incredible, said Cus. Incredible, but the fact remains that I
• 1:36:30
  saw. I certainly saw right down his sleeve. But did you Are you
• 1:36:36
  sure suppose a mirror? For instance? Hallucinations are so easily produced. I
• 1:36:42
  don't know if you've ever seen a really good conjuror. I won't argue again,
• 1:36:47
  said Cus. We've thrashed that out, Bunting. And just now there's
• 1:36:51
  these books. Ah, here's some of what I take to be Greek Greek
• 1:36:57
  letters. Certainly, he pointed to the middle of the page. Mister Bunting
• 1:37:02
  flushed slightly and brought his face nearer, apparently finding some difficulty with his glasses.
• 1:37:10
  Suddenly, he became aware of a strange feeling at the nape of his
• 1:37:13
  neck. He tried to raise his head and encountered an immovable resistance. The
• 1:37:17
  feeling was a curious pressure, the grip of a heavy, firm hand,
• 1:37:21
  and it bore his chin irresistibly to the table. Don't move, little men,
• 1:37:28
  whispered a voice, or I'll brain you both. Mister Bunting looked into
• 1:37:32
  the face of Cuss close to his own, and each saw a horrified reflection
• 1:37:38
  of his own, sickly astonishment. I'm sorry to handle you so roughly,
• 1:37:43
  said the voice, but it's unavoidable. Since when did you learn to pry
• 1:37:48
  into an investigator's private memoranda? Said the voice, and two chins struck the
• 1:37:54
  table simultaneously, and two sets of teeth rattled. Since when did you learn
• 1:38:00
  to invade the private rooms of a man in misfortune? And the concussion was
• 1:38:04
  repeated. Where have they put my clothes? Listen? Said the voice.
• 1:38:11
  The windows are fastened, and I've taken the key out of the door.
• 1:38:15
  I am a fairly strong man, and I have the poker handy. Besides
• 1:38:20
  being invisible, There's not the slightest doubt that I could kill you both and
• 1:38:25
  get away quite easily if I wanted to. Do you understand very well?
• 1:38:30
  If I let you go, would you promise not to try any nonsense and
• 1:38:33
  do what I tell you? The vicar and the doctor looked at one another,
• 1:38:40
  and the doctor pulled a face. Yes, said mister Bunting, and
• 1:38:44
  the doctor repeated it. Then the pressure on the next relaxed and the doctor
• 1:38:47
  and the vicar sat up, both very red in the face and wriggling their
• 1:38:51
  heads. Please keep sitting where you are, said the invisible man. Here's
• 1:38:58
  the poker, you see when I came into this room, continued the invisible
• 1:39:03
  Man, after presenting the poker to the tip of the nose of each of
• 1:39:05
  his visitors. I did not expect to find it occupied, and I expected
• 1:39:11
  to find, in addition to my books of memoranda, an outfit of clothing.
• 1:39:15
  Where is it, No, don't rise, I can see it's gone
• 1:39:19
  now. Just at present. Though the days are quite warm enough for an
• 1:39:23
  invisible man to run about stark, the evenings are quite chilly. I want
• 1:39:28
  clothing and other accommodation, and I must also have those three books. Chapter
• 1:39:36
  twelve, The Invisible Man loses his temper. It is unavoidable that at this
• 1:39:45
  point the narrative should break off again for a certain, very painful reason that
• 1:39:48
  will presently be apparent. While these things were going on in the parlor,
• 1:39:53
  and while mister Huckster was watching mister Marvell smoking his pipe against the gate not
• 1:39:58
  a dozen yards away, mister Hall and Teddy Henry were discussing in a state
• 1:40:02
  of cloudy puzzlement the one eyping topic. Suddenly there came a violent thud against
• 1:40:08
  the door of the parlor, a sharp cry, and then silence. Ullo,
• 1:40:15
  said Teddy, Henry ullo from the tap. Mister Hall took things in
• 1:40:21
  slowly, but surely that ain't right, he said, and came round from
• 1:40:26
  behind the bar towards the parlor door. He and Teddy approached the door together
• 1:40:30
  with intent faces, their eyes considered somewhat wrong, said Hall, and Henry
• 1:40:38
  nodded agreement. Whiffs of an unpleasant chemical odor met them. There was a
• 1:40:43
  muffled sound of conversation, very rapid and subdued. You are right there,
• 1:40:47
  asked Hall, rapping. The muttered conversation ceased abruptly for a moment silence.
• 1:40:55
  Then the conversation was resumed in hissing whispers, then a sharp cry of no,
• 1:41:00
  no, you don't. There came a sudden motion and the oversetting of
• 1:41:04
  a chair, a brief struggle, silence again what the deuce, exclaimed Henry
• 1:41:12
  sotto vatching you all right there, asked mister Hall, sharply. Again the
• 1:41:18
  vicar's voice answered with a curious jerking intonation. Cool, cool, quite right,
• 1:41:27
  Please don't interrupt, odd, said mister Henfrey. Odd said mister Hall
• 1:41:35
  says, don't interrupt, said Henfrey. Are you hurt? And said Hall?
• 1:41:41
  And a sniff said Henfrey. They remained listening. The conversation was rapid
• 1:41:47
  and subdued. I can't, said mister Bunting, his voice rising, I
• 1:41:51
  tell you, sir, I will not. What was that, asked Henfrey.
• 1:41:58
  Says ye, winner it where speaking to us? Was he disgraceful,
• 1:42:03
  said mister Bunting. Within disgraceful, said mister Henfrey. I heard it distinct?
• 1:42:10
  Who's that speaking now, asked Henfrey. Mister cusse, I suppose,
• 1:42:15
  said Haul. Can you hear anything? Silence? The sounds within indistinct and
• 1:42:21
  perplexing, sounds like throwing the tablecloth about, said Hall. Missus Hall appeared
• 1:42:30
  behind the bar. Hall made gestures of silence and invitation. This aroused Missus
• 1:42:35
  Hall's wifely opposition. What's your lessening there? For? Hall? Ain't you
• 1:42:41
  nothing better to do? Busy day like this? Hall tried to convey everything
• 1:42:45
  by grimaces and dumb show, but Missus Hall was obdurate. She raised her
• 1:42:49
  voice, so Hall and Henfrey, rather crestfallen, tiptoed back to the bar
• 1:42:55
  gesticulating to explain to her. At first she refused, used to see anything
• 1:43:00
  in what they had heard at all. Then she insisted on Hall keeping silence
• 1:43:03
  while Henfrey told her his story. She was inclined to think the whole business
• 1:43:08
  nonsense. Perhaps they were just moving the furniture about. I heard and say
• 1:43:13
  disgraceful that I did, said Hall. I heard that, Missus Hall,
• 1:43:18
  said Henfrey. Like as not began Missus Hall sh said, mister Teddy Henry.
• 1:43:25
  Didn't I hear the window? What window, asked Missus Hall. Parlor
• 1:43:30
  window, said Henfrey. Everyone stood listening intently. Missus Hall's eyes directed straight
• 1:43:36
  before her saw without seeing the brilliant oblong of the inn door, the road
• 1:43:41
  white and vivid, and Huckster's shop front blistering in the June sun. Abruptly,
• 1:43:46
  Huckster's door opened and Huckster appeared, eyes staring with excitement, arms gesticulating.
• 1:43:54
  Yap cried Hunter, stop thief, and he run obliquely across the oblong
• 1:43:59
  towards the yard and vanished. Simultaneously came a tumult from the parlor and a
• 1:44:04
  sound of windows being closed. Hall, Henfrey, and the human contents of
• 1:44:10
  the tap rushed out at once pell mell into the street. They saw someone
• 1:44:14
  whisker around the corner towards the road, and mister Huckster executing a complicated leap
• 1:44:17
  in the air that ended on his face and shoulder. Down the street.
• 1:44:21
  People were standing astonished or running towards them. Mister Huckster was stunned. Henry
• 1:44:29
  stopped to discover this, but Hall and the two laborers from the tap rushed
• 1:44:32
  at once to the corner, shouting incoherent things, and saw mister Marvell vanishing
• 1:44:38
  by the corner of the church wall. They appeared to have jumped to the
• 1:44:41
  impossible conclusion that this was the invisible man suddenly become visible and set off at
• 1:44:45
  once along the lane in pursuit. But Hall had hardly run a dozen yards
• 1:44:50
  before he gave a loud shout of astonishment and went flying headlong sideways, clutching
• 1:44:55
  one of the laborers and bringing him to the ground. He had been charged,
• 1:45:00
  just as one charges a man at football. The second laborer came round
• 1:45:03
  in a circle, stared and conceiving that Hall had tumbled over of his own
• 1:45:06
  accord, turned to resume the pursuit, only to be tripped by the ankle,
• 1:45:12
  just as Huckster had been. Then, as the first labourer struggled to
• 1:45:15
  his feet, he was kicked sideways by a blow that might have felled an
• 1:45:18
  ox. As he went down the rush from the direction of the village Green
• 1:45:24
  came round the corner. The first to appear was the proprietor of the Cocoanut
• 1:45:28
  Shy, a burly man in blue Jersey. He was astonished to see the
• 1:45:32
  lane empty save for three men sprawling absurdly on the ground. And then something
• 1:45:38
  happened to his rearmost foot, and he went headlong and rolled sideways, just
• 1:45:42
  in time to graze the feet of his brother and partner following headlong. The
• 1:45:45
  two were then kicked, knelt on, fallen over, and cursed by quite
• 1:45:49
  a number of over hasty people. Now, when Hall and Henfrey and the
• 1:45:56
  labourers ran out of the house, Missus Hall, who had been disciplined by
• 1:46:00
  years of experience, remained in the bar next to the till. And suddenly
• 1:46:03
  the parlor door was opened and mister Cuss appeared, and without glancing at her,
• 1:46:08
  rushed at once down the steps round the corner. Hold him, he
• 1:46:13
  cried, don't let him drop that parcel he knew nothing of the existence of
• 1:46:17
  Marvel, for the invisible man had handed over the books and bundle in the
• 1:46:21
  yard. The face of mister Cuss was angry and resolute, but his costume
• 1:46:27
  was defective, a sort of limp white kilt that could only have passed muster
• 1:46:30
  in Greece. Hold him, he bawled. He's got my trousers, and
• 1:46:35
  every stitch of the vicar's clothes tend to him in a minute, he cried
• 1:46:41
  to Henry. As he passed the prostrate huckster, and coming round the corner
• 1:46:45
  to join the tumult, was promptly knocked off his feet into an indecorous sprawl.
• 1:46:50
  Somebody in full flight trod heavily on his finger. He yelled, struggled
• 1:46:56
  to regain his feet, was knocked against and thrown on all fours again,
• 1:47:00
  and became aware that he was involved not in a capture but a rout.
• 1:47:04
  Everyone was running back to the village. He rose again and was hit severely
• 1:47:09
  behind the ear. He staggered and set off back to the coach and horses,
• 1:47:13
  forthwith leaping over the deserted huckster, who was now sitting up on his
• 1:47:16
  way behind him. As he was half way up the inn steps, he
• 1:47:21
  heard a sudden yell of rage, rising sharply out of the confusion of cries,
• 1:47:26
  and a sounding smack in someone's face. He recognized the voice as that
• 1:47:30
  of the Invisible Man, and the note was that of a man suddenly infuriated
• 1:47:34
  by a painful blow. In another moment, mister Cuss was back in the
• 1:47:40
  parlor. He's coming back, Bunting, he said, rushing in. Save
• 1:47:44
  yourself. Mister Bunting was standing in the window, engaged in an attempt to
• 1:47:48
  clothe himself in the hearth rug and a West Surrey gazette. Who's coming,
• 1:47:55
  he said, so startled that his costume narrowly escaped disintegration. Invisible Man,
• 1:48:00
  said Cuss, and rushed on at to the window. We'd better clear out
• 1:48:02
  from here. He's fighting mad mad. In another moment, he was out
• 1:48:08
  in the yard. Good heavens, said mister Bunting, hesitating between two horrible
• 1:48:14
  alternatives. He heard a frightful struggle in the passage of the inn, and
• 1:48:17
  his decision was made. He clambered out of the window, adjusted his costume
• 1:48:23
  hastily, and fled up the village as fast as his fat little legs would
• 1:48:27
  carry him. From the moment when the Invisible Man screamed with rage and mister
• 1:48:33
  Bunting made his memorable flight up the village, it became impossible to give a
• 1:48:38
  consecutive account of affairs in Iping. Possibly the Invisible Man's original intention were simply
• 1:48:44
  to cover Marvel's retreat with the clothes and books, but his temper at no
• 1:48:47
  time very good, seems to have gone completely. At some chance blow and
• 1:48:53
  forthwith he set to smiting and overthrowing. For the mere satisfaction of hurting,
• 1:48:59
  you must figure the street full of running, figures of doors slamming, and
• 1:49:02
  fights for hiding places. You must figure the tumult suddenly striking on the unstable
• 1:49:08
  equilibrium of old Fletcher's planks and two chairs with cataclysmic results. You must figure
• 1:49:14
  an appalled couple caught dismally in a swing. And then the whole tumultuous rush
• 1:49:19
  has passed, and the Iping street, with its gourds and flags, is
• 1:49:23
  deserted, save for the still raging, unseen and littered with cocoanuts, overthrown
• 1:49:29
  canvas, screens, and the scattered stock in trade of a sweet stuff's tall.
• 1:49:33
  Everywhere there is a sound of closing shutters and shoving bolts, and the
• 1:49:38
  only visible humanity is an occasional flitting eye under a raised eyebrow in the corner
• 1:49:43
  of a windowpane. The invisible man amused himself for a little while by breaking
• 1:49:49
  all the windows in the coach and horses, and then he thrust a street
• 1:49:54
  lamp through the parlor window of Missus Gribble. He it must have been who
• 1:49:58
  cut the telegraph wire to Addeddeton, just beyond Higgins's cottage on the Aderdean Road.
• 1:50:03
  And after that, as his peculiar qualities allowed, he passed out of
• 1:50:08
  human perceptions altogether, and he was neither heard, seen, nor felt in
• 1:50:12
  Iping any more. He vanished absolutely. But it was the best part of
• 1:50:18
  two hours before any human being ventured out again into the desolation of an Iping
• 1:50:24
  Street. End of chapter twelve. Chapter thirteen, mister Marvel discusses his resignation.
• 1:50:36
  When the dust was gathering and Iping was just beginning to peep timorously forth
• 1:50:41
  again upon the shattered wreckage of its bank holiday, A short, thick set
• 1:50:45
  man in a shabby silk hat was marching painfully through the twilight behind the beech
• 1:50:49
  woods on the road to Bramblehurst. He carried three books, bound together by
• 1:50:54
  some sort of ornamental elastic ligature, and a bundle wrapped in a blue tablecloth.
• 1:51:00
  His rubicund face expressed consternation and fatigue. He appeared to be in some
• 1:51:05
  sort of spasmodic hurry. He was accompanied by a voice other than his own,
• 1:51:12
  and ever and again he winced under the touch of unseen hands. If
• 1:51:16
  you give me the slip again, said the voice. If you attempt to
• 1:51:19
  give me the slip again, Lord, said mister Marvell. That shoulder's a
• 1:51:26
  mass of bruises as it is. On my honor, said the voice.
• 1:51:30
  I will kill you. I didn't try to give you the slip, said
• 1:51:34
  Marvel, in a voice that was not far remote from tears. I swear
• 1:51:39
  I didn't. I didn't know the blessed turning. That was all how the
• 1:51:43
  devil was I to know the blessed turning? As it is, I've been
• 1:51:45
  knocked about. You'll get knocked about a great deal more if you don't mind,
• 1:51:49
  said the voice, and mister Marvell abruptly became silent. He blew out
• 1:51:55
  his cheeks, and his eyes were eloquent of despair. It's bad enough to
• 1:52:00
  let those floundering yokels explode my little secret without your cutting off with my books.
• 1:52:06
  It's lucky for some of them. They cut and ran when they did.
• 1:52:11
  Here am I No one knew I was invisible? And now what am
• 1:52:15
  I to do? What am I to do? Asked Marvel sotto vo.
• 1:52:19
  She it's all about. It will be in the papers. Everybody will be
• 1:52:25
  looking for me, every one on their guard. The voice broke off into
• 1:52:29
  vivid curses and ceased. The despair of mister Marvell's face deepened and his pace
• 1:52:34
  slackened. Go on, said the voice. Mister Marvell's face assumed a grayish
• 1:52:42
  tint between the ruddier patches. Don't drop those books, stupid, said the
• 1:52:46
  voice, sharply, overtaking him. The fact is, said the voice.
• 1:52:51
  I shall have to make use of you. You're a poor tool, but
• 1:52:55
  I must. O'm a miserable tool, said Marvel. You are, said
• 1:53:00
  the voice. I'm the worst possible tool you could have, said Marvel.
• 1:53:08
  I'm not strong, he said, after a discouraging silence. I'm not over
• 1:53:13
  strong, he repeated. No, and my heart's weak. That little business
• 1:53:20
  I pulled it through, of course, but bless you, I could have
• 1:53:24
  dropped. Well, I haven't the nerve and strength for the sort of thing
• 1:53:30
  you want. I'll stimulate you. I wish you wouldn't. I wouldn't like
• 1:53:35
  to mess up your plans, you know, but I might out of sheer
• 1:53:40
  funk and misery. You'd better not, said the voice, with quiet emphasis.
• 1:53:46
  I wish I was dead, said Marvel. He ain't justice, he
• 1:53:51
  said, you must admit it seems to me I've a perfect right Get on,
• 1:53:57
  said the voice. Mister Marvell mended his pace, and for a time
• 1:54:01
  they went in silence again. It's devilish, horrid, said mister Marple.
• 1:54:08
  This was quite ineffectual. He tried another tack. What do I make by
• 1:54:13
  it? He began, and again in a tone of unendurable wrong. Oh,
• 1:54:18
  shut up, said the voice, with sudden, amazing vigor. I'll
• 1:54:23
  see to you, all right. You do what you're told. You'll do
• 1:54:26
  it all right. You're fallen all that, but you'll do I tell you,
• 1:54:30
  sir, I'm not the man for it, respectfully, but it is
• 1:54:33
  so. If you don't shut up, I shall twist your wrist again,
• 1:54:38
  said the invisible man. I want to think presently. Two oblongs of yellow
• 1:54:45
  light appeared through the trees, and the square tower of a church loomed through
• 1:54:48
  the gloaming. I shall keep my hand on your shoulder, said the voice
• 1:54:54
  all through the village. Go straight through, and try no foolery. It'll
• 1:54:58
  be the worse for you if you do. Oh he know that, sighed
• 1:55:02
  mister Marvel. Oh he know all that. The unhappy looking figure in the
• 1:55:09
  obsolete silk hat passed up the street of the little village with his burdens and
• 1:55:14
  vanished into the gathering darkness beyond the lights of the windows. Chapter fourteen.
• 1:55:21
  At Port Stowe, ten o'clock the next morning found mister Marvel, unshaven,
• 1:55:30
  dirty and travel stained, sitting with the books beside him, and his hands
• 1:55:33
  deep in his pockets, looking very weary, nervous and uncomfortable, and inflating
• 1:55:39
  his cheeks at infrequent intervals, on the bench outside a little inn on the
• 1:55:43
  outskirts of Port Stow. Beside him were the books, but now they were
• 1:55:47
  tied with string. The bundle had been abandoned in the pine woods beyond Bramblehurst
• 1:55:53
  in accordance with a change of plans in the Invisible Man. Mister Marvel sat
• 1:55:58
  on the bench and although no one took the slightest notice of him. His
• 1:56:01
  agitation remained at fever heat. His hands would go ever and again to his
• 1:56:06
  various pockets with a curious, nervous fumbling. When he had been sitting for
• 1:56:12
  the best part of an hour, however, an elderly mariner carrying a newspaper
• 1:56:16
  came out of the inn and sat down beside him. Pleasant day, said
• 1:56:19
  the mariner. Mister Marvell glanced about him with something very like terror. Very,
• 1:56:27
  he said, just seasonable weather for the time of year, said the
• 1:56:30
  mariner, taking no denial, quite, said mister Marvel. The mariner produced
• 1:56:38
  a toothpick, and, saving his regard, was engrossed thereby for some minutes.
• 1:56:43
  His eyes, meanwhile, were at liberty to examine mister Marvell's dusty figure
• 1:56:46
  and the books beside him. As he had approached mister Marvell, he had
• 1:56:50
  heard a sound like the dropping of coins into a pocket. He was struck
• 1:56:55
  by the contrast of mister Marvell's appearance with this sudden suggestion of opulence. Thence
• 1:57:00
  his mind wandered back again to a topic that had taken a curiously firm hold
• 1:57:04
  of his imagination. Books. He said, suddenly noisily finishing with a tuthpick.
• 1:57:11
  Mister Marvel started and looked at them. Oh, yes, he said,
• 1:57:15
  Yes, they're books. There are some extraordinary things in books, said
• 1:57:19
  the mariner. We believe you, said mister Marvel. And some extraordinary things
• 1:57:26
  out of them, said the mariner. True. Likewise, said mister Marvel.
• 1:57:30
  He eyed his interlocutor, and then glanced about him. There's some extraordinary
• 1:57:35
  things in newspapers, for example, said the mariner. There are in this
• 1:57:43
  newspaper, said the mariner. Ah, said mister Marvel. There's a story,
• 1:57:48
  said the mariner, fixing mister Marvel with an eye that was firm and
• 1:57:51
  deliberate. There's a story about an invisible man, for instance. Mister Marvel
• 1:58:00
  pulled his mouth askew and scratched his cheek, and felt his ears glowing.
• 1:58:03
  What will they be writing next, he asked, faintly. Austria or America?
• 1:58:11
  Neither, said the mariner. Here, lord, said mister Marvel.
• 1:58:15
  Starting when I say here, said the mariner, said mister Marvel's intense relief.
• 1:58:23
  I don't, of course mean here in this place, I mean hereabouts.
• 1:58:29
  An invisible man, said mister Marvel. And what's he been up to?
• 1:58:33
  Everything, said the mariner, controlling Marvel with his eye, and then
• 1:58:36
  amplifying every blessed thing. I ain't seen a paper these four days, said
• 1:58:44
  Marvel. Iping's the place he started at, said the mariner. Indeed,
• 1:58:48
  said mister Marvel, he started there, and where he came from. Nobody
• 1:58:54
  don't seem to know here. It is peculiar story from Iping. And it
• 1:58:59
  says in this paper that the evidence is extraordinarily strong. Extraordinary, lord,
• 1:59:05
  said mister Marvel. But then it's an extraordinary story. There was a clergyman
• 1:59:11
  and a medical gent. Witnesses saw him all right and proper at least ways
• 1:59:15
  didn't see him. He was staying it as at the coach and horses,
• 1:59:18
  and don't no one seemed to being aware of his misfortune. Aware of his
• 1:59:23
  misfortune, it says, until in an altercation at the inn. It says
• 1:59:28
  his bandages on his head was torn off. Was then observed that his head
• 1:59:31
  was invisible. Attempts were at once made to secure him, but casting off
• 1:59:36
  his garments. It says. He succeeded in escaping, but not until after
• 1:59:42
  a desperate struggle in which he had inflicted serious injuries. It says on her
• 1:59:46
  worthy and able, constable, mister J. A. Jaffers, pretty straight
• 1:59:51
  story, eh, names and everything, Lord, said mister Marvel, looking
• 1:59:58
  nervously about him, trying to count the money in his pockets by his unaided
• 2:00:01
  sense of touch, and full of a strange novel idea. It sounds most
• 2:00:06
  astonishing, don't it extraordinary? I call it? Never a tell of invisible
• 2:00:14
  men? Before I haven't, but nowadays when he hears such a lot of
• 2:00:17
  extraordinary things. That that all he did, asked Marvel, trying to seem
• 2:00:25
  at his ease. It's enough, ain't it? Said the Mariner. Didn't
• 2:00:30
  go back by any chance, asked Marvel. Just escaped, and that's all,
• 2:00:35
  eh all, said the Mariner. Why ain't it enough? Quite enough?
• 2:00:42
  Said Marvel. I should think it was enough, said the Mariner.
• 2:00:45
  I should think it was enough. He didn't have any pals. You don't
• 2:00:50
  say he had any pals, does it, asked mister Marvel. Anxious,
• 2:00:56
  ain't one of U sawt enough for you? Asked the Mariner. No,
• 2:01:00
  thank heaven, as one say he didn't. He nodded his head slowly.
• 2:01:05
  It makes me regular uncomfortable the bare thought of that chap running about the country.
• 2:01:11
  He is at present at large, and from certain evidence, it is
• 2:01:15
  supposed that he has taken took I suppose they mean the road to port Stow.
• 2:01:23
  You see, we're right in it, none of your American wonderers this
• 2:01:27
  time. And just think of the things he might do. Where'd ye be
• 2:01:30
  if he took a drop over and above and had a fancy to go for
• 2:01:33
  you? Supposing he wants to rob, who can prevent him? He can
• 2:01:38
  tresp us, he can burgle, He could walk through the cordon of a
• 2:01:41
  policeman as easy as me. Or you could give the slip to a blind
• 2:01:44
  man, easier for the easier. Blind chapsk here uncommon sharp, I'm told,
• 2:01:49
  And wherever there was liquor, he fancied. He's got a tremendous advantage,
• 2:01:56
  certainly, said mister Marvell. And well you're right, said the mariner.
• 2:02:01
  He has. All of this time, mister Marvell had been glancing about
• 2:02:08
  him, intently, listening for faint footfalls, trying to detect imperceptible movements.
• 2:02:14
  He seemed on the point of some great resolution. He coughed behind his hand.
• 2:02:20
  He looked about him again, listened, bent towards the Mariner, and
• 2:02:25
  lowered his voice. The fact of it is. I happen to know just
• 2:02:30
  a thing or two about this invisible man from private sources, Oh, said
• 2:02:36
  the mariner. Interested you, Yes, said mister Marvel. Me indeed,
• 2:02:44
  said the mariner. And may I ask you will be astonished, said mister
• 2:02:47
  Marvel behind his hand. It's tremendous, indeed, said the mariner. The
• 2:02:55
  fact is, began mister Marvell eagerly, in a confidential undertone. Suddenly his
• 2:03:00
  expression changed marvelously. Oh, he said. He rose stiffly in his seat.
• 2:03:05
  His face was eloquent of physical softening. Wow, he said, what's
• 2:03:13
  up, said the mariner. Concerned toothache, said mister Marvell, and put
• 2:03:17
  his hand to his ear. He caught hold of his books. I must
• 2:03:20
  be getting on, I think, he edged in a curious way along the
• 2:03:25
  seat, away from his interlocutor. But you was just gonna tell me about
• 2:03:30
  this here, invisible, ma'am, protested the mariner. Mister Marvel seemed to
• 2:03:34
  consult it himself. Hoax, said a voice. It's a hoax, said
• 2:03:40
  mister Marvel. But it's in the paper, said the mariner. Hoax all
• 2:03:45
  the same, said Marvel. I know the chat that started to lie.
• 2:03:49
  There ain't no invisible man whatsoever bloy me? But how about this paper?
• 2:03:56
  Do you mean to say not a word of it? Said Marvel, stoutly.
• 2:04:00
  The mariner stared the paper in hand. Mister Marvel jerkily faced about.
• 2:04:06
  Wait a bit, said the mariner, rising and speaking slowly. Do you
• 2:04:11
  mean to say I do? Said mister Marvel. Then why do you let
• 2:04:15
  me go on and tell you all this blasted stuff? Then what do you
• 2:04:18
  mean by letting a man make a fool of himself like that? For hey,
• 2:04:23
  mister Marvel blew out his cheeks. The mariner was suddenly very red.
• 2:04:27
  Indeed, he clenched his hands. I've been talking here, there's ten minutes,
• 2:04:31
  he said, And you, your little pot bellied, leathery faced son
• 2:04:34
  of an old boot, couldn't have the elementary manners. Don't you come bandying
• 2:04:40
  words with me? Said mister Marvel, bandying words. I've a drolly good
• 2:04:45
  mind. Come up, said a voice, and mister Marvel was suddenly whirled
• 2:04:50
  about and started marching off in a curious, spasmodic manner. You'd better move
• 2:04:56
  on, said the mariner. Who's moving on, said mister Marvel. He
• 2:05:00
  was receding obliquely with a curious, hurrying gait with occasional violent jerks forward.
• 2:05:06
  Somewhere along the road. He began a muttered monolog protests and recriminations. Silly
• 2:05:13
  devil, said the mariner, legs wide apart, elbows akimbo, watching the
• 2:05:16
  receding figure. I'll show you, you silly ass, hoaxing me. It's
• 2:05:21
  here on the paper, mister Marvel retorted incoherently, And receding was hidden by
• 2:05:28
  a bend in the road, But the mariner still stood magnificent in the midst
• 2:05:32
  of the way until the approach of a butcher's cart dislodged him. Then he
• 2:05:36
  turned himself towards Portstow. Full of extraordinary asses, he said softly to himself,
• 2:05:43
  just take me down a bit. That was his silly game. It's
• 2:05:45
  on the paper. And there was another extraordinary thing he was presently to hear
• 2:05:51
  that had happened quite close to him, And that was a vision of a
• 2:05:56
  fistful of money, no less, traveling without visible aid along by the wall
• 2:06:00
  at the corner of Saint Michael's Lane. A brother Mariner had seen this wonderful
• 2:06:05
  sight that very morning. He had snatched at the money forthwith and had been
• 2:06:10
  knocked headlong, and when he got to his feet, the butterfly money had
• 2:06:14
  vanished. Our mariner was in the mood to believe anything, he declared,
• 2:06:17
  but that was a bit too stiff. Afterwards, however, he began to
• 2:06:23
  think things over, the story of the flying money was true, and all
• 2:06:28
  about that neighborhood, even from the August London and Country Banking Company, from
• 2:06:31
  the tills of shops and inns doors, standing that sunny weather entirely open,
• 2:06:36
  money had been quietly and dexterously making off that day in handfuls and rulo,
• 2:06:42
  floating quietly along by walls and shady places, dodging quickly from the approaching eyes
• 2:06:46
  of men. And it had, though no man had traced it, invariably
• 2:06:51
  ended its mysterious flight in the pocket of that agitated gentleman in the obsolete silk
• 2:06:56
  hat, sitting outside the little end on the outskirt of Port Stow. It
• 2:07:02
  was ten days after, and indeed only when the Burdock story was already old,
• 2:07:08
  that the mariner collated these facts and began to understand how near he had
• 2:07:12
  been to the wonderful invisible man. Chapter fifteen. The man who was running
• 2:07:20
  in the early evening time, Doctor Kemp was sitting in his study in the
• 2:07:25
  Belvidere on the hill overlooking Birdock. It was a pleasant little room with three
• 2:07:30
  windows north west and south, and bookshelves covered with books and scientific publications,
• 2:07:35
  and a broad writing table, and underneath the north window a microscope, glass
• 2:07:41
  lips, minute instruments, some cultures, and scattered bottles of reagents. Doctor
• 2:07:46
  Kemp's solar lamp was lit, albeit the sky was still bright with the sunset
• 2:07:50
  light, and his blinds were up because there was no offense of peering outsiders
• 2:07:56
  to require them pulled down. Doctor Kemp was a tall and slender young man,
• 2:08:01
  with flaxen hair and a mustache almost white, and the work he was
• 2:08:05
  upon would earn him he hoped the fellowship of the Royal Society, so highly
• 2:08:09
  did he think of it. And his eye, presently wandering from his work,
• 2:08:15
  caught the sunset blazing at the back of the hill that is over against
• 2:08:18
  his own. For a minute, perhaps he sat pen in mouth, admiring
• 2:08:24
  the rich golden color above the crest, and then his attention was attracted by
• 2:08:28
  the little figure of a man, inky black running over the hill brow towards
• 2:08:31
  him. He was a shortish little man, and he wore a high hat,
• 2:08:35
  and he was running so fast that his legs verily twinkled. Another of
• 2:08:41
  those fools, said doctor Kemp, like that ass who ran into me this
• 2:08:46
  morning around a corner with visible man a coming, Sir, I can't imagine
• 2:08:52
  what possesses people. One might think we were in the thirteenth century. He
• 2:08:56
  got up, went to the window and stared at the dusky hillsie and the
• 2:09:00
  dark little figure tearing down it. He seems in a confounded hurry, said
• 2:09:03
  doctor Kemp. But he doesn't seem to be getting on. If his pockets
• 2:09:09
  were full of lead, he couldn't run. Heavier spurted, sir, said
• 2:09:13
  doctor Kemp. In another moment, the higher of the villas that had clambered
• 2:09:16
  up the hill from Burdock had occluded the running figure. He was visible again
• 2:09:22
  for a moment, and again, and then again three times between the three
• 2:09:26
  detached houses that came next, and then the terrace hid him. Asses,
• 2:09:31
  said doctor Kemp, swinging around on his heel and walking back to his writing
• 2:09:33
  table. But those who saw the fugitive nearer and perceived the abject terror on
• 2:09:39
  his perspiring face being themselves in the open roadway did not share in the doctor's
• 2:09:46
  contempt. The man pounded, and as he ran he chinked, like a
• 2:09:50
  well filled purse that is tossed to and fro. He looked neither to the
• 2:09:54
  right nor the left, but his dilated eyes stared straight down hill, to
• 2:09:58
  where the lamps were being and the people were crowded in the street. And
• 2:10:03
  his ill shaped mouth fell apart, and a glary foam lay on his lips,
• 2:10:07
  and his breath came hoarse and noisy. All he passed stopped and began
• 2:10:11
  staring up the road and down and interrogating one another with an inkling of discomfort
• 2:10:16
  for the reason of his haste. And then, presently far up the hill,
• 2:10:20
  a dog playing in the road yelped and ran under a gate. And
• 2:10:24
  as they still wandered, something a wind, a pad, pad pad,
• 2:10:28
  a sound like a panting breathing rushed by. People screamed, people sprang off
• 2:10:35
  the pavement. It passed in shouts, It passed by instinct down the hill.
• 2:10:41
  They were shouting in the street before Marvel was halfway there. They were
• 2:10:45
  bolting into houses and slamming the doors behind them. And with the news he
• 2:10:50
  heard it and made one last desperate spurt. Fear came striding by, rushed
• 2:10:54
  ahead of him, and in a moment had seized the town. The Invisible
• 2:10:58
  Man is coming Invisible Man, Chapter sixteen. In The Jolly Cricketers. The
• 2:11:09
  Jolly Cricketers is just at the bottom of the hill where the tram lines begin.
• 2:11:13
  The barman leant his fat red arms on the counter and talked of horses
• 2:11:16
  with an anemic cabman, while a black bearded man in a gray snapped up
• 2:11:22
  biscuit and cheese, drank burton, and conversed in American with a policeman off
• 2:11:26
  duty. What's the shouting about, said the anemic cabman, going off at
• 2:11:31
  a tangent, trying to see up the hill over the dirty yellow blind in
• 2:11:35
  the low window of the inn. Somebody ran by outside fire perhaps, said
• 2:11:41
  the barman. Footsteps approached, running heavily. The door was pushed open violently,
• 2:11:46
  and Marvel weeping and disheveled, his hat gone, the neck of his
• 2:11:50
  coat torn open, rushed in, made a convulsive turn and attempted to shut
• 2:11:56
  the door. It was half held open by a trap coming. He bawled,
• 2:12:01
  his voice shrieking with terror. He's coming, the visible man after me.
• 2:12:07
  For God's sake, help help, help shut the doors, said the
• 2:12:11
  policeman, who's coming. What's the row? He went to the door,
• 2:12:16
  released the strap and it slammed. The American closed the other door. Let
• 2:12:20
  me go inside, said Marvel, staggering and weeping, but still clutching the
• 2:12:26
  books. Let me go inside. Lock me in somewhere. I tell you
• 2:12:30
  he's after me. I gave him the slip. He said he'd kill me,
• 2:12:33
  and he will. You're safe, said the man with the black beard.
• 2:12:37
  The doors shut. What's it all about? Let me go inside,
• 2:12:41
  said Marvel, and shrieked aloud as a blow suddenly made the fastened door shiver
• 2:12:46
  and was followed by a hurried rapping and a shouting outside. Hello, cried
• 2:12:50
  the policeman. Who's there. Mister Marvel began to make frantic dives at panels
• 2:12:56
  that looked like doors. He'll kill me. He's got a knife or something.
• 2:12:58
  For God's sake, here you are, said the barman. Come in
• 2:13:03
  here, and he held up the flap of the bar. Mister Marvel rushed
• 2:13:07
  behind the bar as the summon's outside was repeated. Don't open the door,
• 2:13:11
  he screamed, please don't open the door. Where shall I eide this?
• 2:13:18
  This invisible man then asked the man with the black beard, with one hand
• 2:13:22
  behind him. Oh, yes, it's about time we saw him. The
• 2:13:26
  window of the inn was suddenly smashed in, and there was a screaming and
• 2:13:31
  running to and fro in the street. The policeman had been standing on the
• 2:13:33
  settee staring out, craning to see who was at the door. He got
• 2:13:39
  down with raised eyebrows. It's that, he said. The barman stood in
• 2:13:43
  front of the bar parlor, which was now locked on. Mister Marvel stared
• 2:13:48
  at the smashed window and came around to the other two men. Everything was
• 2:13:52
  suddenly quiet. I wish I had my truncheon, said the policeman, going
• 2:13:58
  irresolutely to the door. Once we open in he comes, there's no stop
• 2:14:01
  in him. Don't you be in too much hurry about that door, said
• 2:14:07
  the anemic cabman. Actionously, draw the bolts, said the man with a
• 2:14:11
  black beard, And if he comes, he showed a revolver in his hand.
• 2:14:18
  That won't do, said the policeman. That's murder. I know what
• 2:14:22
  country I'm in, said the man with the beard. I'm going to let
• 2:14:24
  off at his legs. Draw the bolts. Not with that blinking fingering off
• 2:14:30
  behind me, said the barman, craning over the blind. Very well,
• 2:14:35
  said the man with a black beard, and stooping down revolver already drew himself.
• 2:14:39
  Barman, cabman and policeman faced about. Come in, said the bearded
• 2:14:43
  man in an undertone, standing back and facing the unbolted doors with his pistol
• 2:14:48
  behind him. No one came in. The door remained closed five minutes afterwards,
• 2:14:54
  when a second cabman pushed his head in cautiously. They were still waiting,
• 2:14:58
  and an anxious face peered out of the bar parlor and supplied information.
• 2:15:05
  Are all the doors of the house shut, asked Marvel. He's going round,
• 2:15:07
  prowling round. He's as artful as the devil. Good lord, said
• 2:15:13
  the burly barman. There's the back. Just watch them doors, I say.
• 2:15:18
  He looked about him helplessly. The bar parlor door slammed, and they
• 2:15:22
  heard the key turn. There's the yard door and the private door. The
• 2:15:26
  yard door, he rushed out of the bar. In a minute he reappeared
• 2:15:31
  with a carving knife in his hand. The yard door was open, he
• 2:15:35
  said, and his fat under lip dropped. He may be in the house
• 2:15:37
  now, said the first cabman. He's not in the kitchen, said the
• 2:15:43
  barman. There's two women there, and I've stabbed every inch of it with
• 2:15:46
  his little beef slicer, and they don't think he's come in. They haven't
• 2:15:48
  noticed. Have you fastened it, asked the first cabman. I'm out of
• 2:15:54
  frocks, said the barman. The man with the beard replaced his revolver,
• 2:16:00
  and even as he did so, the flap of the bar was shut down
• 2:16:01
  and the bolt clicked, and then with a tremendous thud, the catch of
• 2:16:05
  the door snapped and the bar parlor door pursed open. The heard Marvel squeal
• 2:16:09
  like a caught leverage, and forthwith they were clambering over the bar to his
• 2:16:13
  rescue. The bearded man's revolver cracked, and the looking glass at the back
• 2:16:18
  of the parlor starred and came smashing and tinkling down. As the barman entered
• 2:16:24
  the room, he saw Marvel curiously crumpled up and struggling against the door that
• 2:16:28
  led to the yard and kitchen. The door flew open while the barman hesitated
• 2:16:31
  and Marvel was dragged into the kitchen. There was a scream and a clatter
• 2:16:35
  of hands. Marvel, head down and lugging back obstinately, was forced to
• 2:16:41
  the kitchen door, and the bolts were drawn. Then the policeman, who
• 2:16:46
  had been trying to pass the barman, rushed in, followed by one of
• 2:16:48
  the cabin grabbed the wrist of the invisible hand that collared. Marvel, was
• 2:16:52
  hit in the face and went reeling back. The door opened, and Marvel
• 2:16:56
  made a frantic effort to obtain a lodgment behind him. Then the cabman collared.
• 2:17:01
  Something I got him, said the cabman. The barman's red hands came
• 2:17:07
  clawing at the unseen. Here he is, said the barman. Mister Marvell,
• 2:17:11
  released, suddenly dropped to the ground and made an attempt to crawl behind
• 2:17:16
  the legs of the fighting men. The struggle blundered around the edge of the
• 2:17:20
  door. The voice of the invisible man was heard for the first time,
• 2:17:24
  yelling out sharply as the policeman trod on his foot. Then he cried out
• 2:17:28
  passionately, and his fists flew round like flails. The cabman suddenly whooped and
• 2:17:31
  doubled up, kicked under the diaphragm. The door into the bar parlor from
• 2:17:37
  the kitchen slammed and covered mister Marvell's retreat. The men in the kitchen found
• 2:17:41
  themselves clutching at and struggling with empty air. Where is he gone, cried
• 2:17:48
  the man with a beard. Out this way, said the policeman, stepping
• 2:17:50
  into the garden, stopping. A piece of tile whizzed by his head and
• 2:17:54
  smashed among the crockery on the kitchen table. I'll show him, shouted the
• 2:18:00
  man with the black beard. And suddenly a steel barrel shone over the policeman's
• 2:18:03
  shoulder, and five bullets had followed one another into the twilight. Whence the
• 2:18:07
  missile had come. As he fired, the man with the beard moved his
• 2:18:11
  hand in a horizontal curve so that his shots radiated out into the narrow yard
• 2:18:16
  like spokes from a wheel. A silence followed five cartridges, said the man
• 2:18:22
  with a black beard. That's the best of all four aces, and a
• 2:18:26
  joker. Get a lantern, someone uncomme and feel about for his body.
• 2:18:33
  Chapter seventeen, Doctor Kemp's visitor. Doctor Kemp had continued writing in his study
• 2:18:41
  until the shots aroused him. Crack, crack, crack. They came one
• 2:18:46
  after another. Hallo, said doctor Kemp, putting his pen into his mouth
• 2:18:50
  again and listening. Who's letting revolvers off in Burdock? What are the asses
• 2:18:54
  at now? He went to the south window, threw it up, and
• 2:18:58
  leaning up, stared down on the network of windows, beaded gas lamps and
• 2:19:03
  shops with its black interstices of roof and yard that made up the town at
• 2:19:07
  night. Looked like a crowd down the hill, he said, by the
• 2:19:11
  cricketers, and remained watching. Thence his eyes wandered over the town to far
• 2:19:16
  away, where the ship's lights shone, and the piered lowed a little illuminated
• 2:19:20
  faceted pavilion like a gem of yellow light. The moon in his first quarter
• 2:19:26
  hung over the westward hill, and the stars were clear and almost tropically bright.
• 2:19:31
  After five minutes, during which his mind had traveled into a remote speculation
• 2:19:35
  of social conditions of the future, and lost itself at last over the time
• 2:19:39
  dimension, doctor Kemp roused himself with a sigh, pulled down the window again,
• 2:19:43
  and returned to his writing desk. It must have been about an hour
• 2:19:48
  after this that the front door bell rang. He had been writing slightly,
• 2:19:52
  and with intervals of abstraction. Since the shots, he sat listening. He
• 2:19:58
  heard the servant answer the door, and waited for her feet on the staircase,
• 2:20:01
  but she did not come. Wonder what that was, said doctor Kemp.
• 2:20:07
  He tried to resume his work, failed, got up, went downstairs
• 2:20:11
  from his study to the landing rang and called over the balustrade to the housemaid
• 2:20:16
  as she appeared in the hall below. Was that a letter, he asked,
• 2:20:20
  Only a runaway ring, sir, she answered, I'm restless to night,
• 2:20:24
  he has said to himself. He went back to his study and this
• 2:20:28
  time attacked his work resolutely. In a little while he was hard at work
• 2:20:33
  again, and the only sounds in the room were the ticking of the clock
• 2:20:35
  and the subdued shrillness of his quill hurrying in the very center of the circle
• 2:20:41
  of light. His lamp shade threw on his table. It was two o'clock
• 2:20:46
  before doctor Kemp had finished his work for the night. He rose, yawned,
• 2:20:50
  and went downstairs to bed. He had already removed his coat and vest
• 2:20:54
  when he noticed that he was thirsty. He took a candle and went down
• 2:20:58
  to the dining room in search of a siphon and whish Doctor Kemp's scientific pursuits
• 2:21:03
  have made him a very observant man, and as he recrossed the hall he
• 2:21:07
  noticed a dark spot on the linoleum near the mat at the foot of the
• 2:21:11
  stairs. He went on upstairs, and then it suddenly occurred to him to
• 2:21:16
  ask himself what the spot on the linonium might be. Apparently some subconscious element
• 2:21:20
  was at work. At any rate, he turned with his burden, went
• 2:21:24
  back to the hall, put down the siphon and whiskey, and bending down,
• 2:21:28
  touched the spot. Without any great surprise, he found it had the
• 2:21:33
  stickiness and color of drying blood. He took up his burden again and returned
• 2:21:39
  upstairs. Looking about him and trying to account for the blood spot on the
• 2:21:43
  landing, he saw something and stopped, astonished. The door handle of his
• 2:21:48
  own room was blood stained. He looked at his own hand, it was
• 2:21:52
  quite clean, and then he remembered the door of his room had been open
• 2:21:56
  when he came down from his study, and that consequently he had not touched
• 2:21:58
  the handle at all. He went straight into his room, his face quite
• 2:22:03
  calm, perhaps a trifle more resolute than usual. His glance wandering inquisitively fell
• 2:22:09
  on the bed. On the counterpane was a mess of blood, and the
• 2:22:13
  sheet had been torn. He had not noticed this before because he had walked
• 2:22:16
  straight to the dressing table on the further side. The bedclothes were depressed,
• 2:22:22
  as if someone had recently been sitting there. Then he had an odd impression
• 2:22:26
  that he heard a low voice say, good, Heaven's Kemp. But doctor
• 2:22:31
  Kemp was no believer in voices. He stood staring at the tumbled sheets.
• 2:22:37
  Was that really a voice? He looked about again, but noticed nothing further
• 2:22:41
  than the disordered and blood stained bed. Then he distinctly heard a movement across
• 2:22:46
  the room near the wash handstand. All men, however highly educated, retained
• 2:22:52
  some superstitious inklings. The feeling that is called eerie came upon him. He
• 2:22:58
  closed the door the room, came forward to the dressing table and put down
• 2:23:01
  his burdens. Suddenly, with a start, he perceived a coiled and blood
• 2:23:07
  stained bandage of linen rag hanging in mid air between him and the washhand stand.
• 2:23:13
  He stared at this in amazement. It was an empty bandage, a
• 2:23:18
  bandage properly tied, but quite empty. He would have advanced to grasp it,
• 2:23:22
  but a touch arrested him, and a voice speaking quite close to him.
• 2:23:26
  Kemp said the voice, Eh, said Kemp, with his mouth open.
• 2:23:31
  Keep your nerve, said the voice, I am an invisible man.
• 2:23:35
  Kemp made no answer for a space, simply stared at the bandage. Invisible
• 2:23:41
  man, he said, I am an invisible man, repeated the voice.
• 2:23:48
  The story he had been active to ridicule only that morning rushed through Kemp's brain.
• 2:23:54
  He does not appear to have been either very much frightened or very greatly
• 2:23:58
  surprised at the moment. Realization came later. I thought it was all a
• 2:24:03
  lie, he said. The thought uppermost in his mind was the reiterated arguments
• 2:24:09
  of the morning. Have you a bandage, John, he asked, Yes,
• 2:24:13
  said the invisible man. Oh, said Kemp, and then roused himself.
• 2:24:18
  I say, he said, but this is nonsense. It's some trick.
• 2:24:22
  He stepped forward. Suddenly in his hand extended towards the bandage, met
• 2:24:26
  invisible fingers. He recoiled at the touch, and his color changed. Keep
• 2:24:33
  steady, Kemp, for God's sake, I want help badly stop. The
• 2:24:37
  hand gripped his arm. He struck at it. Kemp cried the voice,
• 2:24:41
  Kemp, keep steady, and the grip tightened. A frantic desire to free
• 2:24:46
  himself took possession of Kemp. The hand of the bandaged arm gripped his shoulder,
• 2:24:50
  and he was suddenly tripped and flung backwards upon the bed. He opened
• 2:24:54
  his mouth to shout, and the corner of the sheet was thrust between his
• 2:24:56
  teeth. The invisible man had him down grimly, but his arms were free,
• 2:25:01
  and he struck and tried to kick savagely. Listen to reason, will
• 2:25:05
  you, said the invisible man, sticking to him, in spite of a
• 2:25:09
  pounding in the ribs. By Heaven, you'll madden me in a minute.
• 2:25:13
  Lie still, you fool, bawled the invisible man in Kemp's ear. Kemp
• 2:25:18
  struggled for another moment and then lay still. If you shout, I'll smash
• 2:25:22
  your face, said the invisible man, relieving his mouth. I'm an invisible
• 2:25:28
  man. It's no foolish and no magic. I really am an invisible man,
• 2:25:31
  and I want your help. I don't want to hurt you, but
• 2:25:35
  if you behave like a frantic rustic I must. Don't you remember me,
• 2:25:39
  Kemp gryffin of University College. Let me get up, said Kemp. I'll
• 2:25:45
  stop where I am and let me see it. Quiet for a minute,
• 2:25:48
  he sat up and felt his neck. I am Gryffin of University College,
• 2:25:52
  and I have made myself invisible. I am just an ordinary man, a
• 2:25:58
  man you have known, made invisible, Gryffin, said Kemp. Gryffin answered
• 2:26:03
  the voice, A younger student than you were, almost an albino, six
• 2:26:07
  feet high and broad, with a pink and white face and red eyes,
• 2:26:11
  who won the medal for chemistry. I am confused, said Kemp. My
• 2:26:16
  brain is writing. What has this to do with Griffin? I am Griffin.
• 2:26:24
  Kemp thought. It's horrible, he said, but what devilry must happen
• 2:26:28
  to make a man invisible? It's no devilry. It's a process, sane
• 2:26:33
  and intelligible enough. It's horrible, said Kemp. How on earth it's horrible
• 2:26:39
  enough. But I am wounded and in pain and tired. Great God,
• 2:26:43
  Kemp, you are a man. Take it steady, Give me some food
• 2:26:46
  and drink, and let me sit down here. Kemp stared at the bandage
• 2:26:52
  as it moved across the room, then saw a basket chair dragged across the
• 2:26:56
  floor and come to rest near the bed. It creaked, and the sea
• 2:27:00
  twas depressed by the quarter of an inch or so. He rubbed his eyes
• 2:27:03
  and felt his neck again. This beats ghosts, he said, and laughed
• 2:27:09
  stupidly. That's better, Thank Heaven. You're getting sensible or silly, said
• 2:27:15
  Kemp, and knuckled his eyes. Give me some whiskey. I'm near dead.
• 2:27:20
  It didn't feel so Where are you? If I get up, I
• 2:27:22
  run into you? There? All right? Whisky here? Where shall I
• 2:27:28
  give it to you? The chair creaked, and Kemp felt the glass drawn
• 2:27:31
  away from him. He let go by an effort. His instinct was all
• 2:27:35
  against it. It came to rest poised twenty inches above the front edge of
• 2:27:39
  the seat of the chair. He stared at it in infinite perplexity. This
• 2:27:46
  is this must be hypnotism. You have suggested you are invisible. Nonsense,
• 2:27:52
  said the voice. It's frantic. Listen to me, I demonstrated conclusively this
• 2:27:58
  morning, began Kemp. That invisibility. Never mind what you've demonstrated. I'm
• 2:28:01
  starving, said the voice. And the night is chilly to a man without
• 2:28:05
  clothes food, said Kemp. The tumbler of whiskey tilted itself, Yes,
• 2:28:11
  said the invisible man, wrapping it down. Have you a dressing gown?
• 2:28:16
  Kemp made some exclamation in an undertone. He walked to a wardrobe and produced
• 2:28:20
  a robe of dingy'scarlet. This do, he asked? It was taken from
• 2:28:24
  him. It hung limp for a moment in mid air, fluttered weirdly,
• 2:28:28
  stood full and decorously, buttoning itself, and sat down in his chair.
• 2:28:33
  Drawers, socks, slippers would be a comfort, said the unseen Curtly,
• 2:28:37
  and food anything, but this is the insanest thing I was ever in in
• 2:28:43
  my life. He turned out his drawers for the articles, and then went
• 2:28:46
  downstairs to ransack his larder. He came back with some cold cutlets and bread,
• 2:28:52
  pulled up a light table, and placed them before his guest. Never
• 2:28:56
  mind knives, said his visitor, and a cutlet hung in mid air with
• 2:28:58
  a sound of invisible, said Kemp, and sat down on a bedroom chair.
• 2:29:05
  I always like to get something about me before I eat, said the
• 2:29:07
  invisible man, with a full mouth, eating greedily. Queer fancy. I
• 2:29:13
  suppose that wrist is all right, said Kemp. Trust me, said the
• 2:29:16
  invisible man. I've all the strange and wonderful, exactly, But it's odd
• 2:29:22
  I should blunder into your house to get my bandaging, my first stroke of
• 2:29:24
  luck. Anyhow, I meant to sleep in this house to night. You
• 2:29:28
  must stand that it's a filthy nuisance. My blood showing, Isn't it quite
• 2:29:33
  a clot? Over there? Gets visible as it coagulates. You see,
• 2:29:35
  it's the only living tissue I've changed, and only for as long as I'm
• 2:29:39
  alive. I've been in the house three hours. But how's it done?
• 2:29:45
  Began Kemp in a tone of exasperation. Confound it the whole business. It's
• 2:29:48
  unreasonable from beginning to end. Quite reasonable, said the invisible man, perfectly
• 2:29:54
  reasonable. He reached over and secured the whiskey bottle. Kemp stared at the
• 2:29:58
  devouring d A ray of candle light penetrating a torn patch in the right shoulder
• 2:30:03
  made a triangle of light under the left ribs. Where are the shots?
• 2:30:07
  He asked? How did the shooting begin? There was a real fool of
• 2:30:11
  a man, a sort of confederate of mine. Curse him who tried to
• 2:30:15
  steal my money has done so? Is he invisible too? No? Well,
• 2:30:22
  can't I have some more to eat before I tell you all that I'm
• 2:30:24
  hungry in pain, and you want me to tell stories, Kemp got up.
• 2:30:28
  You didn't do any shooting, he asked, Not me, said his
• 2:30:33
  visitor. Some fool i'd never seen fired at random. A lot of them
• 2:30:37
  got scared. They all got scared at me. Curse them. I say,
• 2:30:41
  I want more to eat than this, Kemp. I'll see what there
• 2:30:43
  is to eat downstairs, said Kemp. Not much, I'm afraid. After
• 2:30:48
  he had done eating, and he had made a heavy meal, the invisible
• 2:30:52
  man demanded a cigar. He bit the end savagely before Kemp could find a
• 2:30:56
  knife, and cursed. When the outer leaf loosened, it was strange to
• 2:31:00
  see him smoking. His mouth and throat phananx and narrows became visible as a
• 2:31:03
  sort of whirling smoke cast this blessed gift of smoking, he said, and
• 2:31:09
  puffed vigorously. I am lucky to have fallen upon you, Kemp. You
• 2:31:11
  must help me. Fancy tumbling on you just now. I'm in a devilish
• 2:31:16
  scrape. I've been mad. I think the things I've been through, But
• 2:31:18
  we will do things yet. Let me tell you he helped himself to more
• 2:31:22
  whiskey and soda. Kemp got up, looked about him, and fetched a
• 2:31:26
  glass from his spare room. It's wild, but I suppose I may drink.
• 2:31:31
  You haven't changed much, Kemp, these dozen years. You fair men
• 2:31:35
  don't cool and methodical. After the first collapse, I must tell you.
• 2:31:39
  We will work together. But how was it all done? Said Kemp?
• 2:31:41
  And how did you get like this? For God's sake, let me smoke
• 2:31:46
  in peace for a little while, and then I will begin to tell you.
• 2:31:50
  But the story was not told that night. The Invisible Man's wrist was
• 2:31:52
  growing painful. He was feverish, exhausted, and his mind came round to
• 2:31:56
  brood upon his chase down the hill and the struggle about the ear. He
• 2:32:01
  spoke in fragments of marvel. He smoked faster, his voice grew angry.
• 2:32:05
  Kemp tried to gather what he could. He was afraid of me. I
• 2:32:09
  could see that he was afraid of me, said the invisible man. Many
• 2:32:11
  times over. He meant to give me the slip. He was always casting
• 2:32:16
  about. What a fool I was the cur I should have killed him.
• 2:32:20
  Where did you get the money, asked Kemp abruptly. The Invisible Man was
• 2:32:24
  silent for a space. I can't tell you to night, he said.
• 2:32:28
  He groaned suddenly and leant forward, supporting his invisible head on invisible hands.
• 2:32:35
  Kemp he said, I've had no sleep for near three days, except a
• 2:32:37
  couple of dozes an hour. I must sleep soon. Well, I have
• 2:32:41
  my room, have this room, But how can I sleep? If I
• 2:32:43
  sleep, he will get away? Ugh, what does it matter? What's
• 2:32:48
  the shot wound? Asked Kemp abruptly, nothing, scratch and blood? Oh
• 2:32:54
  God, how I want sleep? Why not? The invisible man appeared to
• 2:32:58
  be regarding Kemp. Because I've a particular objection to being caught by my fellow
• 2:33:03
  men, he said slowly. Kemp started fool that I am, said the
• 2:33:07
  invisible man, striking the table smartly. I've put the idea into your head.
• 2:33:16
  End of Chapter seventeen. Chapter eighteen, The invisible man sleeps. Exhausted
• 2:33:24
  and wounded. As the invisible man was, he refused to accept Kemp's word
• 2:33:28
  that his freedom should be respected. He examined the two windows of the bedroom,
• 2:33:33
  drew up the blinds, and opened the sashes to confirm Kemp's statement that
• 2:33:35
  a retreat by them would be possible outside the night was very quiet and still,
• 2:33:41
  and the new moon was settling over the down Then he examined the keys
• 2:33:46
  of the bedroom and the two dressing room doors to satisfy himself that these also
• 2:33:50
  could be made an assurance of freedom. Finally, he expressed himself satisfied.
• 2:33:54
  He stood on the hearth rug and Kemp heard the sound of a yawn.
• 2:33:58
  I'm sorry, said the invisible man if I cannot tell you all that I
• 2:34:03
  have done tonight, but I am worn out. It's grotesque, no doubt,
• 2:34:07
  it's horrible. But believe me, Kemp, in spite of your arguments
• 2:34:11
  of this morning, it is quite a possible thing. I have made a
• 2:34:15
  discovery. I meant to keep it to myself. I can't. I must
• 2:34:18
  have a partner and you we can do such things. But tomorrow now,
• 2:34:26
  Kemp, I feel as though I must sleep or perish. Kemp stood in
• 2:34:31
  the middle of the room, staring at the headless garment. I suppose I
• 2:34:35
  must leave you, he said. It's incredible. Three things happening like this,
• 2:34:41
  overturning all my preconceptions would make me insane, but it's real. Is
• 2:34:46
  there anything more that I can get? You? Only bid me good night,
• 2:34:50
  said Griffin. Good night, said Kemp, and shook an invisible hand.
• 2:34:54
  He walked sideways to the door. Suddenly the dressing gown walked quickly towards
• 2:34:58
  him. Understand me, said the dressing gown. No attempts to hamper me
• 2:35:03
  or capture me or Kemp's face changed a little. I thought, I gave
• 2:35:07
  you my word, he said. Kemp closed the door softly behind him,
• 2:35:13
  and the key was turned upon him forthwith. Then, as he stood with
• 2:35:16
  an expression of passive amazement on his face, the rapid feet came to the
• 2:35:20
  door of the dressing room, and that too was locked. Kemp slapped his
• 2:35:24
  brow with his hand. Am I dreaming? Has the world gone mad?
• 2:35:28
  Or have I? He laughed, and put his hand to the locked door.
• 2:35:33
  Barred out of my own bedroom by a flagrant absurdity, he said.
• 2:35:37
  He walked to the head of the staircase, turned and stared at the locked
• 2:35:41
  doors. It's fact, he said. He put his fingers to his slightly
• 2:35:46
  bruised neck. Undeniable fact. But he shook his head hopelessly, turned and
• 2:35:54
  went downstairs. He lit the dining room lamp, got out a cigar,
• 2:35:58
  and began pacing the ROOMA jack now and then he would argue with himself.
• 2:36:03
  Invisible, He said, is there such a thing as an invisible animal in
• 2:36:09
  the sea? Yes, thousands millions, or the larvae, or the little
• 2:36:13
  knopoly i and toneras, or the microscopic things like jellyfish. In the sea.
• 2:36:18
  There are more things invisible than visible, or I never thought of that
• 2:36:20
  before. And in the ponds too, or those little pond life things,
• 2:36:24
  specks of colorless translucent jelly. But in air, no, it can't be.
• 2:36:31
  But after all, why not if a man was made of glass,
• 2:36:35
  he would still be visible. His meditation became profound. The bulk of three
• 2:36:41
  cigars had passed into the invisible or diffused as a white ash over the carpet
• 2:36:46
  before he spoke again. Then it was merely an exclamation. He turned aside,
• 2:36:50
  walked out of the room, and went into his little consulting room and
• 2:36:54
  lit the gas. There. It was a little room because doctor Kemp did
• 2:36:58
  not live practice, and in it were the day's newspapers. The morning's paper
• 2:37:03
  lay carelessly opened and thrown aside. He caught it up, turned it over
• 2:37:07
  and read the account of a strange story from Iping that the mariner at Port
• 2:37:11
  Stow had spelt over so painfully to mister Marvel. Kemp read it swiftly wrapped
• 2:37:18
  up, said Kemp, disguised hiding it. No one seems to have been
• 2:37:22
  aware of his misfortune. What the devil is his game? He dropped the
• 2:37:28
  paper and his eye went seeking. Ah, he said. He caught up
• 2:37:31
  the Saint James's Gazette, lying folded up as it arrived. Now we shall
• 2:37:35
  get at the truth, said doctor Kemp. He rent the paper open.
• 2:37:39
  A couple of columns confronted him. An entire village in Sussex goes mad?
• 2:37:46
  Was the heading. Good Heavens, said Kemp, reading eagerly, an incredulous
• 2:37:50
  account of the events in iping of the previous afternoon that have already been described.
• 2:37:54
  Over the leaf, the report in the morning paper had been reprinted.
• 2:37:58
  He re read. Ran through the streets, striking left and right, jaffers
• 2:38:03
  insensible, mister Huckster in great pain, still unable to describe what he saw,
• 2:38:07
  painful humiliation, vicar woman ill with terror, windows smashed. This extraordinary
• 2:38:13
  story, probably a fabrication, too good not to print, cum Grano.
• 2:38:20
  He dropped the paper and stared blankly in front of him, Probably a fabrication,
• 2:38:26
  He caught up the paper again and re read the whole business. But
• 2:38:31
  when does the tramp coming? Why the deuce was he chasing a tramp?
• 2:38:35
  He sat down abruptly on the surgical bench. He's not only invisible, he
• 2:38:41
  said, but he's mad, homicidal. When dawn came to mingle its power
• 2:38:46
  with the lamp light and cigar smoke of the dining room, Kemp was still
• 2:38:50
  pacing up and down, trying to grasp the incredible. He was altogether too
• 2:38:54
  excited to sleep. His servants, descending sleepily, discovered him and were inclined
• 2:39:00
  to think that overstudy had worked this ill on him. He gave them extraordinary
• 2:39:05
  but quite explicit instructions to lay breakfast for two in the belvedere study, and
• 2:39:09
  then to confine themselves to the basement and ground floor. Then he continued to
• 2:39:13
  pace the dining room until the morning's paper came that had much to say and
• 2:39:18
  little to tell beyond the confirmation of the evening before and a very badly written
• 2:39:22
  account of another remarkable tale from Port Burdock. This gave Kemp the essence of
• 2:39:26
  the happenings at the Jolly Cricketers, and the name of Marvel he has made
• 2:39:31
  me keep with him twenty four hours. Marvel testified. Certain minor facts were
• 2:39:35
  added to the iping story, notably the cutting of the village telegraph wire,
• 2:39:41
  but there was nothing to throw light on the connection between the Invisible Man and
• 2:39:43
  the tramp, For mister Marvel had supplied no information about the three books or
• 2:39:48
  the money with which he was lined. The incredulous tone had vanished, and
• 2:39:52
  a shoal of reporters and inquirers were already at work elaborating the matter. Kemp
• 2:39:58
  read every scrap of the report and sent his housemaid out to get every one
• 2:40:01
  of the morning papers she could. These also he devoured. He is invisible,
• 2:40:07
  he said, and it reads like rage growing to mania. The things
• 2:40:11
  he may do, the things he may do, And upstairs he's free as
• 2:40:13
  air. What on earth ought I to do? For instance? Would it
• 2:40:20
  be a breach of faith? If no? He went to a little untidy
• 2:40:24
  desk in the corner and began a note. He tore this up, half
• 2:40:28
  written, and wrote another. He read it over and considered it. Then
• 2:40:31
  he took an envelope and addressed it to Colonel adye Port Burdock. The Invisible
• 2:40:39
  Man awoke even as Kemp was doing this. He awoke in an evil temper,
• 2:40:43
  and Kemp, alert for every sound, heard his pattering feet rush suddenly
• 2:40:46
  across the bedroom overhead. Then a chair was flung over and the wash handstand
• 2:40:52
  tumbler smashed. Kemp hurried upstairs and rapped eagerly, Chapter nineteen, Certain First
• 2:41:03
  Principles. What's the matter, asked Kemp, when the invisible Man admitted him
• 2:41:07
  nothing was the answer, but confound it the smash fit of temper, said
• 2:41:15
  the invisible Man forgot this arm, and it's sore. You're rather liable to
• 2:41:20
  that sort of thing, I am. Kemp walked across the room and picked
• 2:41:24
  up the fragments of broken glass. All the facts are out about you,
• 2:41:28
  said Kemp, standing up with the glass in his hand. All that happened
• 2:41:31
  in iping and down the hill. The world has become aware of its invisible
• 2:41:35
  citizen, but no one knows you are here. The invisible Man swore,
• 2:41:41
  the secret's out. I gather it was a secret. I don't know what
• 2:41:45
  your plans are, but of course I'm anxious to help you. The Invisible
• 2:41:48
  Man sat down on the bed. There's breakfast upstairs, said Kemp, speaking
• 2:41:54
  as easily as possible, and he was delighted to find his strange guest rose
• 2:41:58
  willingly. Kemp led the way to the narrow staircase to the Belvidere. Before
• 2:42:03
  we can do anything else, said Kemp, I must understand a little more
• 2:42:07
  about this invisibility of yours. He had sat down after one nervous glance out
• 2:42:11
  of the window with the air of a man who has talking to do.
• 2:42:16
  His doubts of the sanity of the entire business flashed and vanished again as he
• 2:42:20
  looked across to where Griffin sat at the breakfast table, a headless, handless
• 2:42:24
  dressing gown, wiping unseen lips on a miraculously held serviette. It's simple enough
• 2:42:31
  and credible enough, said Griffin, putting the serviette aside and leaning the invisible
• 2:42:35
  head on an invisible hand. No doubt to you, but Kemp laughed.
• 2:42:41
  Well, yes to me, it seemed wonderful at first, no doubt.
• 2:42:43
  But now great God, but we will do great things. Yet. I
• 2:42:48
  came on the stuff first at Cheslestone, Cheslestone. I went there after I
• 2:42:54
  left London, you know, I dropped medicine and took up physics. No,
• 2:42:58
  well, I did light fascinated me er optical density. The whole subject
• 2:43:05
  is a network of riddles, a network with solutions, glimmering elusively through and
• 2:43:09
  being but two and twenty and full of enthusiasm, I said, I will
• 2:43:13
  devote my life to this. This is worth while. Do you know what
• 2:43:18
  fools we are? Two and twenty fools? Then? Are fools? Now,
• 2:43:20
  said Kemp, as though knowing could be any satisfaction to a man.
• 2:43:26
  But I went to work like a slave, and I had hardly worked and
• 2:43:30
  thought about the matter six months before light came through one of the meshes.
• 2:43:33
  Suddenly, blindingly, I found a general principle of pigments and refraction, a
• 2:43:39
  formula, a geometrical expression involving four dimensions. Fools, common men, even
• 2:43:43
  common mathematicians, do not know anything of what some general expression may mean to
• 2:43:48
  the student of molecular physics. In the books, the books that Tramp has
• 2:43:52
  hidden, there are marvels, miracles. But this was not a method.
• 2:43:56
  It was an idea that might lead to a method by way which it will
• 2:44:00
  be possible without changing any other property of matter, except in some instances colors
• 2:44:05
  to lower the refractive index of a substance solid or liquid to that of air,
• 2:44:09
  so far as all practical purposes are concerned. Phew, said Camp.
• 2:44:13
  That's odd, but still I don't quite see. I can understand that thereby
• 2:44:18
  you could spoil a valuable stone, but personal invisibility is a far cry.
• 2:44:24
  Precisely, said Griffin, But consider visibility depends on the action of the visible
• 2:44:28
  bodies on light. Either a body absorbs light, or it reflects or refracts
• 2:44:33
  it, or it does all these things. If it neither reflects, nor
• 2:44:37
  refracts, nor absorbs light, it cannot of itself be visible. You see
• 2:44:41
  an opaque red box, for instance, because the color absorbs some of the
• 2:44:43
  light and reflects the rest or the red part of the light to you.
• 2:44:48
  If it did not absorb any particular part of the light, but reflected it
• 2:44:50
  all, then it would be a shining white box. Silver. A diamond
• 2:44:54
  box would neither absorb much of the light nor reflect much from the general surface,
• 2:44:58
  but just here and there, where the surfaces were favorable, the light
• 2:45:01
  would be reflected and refracted, so that you would get a brilliant appearance of
• 2:45:05
  flashing reflections on translucencies, a sort of skeleton of light. A glass box
• 2:45:11
  would not be so brilliant, not so clearly visible as a diamond box,
• 2:45:13
  because there would be less refraction and reflection. You see that from certain points
• 2:45:18
  of view you could see quite clearly through it. Some kinds of glass would
• 2:45:22
  be more visible than others. A box of flint glass would be brighter than
• 2:45:24
  a box of ordinary window glass. A box of very thin common glass would
• 2:45:28
  be hard to see in a bad light because it would absorb hardly any light
• 2:45:31
  and refract and reflect very little. And if you put a sheet of common
• 2:45:35
  white glass in water, still more, if you put it in some denser
• 2:45:39
  liquid than water, it would vanish almost altogether. Because light passing from water
• 2:45:43
  to glass is only slightly reflected or reflected, or indeed affected in any way.
• 2:45:48
  It is almost as invisible as a jet of coal, gas or hydrogen
• 2:45:52
  is in air. And for precisely the same reason, yes, said Kemp,
• 2:45:56
  that is pretty plain sailing. And here is another fact you will know
• 2:46:01
  to be true. If a sheet of glass is smashed camp and then beaten
• 2:46:03
  into a powder, it becomes much more visible. While it is in the
• 2:46:07
  air. It becomes at least an opaque white powder. This is because the
• 2:46:11
  powdering multiplies the surfaces of the glass at which refraction or reflexion occur. In
• 2:46:16
  the sheet of glass, there are only two surfaces and the powder. The
• 2:46:18
  light is reflected or refracted by each grain that passes through, and very little
• 2:46:22
  gets right through the powder. But if the white powdered glass is put into
• 2:46:26
  water, it forth with vanishes. The powdered glass and water have much the
• 2:46:30
  same refractive index. That is, the light undergoes very little refraction or reflexion
• 2:46:33
  in passing from one to the other. You make the glass invisible by putting
• 2:46:37
  it into a liquid of nearly the same refractive index. A transparent thing becomes
• 2:46:41
  invisible if it is put in any medium of almost the same refractive index.
• 2:46:45
  And if you will consider only a second, you will see also that the
• 2:46:48
  powder of glass might be made to vanish in air, if its refractive index
• 2:46:52
  could be made the same as that of air. For then there will be
• 2:46:54
  no refraction or reflexion as the light passed from glass to air. Yes,
• 2:47:00
  yes, said Kemp, But a man's not powdered glass, No, said
• 2:47:05
  Griffin, he's more transparent. Nonsense that from a doctor, how one forgets?
• 2:47:13
  Have you already forgotten your physics? In ten years. Just think of
• 2:47:16
  all the things that are transparent and seem not to be so. Paper,
• 2:47:20
  for instance, is made up of transparent fibers, and it is white and
• 2:47:22
  opaque only for the same reason that a powder of glass is white and opaque.
• 2:47:26
  Oil white paper fill up the instances between the particles with oil, so
• 2:47:31
  that there is no longer refraction or reflection except at the surfaces, and it
• 2:47:35
  becomes as transparent as glass. Are not only paper, but cotton, fiber,
• 2:47:39
  linen, fiber, wool fiber, woody fiber, and bone, Kemp,
• 2:47:43
  flesh, Kemp hair, Kemp nails, and nerves, camps. In
• 2:47:46
  fact, the whole fabric of a man, except the red of his blood
• 2:47:50
  and the black pigment of hair, are all made up of transparent, colorless
• 2:47:52
  tissue, so little surfaces to make us visible one to the other. For
• 2:47:58
  the most part. The fibers of a living manner no more a paque than
• 2:48:01
  water. Great Heavens, said Kemp. Of course, of course, I
• 2:48:05
  was thinking only last night of the sea larvae and all jelly fish. Now
• 2:48:11
  you have me and all that I knew and had in mind a year after
• 2:48:13
  I left London six years ago. But I kept it to myself. I
• 2:48:18
  had to do my work under frightful disadvantages. Oliver, my professor was a
• 2:48:22
  scientific bounder, a journalist by instinct, a thief of ideas. He was
• 2:48:28
  always prying, and you know the knavish system of the scientific world. I
• 2:48:31
  simply would not publish and let him share my credit. I went on working.
• 2:48:37
  I got nearer and nearer to making my formula in an experiment a reality.
• 2:48:41
  I told no living soul, because I meant to flash my work upon
• 2:48:45
  the world with crushing effect and become famous. At a blow, I took
• 2:48:48
  up the question of pigments to fill up certain gaps, and suddenly, but
• 2:48:52
  by design, not by accident, I made a discovery in physiology. Yees,
• 2:49:00
  you know the red coloring matter of blood. It can be made white,
• 2:49:03
  colorless, and remain with all the functions it has. Now Kemp gave
• 2:49:09
  a cry of credulous amazement. The invisible man rose and began pacing a little
• 2:49:13
  study. You may well exclaim. I remember that night. It was late
• 2:49:18
  at night. In the daytime, one was bothering with the gaping silly students.
• 2:49:22
  And I worked then sometimes till dawn. It came suddenly splendid and complete
• 2:49:26
  in my mind. I was alone the laboratory of still, with the tall
• 2:49:31
  lights burning brightly and silently. In all my great moments I have been alone.
• 2:49:37
  One could make an animal a tissue transparent. One could make it invisible,
• 2:49:41
  all except the pigments. I could be invisible, I said, suddenly
• 2:49:46
  realizing what it meant to be an albino. With such knowledge it was overwhelming.
• 2:49:52
  I left the filtering I was doing and went and stared out of the
• 2:49:54
  great window at the stars. I could be invisible, I repeated. To
• 2:50:01
  do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld, unclouded
• 2:50:05
  by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man,
• 2:50:11
  the mystery, the power, the freedom, drawbacks. I saw none.
• 2:50:16
  You have only to think, and I, a shabby, poverty struck
• 2:50:20
  hemmed in demonstrator teaching fools in a provincial college, might suddenly become this.
• 2:50:26
  I ask you, Kemp, if you any one, I tell you would
• 2:50:28
  have flung himself upon that research. And I worked three years, and every
• 2:50:33
  mountain of difficulty I toiled over showed another from its summit, the infinite details
• 2:50:39
  and the exasperation A professor, a provincial professor, always prying when you were
• 2:50:43
  going to publish this work of yours, with his everlasting question and the students
• 2:50:48
  the cramped means three years I had of it, and after three years of
• 2:50:52
  secrecy an exasperation, I found that to complete it was impossible. Impossible,
• 2:51:00
  how asked Kemp. Money, said the invisible man, and went again to
• 2:51:05
  stare out of the window. He turned round abruptly. I robbed the old
• 2:51:09
  man, robbed my father. The money was not his, and he shot
• 2:51:16
  himself. End of Chapter nineteen, Chapter twenty. At the house in Great
• 2:51:24
  Portland Street. For a moment, Kemp sat in silence, staring at the
• 2:51:31
  back of the headless figure at the window. Then he started, struck by
• 2:51:35
  a thought. Rose took the invisible man's arm and turned him away from the
• 2:51:41
  outlook. You are tired, he said, and while I sit you walk
• 2:51:46
  about. Have my chair. He placed himself between Griffin and the nearest window.
• 2:51:54
  For a space, Griffin sat silent, then he resumed abruptly. I
• 2:52:00
  had left the Chesilstowe Cottage already, he said. When that happened, it
• 2:52:03
  was last December. I had taken a room in London, a large,
• 2:52:07
  unfurnished room, with a big, ill mannaged lodging house in a slum near
• 2:52:11
  Great Portland Street. The room was soon full of the appliances that I had
• 2:52:16
  bought with his money, and the work was going on steadily, successfully,
• 2:52:20
  drawing near an end. I was like a man emerging from a thicket and
• 2:52:24
  suddenly coming on some unmeaning tragedy. I went to bury him. My mind
• 2:52:28
  was still on this research, and I did not lift a finger to save
• 2:52:31
  his character. I remember the funeral, the chief hears, the scant ceremony,
• 2:52:37
  the windy, frost bitten hillside, and the old college friend of his
• 2:52:41
  who read the service over him, a shabby, black, bent old man
• 2:52:45
  with a snivering cold. I remember walking back to the empty house, through
• 2:52:50
  the place that had once been a village, and was now patched and tinkered
• 2:52:54
  by the jerry builders, into the ugly likeness of a town. Every way
• 2:52:58
  the roads ran out at last into the desecrated fields and ended in rubble heaps
• 2:53:03
  and rank, wet weeds. I remembered myself as a gaunt black figure going
• 2:53:07
  along the slippery, shiny pavement on the strange sense of detachment I felt from
• 2:53:11
  the squalid respectability, the sordid commercialism of the place. I did not feel
• 2:53:18
  a bit sorry for my father. He seemed to me to be the victim
• 2:53:20
  of his own foolish sentimentality. The current cant required my attendance at his funeral,
• 2:53:26
  but it was really not my affair. But going along the high Street,
• 2:53:31
  my old life came back to me for a space for I met the
• 2:53:33
  girl I had known ten years since our eyes met. Something moved me to
• 2:53:39
  turn back and talk to her. She was a very ordinary person. It
• 2:53:46
  was all like a dream that visit to the old places. I did not
• 2:53:50
  feel then that I was lonely, that I had come out from the world
• 2:53:52
  into a desolate place. I appreciated my loss of sympathy, but I put
• 2:53:58
  it down to the general inanity of things. Re Entering my room seemed like
• 2:54:01
  the recovery of reality. They were the things I knew and loved. There
• 2:54:05
  stood the apparatus, the experiments arranged and waiting, And now there was scarcely
• 2:54:11
  a difficulty left beyond the planning of details. I will tell you camp sooner
• 2:54:16
  or later. All the complicated processes we need not go into that now.
• 2:54:20
  For the most part, saving certain gaps, I chose to remember they are
• 2:54:24
  written in cipher in those books. The tramp has hidden. We must hunt
• 2:54:28
  him down. We must get those books again. But the essential phase was
• 2:54:33
  to place the transparent object, whose refractive index was to be lowered between two
• 2:54:37
  radiating centers of a sort of ethereal vibration of which I will tell you more
• 2:54:41
  fully later. No, not those oilcan vibrations. I don't know that these
• 2:54:45
  others of mine have been described yet. They are obvious enough. I needed
• 2:54:50
  two little dynamos, and these I worked with a cheap gas engine. My
• 2:54:54
  first experiment was with a bit of white wool fabric. It was the strangest
• 2:54:58
  thing in the world. To see it in the flicker of the flashes,
• 2:55:00
  soft and white, and then to watch it fade like a wreath of smoke
• 2:55:03
  and vanish. I could scarcely believe I had done it. I put my
• 2:55:09
  hand into the emptiness, and there was the thing, as solid as ever.
• 2:55:11
  I felt it awkwardly and threw it on the floor. I had a
• 2:55:15
  little trouble finding it again, and then came a curious experience. I heard
• 2:55:20
  her meow behind me, and turning saw a lean white cat, very dirty
• 2:55:26
  on the cistern cover outside the window. A thought came into my head.
• 2:55:31
  Everything ready for you, I said, and I went to the window,
• 2:55:35
  opened it and called softly. She came in, purring. The poor beast
• 2:55:39
  was starving, and I gave her some milk. All my food was in
• 2:55:43
  a cupboard in the corner of the room. After that she went smelling round
• 2:55:46
  the room, evidently with the idea of making herself at home. The invisible
• 2:55:50
  rag upset her a bit. Who should have seen a spit at it?
• 2:55:54
  But I made her comfortable on the pillow of my truckle bed, and I
• 2:55:58
  gave her butter to get her to wakh and you processed her. I processed
• 2:56:03
  her. But giving drugs to a cat is no joke, kemp. And
• 2:56:07
  the process failed failed in two particulars. These were the claws and the pigment
• 2:56:15
  stuff. What is it at the back of the eye in a cat?
• 2:56:18
  You know? Tap heatum, Yes, the tap eatum. It didn't go.
• 2:56:24
  After I'd given the stuff to bleach the blood and done certain other things
• 2:56:26
  to her, I gave the beast opium and put her in the little pillow
• 2:56:30
  she was sleeping on on the apparatus. And after all the rest that faded
• 2:56:33
  and vanished. There remained two little ghosts of her eyes. Odd. I
• 2:56:39
  can't explain it. She was bandaged and clamped, of course, so I
• 2:56:43
  had her safe. But she woke while she was still misty, and meowed
• 2:56:46
  dismally, and someone came knocking. It was an old woman from downstairs who
• 2:56:52
  suspected me of vivisecting a drink sodden old creature with only a white cat to
• 2:56:56
  care for in all the world. I whipped, had some chloroform, applied
• 2:57:01
  it and answered the door. Did I hear a cat? She asked,
• 2:57:05
  My cat? Not here, said I, very politely. She was a
• 2:57:09
  little doubtful, and tried to peer past me into the room, strange enough
• 2:57:13
  to her, no doubt, bare walls, uncurtained windows, truckle bed,
• 2:57:18
  with the gas engine vibrating, and the seethe of the radiant points, and
• 2:57:22
  that faint, ghastly stinging of chloroform in the air. She had to be
• 2:57:26
  satisfied at last and went away again. How long did it take, asked
• 2:57:31
  Ken? Three or four hours? The cat, the bones and sign news
• 2:57:35
  and the fat were the last to go, and the tips of the colored
• 2:57:39
  hairs, and as I say, the back part of the eye tough iridescent
• 2:57:43
  stuff that it is wouldn't go at all. It was night outside long before
• 2:57:48
  the business was over, and nothing was to be seen but the dim eyes
• 2:57:50
  and the claws. I stopped the gas engine, felt for and stroked the
• 2:57:54
  beast, which was still insensible, and then, being tired, left it
• 2:57:58
  sleeping on the envinsible pillow and went to bed. I found it hard to
• 2:58:03
  sleep. I lay awake, thinking weak, aimless stuff, going over the
• 2:58:07
  experiment over and over again, or dreaming feverishly of things growing misty and vanishing
• 2:58:11
  about me, until everything the ground I stood on vanished, and so I
• 2:58:16
  came to that sickly falling nightmare. One gets about two. The cat began
• 2:58:20
  meowing about the room. I tried to hush it by talking to it,
• 2:58:24
  and then I decided to turn it out. I remember the shock when I
• 2:58:28
  had striking a light. They were just the round eyes, shining green,
• 2:58:33
  and nothing round them. I would have given it milk, but I hadn't
• 2:58:37
  any. It wouldn't be quiet. It just sat down and meowed at the
• 2:58:39
  door. I tried to catch it, with the idea of putting it out
• 2:58:43
  of the window, but it wouldn't be caught. It vanished then it began
• 2:58:46
  meowing in different parts of the room. At last I opened the window and
• 2:58:50
  made a bustle. I suppose it went out. At last I never saw
• 2:58:54
  any more of it. Then, Heaven knows why I fell thinking my father's
• 2:59:00
  funeral again in the dismal, windy hillside until the day had come I found
• 2:59:05
  sleeping, was hopeless and locking my door after me wandered out into the morning
• 2:59:09
  streets. You don't mean to say there's an invisible cast at large, said
• 2:59:13
  Kemp. If it hasn't been killed, said the invisible man. Why not?
• 2:59:20
  Why not? Said Kemp. I didn't mean to interrupt. It's very
• 2:59:26
  probably been killed. It was alive. Four days afterwards, I know,
• 2:59:28
  and down a grating in Great Titchfield Street because I saw a crowd round the
• 2:59:31
  place trying to see whence the me owing came. He was silent for the
• 2:59:37
  best part of a minute, then he resumed abruptly. I remember that morning
• 2:59:41
  before the change very vividly. I must have gone up Great Portland Street.
• 2:59:46
  I remember the barracks in Albany Street and the horse soldiers coming out, And
• 2:59:50
  at last I found the summit of Primrose Hill. It was a sunny day,
• 2:59:54
  in January, one of those sunny, frosty days that come before the
• 2:59:58
  snow this year, my weary brain tried to formulate the position, to plot
• 3:00:03
  out a plan of action. I was surprised to find now that the prize
• 3:00:07
  was within my grasp, how inconclusive its attainment seemed. As a matter of
• 3:00:11
  fact, I was worked out. The intense stress of nearly four years continuous
• 3:00:16
  work left me incapable of any strength or feeling. I was apathetic, and
• 3:00:20
  I tried in vain to recover the enthusiasm of my first inquiries, the passion
• 3:00:24
  of discovery that had enabled me to compass even the downfall of my father's gray
• 3:00:28
  hairs. Nothing seemed to matter. I saw pretty clearly this was a transient
• 3:00:33
  mood due to overwork and want of sleep, and that either by drugs or
• 3:00:37
  rest, it would be possible to recover my energies. All I could think
• 3:00:41
  clearly was that the thing had to be carried through. The fixed idea still
• 3:00:46
  ruled me, and soon for the money I had was almost exhausted. I
• 3:00:50
  looked about me at the hillside, with children playing and girls watching them,
• 3:00:54
  and tried to think of all the fantastic advantages an invisible man would have in
• 3:00:58
  the world. After a time, I crawled home, took some food and
• 3:01:03
  a strong dose of strychnine, and went to sleep in my clothes on my
• 3:01:05
  unmade bed. Strychnine is a grand tonic kenp to take the flabbiness out of
• 3:01:11
  a man. It's the devil, said kepis the Paleolithic in a bottle.
• 3:01:16
  I awoke vastly invigorated and rather irritable. You know, I know the stuff.
• 3:01:22
  And there was someone rapping at the door. It was my landlord,
• 3:01:26
  with threats and inquiries, an old Polish jew in a long gray coat and
• 3:01:30
  greasy slippers. I had been tormenting a cat in the night. He was
• 3:01:33
  sure the old woman's tongue had been busy. He insisted on knowing all about
• 3:01:39
  it. The laws in this country against vivisection were very severe. He might
• 3:01:43
  be liable. I denied the cat. Then the vibration of the little gas
• 3:01:48
  engine could be felt all over the house. He said, that was true.
• 3:01:50
  Certainly. He edged around me into the room, peering about over his
• 3:01:56
  German silver spectacles, and a sudden dread came into my mind that he might
• 3:02:00
  to carry away something of my secret. I tried to keep between him and
• 3:02:03
  the concentrating apparatus I had arranged, and that only made him more curious.
• 3:02:09
  What was I doing? Why was I always alone and secretive? Was it
• 3:02:11
  legal? Was it dangerous? I paid nothing but the usual rent. His
• 3:02:16
  had always been a most respectable house in a disreputable neighborhood. Suddenly my temper
• 3:02:22
  gave way. I told him to get out. He began to protest,
• 3:02:26
  to jabber of his right of entry. In a moment I had him by
• 3:02:28
  the collar. Something ripped and he went spinning out into his own passage.
• 3:02:33
  I slammed and locked the door and sat down quivering. He made it fuss
• 3:02:37
  outside, which I disregarded, and after time he went away. But this
• 3:02:43
  brought matters to a crisis. I did not know what he would do,
• 3:02:46
  nor even what he had power to do. To move to fresh apartments would
• 3:02:50
  have meant delay Altogether. I had barely twenty pounds left in the world,
• 3:02:54
  for the most part in a bank, and I could not afford that vanish,
• 3:02:58
  who was irri resistible. Then there would be an inquiry. The sacking
• 3:03:03
  of my room. At the thought of the possibility of my work being exposed
• 3:03:07
  or interrupted, its very climax. I became angry and active. I hurried
• 3:03:11
  out with my three books of notes, my check book. The tramp has
• 3:03:16
  them now and directed them from the nearest post office to a house of call
• 3:03:20
  for letters and parcels in Great Portland Street. I tried to go out noiselessly.
• 3:03:24
  Coming in, I found my landlord going quietly upstairs. He had heard
• 3:03:28
  the door close. I suppose you would have laughed to see him jump aside
• 3:03:33
  on the landing as I came tearing up after him. He glad me As
• 3:03:35
  I went by him, and I made the house quiver with my slamming of
• 3:03:39
  the door. I heard him come shuffling up to my floor, hesitate,
• 3:03:43
  and go down. I set to work upon my preparations forthwith. It was
• 3:03:48
  all done that evening and night. While I was still sitting under the sickly
• 3:03:52
  drowsy influence of the drugs that decolorized blood, there came a repeated knocking at
• 3:03:56
  the door. It ceased, footsteps went away and returned, and the knocking
• 3:04:01
  was resumed. There was an attempt to push something under the door, a
• 3:04:05
  blue paper. Then, in a fit of irritation, I arose and went
• 3:04:09
  and flung the door wide open. Now, then I said it was my
• 3:04:13
  landlord, with a notice of ejectment or something. He held it out to
• 3:04:16
  me. Saw something odd about my hands, I expected, and lifted his
• 3:04:20
  eyes to my face. For a moment he gaped. Then he gave a
• 3:04:24
  sort of inarticulate cry, dropped candle and writ together, and went blundering down
• 3:04:28
  the dark passage to the stairs. I shut the door, locked it,
• 3:04:33
  and went to the looking glass. Then I understood his terror. My face
• 3:04:39
  was white like white stone, but it was all horrible. I had not
• 3:04:43
  expected the suffering. A night of racking, anguish, sickness and fainting.
• 3:04:48
  I set my teeth, though my skin was presently a fire. All my
• 3:04:52
  body afire. But I lay there like grim death. I understood now how
• 3:04:56
  it was that the cat had howled until I chloroformed it. Lucky it was.
• 3:05:01
  I lived alone and untended in my room. There were times when I
• 3:05:03
  sobbed and groaned and talked, but I stuck to it. I became insensible
• 3:05:09
  and woke languid in the darkness. The pain had passed. I thought I
• 3:05:13
  was killing myself, and I did not care. I shall never forget that
• 3:05:18
  dawn and the strange horror of seeing that my hands had become as clouded glass,
• 3:05:22
  and watching them grow clearer and thinner as the day went by, until
• 3:05:26
  at last I could see the sickly disorder of my room through them. Though
• 3:05:31
  I closed my transparent eyelids, my limbs became glassy, the bones and arteries
• 3:05:37
  faded, vanished, and the little white nerves went last. I gritted my
• 3:05:43
  teeth and stayed there to the end. At last, only the dead tips
• 3:05:46
  of the finger nails remained pallid and white, and the brown stain of some
• 3:05:50
  acid upon my fingers. I struggled up. At first, I was as
• 3:05:56
  incapable as a swathed infant, stepping with limbs I could not see. I
• 3:06:01
  was weak and very hungry. I went and stared at nothing in my shaving
• 3:06:05
  glass, at nothing save where an attenuated pigment still remained behind the retina of
• 3:06:09
  my eyes, fainter than mist. I had to hang on to the table
• 3:06:13
  and press my forehead against the glass. It was only by frantic effort of
• 3:06:18
  will that I dragged myself back to the apparatus and completed the process. I
• 3:06:22
  slept during the forenoon, pulling the sheet over my eyes to shut out the
• 3:06:26
  light, and about mid day I was awakened again by a knocking. My
• 3:06:31
  strength had returned. I sat up and listened and heard a whispering. I
• 3:06:35
  sprang to my feet, and as noiselessly as possible, began to datch the
• 3:06:39
  connections of my apparatus and to distribute it about the room, so as to
• 3:06:43
  destroy the suggestions of its arrangement. Presently, the knocking was renewed, and
• 3:06:48
  voices called, first my landlords, and then two others. To gain time,
• 3:06:52
  I answered them. The invisible rag and pillow came to hand, and
• 3:06:56
  I opened the window and pitched them out onto the cistern cuff. As the
• 3:07:01
  window opened, a heavy crash came at the door. Some one had charged
• 3:07:05
  it with the idea of smashing the lock, but the stout bolts I had
• 3:07:07
  screwed up some days before stopped him. That startled me made me angry.
• 3:07:13
  I began to tremble and do things hurriedly. I tossed together some loose paper,
• 3:07:18
  straw, packing paper, and so forth in the middle of the room,
• 3:07:20
  and turned on the gas. Heavy blows began to rain upon the door.
• 3:07:24
  I could not find the matches. I beat my hands on the wall.
• 3:07:28
  With rage, I turned the gas again, stepped out of the window
• 3:07:31
  on the cistern cover. They softly lowered the sash and sat down, secure
• 3:07:35
  and invisible, but quivering with anger to watch events. They split a panel
• 3:07:41
  I saw, and in another moment they had broken away the staples of the
• 3:07:43
  bolts and stood in the open doorway. It was the landlord and his two
• 3:07:48
  step sons, sturdy young men of three or four, and twenty behind them
• 3:07:52
  fluttered the old hag of a woman from downstairs. You may imagine their astonishment
• 3:07:58
  to find the room empty. One of the younger men rushed to the window
• 3:08:01
  at once, flung it up and stared out his staring eyes and thick lipped,
• 3:08:05
  bearded face came afoot from my face. I was half minded to hit
• 3:08:09
  his silly countenance, but I arrested my doubled fist. He stared right through
• 3:08:13
  me, so did the others, as they joined him. The old man
• 3:08:18
  went and peered under the bed, and they all made a rush for the
• 3:08:20
  cupboard. They had to argue about it in length in Yiddish and cogny English.
• 3:08:26
  They concluded I had not answered them, that their imagination had deceived them.
• 3:08:31
  A feeling of extraordinary elation took the place of my anger as I sat
• 3:08:35
  outside the window and watched these four people. For the old lady came in,
• 3:08:39
  glancing suspiciously about like a cat, trying to understand the riddle of my
• 3:08:43
  behavior. The old man, so far as I could understand his patois,
• 3:08:50
  agreed with the old lady that I was a vivisectionist. The sons protested in
• 3:08:54
  garbled English that I was an electrician, and appealed to the dynamos and radiators.
• 3:08:58
  They were all nervous about my arrival, although I found subsequently that they
• 3:09:03
  had bolted the front door. The old lady peered into the cupboard and under
• 3:09:07
  the bed, and one of the young men pushed up the register and stared
• 3:09:09
  up the chimney. One of my fellow lodgers, a costermonger who shared the
• 3:09:15
  opposite room with a butcher, appeared on the landing, and he was called
• 3:09:18
  in and told incoherent things. It occurred to me that the radiators, if
• 3:09:22
  they fell into the hands of some acute, well educated person, would give
• 3:09:26
  me away too much, And watching my opportunity, I came into the room
• 3:09:31
  and tilted one of the little dynamos off its fellow on which it was standing
• 3:09:35
  and smashed both apparatus. Then, while they were trying to explain the smash,
• 3:09:39
  I dodged out of the room and went softly downstairs. I went into
• 3:09:43
  one of the sitting rooms and waited until they came down, still speculating an
• 3:09:46
  argumentative, all a little disappointed at finding no horrors, and all a little
• 3:09:52
  puzzled how they stood legally towards me. Then I slipped up again with a
• 3:09:56
  box of matches, fired my heap of paper and rubbish, put the ch
• 3:10:00
  and bedding, thereby led the gas to the affair by the means of an
• 3:10:03
  India rubber tube, and waving a farewell to the room, left it for
• 3:10:07
  the last time. You fired the house, exclaimed Kemp. Fired the house.
• 3:10:13
  It was the only way to cover my trail, and no doubt it
• 3:10:16
  was inshored. I slipped the bolts of the front door quietly and went out
• 3:10:20
  into the street. I was invisible, and I was only just beginning to
• 3:10:24
  realize the extraordinary advantage my invisibility gave me. My head was already teeming with
• 3:10:30
  plans of all the wild and wonderful things I now had impunity to do end
• 3:10:37
  of Chapter twenty Chapter twenty one in Oxford Street. In going downstairs the first
• 3:10:46
  time, I found an unexpected difficulty because I could not see my feet.
• 3:10:50
  Indeed, I stumbled twice, and there was an unaccustomed clumsiness in gripping the
• 3:10:54
  bolt. By not looking down. However, I managed to walk on the
• 3:10:58
  level pass well. My mood, I say, was one of exultation.
• 3:11:03
  I felt as a seeing man might do with padded feet and noiseless clothes in
• 3:11:09
  a city of the blind. I experienced a wild impulse to jest, to
• 3:11:13
  startle people, to clap men on the back, fling people's hats astray,
• 3:11:16
  and generally revel in my extraordinary advantage. But hardly had I emerged upon Great
• 3:11:22
  Portland Street, however, my lodging was close to the Big Draper's shop there
• 3:11:28
  when I heard a clashing concussion and was hit violently behind and turning saw a
• 3:11:31
  man carrying a basket of soda water siphons and looking in amazement at his burden.
• 3:11:37
  Although the blow had really hurt me, I found something so irresistible in
• 3:11:41
  his astonishment that I laughed aloud. The devil's in the basket. I said,
• 3:11:46
  and suddenly twisted it out of his hand. He let go incontinently,
• 3:11:50
  and I swung the whole weight into the air. But a fool of a
• 3:11:54
  cabman standing outside a public house made a sudden rush for this, and his
• 3:11:58
  extending fingers took me with excrewciating violence under the ear. I let the hole
• 3:12:03
  down with a smash on the cabman, and then with shouts and the clatter
• 3:12:05
  of feet about me, people coming out of shops, vehicles pulling up.
• 3:12:09
  I realized what I had done for myself, and cursing my folly backed against
• 3:12:13
  a shop window and prepared dodge out of the confusion. In a moment,
• 3:12:18
  I should be wedged into a crowd, and inevitably discovered. I pushed by
• 3:12:22
  a butcher boy, who luckily did not turn to see the nothingness that shoved
• 3:12:26
  him aside, and dodged behind the cabman's four wheeler. I do not know
• 3:12:31
  how they settled the business. I hurried straight across the road, which was
• 3:12:35
  happily clear and hardly heeding, which when I went in the fright of detection
• 3:12:37
  the incident had given me plunged into the afternoon throng of Oxford Street. I
• 3:12:43
  tried to get into the stream of people, but they were too thick for
• 3:12:46
  me, and in a moment my heels were being trodden upon. I took
• 3:12:50
  to the gutter, the roughness of which I found painful to my feet,
• 3:12:54
  and forthwith the shaft of a crawling hansom dug me forcibly under the shoulder blade,
• 3:12:58
  reminding me that I was already bruised severely. I staggered out of the
• 3:13:03
  way of the cab, avoided a perambulator by a convulsive movement, and found
• 3:13:07
  myself behind the hansom. A happy thought saved me, and as this drove
• 3:13:11
  slowly along, I followed in its immediate wake, trembling and astonished at the
• 3:13:16
  turn of my adventure, and not only trembling, but shivering. It was
• 3:13:20
  a bright day in January, and I was stark naked, and the thin
• 3:13:24
  slime of mud that covered the road was freezing. Foolish, as it seems
• 3:13:28
  to me now, I had not reckoned that. Transparent or not, I
• 3:13:31
  was still amenable to the weather and all its consequences. Then suddenly a bright
• 3:13:37
  idea came into my head. I ran round and got into the cab,
• 3:13:41
  and so shivering, scared and sniffing with the first intimations of a cold,
• 3:13:45
  and with the bruises in the small of my back growing upon my attention.
• 3:13:48
  I drove slowly along Oxford Street and passed Tottenham Court Road. My mood was
• 3:13:54
  as different from that in which I had sallied forth ten minutes ago as it
• 3:13:56
  is possible to imagine this in visibility. Indeed, the one thought that possessed
• 3:14:01
  me was how was I to get out of the scrape I was in.
• 3:14:07
  We crawled past Moody's, and there a tall woman with five or six yellow
• 3:14:11
  labeled books hailed my cab, and I sprang out just in time to escape
• 3:14:13
  her, shaving a railway van narrowly in my flight. I made off up
• 3:14:18
  the roadway to Bloomsbery Square, intending to strike north past the museum and so
• 3:14:22
  get into the quiet district. I was now cruelly chilled, and the strangeness
• 3:14:26
  of my situation so unnerved me that I whimpered. As I ran. At
• 3:14:31
  the northward corner of the square, a little white dog ran out of the
• 3:14:35
  Pharmaceutical Society's offices and incontinently made for me nose down. I had never realized
• 3:14:41
  it before, but the nose is to the mind of a dog what the
• 3:14:45
  eye is to the mind of a seeing man. Dogs perceived the scent of
• 3:14:48
  a man moving as men perceive his vision. This brute began barking and leaping,
• 3:14:54
  showing, as it seemed to me, only too plainly, that he
• 3:14:56
  was aware of me. I crossed Great Russell Street, glancing over my shoulder
• 3:15:01
  as I did so, and went somewhere along Montague Street before I realized what
• 3:15:03
  I was running towards. Then I became aware of a blair of music,
• 3:15:09
  and looking along the street, saw a number of people advancing out of Russell
• 3:15:11
  Square, red shirts and the banner of the Salvation Army to the fore.
• 3:15:16
  Such a crowd chanting in the roadway and scoffing on the pavement, I could
• 3:15:20
  not hope to penetrate, and dreading to go back and further from home again,
• 3:15:24
  and deciding on the spur of the moment, I ran up the white
• 3:15:26
  steps of a house facing the museum railings, and stood there until the crowd
• 3:15:31
  should have passed. Happily, the dog stopped at the noise of the band,
• 3:15:35
  too, hesitated, and turned tail, running back to Bloomsbury Square again.
• 3:15:41
  On came the band bawling with unconscious irony, some hymn about when shall
• 3:15:46
  we see his face? And it seemed an interminable time to me before the
• 3:15:50
  tide of the crowd washed along the pavement. But by me third third thud
• 3:15:54
  came the drum with a vibrating resonance, and for the moment I did not
• 3:15:58
  notice two urchins stopping at the rain. Me see em, said one,
• 3:16:03
  see what, said the other? Why them footmarks? Bear? Look what
• 3:16:07
  he makes in mud. I looked down and saw the youngsters had stopped and
• 3:16:13
  were gaping at the muddy footmarks I had left behind me up the newly whitened
• 3:16:16
  steps. The passing people elbowed and jostled them, but their confounded intelligence was
• 3:16:22
  arrested. Third, third, third, when thud, shall we see thud
• 3:16:26
  his face? Thud, thud? There's a bare footman gone at them steps
• 3:16:30
  or I don't know, nahing, said one. And he ain't never come
• 3:16:33
  down again, and his foot was a bleedin'. The thick of the crowd
• 3:16:37
  had already passed. Look here, ted quoth one of the younger of the
• 3:16:41
  detectives, with a sharpness of surprise in his voice, and pointed straight to
• 3:16:45
  my feet. I looked down and saw at once the dim suggestion of their
• 3:16:48
  outline sketched in splashes of mud. For a moment I was paralyzed. Why
• 3:16:56
  that's rum, said the elder dashed rum. It's like the gust of a
• 3:16:58
  foot, ain't it. He hesitated and advanced with outstretched hand. A man
• 3:17:03
  pulled up short to see what he was catching, and then a girl.
• 3:17:07
  In another moment, he would have touched me. Then I saw what to
• 3:17:11
  do. I made a step. The boy started back with an exclamation,
• 3:17:15
  and with a rapid movement, I swung myself over into the portico of the
• 3:17:18
  next house. But the smaller boy was sharp eyed enough to follow the movement,
• 3:17:22
  and before I was well down the steps and upon the pavement, he
• 3:17:24
  had recovered from his momentary astonishment and was shouting out that the feet had gone
• 3:17:28
  over the wall. They rushed round and saw my new footmarks flash into being
• 3:17:33
  upon the lower step and upon the pavement. What's up? Asked some one?
• 3:17:39
  Fat look fat running. Everybody in the road except my three pursuers,
• 3:17:43
  was pouring along after the Salvation army, and this blow not only impeded me
• 3:17:48
  but them. There was an eddy of surprise and interrogation at the cost of
• 3:17:54
  bowling over one young fellow. I got through, and in another moment I
• 3:17:56
  was rushing headlong round the circuit of Russell Square, with six or seven astonished
• 3:18:01
  people following my footmarks. There was no time for explanations, or else the
• 3:18:05
  whole host would have been after me. Twice, I doubled round corners,
• 3:18:09
  thrice, I crossed the road and came back upon my tracks. And then,
• 3:18:13
  as my feet grew hot and dry, the damp impressions began to fade.
• 3:18:16
  At last I had her breathing space, and rubbed my feet clean with
• 3:18:20
  my hands, and so got away altogether. The last I saw of the
• 3:18:24
  chase was a little group of a dozen people, perhaps studying with infinite perplexity
• 3:18:28
  a slowly drying footprint that had resulted from a puddle in Tavistock Square, a
• 3:18:33
  footprint as isolated and incomprehensible to them a scrusoe's solitary discovery. This running warmed
• 3:18:41
  me to a certain extent, and I went on with a better courage to
• 3:18:45
  the maze of less frequented roads that runs hereabouts. My back had now become
• 3:18:50
  very stiff and sore, my tonsils were painful from the cabman's fingers, and
• 3:18:54
  the skin of my neck had been scratched by his nails. My feet hurt
• 3:18:58
  exceedingly, and I was lame for a little cut on one foot. I
• 3:19:01
  saw in time a blind ban approaching me and fled, limping for I feeled
• 3:19:05
  his subtle intuitions. Once or twice, accidental collisions occurred, and I left
• 3:19:11
  people amazed with unaccountable curses ringing in their ears. And then something silent and
• 3:19:16
  quiet against my face, and across the square fell a thin veil of slowly
• 3:19:20
  falling flakes of snow. I had caught a cold, and do as I
• 3:19:24
  would, I could not avoid an occasional sneeze, and every dog that came
• 3:19:28
  in sight, with its pointed nose and curious sniffing, was a terror to
• 3:19:31
  me. Then came men and boys, running, first one and then others,
• 3:19:35
  and shouting as they ran. It was a fire. They ran in
• 3:19:39
  the direction of my lodging, and looking back down a street, I saw
• 3:19:41
  a mass of black smoke streaming up above roofs and telephone wires. It was
• 3:19:46
  my lodging, burning my clothes, my apparatus, all my resources, indeed,
• 3:19:50
  except my check book, and the three volumes of memoranda that awaited me
• 3:19:54
  in Great Portland Street were there burning. I had burnt my boats. If
• 3:19:58
  ever a man did, the place was blazing. The invisible man paused and
• 3:20:05
  thought, Kemp glanced nervously out of the window. Yes, he said,
• 3:20:11
  go on chapter twenty two in the Emporium. So last January, with the
• 3:20:20
  beginning of a snow storm in the air about me, and if it settled
• 3:20:24
  on me it would betray me. Weary, cold, painful, inexpressibly wretched,
• 3:20:30
  and still, but half convinced of my invisible quality, I began this
• 3:20:33
  new life to which I am committed. I had no refuge, no appliances.
• 3:20:39
  No human being in the world in whom I could confide to have told
• 3:20:43
  my secret would have given me away, made a mere show and rarity of
• 3:20:46
  me. Nevertheless, I was half minded to accost some passer by and throw
• 3:20:50
  myself upon his mercy. But I knew too clearly the terror and brutal cruelty
• 3:20:54
  my advances would evoke. I made no plans in the street. My sole
• 3:21:01
  object was to get shelter from the snow, to get myself covered and warm.
• 3:21:05
  Then I might hope to plan. But even to me an invisible man,
• 3:21:09
  the rows of London houses stood latched, barred and bolted impregnably. Only
• 3:21:16
  one thing could I see clearly before me, the cold, exposure and misery
• 3:21:20
  of the snow storm and night. And then I had a brilliant idea.
• 3:21:24
  I turned down one of the roads leading from Gower Street to Tottenham Court Road
• 3:21:28
  and found myself outside Omium's, a big establishment where everything is to be bought,
• 3:21:33
  you know the place, meat, grocery, linen, furniture, clothing,
• 3:21:37
  oil, paintings, even a huge, meandering collection of shops rather than
• 3:21:41
  a shop. I thought I should find the doors open, but they were
• 3:21:45
  closed. And as I stood in the wide entrance, a carriage stopped outside,
• 3:21:48
  and a man in uniform you know, the kind of personage with Omnium
• 3:21:52
  on his cap, flung open the door. I contrived to enter, and
• 3:21:56
  walking down the shop it was a department where they were selling ribbons and gloves
• 3:22:01
  and stockings in that kind of thing, came to a more spacious region,
• 3:22:03
  diverted to picnic baskets and wicker furniture. I did not feel safe there,
• 3:22:09
  however, people were going to and fro, and I prowled restlessly until I
• 3:22:13
  came about a huge section in an upper floor containing multitudes of bedsteads, and
• 3:22:18
  over these I clambered and found a resting place at last, among a huge
• 3:22:20
  pile of folded flock mattresses. The place was already lit up and agreeably warm,
• 3:22:26
  and I decided to remain where I was, keeping a cautious eye on
• 3:22:30
  the two or three sets of shopmen and customers who were meriandering through the place
• 3:22:33
  until closing time came. Then I should be able, I thought, to
• 3:22:37
  rob the place for food and clothing, and disguised prowl through it and examine
• 3:22:41
  its resources, perhaps sleep on some of the bedding. That seemed an acceptable
• 3:22:46
  plan. My idea was to procure clothing, to make myself a muffled but
• 3:22:50
  acceptable figure, to get money, and then to recover my books and parcels
• 3:22:54
  where they awaited me, take a lodging somewhere, and elaborate plans for the
• 3:22:58
  complete realization of the advantages of my life. Visibility gave me, as I
• 3:23:01
  still imagined over my fellow men. Closing time arrived quickly enough. It could
• 3:23:09
  not have been more than an hour after I took up my position on the
• 3:23:11
  mattress. Before I noticed the blinds of the windows being drawn and customers being
• 3:23:16
  marched doorward. And then a number of brisk young men began with remarkable alacrity
• 3:23:20
  to tidy up the goods that remained disturbed. I left my lair as the
• 3:23:24
  crowds diminished and prowled cautiously out into the less desolate parts of the shop.
• 3:23:30
  I was really surprised to observe how rapidly the young men and women whipped away
• 3:23:33
  the goods displayed for sale during the day. All the boxes of goods,
• 3:23:37
  the hanging fabrics, the festoons of lace, the boxes of sweets in the
• 3:23:41
  grocery section, the displays of this and that were being whipped down, folded
• 3:23:45
  up, slapped into tidy receptacles, and everything that could not be taken down
• 3:23:48
  and put away had sheets of some coarse stuff like sacking flung over them.
• 3:23:54
  Finally, all the chairs were turned up on the counters, leaving the floor
• 3:23:56
  clear. Directly each of these young people had done, he or she made
• 3:24:01
  promptly for the door with such an expression of animation as I have rarely observed
• 3:24:05
  in a shop assistant. Before. Then came a lot of youngsters scattering sawdust
• 3:24:09
  and carrying pails and brooms. I had dodged to get out of the way,
• 3:24:13
  and as it was my ankle got stung with the sawdust. For some
• 3:24:18
  time, wandering through the swathed and darkened apartments, I could hear the brooms
• 3:24:20
  at work, and at last, a good hour or more after the shop
• 3:24:24
  had been closed, came a noise of locking doors. Silence came upon the
• 3:24:28
  place, and I find myself wandering through the vast and intricate shops, galleries,
• 3:24:33
  showrooms of the place alone. It was very still. In one place.
• 3:24:37
  I remember passing near one of the Tottenham Court Road entrances and listening to
• 3:24:41
  the tapping of boot heels of the passers by. My first visit was to
• 3:24:46
  the place where I had seen stockings and gloves for sale. It was dark
• 3:24:50
  and I had the devil of a hunt after matches, which I found at
• 3:24:52
  last in the drawer of the little cash desk. Then I had to get
• 3:24:56
  a candle. I had to tear down wrappings and ransack a number of boxes
• 3:25:00
  and drawers, but at last I managed to turn out what I sought.
• 3:25:03
  The box label called them Lamb's wool pants and Lamb's wool vests. Then socks,
• 3:25:09
  a thick comforter. And then I went to the clothing place and got
• 3:25:11
  trousers, a lounge jacket, an overcoat, and a slouch hat, a
• 3:25:15
  clerical sort of hat with the brim turned down. I began to feel a
• 3:25:18
  human being again, and my next thought was food. Upstairs was a refreshment
• 3:25:24
  department, and there I got cold meat. There was coffee still in the
• 3:25:28
  urn, and I lit the gas and warmed it up again, and altogether
• 3:25:31
  I did not do badly. Afterwards, prowling through the place in search of
• 3:25:35
  blankets, I had to put up at last with a heap of down quilts.
• 3:25:39
  I came upon a grocery section with a lot of chocolate and candied fruits
• 3:25:43
  more than was good for me, indeed, and some white burgundy. And
• 3:25:46
  near that was a toy department, and I had a brilliant idea. I
• 3:25:48
  found some artificial noses, dummy noses, you know, and I thought of
• 3:25:54
  dark spectacles, but omniums had no optical department. My nose had been a
• 3:25:58
  difficulty. Indeed, I had thought of paint. But the discovery set my
• 3:26:03
  mind running on wigs and masks and the like. Finally I went asleep in
• 3:26:07
  a heap of down quilts, very warm and comfortable. My last thoughts before
• 3:26:11
  sleeping were the most agreeable I had had since the change. I was in
• 3:26:15
  a state of physical serenity, and that was reflected in my mind. I
• 3:26:18
  thought that I should be able to slip out unobserved in the morning, with
• 3:26:22
  my clothes upon me, muffling my face with a white wrapper I had taken,
• 3:26:26
  purchased with the money I had taken, spectacles and so forth, and
• 3:26:28
  so complete my disguise. I lapsed into disorderly dreams of all the fantastic things
• 3:26:33
  that had happened during the last few days. I saw the ugly little jew
• 3:26:37
  of a landlord vociperating in his rooms. I saw his two sons marveling,
• 3:26:41
  and the wrinkled old woman's gnarled face as she asked for her cat. I
• 3:26:45
  experienced again the strange sensation of seeing the cloth disappear. And so I came
• 3:26:48
  round the windy hillside, and the sniffing old clergyman mumbling earth to earth,
• 3:26:54
  ashes to ashes, dust to dust. At my father's open grave, you
• 3:26:58
  also said a voice, and suddenly I was being forced towards the grave.
• 3:27:03
  I struggled shouted, appealed to the mourners, but they continued stonily following the
• 3:27:07
  service. The old clergyman too, never faltering, droning and sniffling through the
• 3:27:11
  ritual. I realized I was invisible and inaudible, that overwhelming forces had their
• 3:27:16
  grip on me. I struggled in vain. I was forced over the brink.
• 3:27:20
  The coffin rang hollow as I fell upon it, and the gravel came
• 3:27:24
  flying after me in spadefuls. Nobody heeded me, nobody's aware of me.
• 3:27:30
  I made convulsive struggles and awoke. The pale London dawn had come. The
• 3:27:35
  place was full of a chilly gray light that filtered around the edges of the
• 3:27:39
  window blinds. I sat up, and for a time I could not think
• 3:27:41
  where this ample apartment, with its counters, its piles of rolled stuff,
• 3:27:46
  its help of quilts and cushions, its iron pillars, might be. Then,
• 3:27:50
  as recollection came back to me, I heard voices in conversation. Then,
• 3:27:54
  far down the place, in the brighter light of some department which had
• 3:27:56
  already raised its blinds, I saw two men approaching. I scrambled to my
• 3:28:01
  feet, looking about me for some way of escape, and even as I
• 3:28:03
  did so, the sound of my movement made them aware of me. I
• 3:28:07
  suppose they saw merely a figure moving quietly and quickly away. Who's that?
• 3:28:11
  Cried one? And stop there, cried the other. I dashed around a
• 3:28:15
  corner and came full tilt a face's figure, mind you, on a lanky
• 3:28:18
  lad of fifteen. He yelled, and I bowled him over, rushed past
• 3:28:22
  him, turned another corner, and by happy inspiration, threw myself behind a
• 3:28:26
  counter. In another moment, feet went running past, and I heard voices
• 3:28:31
  shouting, all hands to the doors, asking what was up, and giving
• 3:28:33
  another advice how to catch me lying on the ground. I felt scared out
• 3:28:39
  of my wits, But odd as it may seem, it did not occur
• 3:28:43
  to me at that moment to take off my clothes as I should have done.
• 3:28:46
  I had made up my mind I suppose to get away in them,
• 3:28:48
  and that ruled me. And then down the vista of the counters came a
• 3:28:50
  bawling of here he is. I sprang to my feet, whipped a chair
• 3:28:56
  off the counter and sent it whirling at the fool who had shouted. Turned,
• 3:29:00
  came into another round a corner, sent him spinning and rushed up the
• 3:29:03
  stairs. He kept his footing, gave a view Halloo, and came up
• 3:29:07
  the staircase hot after me. Up the staircase were piled a multitude of those
• 3:29:11
  bright colored pot things. What are they? Art pots, suggested Kemp.
• 3:29:16
  That's it art pots. Well. I turned at the top step and swung
• 3:29:18
  round, plucked one out of a pile, and smashed it on his silly
• 3:29:22
  head. As he came at me. The whole pile of pots went headlong,
• 3:29:24
  and I heard shouting and footsteps running from all parts. I made a
• 3:29:28
  mad rush for the refreshment place, and there was a man in white,
• 3:29:31
  like a man cook, who took up the chase. I made one last
• 3:29:35
  desperate turn and found myself among lamps and iron mungery. I went behind the
• 3:29:39
  counter of this and waited for my cook, And as he bolted in at
• 3:29:41
  the head of the chase, I doubled him up with a lamp. Down
• 3:29:45
  he went, and I crouched down behind the counter and began whipping off my
• 3:29:48
  clothes as fast as I could. Coat, jacket, trousers, shoes were
• 3:29:52
  all right, but a lambs will vest fits a man like a skin.
• 3:29:54
  I heard more men coming. My cook was lying quiet on the other side
• 3:29:58
  of the counter, stuck und or scared speechless, and I had to make
• 3:30:01
  another dash for it, like a rabbit hunted out of a woodpile. This
• 3:30:05
  way policemen. I heard someone shouting, and I found myself in my bedsteads
• 3:30:09
  storeroom again, and at the end of a wilderness of wardrobes. I rushed
• 3:30:13
  among them, went flat, got rid of my vest after infinite wriggling,
• 3:30:18
  and stood a free man again, panting and scared. As the policemen and
• 3:30:20
  three of the shopmen came round the corner, they made a rush for the
• 3:30:24
  vest and pants and collared the trousers. He's dropping his plunder, said one
• 3:30:28
  of the young men. He must be somewhere here, But they did not
• 3:30:33
  find me all the same. I stood watching them hunt for me for a
• 3:30:37
  time and cursing my ill luck in losing the clothes. Then I went into
• 3:30:41
  the refreshment room, drank a little milk I found there, and sat down
• 3:30:45
  by the fire to consider my position. In a while, two assistants came
• 3:30:50
  in and began to talk over the business, very excitedly, and like the
• 3:30:54
  fools they were, I heard a magnified account of my depredations and other specky
• 3:31:00
  relations as to my whereabouts. Then I fell to scheming again. The insurmountable
• 3:31:05
  difficulty of the place, especially now it was alarmed, was to get any
• 3:31:07
  plunder out of it. I went down into the warehouse to see if there
• 3:31:11
  was any chance of packing and addressing a parcel, but I could not understand
• 3:31:15
  the system of checking. About eleven o'clock the snow. Having thought as it
• 3:31:18
  fell, and the day being finer and a little warmer than the previous one,
• 3:31:22
  I decided that the emporium was hopeless and went out again, exasperated my
• 3:31:28
  want of success, with only the vaguest plans of action in my mind.
• 3:31:33
  End of Chapter twenty two, Chapter twenty three in Dreary Lane. But you
• 3:31:41
  begin now to realize, said the invisible man, the full disadvantage of my
• 3:31:46
  condition. I had no shelter, no covering, to get clothing, was
• 3:31:50
  to forego all my advantage to make myself a strange and terrible thing. I
• 3:31:54
  was fasting for to eat, to fill myself with unassimilated matter, would be
• 3:31:58
  become grotesquely visible. Again. I never thought of that, said Kemp,
• 3:32:03
  nor had I, and the snow had warned me of other dangers. I
• 3:32:07
  could not go abroad in snow. It would settle on me and expose me.
• 3:32:11
  Rain too, would make me a water outline, a glistening surface of
• 3:32:16
  a man, a bubble and fog. I should be like a fainter bubble
• 3:32:20
  in a fog, a surface, a greasy glimmer of humanity. Moreover,
• 3:32:24
  as I went abroad in the London air, I gathered dirt about my ankles,
• 3:32:28
  floating smuts and dust upon my skin. I did not know how long
• 3:32:31
  it would be before I should come visible from that cause also, but I
• 3:32:35
  saw clearly it could not be for long, not in London at any rate.
• 3:32:41
  I went into the slums towards Great Portland Street and found myself at the
• 3:32:43
  end of the street in which I had lodged. I did not go that
• 3:32:46
  way because of the crowd. Halfway down it opposite, Still looking at the
• 3:32:50
  smoking ruins of the house I had fired, my most immediate problem was to
• 3:32:54
  get clothing. What to do with my face puzzled me. Then I saw
• 3:33:00
  or one of those little miscellaneous shops news sweet toys, stationary, Belated Christmas,
• 3:33:03
  tom Fulu and so forth, and a ray of masks and noses.
• 3:33:07
  I realized the problem was solved. In a flash, I saw my course.
• 3:33:13
  I turned about, no longer aimless, and went securitously in order to
• 3:33:16
  avoid their busy ways towards the back streets north of the strand, for I
• 3:33:20
  remembered, though not very distinctly, ware that some theatrical costumiers had shops in
• 3:33:26
  that district. The day was cold, with a nipping wind down the northward
• 3:33:31
  running streets. I walked fast to avoid being overtaken. Every crossing was a
• 3:33:37
  danger, every passenger a thing to wash alertly. One man I was about
• 3:33:41
  to pass him at the top of Bedford Street, turned upon me abruptly and
• 3:33:45
  came into me, sending me into the road and almost under the wheel of
• 3:33:48
  a passing hansom. The verdict of the cab rank was that he had some
• 3:33:52
  sort of stroke. I was so unnerved by this encounter that I went into
• 3:33:56
  Covent Garden Market and sat down for some time in a quiet corner by a
• 3:34:01
  stall of violets, panting and trembling. I found I had caught a fresh
• 3:34:05
  cold and had to turn out after time lest my sneezes should attract attention.
• 3:34:11
  At last, I reached the object of my quest a dirty, flyblown little
• 3:34:16
  shop in a byway near Drury Lane, with a window full of tinsel,
• 3:34:20
  robes, sham, jewels, wigs, slippers, dominoes, and theatrical photographs.
• 3:34:24
  The shop was old fashioned and low and dark, and the house rose
• 3:34:28
  above it for four stories, dark and dismal. I peered through the window,
• 3:34:31
  and, seeing no one within, entered. The opening of the door
• 3:34:35
  set a clanking bell ringing. I left it open and walked around a bare
• 3:34:39
  costume, stand into a corner behind a cheval glass. For a minute or
• 3:34:43
  two, no one came. Then I heard heavy feet striding across a room,
• 3:34:48
  and a man appeared down the shop. My plans were now perfectly definite.
• 3:34:54
  I proposed to make my way into the house, secrete myself upstairs,
• 3:34:58
  watched my opportunity, and when everything was quiet, rummage out a wig,
• 3:35:01
  masked spectacles and costume and go into the world, perhaps a grotesque, but
• 3:35:05
  still a credible figure. And incidentally, of course, I could rob the
• 3:35:09
  house of any available money. The man who had just entered the shop was
• 3:35:15
  a short, slight hunched, beetle browed man with long arms and very short
• 3:35:18
  bandy legs. Apparently I had interrupted a meal. He stared about the sharp
• 3:35:24
  with an expression of expectation. This gave way to surprise and then to anger
• 3:35:28
  as he saw the shop empty. Damn the boys, he said. He
• 3:35:33
  went a stare up and down the street. He came in again in a
• 3:35:35
  minute, kicked the door too with his foot spitefully, and went muttering back
• 3:35:39
  to the house door. I came forward to follow him, and at the
• 3:35:43
  noise of my movement, he stopped dead. I did so, too,
• 3:35:48
  Startled by his quickness of ear, he slammed the house door in my face.
• 3:35:54
  I stood hesitating. Suddenly I heard his quick footsteps returning, and the
• 3:35:58
  door reopened. He stood looking about the shop like one who was still not
• 3:36:03
  satisfied. Then murmuring to himself, he examined the back of the counter and
• 3:36:07
  peered behind some fixtures. Then he stood doubtful. He had left the house
• 3:36:13
  door open, and I slipped into the inner room. It was a queer
• 3:36:16
  little room, poorly furnished, and with a number of big masks. In
• 3:36:20
  the corner. On the table was his belated breakfast, and it was confoundedly
• 3:36:24
  exasperating for me Kemp to have to sniff his coffee and stand watching while he
• 3:36:30
  came in and resumed his meal, and his table manners were irritating. Three
• 3:36:35
  doors opened into the little room, one going upstairs and one down, but
• 3:36:39
  they were all shut. I could not get out of the room while he
• 3:36:41
  was there. I could scarcely move because of his alertness, and there was
• 3:36:46
  a draft down my back. Twice I strangled a sneeze just in time.
• 3:36:52
  The spectacular quality of my sensations was curious and novel. But for all that,
• 3:36:56
  I was heartily tired and angry long before he had done his ear.
• 3:37:01
  But at last he made an end, and putting his beggarly crockery on the
• 3:37:03
  black tin tray upon which he had had his teapot, and gathering all the
• 3:37:07
  crumbs up on the mustard stained cloth, he took the whole lot of things
• 3:37:11
  after him. His burden prevented his shutting the door behind him, as he
• 3:37:15
  would have done. I had never seen such a man for shutting doors,
• 3:37:18
  and I followed him into a very dirty underground kitchen and scullery. I had
• 3:37:24
  the pleasure of seeing him begin to wash up, and then finding no good
• 3:37:28
  in keeping down there, and the brick floor being coal on my feet,
• 3:37:31
  I returned upstairs and sat in his chair by the fire. It was burning
• 3:37:35
  low, and scarcely, thinking I put on a little coal. The noise
• 3:37:41
  of this brought him up at once, and he stood a glare. He
• 3:37:43
  peered about the room and was within an ace of touching me. Even after
• 3:37:48
  that examination, he scarcely seemed satisfied. He stopped in the doorway and took
• 3:37:52
  a final inspection before he went down. I waited in the little parlor for
• 3:37:56
  an age, and at last he came up unopened the upstairs door. I
• 3:38:01
  just managed to get by him on the staircase. He stopped suddenly, so
• 3:38:05
  that I very nearly blundered into him. He stood looking right back into my
• 3:38:09
  face and listening. I could have sworn, he said. His long,
• 3:38:13
  hairy hand pulled at his lower lip. His eye went up and down the
• 3:38:18
  staircase. Then he grunted and went on up again. His hand was on
• 3:38:24
  the handle of a door, and then he stopped again, with the same
• 3:38:26
  puzzled anger on his face. He was becoming aware of the faint sounds of
• 3:38:31
  my movements about him. The man must have had diabolically acute hearing. He
• 3:38:35
  suddenly flashed into rage. If there's any one in this house, he cried
• 3:38:41
  with an oath, and left the threat unfinished. He put his hand in
• 3:38:45
  his pocket, failed to find what he wanted, and, rushing past me,
• 3:38:48
  went blundering noisily and pugnaciously downstairs. But I did not follow him.
• 3:38:52
  I sat on the head of the staircase until his return. Presently he came
• 3:38:58
  up again, still muttering. He opened the door of the room, and
• 3:39:01
  before I could enter, slammed it in my face. I resolved to explore
• 3:39:07
  the house, and spent some time in doing it so as noiselessly as possible.
• 3:39:11
  The house was very old and tumble down, damp, so that the
• 3:39:15
  paper in the attics was peeling from the walls, and rat infested. Some
• 3:39:20
  of the door handles were stiff, and I was afraid to turn them.
• 3:39:22
  Several rooms I did inspect were unfurnished, and others were littered with theatrical lumber
• 3:39:28
  brought second hand, I judged from its appearance. In one room next to
• 3:39:31
  his, I found a lot of old clothes. I began rooting among these,
• 3:39:35
  and in my eagerness forgot again the evident sharpness of his ears. I
• 3:39:41
  heard a stealthy footstep, and looking up just in time, saw him peering
• 3:39:46
  in at the tumbled heap and holding an old fashioned revolver in his hand.
• 3:39:50
  I stood perfectly still while he stared about, open mouthed and suspicious. It
• 3:39:54
  must have been her, he said, slowly, damn her. He shut
• 3:39:58
  the door quiet and immediately I heard the key turn in the lock. Then
• 3:40:03
  his footsteps retreated. I realized abruptly that I was locked in for a moment.
• 3:40:09
  I did not know what to do. I walked from door to window
• 3:40:11
  and back and stood perplexed. A gust of anger came upon me, but
• 3:40:16
  I decided to inspect the clothes before I did anything further, and my first
• 3:40:20
  attempt brought down a pile from an upper shelf. This brought him back,
• 3:40:26
  more sinister than ever. That time he actually touched me, jumped back with
• 3:40:31
  amazement, and stood astonished in the middle of the room. Presently he calmed,
• 3:40:35
  A little rats, he said, in an undertone, fingers on lips.
• 3:40:41
  He was evidently a little scared. I edged quietly out of the room,
• 3:40:46
  but a plank creaked. Then the infernal little brute started going all over
• 3:40:50
  the house, revolver in hand and locking door after door and pocketing the keys.
• 3:40:56
  When I realized what he was up to, I had a fit of
• 3:40:58
  rage. I could hardly control myself sufficiently to watch my opportunity. By this
• 3:41:03
  time I knew he was alone in the house, and so I made no
• 3:41:07
  more ado, but knocked him on the head. Knocked him on the head,
• 3:41:11
  exclaimed Kemp. Yes, stunned him as he was going downstairs, hit
• 3:41:16
  him from behind with a stool that stood on the landing. He went downstairs
• 3:41:20
  like a bag of old boots. But I say, the common conventions of
• 3:41:26
  humanity are all very well for common people. But the point was, Kemp,
• 3:41:31
  that I had to get out of that house in a disguise without his
• 3:41:33
  seeing me, and I couldn't think of another way of doing it. And
• 3:41:39
  then I gagged him with a Louis Cator's vest and tied him up in a
• 3:41:41
  sheet. Tied him up in a sheet, I made a sort of bag
• 3:41:46
  of it. It was rather a good idea to keep the idiot scared and
• 3:41:50
  quiet, and a devilish hard thing to get out of head away from the
• 3:41:52
  string. My dear Kemp, it's no good you sitting glaring at me as
• 3:41:56
  though I was a murderer. It had to be done. He had his
• 3:42:00
  revolver, if once he saw me he would be able to describe me.
• 3:42:05
  But still, said Kemp, in England to day, and the man was
• 3:42:09
  in his own house, and you were well, robbing, robbing, confound
• 3:42:15
  it. You'll call me a thief next, surely, Kemp, you're not
• 3:42:16
  fool enough to dance on the old strings. Can't you see my position?
• 3:42:22
  And here's too, said Kemp. The invisible man stood up sharply. What
• 3:42:26
  do you mean to say? Kemp's frace grew a trifle hard. He was
• 3:42:31
  about to speak, and checked himself. I suppose, after all, he
• 3:42:35
  said, with a sudden change of manner, the thing had to be done.
• 3:42:39
  You were in a fix. But still, of course I was in
• 3:42:41
  a fix, an infernal fix. And he made me wild too, hunting
• 3:42:46
  me about the house, falling about with his revolver, locking and unlocking doors.
• 3:42:50
  He was simply exasperating. You don't blame me, do you? You
• 3:42:52
  don't blame me. I never blame any one, said Kemp. It's quite
• 3:42:58
  out of fashion. What did you do next? I was hungry downstairs.
• 3:43:03
  I found a loaf and some rank cheese, more than sufficient to satisfy my
• 3:43:07
  hunger. I took some brandy and water, and then went up past my
• 3:43:11
  impromptu bag. He was lying quite still, to the room containing the old
• 3:43:16
  clothes. This looked out upon the street. Two lace curtains, brown with
• 3:43:20
  dirt, guarding the window. I went and peered out through their interstices.
• 3:43:26
  Outside, the day was bright, by contrast with the brown shadows of the
• 3:43:28
  dismal house in which I found myself dazzlingly bright. A brisk traffic was going
• 3:43:33
  by fruit carts, a handsome a four wheeler with a pile of boxes,
• 3:43:37
  a fishmonger's cart. I turned, with spots of color swimming before my eyes,
• 3:43:41
  to the shadowy fixtures behind me. My excitement was giving place to a
• 3:43:46
  clear apprehension of my position. Again. The room was full of a faint
• 3:43:50
  scent of benzoline, used I supposed in cleaning the garments. I began a
• 3:43:56
  systematic search of the place I should judge them. The hunchback had been alone
• 3:44:01
  in the house for some time. He was a curious person. Everything that
• 3:44:05
  could possibly be of service to me I collected in the clothes storeroom. Then
• 3:44:09
  I made a deliberate selection. I found a handbag. I thought a suitable
• 3:44:13
  possession, and some powder, rouge and sticking plaster. I had thought of
• 3:44:18
  painting and powdering my face and all that there was to show of me,
• 3:44:20
  in order to render myself visible. But the disadvantage of this lay in the
• 3:44:24
  fact that I should require turpentine and other appliances, and a considerable amount of
• 3:44:28
  time before I could vanish again. Finally, I chose a mask of the
• 3:44:33
  better type, slightly grotesque, but not more so than many human beings.
• 3:44:37
  Dark glasses, grayish whiskers, and a wig. I could find no underclothing,
• 3:44:43
  but that I could buy. Subsequently, and for the time, I
• 3:44:46
  swathed myself in calico dominoes and some white cashmere scarves. I could find no
• 3:44:50
  socks, but the hunchback's boots were rather a loose fit and sufficed. In
• 3:44:56
  a desk in the shop were three sovereigns at about thirty shillings worth of silk,
• 3:45:00
  and in a locked cupboard I burst in in the inner room were eight
• 3:45:03
  pounds in gold. I could go forth into the world again equipped. Then
• 3:45:09
  came a curious hesitation, with my appearance really credible. I tried myself with
• 3:45:16
  a little bedroom looking glass, inspecting myself from every point of view to discover
• 3:45:20
  any forgotten chink. But it all seemed sound. I was grotesque to the
• 3:45:24
  theatrical pitch, a stage miser, but I was certainly not a physical impossibility.
• 3:45:31
  Gaining confidence, I took my looking glass down into the shop, pulled
• 3:45:35
  down the shop blinds, and surveyed myself from every point of view with the
• 3:45:39
  help of the cheval glass in the corner. I spent some moments screwing up
• 3:45:45
  my courage, and then unlocked the shop door and marched out into the street,
• 3:45:48
  leaving the little man to get out of his sheet again when he liked.
• 3:45:52
  And five minutes a dozen turnings intervened between me and the costumious shop.
• 3:45:56
  No one appeared to notice me. Very pointedly, I last difficulty seemed overcome.
• 3:46:03
  He stopped again, and you troubled. No more about the hunchback,
• 3:46:07
  said Kemp. No said the invisible man, Nor have I heard what became
• 3:46:11
  of him. I suppose he untied himself or kicked himself out. The knots
• 3:46:16
  were pretty tight. He became silent and went to the window and stared out
• 3:46:22
  what happened when he went out into the strand. Oh, disillusionment again,
• 3:46:26
  I thought my troubles were over. Practically, I thought I had impunity to
• 3:46:31
  do whatever I chose, everything save to give away my secret. So I
• 3:46:35
  thought whatever I did, whatever the consequences might be, was nothing to me.
• 3:46:39
  I had merely to fling aside my garments and vanish. No person could
• 3:46:43
  hold me. I could take my money where I found it. I decided
• 3:46:48
  to treat myself to a sumptuous feast and then put up at a good hotel
• 3:46:52
  and accumulate a new outfit of property. I felt amazingly confident. It's not
• 3:46:56
  particularly pleasant recalling that I was an ass. I went into a place and
• 3:47:01
  was already ordering lunch when it occurred to me that I could not eat unless
• 3:47:05
  I exposed my invisible face. I finished ordering the lunch, told the man
• 3:47:09
  I should be back in ten minutes, and went out, exasperating. I
• 3:47:13
  don't know if you have ever been disappointed in your appetite. Not quite so
• 3:47:18
  badly, said Kemp, But I can imagine it. I could have smashed
• 3:47:22
  the silly devils at last. Faint with the desire for tasteful food, I
• 3:47:26
  went into another place and demanded a private room. I am disfigured, I
• 3:47:31
  said, badly. They looked at me curiously, but of course it was
• 3:47:33
  not their affair, and so at last I got my lunch. I was
• 3:47:39
  not particularly well served, but it sufficed. And when I had it,
• 3:47:41
  I sat over a cigar, trying to plan my line of action, and
• 3:47:46
  outside a snow storm was beginning. The more I thought it over Kemp,
• 3:47:52
  the more I realized what a helpless, absurdity and invisible man was in a
• 3:47:56
  cold and dirty climate and a crowded, civilized city. Before I made this
• 3:48:01
  mad experiment, I had dreamt of a thousand advantages. That afternoon it seemed
• 3:48:05
  all disappointment. I went over the heads of the things a man reckons desirable,
• 3:48:11
  No doubt, invisibility made it possible to get them, but it made
• 3:48:15
  it impossible to enjoy them when they are got ambition. What is the good
• 3:48:20
  of pride of place when you cannot appear there? What is the good of
• 3:48:22
  the love of a woman when her name must needs be Delilah? I have
• 3:48:28
  no taste for politics, for the blaggardisms of fame, for philanthropy, for
• 3:48:31
  sport. What was I to do? And for this I had become a
• 3:48:37
  wrapped up mystery, a swathed and bandaged caricature of a man. He paused,
• 3:48:43
  and his attitude suggested a roving glance at the window. But how did
• 3:48:48
  you get to Iping? Said Kemp, anxious to keep his guest busy talking.
• 3:48:52
  I went there to work. I had one hope it was a half
• 3:48:56
  idea. I have it still. It is a full blown idea now,
• 3:48:58
  a way of getting back, of restoring what I have done when I choose,
• 3:49:03
  when I have done all I mean to do invisibly. And that is
• 3:49:07
  what I chiefly want to talk to you about. Now. You went straight
• 3:49:11
  to Iping. Yes, I had simply to get my three volumes of memoranda,
• 3:49:16
  and my check book, my luggage and underclothing, order a quantity of
• 3:49:20
  chemicals to work out this idea of mine. I will show you the calculations
• 3:49:24
  as soon as I get my books. And then I started. Jove,
• 3:49:28
  I remember the snowstorm now and the accursed bother. It was to keep the
• 3:49:31
  snow from damping my pasteboard nose at the end, said Kemp. The day
• 3:49:37
  before yesterday, when they found you out, you rather to judge by the
• 3:49:41
  papers I did? Rather? Did I kill that fool of a constable?
• 3:49:46
  No, said Kemp. He's expected to recover. That's his luck. Then
• 3:49:52
  I clean lost my temper. The fools. Why couldn't they leave me alone?
• 3:49:56
  And that grosser lout There are no oh, deaths expected, said Kemp.
• 3:50:03
  I don't know about that tramp of mine, said the invisible man,
• 3:50:05
  with an unpleasant laugh. By heaven, Kemp, you don't know what rage
• 3:50:09
  is to have worked for years, to have planned and plotted, and then
• 3:50:13
  to get some fumbling, purblind idiot messing across your course. Every conceivable sort
• 3:50:20
  of silly creature that has ever been created has been sent to cross me.
• 3:50:24
  If I have much more of it, I shall go wild. I shall
• 3:50:26
  stop mowing em as it is. They've made things a thousand times more difficult.
• 3:50:31
  No doubt it's exasperating, said Kemp dryly, end of chapter twenty three,
• 3:50:39
  Chapter twenty four. The plan that failed. But now, said Kemp,
• 3:50:46
  with a side glance out of the window, what are we to do?
• 3:50:50
  He moved near his guest as he spoke, in such a manner as
• 3:50:52
  to prevent the possibility of a sudden glimpse of the three men who were advancing
• 3:50:56
  up the hill road with an intolerable slowness. It seemed to Kemp, What
• 3:51:01
  were you planning to do when you were heading for Port Burdock? Had you
• 3:51:05
  any plan? I was going to clear out of the country, but I
• 3:51:09
  have altered that plan rather since seeing you. I thought it would be wise,
• 3:51:13
  now that the weather is hot and invisibility possible, to make for the
• 3:51:18
  south, especially as my secret was known and everybody would be on the lookout
• 3:51:22
  for a masked and muffled man. You have a line of steamers from here
• 3:51:26
  to France. My idea was to get a board one and run the risks
• 3:51:28
  of the passage. Thence I could go by train into Spain or Elsecat to
• 3:51:33
  Algiers. It would not be difficult there a man might always be invisible and
• 3:51:37
  yet live and do things. I was using that tramp as a money box
• 3:51:41
  and luggage carrier until I decided how to get my books and things sent over
• 3:51:46
  to meet me. That's clear, and then the filthy brute must needs try
• 3:51:50
  to rob me. He has hidden my books, Kep, hidden my books.
• 3:51:54
  If I can lay my hands on him, best plan to get the
• 3:51:58
  books out of him first. But where is he? Do you know?
• 3:52:03
  He's in the town police station, locked up by his own request. In
• 3:52:05
  strongest selling the place, cur said the invisible man. But that hangs up
• 3:52:11
  your plans a little. We must get those books. Those books are vital,
• 3:52:16
  certainly, said Kemp, a little nervously, wondering if he heard footsteps
• 3:52:20
  outside. Certainly we must get those books. But that won't be difficult if
• 3:52:24
  he doesn't know they're for you. No, said the invicible man, and
• 3:52:28
  thought Kemp tried to think of something to keep the talk going, but the
• 3:52:31
  invisible Man resumed of his own accord. Blundering into your house, Kemp,
• 3:52:35
  changes all my plans for you are a man that can understand. In spite
• 3:52:41
  of all that has happened, in spite of this publicity, of the loss
• 3:52:43
  of my books, of what I have suffered, there still remain great possibilities,
• 3:52:48
  huge possibilities. You have told no one that I am here, he
• 3:52:52
  asked abruptly. Camp hesitated, that was implied, he said, no one
• 3:52:58
  insisted Griffin, not a soul. Ah. Now the invisible Man stood up,
• 3:53:05
  and, sticking his arms, Akimbo began to pace the study. I
• 3:53:09
  made a mistake, Kemp, A huge mistake in carrying this thing through alone.
• 3:53:13
  I have wasted strength, time, opportunities alone. It is wonderful,
• 3:53:18
  how little a man can do alone, to rob a little, to hurt
• 3:53:20
  a little, And there is the end. What I want, Kemp,
• 3:53:24
  is a goalkeeper, a helper, and a hiding place, an arrangement whereby
• 3:53:28
  I can sleep and eat and rest in peace and unsuspected. I must have
• 3:53:33
  a confederate, with a confederate, with food and rest. A thousand things
• 3:53:37
  are possible. Hitherto I have gone on vague lines. We have to consider
• 3:53:43
  all that invisibility means, all that it does not mean. It means little
• 3:53:46
  advantage for eavesdropping and so forth. One makes sounds. It's of little help,
• 3:53:52
  A little help perhaps in housebreaking and so forth. Once you have caught
• 3:53:56
  me, you could easily imprison me. But on the other hand, I
• 3:53:58
  am hard to catch. This Invisibility, in fact, is only good in
• 3:54:01
  two cases. Is useful in getting away, It's useful in approaching. It's
• 3:54:07
  particularly useful therefore, in killing. I can walk round a man, whatever
• 3:54:11
  weapon he has, choose my point, strike as I like, dodge,
• 3:54:15
  as I like escape, as I like. Kemp's hand went to his mustache.
• 3:54:20
  Was that a movement downstairs? And it is killing? We must do,
• 3:54:26
  Kemp. It is killing we must do, repeated Kemp. I am
• 3:54:30
  listening to your plan, Griffin, but I'm not agreeing. Mind why killing,
• 3:54:35
  not wanton killing, but a judicious slaying. The point is they know
• 3:54:41
  there is an invisible man as well as we know there is an invisible man.
• 3:54:46
  And that invisible man, Kemp, must now establish a reign of terror.
• 3:54:52
  Yes, no doubt, it's startling, but I mean it, a
• 3:54:54
  reign of terror. He must take some town like your Burdock and terrify and
• 3:55:00
  dominate it. He must issue his orders. He can do that in a
• 3:55:03
  thousand ways. Scraps of paper thrust under doors would suffice and all who disobey
• 3:55:07
  his orders, he must kill and kill all who would defend them. Humph,
• 3:55:13
  said Kemp, no longer listening to Griffin, but to the sound of
• 3:55:16
  his front door opening and closing. It seems to me, Griffin, he
• 3:55:20
  said, to cover his wandering attention, that your confederate would be in a
• 3:55:24
  difficult position. No one would know he was a confederate, said the invisible
• 3:55:28
  man eagerly, And then suddenly, hush, what's that downstairs? Nothing,
• 3:55:33
  said Kemp, and suddenly began to speak loud and fast. I don't agree
• 3:55:37
  to this griffin, he said, understand me. I don't agree to this.
• 3:55:39
  Why dream of playing a game against the race. How can you hope
• 3:55:43
  to gain happiness? Don't be a lone wolf. Publish your results. Take
• 3:55:46
  the world, take the nation at least into your confidence. Think what you
• 3:55:50
  might do with a million helpers. The invisible man interrupted, arm extended.
• 3:55:56
  There are footsteps coming upstairs, he said in a low voice. Nonsense,
• 3:56:01
  said Kemp. Let me see, said the invisible man, and advanced.
• 3:56:05
  Arm extended to the door, and then things happened very swiftly. Kemp hesitated
• 3:56:11
  for a second and then moved to intercept him. The invisible man started and
• 3:56:16
  stood still. Traitor cried the voice, and suddenly the dressing gown opened,
• 3:56:20
  and, sitting down, the unseen began to disrobe. Kemp made three swift
• 3:56:24
  steps to the door and forthwith the invisible man. His legs had vanished,
• 3:56:28
  sprang to his feet. With a shout, Kemp flung the door open.
• 3:56:33
  As it opened, there came a sound of hurrying feet downstairs and voices.
• 3:56:37
  With a quick movement, Kemp thrust the invisible man back, sprang aside,
• 3:56:41
  and slammed the door. The key was outside and ready. In another moment,
• 3:56:46
  Griffin would have been alone in the belvedere study a prisoner, save for
• 3:56:50
  one little thing. The key had been slipped in hastily that morning. As
• 3:56:54
  Kemp slammed the door, it fell noisily upon the carpet. Kemp's face became
• 3:56:58
  white. He tried to grip the door handle with both hands. For a
• 3:57:03
  moment he stood lugging. Then the door gave six inches, but he got
• 3:57:07
  it closed again. The second time, it was jerked a foot wide,
• 3:57:09
  and the dressing gown came wedging itself into the opening. His throat was gripped
• 3:57:13
  by invisible fingers, and he left his hold on the handle to defend himself.
• 3:57:18
  He was forced back, tripped, and pitched heavily into the corner of
• 3:57:22
  the landing. The empty dressing gown was flung on top of him. Half
• 3:57:26
  Way up the staircase was Colonel Adye, the recipient of Kemp's letter, the
• 3:57:31
  chief of the Burdock Police. He was staring aghast at the sudden appearance of
• 3:57:35
  Kemp, followed by the extraordinary sight of the clothing tossing empty in the air.
• 3:57:39
  He saw Kemp felled and struggling to his feet. He saw him rush
• 3:57:43
  forward and go down again, felled like an ox. Then suddenly he was
• 3:57:48
  struck violently by nothing. A vast weight, it seemed, leaped upon him,
• 3:57:52
  and he was hurled headlong down the staircase, with a grip on his
• 3:57:54
  throat and a knee in his groin. An invisible foot trod on his back.
• 3:57:58
  A ghostly pata passed downstairs. He heard the two police officers in the
• 3:58:03
  hall shout and run, and the front door of the house slammed violently.
• 3:58:07
  He rolled over and sat up, staring. He saw staggering down the staircase
• 3:58:11
  Kemp, dusty and disheveled, one side of his face white from a blow,
• 3:58:16
  his lip bleeding, and a pink dressing gown and some underclothing held in
• 3:58:20
  his arms. My God, cried Kemp. The game's up, He's gone.
• 3:58:26
  Chapter twenty five, The Hunting of the Invisible Man. For a space,
• 3:58:33
  Kemp was too inarticulate to make aid I understand the swift things that had
• 3:58:37
  just happened. They stood on the landing, Kemp speaking swiftly, the grotesque
• 3:58:41
  swathings of Griffin still on his arm. But presently aid I began to grip
• 3:58:46
  something of the situation. He is mad, said Kemp. Inhuman, he
• 3:58:50
  is pure selfishness. He thinks of nothing but his own advantage, his own
• 3:58:54
  safety. I have listened to such a story this morning of brutal self seeking.
• 3:59:00
  He has wounded men. He will kill them. Unless we can prevent
• 3:59:01
  him, he will create a panic. Nothing can stop him. He is
• 3:59:05
  going out now, furious. He must be caught, said Adey. That
• 3:59:11
  is certain, But how cried Kemp, and suddenly became full of ideas.
• 3:59:16
  You must begin at once. You must set every available man to work.
• 3:59:18
  You must prevent his living this district. Once he gets away, he may
• 3:59:22
  go through the countryside as he wills, killing and maiming. He dreams of
• 3:59:26
  a reign of terror, a reign of terror. I tell you you must
• 3:59:30
  set a watch on trains and roads and shipping. The garrison must help,
• 3:59:33
  you must wire for help. The only thing that may keep him here is
• 3:59:37
  the thought of recovering some books of notes he counts of value. I will
• 3:59:41
  tell you of that. There is a man in your police station marvel.
• 3:59:45
  I know, said Ady, I know these books. Yes, But the
• 3:59:48
  tramp, he says, he hasn't got his books. But he thinks the
• 3:59:52
  tramp has, and you must prevent him from eating or sleeping day and night.
• 3:59:56
  The country must be astir for him. Food must be locked up and
• 3:59:58
  secured, all food, so that he will have to break his way to
• 4:00:01
  it. The houses everywhere must be barred against him. Heavens send us cold
• 4:00:05
  knights and rain. The whole countryside must begin hunting and keep hunting. I
• 4:00:09
  tell you, Adi, he is a danger, a disaster unless he is
• 4:00:13
  pinned and secured. It is frightful to think of the things that may happen.
• 4:00:18
  What else can we do? Said Adi? I must go down at
• 4:00:22
  once and begin organizing. But why not come? Yes, you come too,
• 4:00:26
  Come and we must hold a sort of council of war. Get hops
• 4:00:28
  to help, and the railway managers. By jove, it's urgent. Come
• 4:00:33
  along. Tell me as we go what else is there we can do?
• 4:00:37
  Put that stuff down. In another moment, Adi was leaning the way downstairs.
• 4:00:43
  They found the front door open and the policeman standing outside staring at empty
• 4:00:46
  air. He's got away, sir, said one. We must go to
• 4:00:50
  the central station at once, said aid I. One of you go on
• 4:00:52
  down and get a cab to come up and meet us quickly. And now
• 4:00:56
  Kemp. What else, dogs, said Kep. Get dogs. They don't
• 4:01:01
  see him, but they win him. Get dogs. Good, said Adi.
• 4:01:07
  It's not generally known, but the prison officials over at Halstead know a
• 4:01:09
  man with bloodhounds dogs. What else bear in mind, said Kemp. His
• 4:01:16
  food shows after eating. His food shows until it is assimilated, so that
• 4:01:20
  he has to hide after eating. You must keep on beating every thicket,
• 4:01:24
  every quiet corner, and put all weapons, all implements that might be weapons
• 4:01:30
  away. He can't carry such things for long, and what he can snatch
• 4:01:33
  up and strike men with must be hidden away. Good again, said Adi.
• 4:01:39
  We shall have him yet, and on the roads, said Kemp.
• 4:01:41
  And hesitated, yes, said Adi. Powdered glass, said Kemp. It's
• 4:01:48
  cruel, I know, but think of what he may do. Adi drew
• 4:01:52
  the breath in sharply between his teeth. It's unsportsmanlike. I don't know,
• 4:01:58
  but I'll have powdered glass got ready. If he goes too far. The
• 4:02:03
  man's become inhuman, I tell you, said Kemp. I am sure he
• 4:02:07
  will establish a reign of terror so soon as he has got over the emotions
• 4:02:09
  of this escape. As I am sure, I am talking to you.
• 4:02:13
  Our only chance is to be ahead. He has cut himself off from his
• 4:02:18
  kind. His blood be upon his own head. Chapter twenty six, The
• 4:02:26
  Wixteed Murder. The Invisible Man seems to have rushed out of Kemp's house in
• 4:02:31
  a state of blind fury. A little child playing near Kemp's gateway was violently
• 4:02:37
  caught up and thrown aside, so that its ankle was broken, And thereafter
• 4:02:41
  for some hours the Invisible Man passed out of human perceptions. No one knows
• 4:02:46
  where he went, nor what he did, but one can imagine him hurrying
• 4:02:50
  through the hot June forenoon up the hill and on to the open downland behind
• 4:02:54
  Port Burdock, raging and despairing at his intolerable fate, and sheltering at last,
• 4:03:00
  heated and weary, amid the thickets of Hinton, Dean to piece together
• 4:03:03
  again his shattered schemes against his species. That seems to most probable refuge for
• 4:03:09
  him, for there it was he reasserted himself in a grimly tragical manner about
• 4:03:15
  two in the afternoon. One wonders what his state of mind may have been
• 4:03:20
  during that time, and what plans he devised. No doubt he was almost
• 4:03:24
  ecstatically exasperated by Kemp's treachery, And though we may be able to understand the
• 4:03:30
  motives that led to that deceit, we may still imagine and even sympathize a
• 4:03:35
  little with the fury the attempted surprise must have occasioned. Perhaps something of the
• 4:03:39
  stunned astonishment of his Oxford Street experiences may have returned to him, for he
• 4:03:43
  had evidently counted on Kemp's co operation in his brutal dream of a terrorized world.
• 4:03:50
  At any rate, he vanished from human ken about mid day, and
• 4:03:54
  no living witness can tell what he did until about half past two. It
• 4:03:58
  was a fortunate thing, perhaps for humanity, but for him it was a
• 4:04:01
  fatal inaction. During that time, a growing multitude of men scattered over the
• 4:04:07
  countryside were busy. In the morning, he had still been simply a legend
• 4:04:11
  a terror. In the afternoon, by virtue, chiefly of Kemp's dryly worded
• 4:04:16
  proclamation, he was presented as a tangible antagonist to be wounded, captured,
• 4:04:22
  or overcome, and the countryside began organizing itself with inconceivable rapidity. By two
• 4:04:28
  o'clock. Even he might still have removed himself out of the district by getting
• 4:04:31
  a board a train, but after two that became impossible. Every passenger train
• 4:04:37
  along the lines on a great parallelogram between Southampton, Manchester, Brighton and Horsham
• 4:04:41
  traveled with locked doors, and the goods traffic was almost entirely suspended, and
• 4:04:48
  in a great circle of twenty miles around Port Burdock, men armed with guns
• 4:04:52
  and bludgeons were presently setting out in groups of three and four with dogs to
• 4:04:56
  beat the roads and fields. Mounted police Eastmen rode along the country lanes,
• 4:05:01
  stopping at every cottage and warning the people to lock up their houses and keep
• 4:05:05
  indoors unless they were armed. And all the elementary schools had broken up by
• 4:05:09
  three o'clock and the children, scared and keeping together in groups, were hurrying
• 4:05:13
  home. Kemp's proclamation, signed indeed by Adai, was posted over almost the
• 4:05:20
  whole district by four or five o'clock in the afternoon. It gave briefly but
• 4:05:24
  clearly all the conditions of the struggle, the necessity of keeping the invisible man
• 4:05:28
  from food and sleep, the necessity for incessant watchfulness and for a prompt attention
• 4:05:33
  to any evidence of his movements, and so swift and decided was the action
• 4:05:37
  of the authorities, so prompt and universal was the belief in this strange being
• 4:05:43
  that before nightfall an area of several hundred square miles was in a stringent state
• 4:05:46
  of siege, and before nightfall two a thrill of horror went through the whole
• 4:05:52
  watching nervous countryside. Going from whispering Mouth to mouth, swift and certain over
• 4:05:58
  the length and breadth of the country passed the story of the murder of mister
• 4:06:01
  Wicksteed. If our supposition that the invisible Man's refuge was the Hintondean thickets,
• 4:06:09
  we must suppose that in the early afternoon he sallied out again, bent upon
• 4:06:13
  some project that involved the use of a weapon. We cannot know what that
• 4:06:18
  project was, but the evidence that he had the iron rod in hand before
• 4:06:22
  he met Wicksteed is to me at least overwhelming. Of course, we can
• 4:06:28
  know nothing of the details of that encounter. It occurred on the edge of
• 4:06:31
  a gravel pit, not two hundred yards from Lord Burdock's lodge gate. Everything
• 4:06:37
  points to a desperate struggle. The trampled ground, the numerous wounds mister Wixteed
• 4:06:41
  received, his splintered walking stick. But why the attack was made save in
• 4:06:46
  a murderous frenzy, it is impossible to imagine. Indeed, the theory of
• 4:06:52
  madness is almost unavoidable. Mister Wicksteed was a man of forty five or forty
• 4:06:56
  six, steward to Lord Burdock, of inoffensive habits and appearance, the very
• 4:07:01
  last person in the world to provoke such a terrible antagonist against him. It
• 4:07:07
  would seem the invisible man used an iron rod dragged from a broken piece of
• 4:07:11
  fence. He stopped this quiet man going quietly home to his midday meal,
• 4:07:16
  attacked him, beat down his feeble defenses, broke his arm, felt him,
• 4:07:22
  and smashed his head to a jelly. Of course, he must have
• 4:07:26
  dragged this rod out of the fencing before he met his victim. He must
• 4:07:30
  have been carrying it ready in his hand. Only two details, beyond what
• 4:07:33
  has already been stated, seemed to bear on the matter. One is the
• 4:07:37
  circumstance that the gravel pit was not in mister Wicksteed's direct path home, but
• 4:07:41
  nearly a couple of hundred yards out of his way. The other is the
• 4:07:46
  assertion of a little girl to that effect that going to her afternoon school,
• 4:07:50
  She saw the murdered man trotting in a peculiar manner across a field towards the
• 4:07:54
  gravel pit. Her pantomime of his action suggests a man pursuing something on the
• 4:07:58
  ground before him and striking at it ever and again with his walking stick.
• 4:08:03
  She was the last person to see him alive. He passed out of her
• 4:08:09
  sight to his death, the struggle being hidden from her only by a clump
• 4:08:13
  of beech trees and a slight depression in the ground. Now, this,
• 4:08:18
  to the present writer's mind, at least lifts the murder out of the realm
• 4:08:22
  of the absolutely wanton. We may imagine that Griffin had taken the rod as
• 4:08:26
  a weapon indeed, but without any deliberate intention of using it in murder.
• 4:08:31
  Weiksteed may then have come by and noticed this rod inexplicably moving through the air
• 4:08:37
  without any thought of the invisible man. For Port Burdock is ten miles away,
• 4:08:43
  he may have pursued it. It is quite conceivable that he may not
• 4:08:46
  even have heard of the invisible man. One can then imagine the invisible man
• 4:08:50
  making off quietly in order to avoid discovering his presence in the neighborhood, and
• 4:08:56
  wig Steed, excited and curious, pursuing this unaccount be locomotive object, finally
• 4:09:01
  striking at it. No doubt, the invisible man could easily have distanced his
• 4:09:07
  middle aged pursuer under ordinary circumstances, but the position in which Wigsted's body was
• 4:09:11
  found suggests that he had had the ill luck to drive his quarry into a
• 4:09:16
  corner between a drift of stinging nettles and the gravel pit. To those who
• 4:09:20
  appreciate the extraordinary irascibility of the invisible man, the rest of the encounter will
• 4:09:26
  be easy to imagine, but this is pure hypothesis. The only undeniable facts
• 4:09:33
  for stories of children are often unreliable. Of the discovery of Wicksteed's body done
• 4:09:37
  to death, and of the bloodstained iron rod flung among the nettles. The
• 4:09:43
  abandonment of the rod by Griffin suggests that, in the emotional excitement of the
• 4:09:46
  affair, the purpose for which he took it, if he had a purpose,
• 4:09:50
  was abandoned. He was certainly an intensely egotistical and unfeeling man, but
• 4:09:54
  the sight of his victim, his first victim, bloody and pitiful at his
• 4:09:58
  feet heat may have released some long pent fountain of remorse, which for a
• 4:10:03
  time may have flooded whatever scheme of action he had contrived. After the murder
• 4:10:09
  of mister Wicksteed, he would seem to have struck across the country towards the
• 4:10:13
  Downland. There is a story of a voice heard about sunset by a couple
• 4:10:16
  of men in a field near fern Bottom. It was wailing and laughing,
• 4:10:22
  sobbing and groaning, and ever and again it shouted. It must have been
• 4:10:26
  a queer hearing it, drove up across the middle of a clover field and
• 4:10:30
  died away towards the hills. That afternoon, the invisible man must have learnt
• 4:10:35
  something of the rapid use Kemp had made of his confidences. He must have
• 4:10:39
  found houses locked and secured. He may have loitered about railway stations and prowled
• 4:10:43
  about inns, and no doubt he read the proclamations and realized something of the
• 4:10:48
  nature of the campaign against him. And as the evening advanced, the fields
• 4:10:52
  became dotted here and there with groups of three or four men, and noisy
• 4:10:56
  with the yelping of dogs. These men hunt had peculiar instructions. In the
• 4:11:01
  case of an encounter as to the way they should support one another, but
• 4:11:05
  he avoided them all. We may understand something of his exasperation, and it
• 4:11:11
  could have been none the less because he himself had supplied the information that was
• 4:11:15
  being used, though remorselessly against him. For that day at least he lost
• 4:11:20
  heart for nearly twenty four hours saved when he turned on Wicksteed. He was
• 4:11:24
  a hunted man. In the night he must have eaten and slept, for
• 4:11:28
  in the morning he was himself again, active, powerful, angry and malignant,
• 4:11:33
  prepared for his last great struggle against the world. End of Chapter twenty
• 4:11:37
  six. Chapter twenty seven, The Siege of Kemp's house. Kemp read a
• 4:11:46
  strange missive written in pencil on a greasy sheet of paper. You have been
• 4:11:52
  amazingly energetic and clever. This letter ran, though what you stand again by
• 4:11:56
  it, I cannot imagine you are against me For a whole day. You
• 4:12:01
  have chased me. You have tried to rob me of a night's rest.
• 4:12:05
  But I have had food in spite of you. I have slept in spite
• 4:12:09
  of you. And the game is only beginning. The game is only beginning.
• 4:12:13
  There is nothing for it but to start the terror. This announces the
• 4:12:16
  first day of the terror. Port Burdock is no longer under the Queen.
• 4:12:20
  Tell your colonel of police and the rest of them, it is under me
• 4:12:26
  the terror. This is day one of year one of the new Epoch,
• 4:12:31
  the epoch of the Invisible Man. I am invisible man, the first to
• 4:12:35
  begin with. The rule will be easy. The first day there will be
• 4:12:39
  one execution. For the sake of example, a man named Kemp, Death
• 4:12:45
  starts for him to day. He may lock himself away, hide himself away,
• 4:12:50
  get guards about him, put on armor. If he likes death.
• 4:12:54
  The unseen death is coming. Let him take precautions. It will impress my
• 4:12:58
  people. Death starts from the pillar box. By midday the letter will fall
• 4:13:03
  in as the postman comes along. Then off the game begins. Death starts.
• 4:13:09
  Help him, not my people. Let death fall upon you also.
• 4:13:13
  To day Kemp is to die. Kemp read this letter twice. It's no
• 4:13:20
  hoax, he said. That's his voice, and he means it. He
• 4:13:24
  turned the folded sheet over and saw on the addressed side of it the postmark
• 4:13:28
  Hinton Dean and the prosaic detail two pence to pay. He got up,
• 4:13:33
  slowly, leaving his lunch unfinished the letter had come by the one o'clock post,
• 4:13:39
  and went into his study. He rang for his housekeeper and told her
• 4:13:43
  to go round the house at once, examining all the fastenings of the windows
• 4:13:46
  and closing all the shutters. He closed the shutters of his study himself from
• 4:13:52
  a lock straw in his bedroom, he took a little revolver, examined it
• 4:13:56
  carefully, and put it into the pocket of his lounge jacket. Wrote a
• 4:14:00
  number of brief notes, one to Colonel Adye, gave them to his servant
• 4:14:03
  to take with explicit instructions as to her way of leaving the house. There
• 4:14:09
  is no danger, he said, and added a mental reservation to you.
• 4:14:13
  He remained meditative for a space after doing this, and then returned to his
• 4:14:18
  cooling lunch. He ate with gaps of thought. Finally he struck the table
• 4:14:24
  sharply. We will have him, he said, and I am the bait.
• 4:14:28
  He will come too far. He went up to the belvidere, carefully
• 4:14:33
  shutting every door after him. It's a game, he said, an odd
• 4:14:37
  game, but the chances are all for me, mister Griffin, in spite
• 4:14:39
  of your invisibility, Gryffin contremundum with a vengeance. He stood at the window,
• 4:14:48
  staring at the hot hillside. He must get food every day, and
• 4:14:52
  I don't envy him. Did he really sleep last night out in the open,
• 4:14:56
  somewhere secure from collisions? I wish we could get some good, cold,
• 4:15:01
  wet weather instead of the heat. He may be watching me now.
• 4:15:07
  He went to close the window. Something rapped smartly against the brickwork over the
• 4:15:11
  frame and made him start violently back. I'm getting nervous, said Kemp.
• 4:15:18
  But it was five minutes before he went to the window again. It must
• 4:15:22
  have been a sparrow, he said. Presently, he heard the front door
• 4:15:26
  bell ringing, and hurried downstairs. He unbolted and unlocked the door, examined
• 4:15:31
  the chain, put it up, and opened cautiously, without showing himself.
• 4:15:35
  A familiar voice hailed him. It was aide. Your servant's been assaulted,
• 4:15:41
  Kemp, he said, round the door, what exclaimed Kemp? Had that
• 4:15:46
  note of yours taken away from her? He's close about here. Let me
• 4:15:50
  in. Kemp released the chain and aid I entered through as narrow an opening
• 4:15:54
  as possible. He stood in the hall, looking with infinite relief at Kemp
• 4:16:00
  refastening the door. Note was snatched out of her hand. Scared horribly,
• 4:16:04
  she's down at the station hysterics. He's close here. What was it about?
• 4:16:11
  Kemp swore? What a fool I was, said Kemp. I might
• 4:16:15
  have known. It's not an hour's walk from Hinton Dean already. What's up?
• 4:16:21
  Said ad I. Look here, said Kemp, and led the way
• 4:16:23
  into his study. He handed Ady the Invisible Man's letter. Adi read it
• 4:16:29
  and whistled softly. And you, said ad I proposed a trap like a
• 4:16:34
  fool, said Kemp, and sent my proposal out by a maid servant to
• 4:16:38
  him. Ade I followed Kemp's profanity. He'll clear out, said ad I.
• 4:16:45
  Not, he said Kemp. A resounding smash of glass came from upstairs.
• 4:16:52
  Adi had a silvery glimpse of a little revolver half out of Kemp's pocket.
• 4:16:56
  It's a window upstairs, said Kemp, and led the way up.
• 4:17:00
  There came a second smash while they were still on the staircase. When they
• 4:17:03
  reached the study, they found two of the three windows smashed, half the
• 4:17:07
  room littered with splendid glass, and one big flint lying on the writing table.
• 4:17:12
  The two men stopped in the doorway. Contemplating the wreckage, Kemp swore
• 4:17:18
  again, and as he did so, the third window went with a snap
• 4:17:19
  like a pistol, hung starred for a moment, and collapsed in jagged,
• 4:17:23
  shivering triangles into the room. What's this for, said Adi. It's a
• 4:17:30
  beginning, said Kemp. There's no way of climbing up here, not for
• 4:17:36
  a cat, said Kemp. No shutters, not here all the downstairs room.
• 4:17:42
  Hullo smash and then whack of boards hit hard came from downstairs. Confound
• 4:17:49
  him, said Kemp. That must be yes, it's one of the bedrooms.
• 4:17:53
  He's going to do all the house. But he's a fool. The
• 4:17:57
  shutters are up and the glass were four outside. He'll cut his feet.
• 4:18:03
  Another window proclaimed its destruction. The two men stood on the landing, perplexed.
• 4:18:08
  I have it, said Ade, Let me have a stick or something.
• 4:18:11
  I'll go down to the station and get their bloodhounds put on. That
• 4:18:15
  ought to settle him. They're hard. By not ten minutes, another window
• 4:18:19
  went the way of its fellows. You haven't a revolver, asked ad I.
• 4:18:25
  Kemp's hand went to his pocket, then he hesitated, I haven't one.
• 4:18:29
  At least to spare. I'll bring it back, said Ade. You'll
• 4:18:33
  be safe here. Kemp, ashamed of his momentary lapse from truthfulness, handed
• 4:18:38
  him the weapon. Now for the door, said ad I. As they
• 4:18:45
  stood hesitating in the hall, they heard one of the first floor bedroom windows
• 4:18:48
  crack and clash. Kemp went to the door and began to slip the bolts
• 4:18:52
  as silently as possible. His face was a little paler than usual. You
• 4:18:57
  must step straight out, said Kemp. In another moment, ad I was
• 4:19:02
  on the doorstep and the bolts were dropping back into the stables. He hesitated
• 4:19:07
  for a moment, feeling more comfortable with his back against the door. Then
• 4:19:11
  he marched upright and square down the steps. He crossed the lawn and approached
• 4:19:15
  the gate. A little breeze seemed to ripple over the grass. Something moved
• 4:19:21
  near him. Stop a bit, said a voice, and ad I stopped
• 4:19:26
  dead, and his hand tightened on the revolver. Well, said Ada,
• 4:19:32
  white and grim and every nerve tense, oblige me by going back to the
• 4:19:37
  house, said the voice, as tense and grim as aide's sorry, said
• 4:19:44
  Ady a little hoarsely, and moistened his lips with his tongue. The voice
• 4:19:48
  was on his left front. He thought, supposed he were to take his
• 4:19:51
  luck with a shot. What are you going for? Said the voice,
• 4:19:55
  and there was a quick movement of the two and a flash of sunlight from
• 4:19:59
  the open lip of Ada's pocket. Ad I desisted and thought, where I
• 4:20:04
  go? He said, slowly is my own business. The words were still
• 4:20:11
  on his lips when an arm came round his neck. His back fell to
• 4:20:14
  knee, and he was sprawling backward. He drew clumsily and fired absurdly,
• 4:20:18
  and in another moment he was struck in the mouth and the revolver rested from
• 4:20:22
  his grip. He made a vain clutch at a slippery limb, tried to
• 4:20:26
  struggle up and fell back. Damn, said Ada. The voice laughed,
• 4:20:32
  I'd kill you now if it wasn't the waist of a bullet, he said.
• 4:20:34
  He saw the revolver in mid air six feet off, covering him well,
• 4:20:41
  said ad. I sitting up, Get up, said the voice.
• 4:20:45
  Ada stood up attention, said the voice, and then fiercely. Don't try
• 4:20:51
  any games. Remember I can see your face. If you can't see mine,
• 4:20:56
  You've got to go back to the house. He won't let me in,
• 4:21:00
  said ady. That's a pity, said the invisible man. I've got
• 4:21:06
  no quarrel with you. Adai moistened his lips again. He glanced away from
• 4:21:11
  the barrel of the revolver and saw the sea far off, very blue and
• 4:21:15
  dark under the midday sun, the smooth green down, the white cliff of
• 4:21:19
  the head, and the multitudinous town, and suddenly he knew that life was
• 4:21:23
  very sweet. His eyes came back to this little metal thing hanging between heaven
• 4:21:27
  and earth, six yards away. What am I to do? He said,
• 4:21:33
  sullenly. What am I to do? Asked the invisible man. You
• 4:21:37
  will get help. The only thing is for you to go back. I
• 4:21:41
  will try if he lets me in. Will you promise not to rush the
• 4:21:45
  door. I've got no quarrel with you, said the voice. Kemp had
• 4:21:52
  hurried upstairs after letting Ade out, and now crouching among the broken glass and
• 4:21:56
  peering cautiously over the edge of the study window sill, he saw Adi stand
• 4:22:00
  parleying with the unseen. Why doesn't he fire, whispered Kemp to himself.
• 4:22:07
  Then the revolver moved a little, and the glint of the sunlight flashed in
• 4:22:10
  Kemp's eyes. He shaded his eyes and tried to see the source of the
• 4:22:14
  blinding beam. Surely, he said, Adi has given up the revolver.
• 4:22:19
  Promise not to rush the door. Adi was saying, don't push a winning
• 4:22:23
  game too far. Give a man a chance. You go back to the
• 4:22:27
  house. I tell you flatly, I will not promise anything. Adi's decision
• 4:22:33
  seemed suddenly made. He turned towards the house, walking slowly with his hands
• 4:22:37
  behind him. Kemp watched him, puzzled. The revolver vanished, flashed again
• 4:22:44
  into sight, vanished again, and became evident on a closer scrutiny as a
• 4:22:48
  little dark object following Adi. Then things happened very quickly. Aid I leapt
• 4:22:53
  backwards, swung around, clutched at this little object, missed it, threw
• 4:22:56
  up his hands and fell forward on his face, a little puff of blue
• 4:23:00
  in the air. Kemp did not hear the sound of the shot. Adi
• 4:23:06
  writhed, raised himself on one arm, fell forward, and lay still for
• 4:23:15
  a space. Kemp remained staring at the quiet carelessness of Ady's attitude. The
• 4:23:21
  afternoon was very hot, and still nothing seemed stirring in all the world save
• 4:23:25
  a couple of yellow butterflies chasing each other through the shrubbery between the house and
• 4:23:29
  the road gate. Aid I lay on the lawn near the gate. The
• 4:23:33
  blinds of all the villas down the hill road were drawn, but in one
• 4:23:37
  little green summer house was a white figure, apparently an old man asleep.
• 4:23:41
  Kemp scrutinized the surroundings of the house for a glimpse of the revolver, but
• 4:23:45
  it had vanished. His eyes came back to Adi. The game was opening
• 4:23:52
  well. Then came a ringing and knocking at the front door that grew at
• 4:23:59
  last two months, but pursuant to Kemp's instructions, the servant had locked themselves
• 4:24:03
  into their rooms. This was followed by a silence. Kemp sat listening,
• 4:24:08
  and then began peering cautiously out of the three windows one after another. He
• 4:24:14
  went to the staircase head and stood listening uneasily. He armed himself with his
• 4:24:18
  bedroom poker and went to examine the interior fastenings of the ground floor windows.
• 4:24:22
  Again everything was safe and quiet. He returned to the Belvidere ad I lay
• 4:24:30
  motionless over the edge of the gravel, just as he had fallen coming along
• 4:24:34
  the road. By the villas with a house maid and two policemen. Everything
• 4:24:38
  was deadly still. The three people seemed very slow in approaching. He wondered
• 4:24:45
  what his antagonist was doing. He started, there was a smash from below.
• 4:24:51
  He hesitated and went downstairs again. Suddenly the house resounded with heavy blows
• 4:24:56
  and the splintering of wood. He heard a smash and the destructive clang of
• 4:25:00
  the iron fastenings of the shutters. He turned the key and opened the kitchen
• 4:25:03
  door. As he did so, the shutters split and splintering came flying inward.
• 4:25:10
  He stood aghast. The window frame, save for one crossbar, was
• 4:25:12
  still intact, but only little teeth of glass remained in the frame. The
• 4:25:18
  shutters had been driven in with an axe, and now the axe was descending
• 4:25:22
  in sweeping blows upon the window frame and the iron bars defending it. Then
• 4:25:26
  suddenly it leaped aside and vanished. He saw the revolver lying on the path
• 4:25:32
  outside, and then the little weapon sprang into the air. He dodged back.
• 4:25:37
  The revolver cracked just too late, and a splinter from the edge of
• 4:25:40
  the closing door flashed over his head. He slammed and locked the door,
• 4:25:44
  and as he stood outside. He heard Griffin shouting and laughing. Then the
• 4:25:48
  blows of the axe, with its splitting and smashing consequences, were resumed.
• 4:25:53
  Kemp stood in the passage, trying to think. In a moment, the
• 4:25:57
  invisible man would be in the kitchen. This door would not keep him a
• 4:26:02
  moment, and then a ringing came at the front door. Again it would
• 4:26:07
  be the policeman. He ran into the hall, put up the chain and
• 4:26:10
  drew the bolts. He made the girl speak before he dropped the chain,
• 4:26:14
  and the three people blundered into the house in a heap, and Kemp slammed
• 4:26:17
  the door again. The invisible man said Kemp, he has a revolver with
• 4:26:22
  two shots left. He's killed ADEI shot him anyhow, didn't you see him
• 4:26:26
  on the lawn? He's lying there? Who said one of the policemen.
• 4:26:33
  A die, said Kemp. We came in the back way, said the
• 4:26:36
  girl. What's that smashing? Asked one of the policemen. He's in the
• 4:26:40
  kitchen, or will be. He's found an axe. Suddenly the house was
• 4:26:45
  full of the invisible Man's resounding blows on the kitchen door. The girl stared
• 4:26:48
  towards the kitchen shuddered and retreated into the dining room. Kemp tried to explain
• 4:26:53
  in broken sentences. They heard the kitchen door. Give this way, said
• 4:26:59
  Kemp, starting into activity, and bundled the policeman into the dining room.
• 4:27:03
  Doorway poker, said Kemp, and rushed to the fender. He handed the
• 4:27:07
  poker he had carried to the policeman and the dining room one to the other.
• 4:27:11
  He suddenly flung himself backward. Whoop, said one policeman ducked and caught
• 4:27:15
  the axe on his poker. The pistol snapped his penultimate shot and ripped a
• 4:27:19
  valuable Sidney Cooper. The second policeman brought his poker down on the little weapon
• 4:27:25
  as one might knock down a wasp, and sent it rattling to the floor.
• 4:27:30
  At the first clash, the girl screamed, stood screaming for a moment
• 4:27:33
  by the fireplace, and then ran to open the shutters, possibly with an
• 4:27:37
  idea of escaping by the shattered window. The axe receded into the passage and
• 4:27:42
  fell to a position about two feet from the ground. They could hear the
• 4:27:48
  invisible man breathing, stand away, you two, I want that man,
• 4:27:52
  Kemp, we want you, said the first policeman, making a quick step
• 4:27:56
  forward and wiping with his poker at the voice. The invisible man must have
• 4:28:02
  started back, and he blundered into the umbrella stand. Then, as the
• 4:28:06
  policeman staggered with the swing of the blow he had aimed, the invisible man
• 4:28:10
  countered with the axe. The helmet crumbled like paper, and the blow sent
• 4:28:12
  the man spinning to the floor at the head of the kitchen stairs. But
• 4:28:17
  the second policeman, aiming behind the axe with his poker, hid something soft
• 4:28:22
  that snapped. There was a sharp exclamation of pain, and then the axe
• 4:28:26
  fell to the ground. The policeman wiped again at vacancy and hid nothing.
• 4:28:30
  He put his foot on the axe and struck again. Then he stood poker
• 4:28:34
  clubbed, listening intent for the slightest movement. He heard the dining room window
• 4:28:41
  open and a quick rush of feet within. His companion rolled over and sat
• 4:28:47
  up, with blood running down between his eye and ear. Where is he
• 4:28:51
  asked the man on the floor. Don't know I've hit him. He's standing
• 4:28:55
  somewhere in the hall unless he slipped past you, Doctor Kemp. Sir pause,
• 4:29:03
  Doctor Kemp, cried the policeman again. The second policeman began struggling to
• 4:29:07
  his feet. He stood up. Suddenly, the faint pad of bare feet
• 4:29:12
  on the kitchen stairs could be heard. Yap, cried the first policeman,
• 4:29:17
  and incontinently flung his poker. It smashed a little gas bracket. He made
• 4:29:22
  as if he would pursue the invisible man downstairs. Then he thought better of
• 4:29:26
  it and stepped into the dining room. Doctor Kemp, he began, and
• 4:29:32
  stopped short. Doctor Kemp's a hero, he said, as his companion looked
• 4:29:37
  over his shoulder. The dining room window was wide open, and neither housemaid
• 4:29:42
  nor Kemp was to be seen. The second Policeman's opinion of Kemp was terse
• 4:29:48
  and vivid. Chapter twenty eight. The Hunter hunted. Mister Helas, mister
• 4:30:02
  Kemp's nearest neighbor among the villa holders, was asleep in his summer house when
• 4:30:06
  the siege of Kemp's house began. Mister Helas was one of the sturdy minority
• 4:30:11
  who refused to believe in all this nonsense about an invisible man. His wife.
• 4:30:17
  However, as he was subsequently to be reminded, did he insisted on
• 4:30:22
  walking about his garden just as if nothing was the matter, and he went
• 4:30:26
  asleep in the afternoon. In accordance with the custom of years, he slept
• 4:30:30
  through the smashing of the windows, and then woke up suddenly, with a
• 4:30:33
  curious persuasion of something wrong. He looked across at Kemp's house, rubbed his
• 4:30:38
  eyes, and looked again. Then he put his feet to the ground and
• 4:30:41
  sat listening. He said he was damned, but still the strange thing was
• 4:30:45
  visible. The house looked as though it had been deserted for weeks after a
• 4:30:48
  violent riot. Every window was broken, and every window save those of the
• 4:30:53
  belvedere study was blinded by the internal shutters. I could have sworn it was
• 4:30:59
  all a right. He looked at his watch twenty minutes ago he became aware
• 4:31:06
  of a measured concussion and the clash of glass far away in the distance.
• 4:31:10
  And then, as he sat open mouthed, came a still more wonderful thing.
• 4:31:15
  The shutters of the drawing room window were flung open violently, and the
• 4:31:18
  housemaid, in her outdoor hat and garments, appeared, struggling in a frantic
• 4:31:22
  manner to throw up the sash. Suddenly a man appeared beside her, helping
• 4:31:26
  her. Doctor Kemp in another moment, the window was open and the housemaid
• 4:31:30
  was struggling out. She pitched forward and vanished among the shrubs. Mister Helas
• 4:31:34
  stood up, exclaiming vaguely and vehemently, at all these wonderful things. He
• 4:31:40
  saw Kemp stand on the sill, spring from the window and reappear almost instantaneously,
• 4:31:45
  running along a path in the shrubbery, and stooping as he ran like
• 4:31:48
  a man who evades observation. He vanished behind a laburnum and appeared again,
• 4:31:53
  clambering over a fence that had butted on the open down. In a second
• 4:31:59
  he had tumbled over and was running at a tremendous pace down the slope towards
• 4:32:02
  mister Helas. Lord cried, mister Helas struck with an idea. It's that
• 4:32:08
  invisible man, brute. It's right after all with mister Helas. To think
• 4:32:15
  things like that was to act. And his cook, watching him from the
• 4:32:18
  top window, was amazed to see him come pelting towards the house at a
• 4:32:22
  good nine miles an hour. There was a slamming of doors, a ringing
• 4:32:26
  of bells, and the voice of mister Helas bellowing like a bull. Shut
• 4:32:30
  the doors shut, the windows, shut everything. The invisible man is coming
• 4:32:34
  Instantly. The house was full of screams and directions and scurrying feet. He
• 4:32:38
  ran himself to shut the French windows that opened on the verandah. As he
• 4:32:42
  did so, Kemp's head and shoulders and knee appeared over the edge of the
• 4:32:45
  garden fence. In another moment, Kemp had plowed through the asparagus and was
• 4:32:51
  running across the tennis lawn to the house. You can't come in, said
• 4:32:56
  mister Helas, shutting the bolts. I'm very sorry if he's after you,
• 4:32:59
  but you can come in. Kemp appeared with a face of terror, close
• 4:33:03
  to the glass, rapping and then shaking frantically at the French window. Then,
• 4:33:08
  seeing his efforts were useless, he ran along the verandah, vaulted the
• 4:33:12
  end and went a hammer at the side door. Then he ran around by
• 4:33:15
  the side gate to the front of the house and so into the hill road.
• 4:33:19
  And mister Helas, staring from his window a face of horror, had
• 4:33:25
  scarcely witnessed Kemp vanish ere. The asparagus was being trampled this way and that
• 4:33:29
  by feet unseen. At that mister Helas fled precipitately upstairs and the rest of
• 4:33:36
  the chases beyond his purview. But as he passed the staircase window he heard
• 4:33:41
  the side gate slam. Emerging into the hill road, Kemp naturally took the
• 4:33:48
  downward direction, and so it was he came to run in his own person
• 4:33:51
  the very race he had washed with such a critical eye from the Belvedere study
• 4:33:55
  only four days ago. He ran it well for a man out of training,
• 4:33:59
  and though his face was white and wet, his wits were cool to
• 4:34:03
  the last. He ran with wide strides, and wherever a patch of rough
• 4:34:07
  ground intervened, wherever there came a patch of raw flints or a bit of
• 4:34:10
  broken glass shone dazzling, he crossed it and left the bare, invisible feet
• 4:34:15
  that followed to take what line they would. For the first time in his
• 4:34:19
  life, Kemp discovered that the hill road was indescribably vast and desolate, and
• 4:34:26
  that the beginnings of the town far below at the hill foot were strangely remote.
• 4:34:30
  Never had there been a slower or more painful method of progression than running.
• 4:34:34
  All the gaunt villas sleeping in the afternoon sun looked locked and barred.
• 4:34:40
  No doubt they were locked and barred by his own orders, but at any
• 4:34:45
  rate they might have kept a lookout for an eventuality like this. The town
• 4:34:48
  was rising up now, the sea had dropped out of sight behind it,
• 4:34:52
  and people down below were stirring. A tram was just arriving at the hill.
• 4:34:56
  Foot beyond that was the p police station. Was that footsteps he heard
• 4:35:03
  behind him spurret. The people below were staring at him, One or two
• 4:35:08
  were running, and his breath was beginning to soar in his throat. The
• 4:35:12
  tram was quite near now, and the Jolly Cricketers was noisily barring its doors.
• 4:35:18
  Beyond the tram were posts and heaps of gravel the drainage works. He
• 4:35:22
  had a transitory idea of jumping into the tram and slamming the doors, and
• 4:35:26
  then he resolved to go for the police station. In another moment, he
• 4:35:30
  had passed the door of the Jolly Cricketers and was in the blistering fag end
• 4:35:33
  of the street, with human beings about him. The tram driver and his
• 4:35:37
  helper, arrested by the sight of his furious haste, stood staring with the
• 4:35:41
  tram horses unhitched further on the astonished features of navvies appeared above the mounds of
• 4:35:47
  gravel. His pace broke a little, and then he heard the swift pad
• 4:35:52
  of his pursuer, and leaped forward again the invisible man. He cried to
• 4:35:56
  the navvies with a vague indicative gesture, and by an inspiration leapt the excavation
• 4:36:02
  and placed a burly group between him and the chase. Then, abandoning the
• 4:36:06
  idea of the police station, he turned into a little side street, rushed
• 4:36:08
  by a green grocer's cart, hesitated for the tenth of a second at the
• 4:36:12
  door of a sweet stuff shop, and then made for the mouth of an
• 4:36:15
  alley that ran back into the main hill street again. Two or three little
• 4:36:19
  children were playing here and shrieked and scattered at his apparition, and forthwith doors
• 4:36:23
  and windows opened, and excited mothers revealed their hearts out. He shot into
• 4:36:30
  Hill Street again, three hundred yards from the tram line end, and immediately
• 4:36:33
  he became aware of a tumultuous vociferation and running people. He glanced up the
• 4:36:41
  street towards the hill. Hardly a dozen yards off ran a huge navvy,
• 4:36:45
  cursing in fragments and slashing viciously with a spade, and hard behind him came
• 4:36:51
  the tram conductor with his fists clenched up the street. Others followed these two,
• 4:36:55
  striking and shouting down towards the town. Men and women were running,
• 4:37:00
  and he noticed clearly one man coming out of a shop door with a stick
• 4:37:03
  in his hand, spread out, spread out, cried some one. Kemp
• 4:37:07
  suddenly grasped the altered condition of the chase. He stopped and looked around,
• 4:37:11
  panting, He's close here, he cried, form a line across. He
• 4:37:17
  was hit hard under the ear and went reeling, trying to face round towards
• 4:37:21
  his unseen antagonist. He just managed to keep his feet and he struck a
• 4:37:25
  vain counter in the air. Then he was hit again under the jaw and
• 4:37:29
  sprawled headlong on the ground. In another moment, a knee compressed his diaphragm,
• 4:37:33
  and a couple of eager hands gripped his throat, but the grip of
• 4:37:37
  one was weaker than the other. He grasped the wrists, heard a cry
• 4:37:41
  of pain from his assailant, and then the spade of the navvy came whirling
• 4:37:45
  through the air above him and struck something with a dull thud. He felt
• 4:37:49
  a drop of moisture on his face. The grip at his throat suddenly relaxed,
• 4:37:55
  and with a convulsive effort, Kemp loosened himself, grasped a limp shoulder,
• 4:37:59
  and rolled uppermost. He gripped the unseen elbows near the ground. I've
• 4:38:04
  got him, screamed Kemp, help help hold he's down, hold his feet.
• 4:38:11
  In another second there was a simultaneous rush upon the struggle, and a
• 4:38:15
  stranger coming into the road suddenly might have thought an exceptionally savage game of rugby
• 4:38:19
  football was in progress. And there was no shouting after Kemp's cry, only
• 4:38:26
  a sound of blows and feet and heavy breathing. Then came a mighty effort,
• 4:38:30
  and the invisible man threw off a couple of his antagonists and rose to
• 4:38:33
  his knees. Kemp clung to him in front like a hound to a stag,
• 4:38:37
  and a dozen hands gripped, clutched, and tore at the unseen.
• 4:38:41
  The tram conductor suddenly got the neck and shoulders and lugged him back down,
• 4:38:47
  went to the heap of struggling men again and rolled over. There was I
• 4:38:51
  am afraid some savage kicking, and then suddenly a wild scream of mercy,
• 4:38:56
  mercy that died down swiftly to a like choking. Get back, you fools,
• 4:39:03
  cried the muffled voice of Kemp, and there was a vigorous shoving back
• 4:39:07
  of stalwart forms. He's hurt, I tell you stand back. There was
• 4:39:11
  a brief struggle to clear a space, and then the circle of eager faces
• 4:39:15
  saw the doctor kneeling as it seemed fifteen inches in the air and holding invisible
• 4:39:22
  arms to the ground. Behind him, a constable gripped in visible ankles.
• 4:39:26
  Don't you leave, goavin, cried the big navvy, holding a blood stained
• 4:39:30
  spade. He's shamming. He's not shamming, said the doctor, cautiously raising
• 4:39:37
  his knee, and I'll hold him. His face was bruised and already going
• 4:39:41
  red. He spoke thickly because of a bleeding lip. He released one hand
• 4:39:45
  and seemed to be feeling at the face. The mouth's all wet, he
• 4:39:49
  said, and then good God. He stood up abruptly and then knelt down
• 4:39:57
  on the ground by the side of the thing. Un there was a pushing
• 4:40:02
  and shuffling, a sound of heavy feet as fresh people turned up to increase
• 4:40:04
  the pressure of the crowd. People were coming out of the houses. Now
• 4:40:10
  the doors of the jolly cricketers stood suddenly wide open. Very little was said.
• 4:40:18
  Kemp felt about his hand, seeming to pass through empty air. He's
• 4:40:23
  not breathing, he said, And then I can't feel his heart his side.
• 4:40:30
  Uugh. Suddenly, an old woman, peering under the arm of the
• 4:40:36
  big navvy, screamed, sharply. Lookye there, she said, and thrust
• 4:40:40
  out a wrinkled finger, And looking where she pointed, every one saw faint
• 4:40:45
  and transparent, as though it were made of glass, so that veins and
• 4:40:48
  arteries, and bones and nerves could be distinguished. The outline of a hand,
• 4:40:55
  a hand, limp and prone. It grew clouded and opaque. Even
• 4:41:00
  as they stared. Hallo cried the constable. Here is his feet are showing,
• 4:41:07
  and so slowly, beginning at his hands and feet, and creeping along
• 4:41:11
  his limbs to the vital centers of his body. That strange change continued.
• 4:41:18
  It was like the slow spreading of a poison. First came the little white
• 4:41:22
  nerves, a hazy gray sketch of a limb, Then the glassy bones and
• 4:41:26
  intricate arteries, then the flesh and skin, first a faint fogginess, and
• 4:41:30
  then growing rapidly dense and opaque. Presently they could see his crushed chest and
• 4:41:36
  his shoulders, and the dim outline of his drawn and battered features. When
• 4:41:41
  at last the crowd made way for camp to stand erect, there lay,
• 4:41:45
  naked and pitiful on the ground, the bruised and broken body of a young
• 4:41:49
  man about thirty. His hair and brow were white, not gray with age,
• 4:41:56
  but white with the whiteness of albinism, and his eyes were like His
• 4:42:00
  hands were clenched, his eyes wide open, and his expression was one of
• 4:42:04
  anger and dismay. Cover's face, said a man, For God's sake,
• 4:42:11
  cover that face. And three little children, pushing forward through the crowd,
• 4:42:15
  were suddenly twisted round and sent packing off again. Some one brought a sheet
• 4:42:22
  from the jolly cricketers, and having covered him, they carried him into the
• 4:42:26
  house. And there it was, on a shabby bed, in a tawdry,
• 4:42:30
  ill lighted bedroom, surrounded by a crowd of ignorant and excited people,
• 4:42:34
  broken and wounded, betrayed and unpitied, that Gryffin the first of all men
• 4:42:41
  to make himself invisible. Gryffin, the most gifted physicist the world has ever
• 4:42:47
  seen, ended in infinite disaster his strange and terrible career. The epilog so
• 4:43:00
  ends the story of the strange and evil experiments of the Invisible Man. And
• 4:43:06
  if you would learn more of him, you must go to a little inn
• 4:43:08
  near Port Stow and talk to the Landlord. The sign of the inn is
• 4:43:12
  an empty board save for a hat and boots, and the name is the
• 4:43:15
  title of this story. The landlord is a short and corpulent little man,
• 4:43:19
  with a nose of cylindrical proportions, wiry hair, and a sporadic rosiness of
• 4:43:25
  visage. Drink generously, and he will tell you generously of all the things
• 4:43:29
  that happened to him after that time, and of how the lawyers tried to
• 4:43:32
  do him out of the treasure found upon him when they found they couldn't prove
• 4:43:37
  whose money was. Which I'm blessed, he says, if they didn't try
• 4:43:41
  to make me out a blooming treasure trove, do I look like a treasure
• 4:43:44
  trove? And then a gentleman gave me a guinea a night to tell a
• 4:43:45
  story at the Empire Music all just to tell him all in my own words,
• 4:43:49
  barring one. And if you want to cut off the flow of his
• 4:43:53
  reminiscences abruptly, you can always do so by asking if there weren't three manuscript
• 4:43:59
  books in the story. He admits there were, and proceeds to explain with
• 4:44:03
  asseverations that everybody thinks he hasn't, but bless you, he hasn't. The
• 4:44:07
  invisible man it was took him off to Adam when I cut and ran for
• 4:44:11
  Portstow. Is that mister Kemp put people on with the idea of may avindom.
• 4:44:17
  And then he subsides into a pensive state, watches you furtively, bustles
• 4:44:22
  nervously with glasses, and presently leaves the bar. He is a bachelor man,
• 4:44:29
  his tastes were ever bachelor, and there are no women folk in the
• 4:44:32
  house. Outwardly he buttons, it is expected of him, but in his
• 4:44:37
  more vital privacies, in the manner of braces, for examples, he still
• 4:44:40
  turns to string. He conducts his house without enterprise, but with eminent decorum.
• 4:44:47
  His movements are slow, and he is a great thinker. But he
• 4:44:49
  has a reputation for wisdom and for a respectable parsimoney in the village, and
• 4:44:55
  his knowledge of the roads of the south of England would beat Cobbet on Sunday
• 4:45:00
  mornings, every Sunday morning all the year round while he is close to the
• 4:45:04
  outer world. And every night after ten he goes into his bar parlor bearing
• 4:45:10
  a glass of gin faintly tinged with water, and having placed this down,
• 4:45:14
  he locks the door and examines the blinds, and even looks under the table,
• 4:45:18
  and then, being satisfied of his solitude, he unlocks the cupboard,
• 4:45:22
  and a box in the cupboard, and a drawer in that box, and
• 4:45:26
  produces three volumes, bound in brown leather, and places them solemnly in the
• 4:45:30
  middle of the table. The covers are weather worn and tinged with an algal
• 4:45:34
  green, for once they sojourned in a ditch, and some of the pages
• 4:45:38
  have been washed blank by dirty water. The landlord sits down in an arm
• 4:45:44
  chair fills a long clay pipe, slowly gloating over the books the while.
• 4:45:51
  Then he pulls one towards him and opens him and begins to study it,
• 4:45:56
  turning over the leaves backwards and forwards. His brows are knit and his lips
• 4:46:02
  move painfully. X A little two up in the air cross and a fiddle
• 4:46:07
  de dee Lord, what a one he was for intellect. Presently, he
• 4:46:14
  relaxes and leans back and blinks through his smoke across the room at things invisible
• 4:46:18
  to other eyes. Full of secrets, he says, wonderful secrets. Once
• 4:46:27
  I get a whore of them. Short, I wouldn't do what he did.
• 4:46:33
  I just well, He pulls at his pipe, so he lapses into
• 4:46:41
  a dream, the undying, wonderful dream of life. And though Kemp has
• 4:46:47
  fished unceasingly, no human being save the Landlord knows those books are there,
• 4:46:52
  with the subtle secret of invisibility, and a dozen other strange secrets written therein,
• 4:46:57
  and none other will know of them until he dies. End of the
• 4:47:04
  Invisible Man by H. G. Wells