THE INVISIBLE MAN ......................................................................................................................................1

H.G. Wells...............................................................................................................................................1

The stranger came early in February one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last

snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station and carrying a

little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his

soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled itself against his

shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to the burden he carried. He staggered into the Coach and

Horses, more dead than alive as it seemed, and flung his portmanteau down. "A fire," he cried, "in the name

of human charity! A room and a fire!" He stamped and shook the snow from off himself in the bar, and

followed Mrs. Hall into her guest parlour to strike his bargain. And with that much introduction, that and a

ready acquiescence to terms and a couple of sovereigns flung upon the table, he took up his quarters in the

Mrs. Hall lit the fire and left him there while she went to prepare him a meal with her own hands. A guest to

stop at Iping in the wintertime was an unheardof piece of luck, let alone a guest who was no "haggler," and

she was resolved to show herself worthy of her good fortune. As soon as the bacon was well under way, and

Millie, her lymphatic aid, had been brisked up a bit by a few deftly chosen expressions of contempt, she

carried the cloth, plates, and glasses into the parlour and began to lay them with the utmost clat. Although the

fire was burning up briskly, she was surprised to see that her visitor still wore his hat and coat, standing with

his back to her and staring out of the window at the falling snow in the yard. His gloved hands were clasped

behind him, and he seemed to be lost in thought. She noticed that the melted snow that still sprinkled his

shoulders dripped upon her carpet. "Can I take your hat and coat, sir," she said, "and give them a good dry in

He turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder. "I prefer to keep them on," he said with emphasis,

and she noticed that he wore big blue spectacles with sidelights and had a bushy sidewhisker over his

He made no answer and had turned his face away from her again; and Mrs. Hall, feeling that her

conversational advances were ill timed, laid the rest of the table things in a quick staccato and whisked out

of the room. When she returned he was still standing there like a man of stone, his back hunched, his collar

turned up, his dripping hatbrim turned down, hiding his face and ears completely. She put down the eggs

and bacon with considerable emphasis, and called rather than said to him, "Your lunch is served, sir."

"Thank you," he said at the same time, and did not stir until she was closing the door. Then he swung round

As she went behind the bar to the kitchen she heard a sound repeated at regular intervals. Chirk, chirk, chirk,

it went, the sound of a spoon being rapidly whisked round a basin. "That girl!" she said. "There! I clean

forgot it. It's her being so long!" And while she herself finished mixing the mustard, she gave Millie a few

verbal stabs for her excessive slowness. She had cooked the ham and eggs, laid the table, and done

everything, while Millie (help indeed!) had only succeeded in delaying the mustard. And him a new guest and

wanting to stay! Then she filled the mustard pot, and, putting it with a certain stateliness upon a gold and

She rapped and entered promptly. As she did so her visitor moved quickly, so that she got but a glimpse of a

white object disappearing behind the table. It would seem he was picking something from the floor. She

rapped down the mustard pot on the table, and then she noticed the overcoat and hat had been taken off and

put over a chair in front of the fire. A pair of wet boots threatened rust to her steel fender. She went to these

things resolutely. "I suppose I may have them to dry now," she said in a voice that brooked no denial.

"Leave the hat," said her visitor in a muffled voice, and turning she saw he had raised his head and was sitting

He held a white clothit was a serviette he had brought with himover the lower part of his face, so that

his mouth and jaws were completely hidden, and that was the reason of his muffled voice. But it was not that

which startled Mrs. Hall. It was the fact that all his forehead above his blue glasses was covered by a white

bandage, and that another covered his ears, leaving not a scrap of his face exposed excepting only his pink,

peaked nose. It was bright pink, and shiny just as it had been at first. He wore a darkbrown velvet jacket

with a high black linen lined collar turned up about his neck. The thick black hair, escaping as it could below

and between the cross bandages, projected in curious tails and horns, giving him the strangest appearance

conceivable. This muffled and bandaged head was so unlike what she had anticipated, that for a moment she

He did not remove the serviette, but remained holding it, as she saw now, with a brown gloved hand, and

regarding her with his inscrutable blue glasses. "Leave the hat," he said, speaking very distinctly through the

Her nerves began to recover from the shock they had received. She placed the hat on the chair again by the

"Thank you," he said drily, glancing from her to the door and then at her again.

"I'll have them nicely dried, sir, at once," she said, and carried his clothes out of the room. She glanced at his

whiteswathed head and blue goggles again as she was going out of the door; but his napkin was still in front

of his face. She shivered a little as she closed the door behind her, and her face was eloquent of her surprise

and perplexity. "I never," she whispered. "There!" She went quite softly to the kitchen, and was too

preoccupied to ask Millie what she was messing about with now, when she got there.

The visitor sat and listened to her retreating feet. He glanced inquiringly at the window before he removed his

serviette and resumed his meal. He took a mouthful, glanced suspiciously at the window, took another

mouthful, then rose and, taking the serviette in his hand, walked across the room and pulled the blind down to

the top of the white muslin that obscured the lower panes. This left the room in twilight. This done, he

"The poor soul's had an accident or an op'ration or something," said Mrs. Hall. "What a turn them bandages

She put on some more coal, unfolded the clotheshorse, and extended the traveller's coat upon this. "And

they goggles! Why, he looked more like a divin' helmet than a human man!" She hung his muffler on a corner

of the horse. "And holding that handkerchief over his mouth all the time. Talkin' through it!...Perhaps his

She turned round, as one who suddenly remembers. "Bless my soul alive!" she said, going off at a tangent;

When Mrs. Hall went to clear away the stranger's lunch, her idea that his mouth must also have been cut or

disfigured in the accident she supposed him to have suffered, was confirmed, for he was smoking a pipe, and

all the time that she was in the room he never loosened the silk muffler he had wrapped round the lower part

of his face to put the mouthpiece to his lips. Yet it was not forgetfulness, for she saw he glanced at it as it

smouldered out. He sat in the corner with his back to the windowblind and spoke now, having eaten and

drunk and being comfortably warmed through, with less aggressive brevity than before. The reflection of the

fire lent a kind of red animation to his big spectacles they had lacked hitherto.

"I have some luggage," he said, "at Bramblehurst station," and he asked her how he could have it sent. He

bowed his bandaged head quite politely in acknowledgment of her explanation. "Tomorrow!" he said.

"There is no speedier delivery?" and seemed quite disappointed when she answered "No." Was she quite

Mrs. Hall, nothing loath, answered his questions and developed a conversation. "It's a steep road by the

down, sir," she said in answer to the question about a trap; and then, snatching at an opening said, "It was

there a carriage was upsettled, a year ago and more. A gentleman killed, besides his coachman. Accidents, sir,

But the visitor was not to be drawn so easily. "They do," he said through his muffler, eyeing her quietly

"But they take long enough to get well, sir, don't they? ... There was my sister's son, Tom, jest cut his arm

with a scythe, tumbled on it in the 'ayfield, and, bless me! he was three months tied up, sir. You'd hardly

"He was afraid, one time, that he'd have to have an op'ration he was that bad, sir."

The visitor laughed abruptly, a bark of a laugh that he seemed to bite and kill in his mouth. "Was he?" he

"He was, sir. And no laughing matter to them as had the doing for him, as I hadmy sister being took up

with her little ones so much. There was bandages to do, sir, and bandages to undo. So that if I may make so

"Will you get me some matches?" said the visitor, quite abruptly. "My pipe is out."

Mrs. Hall was pulled up suddenly. It was certainly rude of him, after telling him all she had done. She gasped

at him for a moment, and remembered the two sovereigns. She went for the matches.

"Thanks," he said concisely, as she put them down, and turned his shoulder upon her and stared out of the

window again. It was altogether too discouraging. Evidently he was sensitive on the topic of operations and

bandages. She did not "make so bold as to say," however, after all. But his snubbing way had irritated her,

The visitor remained in the parlour until four o'clock, without giving the ghost of an excuse for an intrusion.

For the most part he was quite still during that time; it would seem he sat in the growing darkness smoking in

Once or twice a curious listener might have heard him at the coals, and for the space of five minutes he was

audible pacing the room. He seemed to be talking to himself. Then the armchair creaked as he sat down

At four o'clock, when it was fairly dark and Mrs. Hall was screwing up her courage to go in and ask her

visitor if he would take some tea, Teddy Henfrey, the clockjobber, came into the bar. "My sakes! Mrs.

Hall," said he, "but this is terrible weather for thin boots!" The snow outside was falling faster.

Mrs. Hall agreed with him, and then noticed he had his bag and hit upon a brilliant idea. "Now you're here,

Mr. Teddy," said she, "I'd be glad if you'd give th' old clock in the parlour a bit of a look. 'Tis going, and it

And leading the way, she went across to the parlour door and rapped and entered.

Her visitor, she saw as she opened the door, was seated in the armchair before the fire, dozing it would seem,

with his bandaged head drooping on one side. The only light in the room was the red glow from the

firewhich lit his eyes like adverse railway signals, but left his downcast face in darknessand the scanty

vestiges of the day that came in through the open door. Everything was ruddy, shadowy, and indistinct to her,

the more so since she had just been lighting the bar lamp, and her eyes were dazzled. But for a second it

seemed to her that the man she looked at had an enormous mouth wide open,a vast and incredible mouth

that swallowed the whole of the lower portion of his face. It was the sensation of a moment: the white

bound head, the monstrous goggle eyes, and this huge yawn below it. Then he stirred, started up in his chair,

put up his hand. She opened the door wide, so that the room was lighter, and she saw him more clearly, with

the muffler held to his face just as she had seen him hold the serviette before. The shadows, she fancied, had

"Would you mind, sir, this man acoming to look at the clock, sir?" she said, recovering from her momentary

"Look at the clock?" he said, staring round in a drowsy manner and speaking over his hand, and then getting

Mrs. Hall went away to get a lamp, and he rose and stretched himself. Then came the light, and Mr. Teddy

Henfrey, entering, was confronted by this bandaged person. He was, he says, "taken aback."

"Goodafternoon," said the stranger, regarding him, as Mr. Henfrey says with a vivid sense of the dark

"None whatever," said the stranger. "Though I understand," he said, turning to Mrs. Hall, "that this room is

"I thought, sir," said Mrs. Hall, "you'd prefer the clock" She was going to say "mended."

"Certainly," said the stranger, "certainlybut, as a rule, I like to be alone and undisturbed.

"But I'm really glad to have the clock seen to," he said, seeing a certain hesitation in Mr. Henfrey's manner.

"Very glad." Mr. Henfrey had intended to apologise and withdraw, but this anticipation reassured him. The

stranger stood round with his back to the fireplace and put his hands behind his back. "And presently," he

said, "when the clockmending is over, I think I should like to have some tea. But not until the

Mrs. Hall was about to leave the room,she made no conversational advances this time, because she did not

want to be snubbed in front of Mr. Henfrey,when her visitor asked her if she had made any arrangements

about his boxes at Bramblehurst. She told him she had mentioned the matter to the postman, and that the

carrier could bring them over on the morrow. "You are certain that is the earliest?" he said.

"I should explain," he added, "what I was really too cold and fatigued to do before, that I am an experimental

"My reason for coming to Iping," he proceeded, with a certain deliberation of manner, "wasa desire for

solitude. I do not wish to be disturbed in my work. In addition to my work, an accident"

"necessitates a certain retirement. My eyesare sometimes so weak and painful that I have to shut myself

up in the dark for hours together. Lock myself up. Sometimesnow and then. Not at present, certainly. At

such times the slightest disturbance, the entry of a stranger into the room, is a source of excruciating

"That, I think, is all," said the stranger, with that quietly irresistible air of finality he could assume at will.

After Mrs. Hall had left the room, he remained standing in front of the fire, glaring, so Mr. Henfrey puts it, at

the clock mending. Mr. Henfrey not only took off the hands of the clock, and the face, but extracted the

works; and he tried to work in as slow and quiet and unassuming a manner as possible. He worked with the

lamp close to him, and the green shade threw a brilliant light upon his hands, and upon the frame and wheels,

and left the rest of the room shadowy. When he looked up, coloured patches swam in his eyes. Being

constitutionally of a curious nature, he had removed the worksa quite unnecessary proceedingwith the

idea of delaying his departure and perhaps falling into conversation with the stranger. But the stranger stood

there, perfectly silent and still. So still, it got on Henfrey's nerves. He felt alone in the room and looked up,

and there, grey and dim, was the bandaged head and huge blue lenses staring fixedly, with a mist of green

spots drifting in front of them. It was so uncannylooking to Henfrey that for a minute they remained staring

blankly at one another. Then Henfrey looked down again. Very uncomfortable position! One would like to

say something. Should he remark that the weather was very cold for the time of year?

He looked up as if to take aim with that introductory shot. "The weather" he began.

"Why don't you finish and go?" said the rigid figure, evidently in a state of painfully suppressed rage. "All

"Certainly, sirone minute more, sir. I overlooked" And Mr. Henfrey finished and went.

But he went off feeling excessively annoyed. "Damn it!" said Mr. Henfrey to himself, trudging down the

And yet again: "Seemingly not. If the police was wanting you you couldn't be more wropped and bandaged."

At Gleeson's corner he saw Hall, who had recently married the stranger's hostess at the Coach and Horses,

and who now drove the Iping conveyance, when occasional people required it, to Sidderbridge Junction,

coming towards him on his return from that place. Hall had evidently been "stopping a bit" at Sidderbridge,

And he proceeded to give Hall a vivid description of his grotesque guest. "Looks a bit like a disguise, don't

it? I'd like to see a man's face if I had him stopping in my place," said Henfrey. "But women are that

trustful,where strangers are concerned. He's took your rooms and he ain't even given a name, Hall."

"Yes," said Teddy. "By the week. Whatever he is, you can't get rid of him under the week. And he's got a lot

of luggage coming tomorrow, so he says. Let's hope it won't be stones in boxes, Hall."

He told Hall how his aunt at Hastings had been swindled by a stranger with empty portmanteaux. Altogether

he left Hall vaguely suspicious. "Get up, old girl," said Hall. "I s'pose I must see 'bout this."

Instead of "seeing 'bout it," however, Hall on his return was severely rated by his wife on the length of time

he had spent in Sidderbridge, and his mild inquiries were answered snappishly and in a manner not to the

point. But the seed of suspicion Teddy had sown germinated in the mind of Mr. Hall in spite of these

discouragements. "You wim' don't know everything," said Mr. Hall, resolved to ascertain more about the

personality of his guest at the earliest possible opportunity. And after the stranger had gone to bed, which he

did about halfpast nine, Mr. Hall went aggressively into the parlour and looked very hard at his wife's

furniture, just to show that the stranger wasn't master there, and scrutinised closely and a little

contemptuously a sheet of mathematical computation the stranger had left. When retiring for the night he

instructed Mrs. Hall to look very closely at the stranger's luggage when it came next day.

She was all the more inclined to snap at Hall because the stranger was undoubtedly an unusually strange sort

of stranger, and she was by no means assured about him in her own mind. In the middle of the night she woke

up dreaming of huge white heads like turnips, that came trailing after her at the end of interminable necks,

and with vast black eyes. But being a sensible woman, she subdued her terrors and turned over and went to

Thus it was that on the ninth day of February, at the beginning of the thaw, this singular person fell out of

infinity into Iping Village. Next day his luggage arrived through the slush. And very remarkable luggage it

was. There was a couple of trunks indeed, such as a rational man might need, but in addition there were a box

of books,big, fat books, of which some were just in an incomprehensible handwriting,and a dozen or

more crates, boxes, and cases, containing objects packed in straw, as it seemed to Hall, tugging with a casual

curiosity at the strawglass bottles. The stranger, muffled in hat, coat, gloves, and wrapper, came out

impatiently to meet Fearenside's cart, while Hall was having a word or so of gossip preparatory to helping

bring them in. Out he came, not noticing Fearenside's dog, who was sniffing in a dilettante spirit at Hall's

And he came down the steps towards the tail of the cart as if to lay hands on the smaller crate.

No sooner had Fearenside's dog caught sight of him, however, than it began to bristle and growl savagely,

and when he rushed down the steps it gave an undecided hop, and then sprang straight at his hand. "Whup!"

cried Hall, jumping back, for he was no hero with dogs, and Fearenside howled, "Lie down!" and snatched

They saw the dog's teeth had slipped the hand, heard a kick, saw the dog execute a flanking jump and get

home on the stranger's leg, and heard the rip of his trousering. Then the finer end of Fearenside's whip

reached his property, and the dog, yelping with dismay, retreated under the wheels of the waggon. It was all

the business of a halfminute. No one spoke, every one shouted. The stranger glanced swiftly at his torn

glove and at his leg, made as if he would stoop to the latter, then turned and rushed up the steps into the inn.

They heard him go headlong across the passage and up the uncarpeted stairs to his bedroom.

"You brute, you!" said Fearenside, climbing off the waggon with his whip in his hand, while the dog watched

Hall had stood gaping. "He wuz bit," said Hall. "I'd better go and see to en," and he trotted after the stranger.

He went straight upstairs, and the stranger's door being ajar, he pushed it open and was entering without any

The blind was down and the room dim. He caught a glimpse of a most singular thing, what seemed a handless

arm waving towards him, and a face of three huge indeterminate spots on white, very like the face of a pale

pansy. Then he was struck violently in the chest, hurled back, and the door slammed in his face and locked,

all so rapidly that he had no time to observe. A waving of indecipherable shapes, a blow, and a concussion.

There he stood on the dark little landing, wondering what it might be that he had seen.

After a couple of minutes he rejoined the little group that had formed outside the Coach and Horses. There

was Fearenside telling about it all over again for the second time; there was Mrs. Hall saying his dog didn't

have no business to bite her guests; there was Huxter, the general dealer from over the road, interrogative;

and Sandy Wadgers from the forge, judicial; besides women and children, all of them saying fatuities:

"Wouldn't let en bite me, I knows"; "'Tasn't right have such dargs"; "Whad 'e bite'n for then?" and so forth.

Mr. Hall, staring at them from the steps and listening, found it incredible that he had seen anything very

remarkable happen upstairs. Besides, his vocabulary was altogether too limited to express his impressions.

"He don't want no help, he says," he said in answer to his wife's enquiry. "We'd better be atakin' of his

"He ought to have it cauterised at once," said Mr. Huxter; "especially if it's at all inflamed."

"Come along," cried an angry voice in the doorway, and there stood the muffled stranger with his collar

turned up, and his hatbrim bent down. "The sooner you get those things in the better I'll be pleased." It is

"Not a bit," said the stranger. "Never broke the skin. Hurry up with those things."

Directly the first crate was carried into the parlour, in accordance with his directions, the stranger flung

himself upon it with extraordinary eagerness, and began to unpack it, scattering the straw with an utter

disregard of Mrs. Hall's carpet. And from it he began to produce bottleslittle fat bottles containing

powders, small and slender bottles containing coloured and white fluids, fluted blue bottles labelled Poison,

bottles with round bodies and slender necks, large greenglass bottles, large whiteglass bottles, bottles with

glass stoppers and frosted labels, bottles with fine corks, bottles with bungs, bottles with wooden caps, wine

bottles, saladoil bottlesputting them in rows on the chiffonier, on the mantel, on the table under the

window, round the floor, on the bookshelf everywhere. The chemist's shop in Bramblehurst could not

boast half so many. Quite a sight it was. Crate after crate yielded bottles, until all six were empty and the

table high with straw; the only things that came out of these crates besides the bottles were a number of

And directly the crates were unpacked, the stranger went to the window and set to work, not troubling in the

least about the litter of straw, the fire which had gone out, the box of books outside, nor for the trunks and

When Mrs. Hall took his dinner in to him, he was already so absorbed in his work, pouring little drops out of

the bottles into testtubes, that he did not hear her until she had swept away the bulk of the straw and put the

tray on the table, with some little emphasis perhaps, seeing the state that the floor was in. Then he half turned

his head and immediately turned it away again. But she saw he had removed his glasses; they were beside

him on the table, and it seemed to her that his eye sockets were extraordinarily hollow. He put on his

spectacles again, and then turned and faced her. She was about to complain of the straw on the floor when he

"I wish you wouldn't come in without knocking," he said in the tone of abnormal exasperation that seemed so

"Perhaps you did. But in my investigationsmy really very urgent and necessary investigationsthe

"Don't. If the straw makes trouble put it down in the bill." And he mumbled at herwords suspiciously like

He was so odd, standing there, so aggressive and explosive, bottle in one hand and testtube in the other, that

Mrs. Hall was quite alarmed. But she was a resolute woman. "In which case, I should like to know, sir, what

"So be it," said Mrs. Hall, taking up the tablecloth and beginning to spread it over the table. "If you're

All the afternoon he worked with the door locked and, as Mrs. Hall testifies, for the most part in silence. But

once there was a concussion and a sound of bottles ringing together as though the table had been hit, and the

smash of a bottle flung violently down, and then a rapid pacing athwart the room. Fearing "something was the

"I can't go on," he was raving. "I can't go on. Three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand! The huge

multitude! Cheated! All my life it may take me! Patience! Patience indeed! Fool and liar!"

There was a noise of hobnails on the bricks in the bar, and Mrs. Hall very reluctantly had to leave the rest of

his soliloquy. When she returned the room was silent again, save for the faint crepitation of his chair and the

When she took in his tea she saw broken glass in the corner of the room under the concave mirror, and a

"Put it down in the bill," snapped her visitor. "For God's sake don't worry me. If there's damage done, put it

down in the bill"; and he went on ticking a list in the exercise book before him.

"I'll tell you something," said Fearenside mysteriously. It was late in the afternoon, and they were in the little

"This chap you're speaking of, what my dog bit. Wellhe's black. Leastways, his legs are. I seed through the

tear of his glove. You'd have expected a sort of pinky to show, wouldn't you? Wellthere wasn't none. Just

"My sakes!" said Henfrey. "It's a rummy case altogether. Why, his nose is as pink as paint!"

"That's true," said Fearenside. "I knows that. And I tell 'ee what I'm thinking. That marn's a piebald, Teddy.

Black here and white therein patches. And he's ashamed of it. He's a kind of halfbreed, and the colour's

come off patchy instead of mixing. I've heard of such things before. And it's the common way with horses, as

I have told the circumstances of the stranger's arrival in Iping with a certain fulness of detail, in order that the

curious impression he created may be understood by the reader. But excepting two odd incidents, the

circumstances of his stay until the extraordinary day of the Club Festival may be passed over very cursorily.

There were a number of skirmishes with Mrs. Hall on matters of domestic discipline, but in every case until

late in April, when the first signs of penury began, he overrode her by the easy expedient of an extra

payment. Hall did not like him, and whenever he dared he talked of the advisability of getting rid of him; but

he showed his dislike chiefly by concealing it ostentatiously, and avoiding his visitor as much as possible.

"Wait till the summer," said Mrs. Hall, sagely, "when the artisks are beginning to come. Then we'll see. He

may be a bit overbearing, but bills settled punctual is bills settled punctual, whatever you like to say."

The stranger did not go to church, and indeed made no difference between Sunday and the irreligious days,

even in costume. He worked, as Mrs. Hall thought, very fitfully. Some days he would come down early and

be continuously busy. On others he would rise late, pace his room, fretting audibly for hours together, smoke,

sleep in the armchair by the fire. Communication with the world beyond the village he had none. His temper

continued very uncertain; for the most part his manner was that of a man suffering under almost unendurable

provocation, and once or twice things were snapped, torn, crushed, or broken in spasmodic gusts of violence.

He seemed under a chronic irritation of the greatest intensity. His habit of talking to himself in a low voice

grew steadily upon him, but though Mrs. Hall listened conscientiously she could make neither head nor tail of

He rarely went abroad by daylight, but at twilight he would go out muffled up enormously, whether the

weather were cold or not, and he chose the loneliest paths and those most overshadowed by trees and banks.

His goggling spectacles and ghastly bandaged face under the penthouse of his hat, came with a disagreeable

suddenness out of the darkness upon one or two homegoing labourers; and Teddy Henfrey, tumbling out of

the Scarlet Coat one night at halfpast nine, was scared shamefully by the stranger's skulllike head (he was

walking hat in hand) lit by the sudden light of the opened door. Such children as saw him at nightfall dreamt

of bogies, and it seemed doubtful whether he disliked boys more than they disliked him, or the reversebut

It was inevitable that a person of so remarkable an appearance and bearing should form a frequent topic in

such a village as Iping. Opinion was greatly divided about his occupation. Mrs. Hall was sensitive on the

point. When questioned, she explained very carefully that he was an "experimental investigator," going

gingerly over the syllables as one who dreads pitfalls. When asked what an experimental investigator was,

she would say with a touch of superiority that most educated people knew that, and would then explain that

he "discovered things." Her visitor had had an accident, she said, which temporarily discoloured his face and

hands; and being of a sensitive disposition, he was averse to any public notice of the fact.

Out of her hearing there was a view largely entertained that he was a criminal trying to escape from justice by

wrapping himself up so as to conceal himself altogether from the eye of the police. This idea sprang from the

brain of Mr. Teddy Henfrey. No crime of any magnitude dating from the middle or end of February was

known to have occurred. Elaborated in the imagination of Mr. Gould, the probationary assistant in the

National School, this theory took the form that the stranger was an Anarchist in disguise, preparing

explosives, and he resolved to undertake such detective operations as his time permitted. These consisted for

the most part in looking very hard at the stranger whenever they met, or in asking people who had never seen

Another school of opinion followed Mr. Fearenside, and either accepted the piebald view or some

modification of it; as, for instance, Silas Durgan, who was heard to assert that "if he choses to show enself at

fairs he'd make his fortune in no time," and being a bit of a theologian, compared the stranger to the man with

the one talent. Yet another view explained the entire matter by regarding the stranger as a harmless lunatic.

Between these main groups there were waverers and compromisers. Sussex folk have few superstitions, and it

was only after the events of early April that the thought of the supernatural was first whispered in the village.

But whatever they thought of him, people in Iping on the whole agreed in disliking him. His irritability,

though it might have been comprehensible to an urban brainworker, was an amazing thing to these quiet

Sussex villagers. The frantic gesticulations they surprised now and then, the headlong pace after nightfall that

swept him upon them round quiet corners, the inhuman bludgeoning of all the tentative advances of curiosity,

the taste for twilight that led to the closing of doors, the pulling down of blinds, the extinction of candles and

lampswho could agree with such goings on? They drew aside as he passed down the village, and when he

had gone by, young humorists would up with coatcollars and down with hatbrims, and go pacing

nervously after him in imitation of his occult bearing. There was a song popular at that time called the

"Bogey Man"; Miss Statchell sang it at the schoolroom concert (in aid of the church lamps), and thereafter

whenever one or two of the villagers were gathered together and the stranger appeared, a bar or so of this

tune, more or less sharp or flat, was whistled in the midst of them. Also belated little children would call

Cuss, the general practitioner, was devoured by curiosity. The bandages excited his professional interest, the

report of the thousand and one bottles aroused his jealous regard. All through April and May he coveted an

opportunity of talking to the stranger; and at last, towards Whitsuntide, he could stand it no longer, and hit

upon the subscriptionlist for a village nurse as an excuse. He was surprised to find that Mr. Hall did not

know his guest's name. "He give a name," said Mrs. Hallan assertion which was quite unfounded "but I

didn't rightly hear it." She thought it seemed so silly not to know the man's name.

Cuss rapped at the parlour door and entered. There was a fairly audible imprecation from within. "Pardon my

intrusion," said Cuss, and then the door closed and cut Mrs. Hall off from the rest of the conversation.

She could hear the murmur of voices for the next ten minutes, then a cry of surprise, a stirring of feet, a chair

flung aside, a bark of laughter, quick steps to the door, and Cuss appeared, his face white, his eyes staring

over his shoulder. He left the door open behind him, and without looking at her strode across the hall and

went down the steps, and she heard his feet hurrying along the road. He carried his hat in his hand. She stood

behind the door, looking at the open door of the parlour. Then she heard the stranger laughing quietly, and

then his footsteps came across the room. She could not see his face where she stood. The parlour door

Cuss went straight up the village to Bunting the vicar. "Am I mad?" Cuss began abruptly, as he entered the

"What's happened?" said the vicar, putting the ammonite on the loose sheets of his forthcoming sermon.

When his nerves had been steadied by a glass of cheap sherry the only drink the good vicar had

availablehe told him of the interview he had just had. "Went in," he gasped, "and began to demand a

subscription for that Nurse Fund. He'd stuck his hands in his pockets as I came in, and he sat down lumpily in

his chair. Sniffed. I told him I'd heard he took an interest in scientific things. He said yes. Sniffed again. Kept

on sniffing all the time; evidently recently caught an infernal cold. No wonder, wrapped up like that! I

developed the nurse idea, and all the while kept my eyes open. Bottleschemicalseverywhere. Balance,

testtubes in stands, and a smell ofevening primrose. Would he subscribe? Said he'd consider it. Asked

him, pointblank, was he researching. Said he was. A long research? Got quite cross. 'A damnable long

research,' said he, blowing the cork out, so to speak. 'Oh,' said I. And out came the grievance. The man was

just on the boil, and my question boiled him over. He had been given a prescription, most valuable

prescription what for he wouldn't say. Was it medical? 'Damn you! What are you fishing after?' I

apologised. Dignified sniff and cough. He resumed. He'd read it. Five ingredients. Put it down; turned his

head. Draught of air from window lifted the paper. Swish, rustle. He was working in a room with an open

fireplace, he said. Saw a flicker, and there was the prescription burning and lifting chimneyward. Rushed

towards it just as it whisked up chimney. So! Just at that point, to illustrate his story, out came his arm."

"No handjust an empty sleeve. Lord! I thought, that's a deformity! Got a cork arm, I suppose, and has

taken it off. Then, I thought, there's something odd in that. What the devil keeps that sleeve up and open, if

there's nothing in it? There was nothing in it, I tell you. Nothing down it, right down to the joint. I could see

right down it to the elbow, and there was a glimmer of light shining through a tear of the cloth. 'Good God!' I

said. Then he stopped. Stared at me with those black goggles of his, and then at his sleeve."

"That's all. He never said a word; just glared, and put his sleeve back in his pocket quickly. 'I was saying,'

said he, 'that there was the prescription burning, wasn't I?' Interrogative cough. 'How the devil,' said I, 'can

you move an empty sleeve like that?' 'Empty sleeve?' 'Yes,' said I, 'an empty sleeve.'

"'It's an empty sleeve, is it? You saw it was an empty sleeve?' He stood up right away. I stood up too. He

came towards me in three very slow steps, and stood quite close. Sniffed venomously. I didn't flinch, though

I'm hanged if that bandaged knob of his, and those blinkers, aren't enough to unnerve any one, coming quietly

"'You said it was an empty sleeve?' he said. 'Certainly,' I said. At staring and saying nothing a barefaced man,

unspectacled, starts scratch. Then very quietly he pulled his sleeve out of his pocket again, and raised his arm

towards me as though he would show it to me again. He did it very, very slowly. I looked at it. Seemed an

age. 'Well?' said I, clearing my throat, 'there's nothing in it.' Had to say something. I was beginning to feel

frightened. I could see right down it. He extended it straight towards me, slowly, slowly just like

thatuntil the cuff was six inches from my face. Queer thing to see an empty sleeve come at you like that!

"There wasn't anything there!" said Cuss, his voice running up into a shriek at the "there." "It's all very well

for you to laugh, but I tell you I was so startled, I hit his cuff hard, and turned round, and cut out of the

Cuss stopped. There was no mistaking the sincerity of his panic. He turned round in a helpless way and took

a second glass of the excellent vicar's very inferior sherry. "When I hit his cuff," said Cuss, "I tell you, it felt

exactly like hitting an arm. And there wasn't an arm! There wasn't the ghost of an arm!"

Mr. Bunting thought it over. He looked suspiciously at Cuss. "It's a most remarkable story," he said. He

looked very wise and grave indeed. "It's really," said Mr. Bunting with judicial emphasis, "a most remarkable

The facts of the burlgary at the vicarage came to us chiefly through the medium of the vicar and his wife. It

occurred in the small hours of WhitMondaythe day devoted in Iping to the Club festivities. Mrs. Bunting,

it seems, woke up suddenly in the stillness that comes before the dawn, with the strong impression that the

door of their bedroom had opened and closed. She did not arouse her husband at first, but sat up in bed

listening. She then distinctly heard the pad, pad, pad of bare feet coming out of the adjoining dressingroom

and walking along the passage towards the staircase. As soon as she felt assured of this, she aroused the Rev.

Mr. Bunting as quietly as possible. He did not strike a light, but putting on his spectacles, her dressinggown,

and his bath slippers, he went out on the landing to listen. He heard quite distinctly a fumbling going on at his

At that he returned to his bedroom, armed himself with the most obvious weapon, the poker, and descended

The hour was about four, and the ultimate darkness of the night was past. There was a faint shimmer of light

in the hall, but the study doorway yawned impenetrably black. Everything was still except the faint creaking

of the stairs under Mr. Bunting's tread, and the slight movements in the study. Then something snapped, the

drawer was opened, and there was a rustle of papers. Then came an imprecation, and a match was struck and

the study was flooded with yellow light. Mr. Bunting was now in the hall, and through the crack of the door

he could see the desk and the open drawer and a candle burning on the desk. But the robber he could not see.

He stood there in the hall undecided what to do, and Mrs. Bunting, her face white and intent, crept slowly

downstairs after him. One thing kept up Mr. Bunting's courage: the persuasion that this burglar was a resident

They heard the chink of money, and realised that the robber had found the housekeeping reserve of

goldtwo pounds ten in half sovereigns altogether. At that sound Mr. Bunting was nerved to abrupt action.

Gripping the poker firmly, he rushed into the room, closely followed by Mrs. Bunting. "Surrender!" cried Mr.

Bunting, fiercely, and then stopped amazed. Apparently the room was perfectly empty.

Yet their conviction that they had, that very moment, heard somebody moving in the room had amounted to a

certainty. For half a minute, perhaps, they stood gaping, then Mrs. Bunting went across the room and looked

behind the screen, while Mr. Bunting, by a kindred impulse, peered under the desk. Then Mrs. Bunting turned

back the windowcurtains, and Mr. Bunting looked up the chimney and probed it with the poker. Then Mrs.

Bunting scrutinised the wastepaper basket and Mr. Bunting opened the lid of the coalscuttle. Then they

There was a violent sneeze in the passage. They rushed out, and as they did so the kitchen door slammed.

"Bring the candle," said Mr. Bunting, and led the way. They both heard a sound of bolts being hastily shot

As he opened the kitchen door he saw through the scullery that the back door was just opening, and the faint

light of early dawn displayed the dark masses of the garden beyond. He is certain that nothing went out of the

door. It opened, stood open for a moment, and then closed with a slam. As it did so, the candle Mrs. Bunting

was carrying from the study flickered and flared. It was a minute or more before they entered the kitchen.

The place was empty. They refastened the back door, examined the kitchen, pantry, and scullery thoroughly,

and at last went down into the cellar. There was not a soul to be found in the house, search as they would.

Daylight found the vicar and his wife, a quaintlycostumed little couple, still marvelling about on their own

Now it happened that in the early hours of WhitMonday, before Millie was hunted out for the day, Mr. Hall

and Mrs. Hall both rose and went noiselessly down into the cellar. Their business there was of a private

nature, and had something to do with the specific gravity of their beer. They had hardly entered the cellar

when Mrs. Hall found she had forgotten to bring down a bottle of sarsaparilla from their jointroom. As she

was the expert and principal operator in this affair, Hall very properly went upstairs for it.

On the landing he was surprised to see that the stranger's door was ajar. He went on into his own room and

But returning with the bottle, he noticed that the bolts of the front door had been shot back, that the door was

in fact simply on the latch. And with a flash of inspiration he connected this with the stranger's room upstairs

and the suggestions of Mr. Teddy Henfrey. He distinctly remembered holding the candle while Mrs. Hall shot

those bolts overnight. At the sight he stopped, gaping, then with the bottle still in his hand went upstairs

again. He rapped at the stranger's door. There was no answer. He rapped again; then pushed the door wide

It was as he expected. The bed, the room also, was empty. And what was stranger, even to his heavy

intelligence, on the bedroom chair and along the rail of the bed were scattered the garments, the only

garments so far as he knew, and the bandages of their guest. His big slouch hat even was cocked jauntily over

As Hall stood there he heard his wife's voice coming out of the depth of the cellar, with that rapid telescoping

of the syllables and interrogative cocking up of the final words to a high note, by which the West Sussex

villager is wont to indicate a brisk impatience. "Gearge! You gart what a wand?"

At that he turned and hurried down to her. "Janny," he said, over the rail of the cellar steps, "'tas the truth

At first Mrs. Hall did not understand, and as soon as she did she resolved to see the empty room for herself.

Hall, still holding the bottle, went first. "If 'e ent there," he said, "his close are. And what's 'e doin' without his

As they came up the cellar steps, they both, it was afterwards ascertained, fancied they heard the front door

open and shut, but seeing it closed and nothing there, neither said a word to the other about it at the time.

Mrs. Hall passed her husband in the passage and ran on first upstairs. Some one sneezed on the staircase.

Hall, following six steps behind, thought that he heard her sneeze. She, going on first, was under the

impression that Hall was sneezing. She flung open the door and stood regarding the room. "Of all the

She heard a sniff close behind her head as it seemed, and, turning, was surprised to see Hall a dozen feet off

on the topmost stair. But in another moment he was beside her. She bent forward and put her hand on the

As she did so, a most extraordinary thing happenedthe bed clothes gathered themselves together, leapt up

suddenly into a sort of peak, and then jumped headlong over the bottom rail. It was exactly as if a hand had

clutched them in the centre and flung them aside. Immediately after, the stranger's hat hopped off the

bedpost, describing a whirling flight in the air through the better part of a circle, and then dashed straight at

Mrs. Hall's face. Then as swiftly came the sponge from the washstand; and then the chair, flinging the

stranger's coat and trousers carelessly aside, and laughing dryly in a voice singularly like the stranger's,

turned itself up with its four legs at Mrs. Hall, seemed to take aim at her for a moment, and charged at her.

She screamed and turned, and then the chair legs came gently but firmly against her back and impelled her

and Hall out of the room. The door slammed violently and was locked. The chair and bed seemed to be

executing a dance of triumph for a moment, and then abruptly everything was still.

Mrs. Hall was left almost in a fainting condition in Mr. Hall's arms on the landing. It was with the greatest

difficulty that Mr. Hall and Millie, who had been roused by her scream of alarm, succeeded in getting her

"'Tas sperrits," said Mrs. Hall. "I know 'tas sperrits. I've read in papers of en. Tables and chairs leaping and

"Lock him out," said Mrs. Hall. "Don't let him come in again. I half guessedI might ha' known. With them

goggling eyes and bandaged head, and never going to church of a Sunday. And all they bottlesmore'n it's

right for any one to have. He's put the sperrits into the furniture. My good old furniture! 'Twas in that very

chair my poor dear mother used to sit when I was a little girl. To think it should rise up against me now!"

They sent Millie across the street through the golden five o'clock sunshine to rouse up Mr. Sandy Wadgers,

the blacksmith. Mr. Hall's compliments and the furniture upstairs was behaving most extraordinary. Would

Mr. Wadgers come round? He was a knowing man, was Mr. Wadgers, and very resourceful. He took quite a

grave view of the case. "Arm darmed ef thet ent witchcraft," was the view of Mr. Sandy Wadgers. "You

He came round greatly concerned. They wanted him to lead the way upstairs to the room, but he didn't seem

to be in any hurry. He preferred to talk in the passage. Over the way Huxter's apprentice came out and began

taking down the shutters of the tobacco window. He was called over to join the discussion. Mr. Huxter

naturally followed in the course of a few minutes. The AngloSaxon genius for parliamentary government

asserted itself; there was a great deal of talk and no decisive action. "Let's have the facts first," insisted Mr.

Sandy Wadgers. "Let's be sure we'd be acting perfectly right in bustin' that there door open. A door onbust is

And suddenly and most wonderfully the door of the room upstairs opened of its own accord, and as they

looked up in amazement, they saw descending the stairs the muffled figure of the stranger staring more

blackly and blankly than ever with those unreasonably large blue glass eyes of his. He came down stiffly and

slowly, staring all the time; he walked across the passage staring, then stopped.

"Look there!" he said, and their eyes followed the direction of his gloved finger and saw a bottle of

sarsaparilla hard by the cellar door. Then he entered the parlour, and suddenly, swiftly, viciously slammed the

Not a word was spoken until the last echoes of the slam had died away. They stared at one another. "Well, if

"I'd go in and ask'n 'bout it," said Wadgers, to Mr. Hall. "I'd d'mand an explanation."

It took some time to bring the landlady's husband up to that pitch. At last he rapped, opened the door, and got

"Go to the devil!" said the stranger in a tremendous voice, and "Shut that door after you." So that brief

The stranger went into the little parlour of the Coach and Horses about halfpast five in the morning, and

there he remained until near midday, the blinds down, the door shut, and none, after Hall's repulse, venturing

All that time he must have fasted. Thrice he rang his bell, the third time furiously and continuously, but no

one answered him. "Him and his 'go to the devil' indeed!" said Mrs. Hall. Presently came an imperfect

rumour of the burglary at the vicarage, and two and two were put together. Hall, assisted by Wadgers, went

off to find Mr. Shuckleforth, the magistrate, and take his advice. No one ventured upstairs. How the stranger

occupied himself is unknown. Now and then he would stride violently up and down, and twice came an

The little group of scared but curious people increased. Mrs. Huxter came over; some gay young fellows

resplendent in black ready made jackets and piqu paper ties, for it was WhitMonday, joined the group with

confused interrogations. Young Archie Harker distinguished himself by going up the yard and trying to peep

under the windowblinds. He could see nothing, but gave reason for supposing that he did, and others of the

It was the finest of all possible WhitMondays, and down the village street stood a row of nearly a dozen

booths and a shooting gallery, and on the grass by the forge were three yellow and chocolate waggons and

some picturesque strangers of both sexes putting up a cocoanut shy. The gentlemen wore blue jerseys, the

ladies white aprons and quite fashionable hats with heavy plumes. Wodger of the Purple Fawn and Mr.

Jaggers the cobbler, who also sold secondhand ordinary bicycles, were stretching a string of unionjacks

and royal ensigns (which had originally celebrated the Jubilee) across the road...

And inside, in the artificial darkness of the parlour, into which only one thin jet of sunlight penetrated, the

stranger, hungry we must suppose, and fearful, hidden in his uncomfortable hot wrappings, pored through his

dark glasses upon his paper or chinked his dirty little bottles, and occasionally swore savagely at the boys,

audible if invisible, outside the windows. In the corner by the fireplace lay the fragments of half a dozen

smashed bottles, and a pungent tang of chlorine tainted the air. So much we know from what was heard at the

About noon he suddenly opened his parlour door and stood glaring fixedly at the three or four people in the

Mrs. Hall appeared after an interval, a little short of breath, but all the fiercer for that. Hall was still out. She

had deliberated over the scene, and she came holding a little tray with an unsettled bill upon it. "Is it your bill

"Why wasn't my breakfast laid? Why haven't you prepared my meals and answered my bell? Do you think I

"I told you two days ago I wasn't going to await no remittances. You can't grumble if your breakfast waits a

"And I'd thank you kindly, sir, if you'd keep your swearing to yourself, sir," said Mrs. Hall.

The stranger stood looking more like an angry divinghelmet than ever. It was universally felt in the bar that

"You told me two days ago that you hadn't anything but a sovereign's worth of silver upon you"

That seemed to annoy the stranger very much. He stamped his foot. "What do you mean?" he said.

"That I wonder where you found it," said Mrs. Hall. "And before I take any bills or get any breakfasts, or do

any such things whatsoever, you got to tell me one or two things I don't understand, and what nobody don't

understand, and what everybody is very anxious to understand. I want know what you been doing t' my chair

upstairs, and I want know how 'tis your room was empty, and how you got in again. Them as stops in this

house comes in by the doorsthat's the rule of the house, and that you didn't do, and what I want know is

Suddenly the stranger raised his gloved hands clenched, stamped his foot, and said, "Stop!" with such

"You don't understand," he said, "who I am or what I am. I'll show you. By Heaven! I'll show you." Then he

put his open palm over his face and withdrew it. The centre of his face became a black cavity. "Here," he

said. He stepped forward and handed Mrs. Hall something which she, staring at his metamorphosed face,

accepted automatically. Then, when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it, and staggered

Then he removed his spectacles, and every one in the bar gasped. He took off his hat, and with a violent

gesture tore at his whiskers and bandages. For a moment they resisted him. A flash of horrible anticipation

It was worse than anything. Mrs. Hall, standing openmouthed and horrorstruck, shrieked at what she saw,

and made for the door of the house. Every one began to move. They were prepared for scars, disfigurements,

tangible horrors, but nothing! The bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a

hobbledehoy jump to avoid them. Every one tumbled on every one else down the steps. For the man who

stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coatcollar of

People down the village heard shouts and shrieks, and looking up the street saw the Coach and Horses

violently firing out its humanity. They saw Mrs. Hall fall down and Mr. Teddy Henfrey jump to avoid

tumbling over her, and then they heard the frightful screams of Millie, who, emerging suddenly from the

kitchen at the noise of the tumult, had come upon the headless stranger from behind.

Forthwith every one all down the street, the sweetstuff seller, cocoanut shy proprietor and his assistant, the

swing man, little boys and girls, rustic dandies, smart wenches, smocked elders and aproned gipsies, began

running towards the inn; and in a miraculously short space of time a crowd of perhaps forty people, and

rapidly increasing, swayed and hooted and inquired and exclaimed and suggested, in front of Mrs. Hall's

establishment. Every one seemed eager to talk at once, and the result was babel. A small group supported

Mrs. Hall, who was picked up in a state of collapse. There was a conference, and the incredible evidence of a

vociferous eyewitness. "O'Bogey!" "What's he been doin', then?" "Ain't hurt the girl, 'as 'e?" "Run at en with

a knife, I believe." "No 'ed, I tell ye. I don't mean no manner of speaking, I mean marn 'without a' ed!"

In its struggles to see in through the open door, the crowd formed itself into a straggling wedge, with the

more adventurous apex nearest the inn. "He stood for a moment, I heerd the gal scream, and he turned. I saw

her skirts whisk, and he went after her. Didn't take ten seconds. Back he comes with a knife in uz hand and a

loaf; stood just as if he was staring. Not a moment ago. Went in that there door. I tell 'e, 'e ain't gart no 'ed 't

There was a disturbance behind, and the speaker stopped to step aside for a little procession that was

marching very resolutely towards the housefirst Mr. Hall, very red and determined, then Mr. Bobby

Jaffers, the village constable, and then the wary Mr. Wadgers. They had come now armed with a warrant.

People shouted conflicting information of the recent circumstances. "'Ed or no 'ed," said Jaffers, "I got to 'rest

Mr. Hall marched up the steps, marched straight to the door of the parlour and flung it open. "Constable," he

Jaffers marched in, Hall next, Wadgers last. They saw in the dim light the headless figure facing them, with a

"What the devil's this?" came in a tone of angry expostulation from above the collar of the figure.

"You're a damned rum customer, mister," said Mr. Jaffers. "But 'ed or no 'ed, the warrant says 'body,' and

Abruptly he whipped down the bread and cheese, and Mr. Hall just grasped the knife on the table in time to

save it. Off came the stranger's left glove and was slapped in Jaffers' face. In another moment Jaffers, cutting

short some statement concerning a warrant, had gripped him by the handless wrist and caught his invisible

throat. He got a sounding kick on the shin that made him shout, but he kept his grip. Hall sent the knife

sliding along the table to Wadgers, who acted as goalkeeper for the offensive, so to speak, and then stepped

forward as Jaffers and the stranger swayed and staggered towards him, clutching and hitting in. A chair stood

Mr. Hall, endeavoring to act on instructions, receiving a sounding kick in the ribs that disposed of him for a

moment, and Mr. Wadgers, seeing the decapitated stranger had rolled over and got the upper side of Jaffers,

retreated towards the door, knife in hand, and so collided with Mr. Huxter and the Siddermorton carter

coming to the rescue of law and order. At the same moment down came three or four bottles from the

"I'll surrender," cried the stranger, though he had Jaffers down, and in another moment he stood up panting, a

strange figure, headless and handlessfor he had pulled off his right glove now as well as his left. "It's no

It was the strangest thing in the world to hear that voice coming as if out of empty space, but the Sussex

peasants are perhaps the most matteroffact people under the sun. Jaffers got up also and produced a pair of

"I say!" said Jaffers, brought up short by a dim realisation of the incongruity of the whole business. "Darm it!

The stranger ran his arm down his waistcoat, and as if by a miracle the buttons to which his empty sleeve

pointed became undone. Then he said something about his shin, and stooped down. He seemed to be

"Why!" said Huxter, suddenly, "that's not a man at all. It's just empty clothes. Look! You can see down his

He extended his hand; it seemed to meet something in midair, and he drew it back with a sharp exclamation.

"I wish you'd keep your fingers out of my eye," said the aerial voice, in a tone of savage expostulation. "The

fact is, I'm all here: head, hands, legs, and all the rest of it, but it happens I'm invisible. It's a confounded

nuisance, but I am. That's no reason why I should be poked to pieces by every stupid bumpkin in Iping, is it?"

The suit of clothes, now all unbuttoned and hanging loosely upon its unseen supports, stood up, arms akimbo.

Several other of the men folks had now entered the room, so that it was closely crowded. "Invisible, eigh?"

"It's strange, perhaps, but it's not a crime. Why am I assaulted by a policeman in this fashion?"

"Ah! that's a different matter," said Jaffers. "No doubt you are a bit difficult to see in this light, but I got a

warrant, and it's all correct. What I'm after ain't no invisibilityit's burglary. There's a house been broken

Abruptly the figure sat down, and before any one could realise what was being done, the slippers, socks, and

trousers had been kicked off under the table. Then he sprang up again and flung off his coat.

"Here, stop that," said Jaffers, suddenly realising what was happening. He gripped the waistcoat; it

struggled, and the shirt slipped out of it and left it limp and empty in his hand. "Hold him!" said Jaffers

"Hold him!" cried every one, and there was a rush at the fluttering white shirt which was now all that was

The shirtsleeve planted a shrewd blow in Hall's face that stopped his openarmed advance, and sent him

backward into old Toothsome the sexton, and in another moment the garment was lifted up and became

convulsed and vacantly flapping about the arms, even as a shirt that is being thrust over a man's head. Jaffers

clutched at it, and only helped to pull it off; he was struck in the mouth out of the air, and incontinently drew

"Look out!" said everybody, fencing at random and hitting at nothing. "Hold him! Shut the door! Don't let

him loose! I got something! Here he is!" A perfect babel of noises they made. Everybody, it seemed, was

being hit all at once, and Sandy Wadgers, knowing as ever and his wits sharpened by a frightful blow in the

nose, reopened the door and led the rout. The others, following incontinently, were jammed for a moment in

the corner by the doorway. The hitting continued. Phipps, the Unitarian, had a front tooth broken, and

Henfrey was injured in the cartilage of his ear. Jaffers was struck under the jaw, and, turning, caught at

something that intervened between him and Huxter in the mle, and prevented their coming together. He felt a

muscular chest, and in another moment the whole mass of struggling, excited men shot out into the crowded

"I got him!" shouted Jaffers, choking and reeling through them all, and wrestling with purple face and

Men staggered right and left as the extraordinary conflict swayed swiftly towards the house door, and went

spinning down the halfdozen steps of the inn. Jaffers cried in a strangled voice holding tight,

nevertheless, and making play with his kneespun round, and fell heavily undermost with his head on the

There were excited cries of "Hold him!" "Invisible!" and so forth, and a young fellow, a stranger in the place

whose name did not come to light, rushed in at once, caught something, missed his hold, and fell over the

constable's prostrate body. Halfway across the road, a woman screamed as something pushed by her; a dog,

kicked apparently, yelped and ran howling into Huxter's yard, and with that the transit of the Invisible Man

was accomplished. For a space people stood amazed and gesticulating, and then came Panic, and scattered

The eighth chapter is exceedingly brief, and relates that Gibbins, the amateur naturalist of the district, while

lying out on the spacious open downs without a soul within a couple of miles of him, as he thought, and

almost dozing, heard close to him the sound as of a man coughing, sneezing, and then swearing savagely to

himself; and looking, beheld nothing. Yet the voice was indisputable. It continued to swear with that breadth

and variety that distinguishes the swearing of a cultivated man. It grew to a climax, diminished again, and

died away in the distance, going as it seemed to him in the direction of Adderdean. It lifted to a spasmodic

sneeze and ended. Gibbins had heard nothing of the morning's occurrences, but the phenomenon was so

striking and disturbing that his philosophical tranquillity vanished; he got up hastily, and hurried down the

You must picture Mr. Thomas Marvel as a person of copious, flexible visage, a nose of cylindrical protrusion,

a liquorish, ample, fluctuating mouth, and a beard of bristling eccentricity. His figure inclined to embonpoint;

his short limbs accentuated this inclination. He wore a furry silk hat, and the frequent substitution of twine

and shoelaces for buttons, apparent at critical points of his costume, marked a man essentially bachelor.

Mr. Thomas Marvel was sitting with his feet in a ditch by the roadside over the down toward Adderdean,

about a mile and a half out of Iping. His feet, save for socks of irregular openwork, were bare, his big toes

were broad, and pricked like the ears of a watchful dog. In a leisurely mannerhe did everything in a

leisurely mannerhe was contemplating trying on a pair of boots. They were the soundest boots he had

come across for a long time, but too large for him; whereas the ones he had were, in dry weather, a very

comfortable fit, but too thinsoled for damp. Mr. Thomas Marvel hated roomy boots, but then he hated damp.

He had never properly thought out which he hated most, and it was a pleasant day, and there was nothing

better to do. So he put the four boots in a graceful group on the turf and looked at them. And seeing them

there among the grass and springing agrimony, it suddenly occurred to him that both pairs were exceedingly

"They arecharity boots," said Mr. Thomas Marvel, with his head on one side regarding them distastefully;

"and which is the ugliest pair in the whole blessed universe, I'm darned if I know!"

"I've worn worsein fact, I've worn none. But none so owdacious uglyif you'll allow the expression. I've

been cadging bootsin particularfor days. Because I was sick of them. They're sound enough, of course.

But a gentleman on tramp sees such a thundering lot of his boots. And if you'll believe me, I've raised nothing

in the whole blessed county, try as I would, but THEM. Look at 'em! And a good county for boots, too, in a

general way. But it's just my promiscuous luck. I've got my boots in this county ten years or more. And then

He turned his head over his shoulder to the right, to look at the boots of his interlocutor with a view to

comparisons, and lo! where the boots of his interlocutor should have been were neither legs nor boots. He

turned his head over his shoulder to the left, and there also were neither legs nor boots. He was irradiated by

the dawn of a great amazement. "Where are yar?" said Mr. Thomas Marvel over his shoulder and coming

round on all fours. He saw a stretch of empty downs with the wind swaying and remote greenpointed furze

"Am I drunk?" said Mr. Marvel. "Have I had visions? Was I talking to myself? What the"

"None of your ventriloquising me," said Mr. Thomas Marvel, rising sharply to his feet. "Where are yer?

"You'll be alarmed in a minute, you silly fool," said Mr. Thomas Marvel. "Where are yer? Lemme get my

There was no answer. Mr. Thomas Marvel stood bootless and amazed, his jacket nearly thrown off.

"Peewit, indeed!" said Mr. Thomas Marvel. "This ain't no time for foolery." The down was desolate, east and

west, north and south; the road with its shallow ditches and white bordering stakes, ran smooth and empty

north and south, and, save for that peewit, the blue sky was empty too. "So help me," said Mr. Thomas

Marvel, shuffling his coat on to his shoulders again. "It's the drink! I might ha' known."

"Ow!" said Mr. Marvel, and his face grew white amidst its patches. "It's the drink," his lips repeated

noiselessly. He remained staring about him, rotating slowly backwards. "I could have swore I heard a voice,"

"It's there again," said Mr. Marvel, closing his eyes and clasping his hand on his brow with a tragic gesture.

He was suddenly taken by the collar and shaken violently and left more dazed than ever. "Don't be a fool,"

"I'moffmybloomingchump," said Mr. Marvel. "It's no good. It's fretting about them blarsted boots.

"Well?" said Mr. Thomas Marvel, with a strange feeling of having been dug in the chest by a finger.

"Very well," said the voice, in a tone of relief. "Then I'm going to throw flints at you till you think

The voice made no answer. Whiz came a flint, apparently out of the air, and missed Mr. Marvel's shoulder by

a hair's breadth. Mr. Marvel, turning, saw a flint jerk up into the air, trace a complicated path, hang for a

moment, and then fling at his feet with almost invisible rapidity. He was too amazed to dodge. Whiz it came,

and ricocheted from a bare toe into the ditch. Mr. Thomas Marvel jumped a foot and howled aloud. Then he

started to run, tripped over an unseen obstacle, and came head over heels into a sitting position.

"Now," said the voice, as a third stone curved upward and hung in the air above the tramp. "Am I

Mr. Marvel by way of reply struggled to his feet, and was immediately rolled over again. He lay quiet for a

moment. "If you struggle any more," said the voice, "I shall throw the flint at your head."

"It's a fair do," said Mr. Thomas Marvel, sitting up, taking his wounded toe in hand and fixing his eye on the

third missle. "I don't understand it. Stones flinging themselves. Stones talking. Put yourself down. Rot away.

"Tell us something I don't know," said Mr. Marvel, gasping with pain. "Where you've hidhow you do itI

"That's all," said the voice. "I'm invisible. That's what I want you to understand."

"Any one could see that. There is no need for you to be so confounded impatient, mister. Now then. Give us a

"I'm invisible. That's the great point. And what I want you to understand is this"

"Oh, come! I ain't blind. You'll be telling me next you're just thin air. I'm not one of your ignorant tramps"

"I am just a human beingsolid, needing food and drink, needing covering tooBut I'm invisible. You see?

"Let's have a hand of you," said Marvel, "if you are real. It won't be so darn outoftheway like,

He felt the hand that had closed round his wrist with his disengaged fingers, and his touch went timorously up

the arm, patted a muscular chest, and explored a bearded face. Marvel's face was astonishment.

"I'm dashed!" he said. "If this don't beat cockfighting! Most remarkable!And there I can see a rabbit clean

He scrutinised the apparently empty space keenly. "You 'aven't been eatin' bread and cheese?" he asked,

"It's quite wonderful enough for my modest wants," said Mr. Thomas Marvel. "Howjer manage it? How the

"What I want to say at present is this: I need help. I have come to thatI came upon you suddenly. I was

wandering, mad with rage, naked, impotent. I could have murdered. And I saw you"

"then stopped. 'Here,' I said, 'is an outcast like myself. This is the man for me.' So I turned back and came

"Lord!" said Mr. Marvel. "But I'm all in a dizzy. May I askHow is it? And what you may be requiring in

"I want you to help me get clothesand shelterand then, with other things. I've left them long enough. If

"Look here," said Mr. Marvel. "I'm too flabbergasted. Don't knock me about any more. And leave me go. I

must get steady a bit. And you've pretty near broken my toe. It's all so unreasonable. Empty downs, empty

sky. Nothing visible for miles except the bosom of Nature. And then comes a voice. A voice out of heaven!

"Pull yourself together," said the voice, "for you have to do the job I've chosen for you."

"I've chosen you," said the voice. "You are the only man, except some of those fools down there, who knows

there is such a thing as an invisible man. You have to be my helper. Help meand I will do great things for

you. An invisible man is a man of power." He stopped for a moment to sneeze violently.

He paused and tapped Mr. Marvel's shoulder smartly. Mr. Marvel gave a yelp of terror at the touch. "I don't

want to betray you," said Mr. Marvel, edging away from the direction of the fingers. "Don't you go

athinking that, whatever you do. All I want to do is to help youjust tell me what I got to do. (Lord!)

After the first gusty panic had spent itself Iping became argumentative. Scepticism suddenly reared its

headrather nervous scepticism, not at all assured of its back, but scepticism neverthe less. It is so much

easier not to believe in an invisible man; and those who had actually seen him dissolve into air, or felt the

strength of his arm, could be counted on the fingers of two hands. And of these witnesses Mr. Wadgers was

presently missing, having retired impregnably behind the bolts and bars of his own house, and Jaffers was

lying stunned in the parlour of the Coach and Horses. Great and strange ideas transcending experience often

have less effect upon men and women than smaller, more tangible considerations. Iping was gay with

bunting, and everybody was in gala dress. WhitMonday had been looked forward to for a month or more.

By the afternoon even those who believed in the Unseen were beginning to resume their little amusements in

a tentative fashion, on the supposition that he had quite gone away, and with the sceptics he was already a

jest. But people, sceptics and believers alike, were remarkably sociable all that day.

Haysman's meadow was gay with a tent, in which Mrs. Bunting and other ladies were preparing tea, while,

without, the Sundayschool children ran races and played games under the noisy guidance of the curate and

the Misses Cuss and Sackbut. No doubt there was a slight uneasiness in the air, but people for the most part

had the sense to conceal whatever imaginative qualms they experienced. On the village green an inclined

string, down which, clinging the while to a pulley swung handle, one could be hurled violently against a

sack at the other end, came in for considerable favour among the adolescent. There were swings and cocoanut

shies and promenading, and the steam organ attached to the swings filled the air with a pungent flavour of oil

and with equally pungent music. Members of the Club, who had attended church in the morning, were

splendid in badges of pink and green, and some of the gayerminded had also adorned their bowler hats with

brilliantcoloured favours of ribbon. Old Fletcher, whose conceptions of holidaymaking were severe, was

visible through the jasmine about his window or through the open door (whichever way you chose to look),

poised delicately on a plank supported on two chairs, and whitewashing the ceiling of his front room.

About four o'clock a stranger entered the village from the direction of the downs. He was a short, stout person

in an extraorindarily shabby top hat, and he appeared to be very much out of breath. His cheeks were

alternately limp and tightly puffed. His mottled face was apprenhensive, and he moved with a sort of

reluctant alacrity. He turned the corner by the church, and directed his way to the Coach and Horses. Among

others old Fletcher remembers seeing him, and indeed the old gentleman was so struck by his peculiar

agitation that he inadvertently allowed a quantity of whitewash to run down the brush into the sleeve of his

This stranger, to the perceptions of the proprietor of the cocoanut shy, appeared to be talking to himself, and

Mr. Huxter remarked the same thing. He stopped at the foot of the Coach and Horses steps, and, according to

Mr. Huxter, appeared to undergo a severe internal struggle before he could induce himself to enter the house.

Finally he marched up the steps, and was seen by Mr. Huxter to turn to the left and open the door of the

parlour. Mr. Huxter heard voices from within the room and from the bar apprising the man of his error. "That

room's private!" said Hall, and the stranger shut the door clumsily and went into the bar.

In the course of a few minutes he reappeared, wiping his lips with the back of his hand with an air of quiet

satisfaction that somehow impressed Mr. Huxter as assumed. He stood looking about him for some moments,

and then Mr. Huxter saw him walk in an oddly furtive manner towards the gates of the yard, upon which the

parlour window opened. The stranger, after some hesitation, leant against one of the gateposts, produced a

short clay pipe, and prepared to fill it. His fingers trembled while doing so. He lit it clumsily, and folding his

arms began to smoke in a languid attitude, an attitude which his occasional quick glances up the yard

All this Mr. Huxter saw over the canisters of the tobacco window, and the singularity of the man's behaviour

Presently the stranger stood up abruptly and put his pipe in his pocket. Then he vanished into the yard.

Forthwith Mr. Huxter, conceiving he was witness of some petty larceny, leapt round his counter and ran out

into the road to intercept the thief. As he did so, Mr. Marvel reappeared, his hat askew, a big bundle in a blue

tablecloth in one hand, and three books tied togetheras it proved afterwards with the Vicar's bracesin

the other. Directly he saw Huxter he gave a sort of gasp, and turning sharply to the left, began to run. "Stop

thief!" cried Huxter, and set off after him. Mr. Huxter's sensations were vivid but brief. He saw the man just

before him and spurting briskly for the church corner and the hill road. He saw the village flags and festivities

beyond, and a face or so turned towards him. He bawled, "Stop!" again. He had hardly gone ten strides before

his shin was caught in some mysterious fashion, and he was no longer running, but flying with inconceivable

rapidity through the air. He saw the ground suddenly close to his face. The world seemed to splash into a

million whirling specks of light, and subsequent proceedings interested him no more.

Now in order clearly to understand what had happened in the inn, it is necessary to go back to the moment

when Mr. Marvel first came into view of Mr. Huxter's window. At that precise moment Mr. Cuss and Mr.

Bunting were in the parlour. They were seriously investigating the strange occurrences of the morning, and

were, with Mr. Hall's permission, making a thorough examination of the Invisible Man's belongings. Jaffers

had partially recovered from his fall and had gone home in the charge of his sympathetic friends. The

stranger's scattered garments had been removed by Mrs. Hall and the room tidied up. And on the table under

the window where the stranger had been wont to work, Cuss had hit almost at once on three big books in

"Diary!" said Cuss, putting the three books on the table. "Now, at any rate, we shall learn something." The

"Diary," repeated Cuss, sitting down, putting two volumes to support the third, and opening it. "H'mno

Cuss turned the pages over with a face suddenly disappointed. "I'mdear me! It's all cypher, Bunting."

"See for yourself," said Mr. Cuss. "Some of it's mathematical and some of it's Russian or some such language

"Of course," said Mr. Bunting, taking out and wiping his spectacles and feeling suddenly very

uncomfortable,for he had no Greek left in his mind worth talking about; "yesthe Greek, of course, may

"I'd rather glance through the volumes first," said Mr. Bunting, still wiping. "A general impression first, Cuss,

He coughed, put on his glasses, arranged them fastidiously, coughed again, and wished something would

happen to avert the seemingly inevitable exposure. Then he took the volume Cuss handed him in a leisurely

Both gentlemen started violently, looked around, and were relieved to see a sporadically rosy face beneath a

"Over the other side, my man," said Mr. Bunting. And "Please shut that door," said Mr. Cuss irritably.

"All right," said the intruder, as it seemed, in a low voice curiously different from the huskiness of its first

enquiry. "Right you are," said the intruder in the former voice. "Stand clear!" and he vanished and closed the

"A sailor, I should judge," said Mr. Bunting. "Amusing fellows they are. Stand clear! indeed. A nautical term

"I daresay so," said Cuss. "My nerves are all loose today. It quite made me jumpthe door opening like

Mr. Bunting smiled as if he had not jumped. "And now," he said with a sigh, "these books."

"One minute," said Cuss, and went and locked the door. "Now I think we are safe from interruption."

"One thing is indisputable," said Bunting, drawing up a chair next to that of Cuss. "There certainly have been

very strange things happen in Iping during the last few daysvery strange. I cannot of course believe in this

"It's incredible," said Cuss, "incredible. But the fact remains that I sawI certainly saw right down his

"But did youare you sure? Suppose a mirror, for instance, hallucinations are so easily produced. I don't

"I won't argue again," said Cuss. "We've thrashed that out, Bunting. And just now there's these booksAh!

He pointed to the middle of the page. Mr. Bunting flushed slightly and brought his face nearer, apparently

finding some difficulty with his glasses. Suddenly he became aware of a strange feeling at the nape of his

neck. He tried to raise his head, and encountered an immovable resistance. The feeling was a curious

pressure, the grip of a heavy, firm hand, and it bore his chin irresistibly to the table. "Don't move, little men,"

whispered a voice, "or I'll brain you both!" He looked into the face of Cuss, close to his own, and each saw a

"Since when did you learn to pry into an investigator's private memoranda?" said the Voice; and two chins

"Since when did you learn to invade the private rooms of a man in misfortune?" and the concussion was

"Listen," said the Voice. "The windows are fastened and I've taken the key out of the door. I am a fairly

strong man, and I have the poker handybesides being invisible. There's not the slightest doubt that I could

kill you both and get away quite easily if I wanted todo you understand? Very well. If I let you go will you

The Vicar and the Doctor looked at one another, and the Doctor pulled a face. "Yes," said Mr. Bunting, and

the Doctor repeated it. Then the pressure on the necks relaxed, and the Doctor and the Vicar sat up, both very

"Please keep sitting where you are," said the Invisible Man. "Here's the poker, you see.

"When I came into this room," continued the Invisible Man, after presenting the poker to the tip of the nose

of each of his visitors, "I did not expect to find it occupied, and I expected to find, in addition to my books of

memoranda, an outfit of clothing. Where is it? No,don't rise. I can see it's gone. Now, just at present,

though the days are quite warm enough for an invisible man to run about stark, the evenings are chilly. I want

It is unavoidable that at this point the narrative should break off again, for a certain very painful reason that

will presently be apparent. While these things were going on in the parlour, and while Mr. Huxter was

watching Mr. Marvel smoking his pipe against the gate, not a dozen yards away were Mr. Hall and Teddy

Suddenly there came a violent thud against the door of the parlour, a sharp cry, and thensilence.

Mr. Hall took things in slowly but surely. "That ain't right," he said, and came round from behind the bar

He and Teddy approached the door together, with intent faces. Their eyes considered. "Summat wrong," said

Hall, and Henfrey nodded agreement. Whiffs of an unpleasant chemical odour met them, and there was a

The muttered conversation ceased abruptly, for a moment silence, then the conversation was resumed in

hissing whispers, then a sharp cry of "No! no, you don't!" There came a sudden motion and the oversetting of

The Vicar's voice answered with a curious jerking intonation: "Quite riight. Please don'tinterrupt."

They remained listening. The conversation was rapid and subdued. "I can't," said Mr. Bunting, his voice

Mrs. Hall appeared behind the bar. Hall made gestures of silence and invitation. This roused Mrs. Hall's

wifely opposition. "What yer listenin' there for, Hall?" she asked. "Ain't you nothin' better to dobusy day

Hall tried to convey everything by grimaces and dumb show, but Mrs. Hall was obdurate. She raised her

voice. So Hall and Henfrey, rather crestfallen, tiptoed back to the bar, gesticulating to explain to her.

At first she refused to see anything in what they had heard at all. Then she insisted on Hall keeping silence,

while Henfrey told her his story. She was inclined to think the whole business nonsense perhaps they were

just moving the furniture about. "I heerd'n say 'disgraceful'; that I did," said Hall.

Every one stood listening intently. Mrs. Hall's eyes, directed straight before her, saw without seeing the

brilliant oblong of the inn door, the road white and vivid, and Huxter's shopfront blistering in the June sun.

Abruptly Huxter's door opened and Huxter appeared, eyes staring with excitement, arms gesticulating.

"Yap!" cried Huxter. "Stop thief!" and he ran obliquely across the oblong towards the yard gates, and

Simultaneously came a tumult from the parlour, and a sound of windows being closed.

Hall, Henfrey, and the human contents of the Tap rushed out at once pellmell into the street. They saw some

one whisk round the corner towards the down road, and Mr. Huxter executing a complicated leap in the air

that ended on his face and shoulder. Down the street people were standing astonished or running towards

Mr. Huxter was stunned. Henfrey stopped to discover this, but Hall and the two labourers from the Tap

rushed at once to the corner, shouting incoherent things, and saw Mr. Marvel vanishing by the corner of the

church wall. They appear to have jumped to the impossible conclusion that this was the Invisible Man

suddenly become visible, and set off at once along the lane in pursuit. But Hall had hardly run a dozen yards

before he gave a loud shout of astonishment and went flying headlong sideways, clutching one of the

labourers and bringing him to the ground. He had been charged just as one charges a man at football. The

second labourer came round in a circle, stared, and conceiving that Hall had tumbled over of his own accord,

turned to resume the pursuit, only to be tripped by the ankle just as Huxter had been. Then, as the first

labourer struggled to his feet, he was kicked sideways by a blow that might have felled an ox.

As he went down, the rush from the direction of the village green came round the corner. The first to appear

was the proprietor of the cocoanut shy, a burly man in a blue jersey. He was astonished to see the lane empty

save for three men sprawling absurdly on the ground. And then something happened to his rearmost foot,

and he went headlong and rolled sideways just in time to graze the feet of his brother and partner, following

headlong. The two were then kicked, knelt on, fallen over, and cursed by quite a number of over hasty

Now when Hall and Henfrey and the labourers ran out of the house, Mrs. Hall, who had been disciplined by

years of experience, remained in the bar next the till. And suddenly the parlour door was opened, and Mr.

Cuss appeared, and without glancing at her rushed at once down the steps towards the corner. "Hold him!" he

cried. "Don't let him drop that parcel! You can see him so long as he holds the parcel." He knew nothing of

the existence of Marvel. For the Invisible Man had handed over the books and bundle in the yard. The face of

Mr. Cuss was angry and resolute, but his costume was defective, a sort of limp white kilt that could only have

passed muster in Greece. "Hold him!" he bawled. "He's got my trousers! And every stitch of the Vicar's

"'Tend to him in a minute!" he cried to Henfrey as he passed the prostrate Huxter, and coming round the

corner to join the tumult, was promptly knocked off his feet into an indecorous sprawl. Somebody in full

flight trod heavily on his finger. He yelled, struggled to regain his feet, was knocked against and thrown on

all fours again, and became aware that he was involved not in a capture, but a rout. Every one was running

back to the village. He rose again and was hit severely behind the ear. He staggered and set off back to the

Coach and Horses forthwith, leaping over the deserted Huxter, who was now sitting up, on his way.

Behind him as he was halfway up the inn steps he heard a sudden yell of rage, rising sharply out of the

confusion of cries, and a sounding smack in some one's face. He recognised the voice as that of the Invisible

In another moment Mr. Cuss was back in the parlour. "He's coming back, Bunting!" he said, rushing in.

Mr. Bunting was standing in the window engaged in an attempt to clothe himself in the hearthrug and a

West Surrey Gazette. "Who's coming?" he said, so startled that his costume narrowly escaped disintegration.

"Invisible Man," said Cuss, and rushed to the window. "We'd better clear out from here! He's fighting mad!

"Good heavens!" said Mr. Bunting, hesitating between two horrible alternatives. He heard a frightful struggle

in the passage of the inn, and his decision was made. He clambered out of the window, adjusted his costume

hastily, and fled up the village as fast as his fat little legs would carry him.

From the moment when the Invisible Man screamed with rage and Mr. Bunting made his memorable flight

up the village, it became impossible to give a consecutive account of affairs in Iping. Possibly the Invisible

Man's original intention was simply to cover Marvel's retreat with the clothes and books. But his temper, at

no time very good, seems to have gone completely at some chance blow, and forthwith he set to smiting and

You must figure the street full of running figures, of doors slamming and fights for hidingplaces. You must

figure the tumult suddenly striking on the unstable equilibrium of old Fletcher's planks and two chairs,with

cataclysmal results. You must figure an appalled couple caught dismally in a swing. And then the whole

tumultuous rush has passed and the Iping streets with its gauds and flags is deserted save for the still raging

Unseen, and littered with cocoanuts, overthrown canvas screens, and the scattered stock in trade of a

sweetstuff stall. Everywhere there is a sound of closing shutters and shoving bolts, and the only visible

humanity is an occasional flitting eye under a raised eyebrow in the corner of a window pane.

The Invisible Man amused himself for a little while by breaking all the windows in the Coach and Horses,

and then he thrust a street lamp through the parlour window of Mrs. Gribble. He it must have been who cut

the telegraph wire to Adderdean just beyond Higgins' cottage on the Adderdean road. And after that, as his

peculiar qualities allowed, he passed out of human perceptions altogether, and he was neither heard, seen, nor

But it was the best part of two hours before any human being ventured out again into the desolation of Iping

When the dusk was gathering and Iping was just beginning to peep timorously forth again upon the shattered

wreckage of its Bank Holiday, a short, thickset man in a shabby silk hat was marching painfully through the

twilight behind the beechwoods on the road to Bramblehurst. He carried three books bound together by some

sort of ornamental elastic ligature, and a bundle wrapped in a blue tablecloth. His rubicund face expressed

consternation and fatigue; he appeared to be in a spasmodic sort of hurry. He was accompanied by a Voice

other than his own, and ever and again he winced under the touch of unseen hands.

"If you give me the slip again," said the Voice; "if you attempt to give me the slip again"

"I didn't try to give you the slip," said Marvel, in a voice that was not far remote from tears. "I swear I didn't.

I didn't know the blessed turning, that was all! How the devil was I to know the blessed turning? As it is, I've

"You'll get knocked about a great deal more if you don't mind," said the Voice, and Mr. Marvel abruptly

"It's bad enough to let these floundering yokels explode my little secret, without your cutting off with my

books. It's lucky for some of them they cut and ran when they did! Here am INo one knew I was invisible!

"It's all about. It will be in the papers! Everybody will be looking for me; everyone on their guard" The

"The fact is," said the Voice, "I shall have to make use of you. You're a poor tool, but I must."

"And my heart's weak. That little businessI pulled it through, of coursebut bless you! I could have

"I wish you wouldn't. I wouldn't like to mess up your plans, you know. But I might,out of sheer funk and

"It ain't justice," he said; "you must admitIt seems to me I've a perfect right"

"Oh! shut up!" said the Voice, with sudden amazing vigour. "I'll see to you all right. You do what you're told.

"If you don't shut up I shall twist your wrist again," said the Invisible Man. "I want to think."

Presently two oblongs of yellow light appeared through the trees, and the square tower of a church loomed

through the gloaming. "I shall keep my hand on your shoulder," said the Voice, "all through the village. Go

The unhappylooking figure in the obsolete silk hat passed up the street of the little village with his burdens,

Ten o'clock the next morning found Mr. Marvel, unshaven, dirty, and travelstained, sitting with the books

beside him and his hands deep in his pockets, looking very weary, nervous, and uncomfortable, and inflating

his cheeks at frequent intervals, on the bench outside a little inn on the outskirts of Port Stowe. Beside him

were the books, but now they were tied with string. The bundle had been abandoned in the pinewoods beyond

Bramblehurst, in accordance with a change in the plans of the Invisible Man. Mr. Marvel sat on the bench,

and although no one took the slightest notice of him, his agitation remained at fever heat. His hands would go

When he had been sitting for the best part of an hour, however, an elderly mariner, carrying a newspaper,

"Just seasonable weather for the time of year," said the mariner, taking no denial.

The mariner produced a toothpick, and (saving his regard) was engrossed thereby for some minutes. His eyes

meanwhile were at liberty to examine Mr. Marvel's dusty figure and the books beside him. As he had

approached Mr. Marvel he had heard a sound like the dropping of coins into a pocket. He was struck by the

contrast of Mr. Marvel's appearance with this suggestion of opulence. Thence his mind wandered back again

Mr. Marvel started and looked at them. "Oh, yes," he said. "Yes, they're books."

"True likewise," said Mr. Marvel. He eyed his interlocutor, and then glanced about him.

"There's some extraordinary things in newspapers, for example," said the mariner.

"There's a story," said the mariner, fixing Mr. Marvel with an eye that was firm and deliberate; "there's a

Mr. Marvel pulled his mouth askew and scratched his cheek and felt his ears glowing. "What will they be

"When I say here," said the mariner, to Mr. Marvel's intense relief, "I don't of course mean here in this place,

"Everything," said the mariner, controlling Marvel with his eye, and then amplifying: "Every Blessed Thing."

"He started there. And where he came from, nobody don't seem to know. Here it is: Pe Culiar Story from

Iping. And it says in this paper that the evidence is extraordinary strongextraordinary."

"But then, it's a extraordinary story. There is a clergyman and a medical gent witnesses,saw 'im all right

and properor leastways, didn't see 'im. He was staying, it says, at the Coach an' Horses, and no one don't

seem to have been aware of his misfortune, it says, aware of his misfortune, until in an Alteration in the inn, it

says, his bandages on his head was torn off. It was then observed that his head was invisible. Attempts were

At Once made to secure him, but casting off his garments, it says, he succeeded in escaping, but not until

after a desperate struggle, In Which he had inflicted serious injuries, it says, on our worthy and able

constable, Mr. J.A. Jaffers. Pretty straight story, eigh? Names and everything."

"Lord!" said Mr. Marvel, looking nervously about him, trying to count the money in his pockets by his

unaided sense of touch, and full of a strange and novel idea. "It sounds most astonishing."

"Don't it? Extraordinary, I call it. Never heard tell of Invisible Men before, I haven't, but nowadays one

"Didn't go Back by any chance?" asked Marvel. "Just escaped and that's all, eh?"

"I should think it was enough," said the mariner. "I should think it was enough."

"He didn't have any palsit don't say he had any pals, does it?" asked Mr. Marvel, anxious.

"Ain't one of a sort enough for you?" asked the mariner. "No, thank Heaven, as one might say, he didn't."

He nodded his head slowly. "It makes me regular uncomfortable, the bare thought of that chap running about

the country! He is at present At Large, and from certain evidence it is supposed that he hastakentook, I

suppose they meanthe road to Port Stowe. You see we're right in it! None of your American wonders, this

time. And just think of the things he might do! Where'd you be, if he took a drop over and above, and had a

fancy to go for you? Suppose he wants to robwho can prevent him? He can trespass, he can burgle, he

could walk through a cordon of policemen as easy as me or you could give the slip to a blind man! Easier!

For these here blind chaps hear uncommon sharp, I'm told. And wherever there was liquor he fancied"

All this time Mr. Marvel had been glancing about him intently, listening for faint footfalls, trying to detect

imperceptible movements. He seemed on the point of some great resolution. He coughed behind his hand.

He looked about him again, listened, bent towards to the mariner, and lowered his voice: "The fact of it isI

happento know just a thing or two about this Invisible Man. From private sources."

"The fact is," began Mr. Marvel eagerly in a confidential undertone. Suddenly his expression changed

marvellously. "Ow!" he said. He rose stiffly in his seat. His face was eloquent of physical suffering. "Wow!"

"Toothache," said Mr. Marvel, and put his hand to his ear. He caught hold of his books. "I must be getting on,

I think," he said. He edged in a curious way along the seat away from his interlocutor. "But you was just

agoing to tell me about this here Invisible Man!" protested the mariner. Mr. Marvel seemed to consult with

"Hoax all the same," said Marvel. "I know the chap that started the lie. There ain't no Invisible Man

The mariner stared, paper in hand. Mr. Marvel jerkily faced about. "Wait a bit," said the mariner, rising and

"Then why did you let me go on and tell you all this blarsted stuff, then? What d'yer mean by letting a man

Mr. Marvel blew out his cheeks. The mariner was suddenly very red indeed; he clenched his hands. "I been

talking here this ten minutes," he said; "and you, you little potbellied, leatheryfaced son of an old boot,

"Come up," said a voice, and Mr. Marvel was suddenly whirled about and started marching off in a curious

spasmodic manner. "You'd better move on," said the mariner. "Who's moving on?" said Mr. Marvel. He was

receding obliquely with a curious hurrying gait, with occasional violent jerks forward. Some way along the

"Silly devil!" said the mariner, legs wide apart, elbows akimbo, watching the receding figure. "I'll show you,

Mr. Marvel retorted incoherently and, receding, was hidden by a bend in the road, but the mariner still stood

magnificent in the midst of the way, until the approach of a butcher's cart dislodged him. Then he turned

himself towards Port Stowe. "Full of extra ordinary asses," he said softly to himself. "Just to take me down a

And there was another extraordinary thing he was presently to hear, that had happened quite close to him.

And that was a vision of a "fist full of money" (no less) travelling without visible agency, along by the wall at

the corner of St. Michael's Lane. A brother mariner had seen this wonderful sight that very morning. He had

snatched at the money forthwith and had been knocked headlong, and when he had got to his feet the

butterfly money had vanished. Our mariner was in the mood to believe anything, he declared, but that was a

The story of the flying money was true. And all about that neighbourhood, even from the august London and

Country Banking Company, from the tills of shops and innsdoors standing that sunny weather entirely

openmoney had been quietly and dexterously making off that day in handfuls and rouleaux, floating

quietly along by walls and shady places, dodging quickly from the approaching eyes of men. And it had,

though no man had traced it, invariably ended its mysterious flight in the pocket of that agitated gentleman in

the obsolete silk hat, sitting outside the little inn on the outskirts of Port Stowe.

In the early evening time Doctor Kemp was sitting in his study in the belvedere on the hill overlooking

Burdock. It was a pleasant little room, with three windows, north, west, and south, and bookshelves crowded

with books and scientific publications, and a broad writingtable, and, under the north window, a

microscope, glass slips, minute instruments, some cultures, and scattered bottles of reagents. Doctor Kemp's

solar lamp was lit, albeit the sky was still bright with the sunset light, and his blinds were up because there

was no offence of peering outsiders to require them pulled down. Doctor Kemp was a tall and slender young

man, with flaxen hair and a moustache almost white, and the work he was upon would earn him, he hoped,

And his eye presently wandering from his work caught the sunset blazing at the back of the hill that is over

against his own. For a minute perhaps he sat, pen in mouth, admiring the rich golden colour above the crest,

and then his attention was attracted by the little figure of a man, inky black, running over the hillbrow

towards him. He was a shortish little man, and he wore a high hat, and he was running so fast that his legs

"Another of those fools," said Doctor Kemp. "Like that ass who ran into me this morning round a corner,

with his ''Visible Man acoming, sir!' I can't imagine what possesses people. One might think we were in the

He got up, went to the window, and stared at the dusky hillside and the dark little figure tearing down it. "He

seems in a confounded hurry," said Doctor Kemp, "but he doesn't seem to be getting on. If his pockets were

In another moment the higher of the villas that had clambered up the hill from Burdock had occulted the

running figure. He was visible again for a moment, and again, and then again, three times between the three

"Asses!" said Doctor Kemp, swinging round on his heel and walking back to his writingtable.

But those who saw the fugitive nearer, and perceived the abject terror on his perspiring face, being

themselves in the open roadway, did not share in the doctor's contempt. By the man pounded, and as he ran

he chinked like a wellfilled purse that is tossed to and fro. He looked neither to the right nor the left, but his

dilated eyes stared straight downhill to where the lamps were being lit, and the people were crowded in the

street. And his illshaped mouth fell apart, and a glairy foam lay on his lips, and his breath came hoarse and

noisy. All he passed stopped and began staring up the road and down, and interrogating one another with an

And then presently, far up the hill, a dog playing in the road yelped and ran under a gate, and as they still

wondered somethinga winda pad, pad, pad,a sound like a panting breathing,rushed by.

People screamed. People sprang off the pavement. It passed in shouts, it passed by instinct down the hill.

They were shouting in the street before Marvel was halfway there. They were bolting into houses and

slamming the doors behind them, with the news. He heard it and made one last desperate spurt. Fear came

The Jolly Cricketers is just at the bottom of the hill, where the tramlines begin. The barman leant his fat red

arms on the counter and talked of horses with an anaemic cabman, while a black bearded man in grey

snapped up biscuit and cheese, drank Burton, and conversed in American with a policeman off duty.

"What's the shouting about?" said the anaemic cabman going off at a tangent, trying to see up the hill over the

dirty yellow blind in the low window of the inn. Somebody ran by outside. "Fire, perhaps," said the barman.

Footsteps approached, running heavily, the door was pushed open violently, and Marvel, weeping and

dishevelled, his hat gone, the neck of his coat torn open, rushed in, made a convulsive turn, and attempted to

"Coming!" he bawled, his voice shrieking with terror. "He's coming. The 'Visible Man! After me! For Gawd's

"Shut the doors," said the policeman. "Who's coming? What's the row?" He went to the door, released the

"Lemme go inside," said Marvel, staggering and weeping, but still clutching the books. "Lemme go inside.

Lock me insomewhere. I tell you he's after me. I give him the slip. He said he'd kill me and he will."

"You're safe," said the man with the black beard. "The door's shut. What's it all about?"

"Lemme go inside," said Marvel, and shrieked aloud as a blow suddenly made the fastened door shiver and

was followed by a hurried rapping and a shouting outside. "Hullo," cried the policeman, "who's there?" Mr.

Marvel began to make frantic dives at panels that looked like doors. "He'll kill mehe's got a knife or

"Here you are," said the barman. "Come in here." And he held up the flap of the bar.

Mr. Marvel rushed behind the bar as the summons outside was repeated. "Don't open the door," he screamed.

"This, this Invisible Man, then?" asked the man with the black beard, with one hand behind him. "I guess it's

The window of the inn was suddenly smashed in, and there was a screaming and running to and fro in the

street. The policeman had been standing on the settee staring out, craning to see who was at the door. He got

down with raised eyebrows. "It's that," he said. The barman stood in front of the barparlour door which was

now locked on Mr. Marvel, stared at the smashed window and came round to the two other men.

Everything was suddenly quiet. "I wish I had my truncheon," said the policeman, going irresolutely to the

"Don't you be in too much hurry about that door," said the anaemic cabman, anxiously.

"Draw the bolts," said the man with the black beard, "and if he comes" He showed a revolver in his hand.

"I know what country I'm in," said the man with the beard. "I'm going to let off at his legs. Draw the bolts."

"Not with that thing going off behind me," said the barman, craning over the blind.

"Very well," said the man with the black beard, and stooping down, revolver ready, drew them himself.

"Come in," said the bearded man in an undertone, standing back and facing the unbolted doors with his pistol

behind him. No one came in, the door remained closed. Five minutes afterwards when a second cabman

pushed his head in cautiously, they were still waiting, and an anxious face peered out of the barparlour and

supplied information. "Are all the doors of the house shut?" asked Marvel. "He's going roundprowling

"Good Lord!" said the burly barman. "There's the back! Just watch them doors! I say!" He looked about

him helplessly. The barparlour door slammed and they heard the key turn. "There's the yard door and the

In a minute he reappeared with a carvingknife in his hand. "The yard door was open!" he said, and his fat

"He's not in the kitchen," said the barman. "There's two women there, and I've stabbed every inch of it with

this little beef slicer. And they don't think he's come in. They haven't noticed"

The man with the beard replaced his revolver. And even as he did so the flap of the bar was shut down and

the bolt clicked, and then with a tremendous thud the catch of the door snapped and the bar parlour door

burst open. They heard Marvel squeal like a caught leveret, and forthwith they were clambering over the bar

to his rescue. The bearded man's revolver cracked and the lookingglass at the back of the parlour was

As the barman entered the room he saw Marvel, curiously crumpled up and struggling against the door that

led to the yard and kitchen. The door flew open while the barman hesitated, and Marvel was dragged into the

kitchen. There was a scream and a clatter of pans. Marvel, head down, and lugging back obstinately, was

Then the policeman, who had been trying to pass the barman, rushed in, followed by one of the cabmen,

gripped the wrist of the invisible hand that collared Marvel, was hit in the face and went reeling back. The

door opened, and Marvel made a frantic effort to obtain a lodgment behind it. Then the cabman clutched

something. "I got him," said the cabman. The barman's red hands came clawing at the unseen. "Here he is!"

Mr. Marvel, released, suddenly dropped to the ground and made an attempt to crawl behind the legs of the

fighting men. The struggle blundered round the edge of the door. The voice of the Invisible Man was heard

for the first time, yelling out sharply, as the policeman trod on his foot. Then he cried out passionately and his

fists flew round like flails. The cabman suddenly whooped and doubled up, kicked under the diaphragm. The

door into the barparlour from the kitchen slammed and covered Mr. Marvel's retreat. The men in the kitchen

A piece of tile whizzed by his head and smashed among the crockery on the kitchen table.

"I'll show him," shouted the man with the black beard, and suddenly a steel barrel shone over the policeman's

shoulder, and five bullets had followed one another into the twilight whence the missle had come. As he

fired, the man with the beard moved his hand in a horizontal curve, so that his shots radiated out into the

A silence followed. "Five cartridges," said the man with the black beard. "That's the best of all. Four aces and

Doctor Kemp had continued writing in his study until the shots aroused him. Crack, crack, crack, they came

"Hello!" said Doctor Kemp, putting his pen into his mouth again and listening. "Who's letting off revolvers in

He went to the south window, threw it up, and leaning out stared down on the network of windows, beaded

gaslamps and shops with black interstices of roof and yard that made up the town at night. "Looks like a

crowd down the hill," he said, "by the Cricketers," and remained watching. Thence his eyes wandered over

the town to far away where the ships' lights shone, and the pier glowed, a little illuminated pavilion like a

gem of yellow light. The moon in its first quarter hung over the western hill, and the stars were clear and

After five minutes, during which his mind had travelled into a remote speculation of social conditions of the

future, and lost itself at last over the time dimension, Doctor Kemp roused himself with a sigh, pulled down

It must have been about an hour after this that the frontdoor bell rang. He had been writing slackly and with

intervals of abstraction, since the shots. He sat listening. He heard the servant answer the door, and waited for

her feet on the staircase, but she did not come. "Wonder what that was," said Doctor Kemp.

He tried to resume his work, failed, got up, went downstairs from his study to the landing, rang, and called

over the balustrade to the housemaid as she appeared in the hall below. "Was that a letter?" he asked.

"I'm restless tonight," he said to himself. He went back to his study, and this time attacked his work

resolutely. In a little while he was hard at work again, and the only sounds in the room were the ticking of the

clock and the subdued shrillness of his quill, hurrying in the very centre of the circle of light his lampshade

It was two o'clock before Doctor Kemp had finished his work for the night. He rose, yawned, and went

downstairs to bed. He had already removed his coat and vest, when he noticed that he was thirsty. He took a

Doctor Kemp's scientific pursuits had made him a very observant man, and as he recrossed the hall, he

noticed a dark spot on the linoleum near the mat at the foot of the stairs. He went on upstairs, and then it

suddenly occurred to him to ask himself what the spot on the linoleum might be. Apparently some

subconscious element was at work. At any rate, he turned with his burden, went back to the hall, put down

the siphon and whisky, and bending down, touched the spot. Without any great surprise he found it had the

He took up his burden again, and returned upstairs, looking about him and trying to account for the

bloodspot. On the landing he saw something and stopped astonished. The doorhandle of his own room was

He looked at his own hand. It was quite clean, and then he remembered that the door of his room had been

open when he came down from his study, and that consequently he had not touched the handle at all. He went

straight into his room, his face quite calmperhaps a trifle more resolute that usual. His glance, wandering

inquisitively, fell on the bed. On the counterpane was a mess of blood, and the sheet had been torn. He had

not noticed this before because he had walked straight to the dressingtable. On the further side the bed

Then he had an odd impression that he had heard a loud voice say, "Good Heavens!Kemp!" But Doctor

He stood staring at the tumbled sheets. Was that really a voice? He looked about again, but noticed nothing

further than the disordered and bloodstained bed. Then he distinctly heard a movement across the room,

near the washhand stand. All men, however highly educated, retain some superstitious inklings. The feeling

that is called "eerie" came upon him. He closed the door of the room, came forward to the dressingtable, and

put down his burdens. Suddenly, with a start, he perceived a coiled and bloodstained bandage of linen rag

He stared at this in amazement. It was an empty bandage, a bandage properly tied but quite empty. He would

have advanced to grasp it, but a touch arrested him, and a voice speaking quite close to him.

Kemp made no answer for a space, simply stared at the bandage. "Invisible Man," he said.

The story he had been active to ridicule only that morning rushed through Kemp's brain. He does not appear

to have been either very much frightened or very greatly surprised at the moment. Realisation came later.

"I thought it was all a lie," he said. The thought uppermost in his mind was the reiterated arguments of the

"Oh!" said Kemp, and then roused himself. "I say!" he said. "But this is nonsense. It's some trick." He stepped

forward suddenly, and his hand, extended towards the bandage, met invisible fingers.

A frantic desire to free himself took possession of Kemp. The hand of the bandaged arm gripped his shoulder,

and he was suddenly tripped and flung backwards upon the bed. He opened his mouth to shout, and the

corner of the sheet was thrust between his teeth. The Invisible Man had him down grimly, but his arms were

"Listen to reason, will you?" said the Invisible Man, sticking to him in spite of a pounding in the ribs. "By

"If you shout I'll smash your face," said the Invisible Man, relieving his mouth.

"I'm an Invisible Man. It's no foolishness, and no magic. I really am an Invisible Man. And I want your help.

I don't want to hurt you, but if you behave like a frantic rustic, I must. Don't you remember me,

"Let me get up," said Kemp. "I'll stop where I am. And let me sit quiet for a minute."

"I am Griffin, of University College, and I have made myself invisible. I am just an ordinary mana man

"Griffin," answered the Voice"a younger student, almost an albino, six feet high, and broad, with a pink

"I am confused," said Kemp. "My brain is rioting. What has this to do with Griffin?"

Kempt thought. "It's horrible," he said. "But what devilry must happen to make a man invisible?"

"It's horrible enough. But I'm wounded an in pain, and tired Great God! Kemp, you are a man. Take it

Kemp stared at the bandage as it moved across the room, then saw a basket chair dragged across the floor and

come to rest near the bed. It creaked, and the seat was depressed the quarter of an inch or so. He rubbed his

eyes and felt his neck again. "This beats ghosts," he said, and laughed stupidly.

"It didn't feel so. Where are you? If I get up shall I run into you? There! all right. Whisky? Here. Where shall

The chair creaked and Kemp felt the glass drawn away from him. He let go by an effort; his instinct was all

against it. It came to rest poised twenty inches above the front edge of the seat of the chair. He stared at it in

infinite perplexity. "This isthis must behypnotism. You must have suggested you are invisible."

"Never mind what you've demonstrated!I'm starving," said the Voice, "and the night ischilly to a man

The tumbler of whisky tilted itself. "Yes," said the Invisible Man, rapping it down. "Have you got a dressing

Kemp made some exclamation in an undertone. He walked to a wardrobe and produced a robe of dingy

scarlet. "This do?" he asked. It was taken from him. It hung limp for a moment in midair, fluttered weirdly,

stood full and decorous buttoning itself, and sat down in his chair. "Drawers, socks, slippers would be a

He turned out his drawers for the articles, and then went downstairs to ransack his larder. He came back with

some cold cutlets and bread, pulled up a light table, and placed them before his guest. "Never mind knives,"

"I always like to get something about me before I eat," said the Invisible Man, with a full mouth, eating

"Exactly. But it's odd I should blunder into your house to get my bandaging. My first stroke of luck. Anyhow

I meant to sleep in this house tonight. You must stand that! It's a filthy nuisance, my blood showing, isn't it?

Quite a clot over there. Gets visible as it coagulates, I see. I've been in the house three hours."

"But how's it done?" began Kemp, in a tone of exasperation. "Confound it! The whole businessit's

He reached over and secured the whisky bottle. Kemp stared at the devouring dressinggown. A ray of

candlelight penetrating a torn patch in the right shoulder, made a triangle of light under the left ribs. "What

"There was a fool of a mana sort of confederate of mine curse him!who tried to steal my money. Has

"Can't I have some more to eat before I tell you all that? I'm hungryin pain. And you want me to tell

"Not me," said his visitor. "Some fool I'd never seen fired at random. A lot of them got scared. They all got

"I'll see what there is more to eat downstairs," said Kemp. "Not much, I'm afraid."

After he had done eating, and he made a heavy meal, the Invisible Man demanded a cigar. He bit the end

savagely before Kemp could find a knife, and cursed when the outer leaf loosened. It was strange to see him

smoking; his mouth and throat, pharynx and nares, became visible as a sort of whirling smoke cast.

"This blessed gift of smoking!" he said, and puffed vigorously. "I'm lucky to have fallen upon you, Kemp.

You must help me. Fancy tumbling on you just now! I'm in a devilish scrape. I've been mad, I think. The

He helped himself to more whisky and soda. Kemp got up, looked about him, and fetched himself a glass

"You haven't changed much, Kemp, these dozen years. You fair men don't. Cool and methodicalafter the

"For God's sake, let me smoke in peace for a little while! And then I will begin to tell you."

But the story was not told that night. The Invisible Man's wrist was growing painful, he was feverish,

exhausted, and his mind came round to brood upon his chase down the hill and the struggle about the inn. He

spoke in fragments of Marvel, he smoked faster, his voice grew angry. Kemp tried to gather what he could.

"He was afraid of me, I could see he was afraid of me," said the Invisible Man many times over. "He meant to

He groaned suddenly and leant forward, supporting his invisible head on invisible hands. "Kemp," he said,

"I've had no sleep for near three daysexcept a couple of dozes of an hour or so. I must sleep soon."

The Invisible Man appeared to be regarding Kemp. "Because I've a particular objection to being caught by

"Fool that I am!" said the Invisible Man, striking the table smartly. "I've put the idea into your head."

Exhausted and wounded as the Invisible Man was, he refused to accept Kemp's word that his freedom should

be respected. He examined the two windows of the bedroom, drew up the blinds, and opened the sashes to

confirm Kemp's statement that a retreat by them would be possible. Outside the night was very quiet and still,

and the new moon was setting over the down. Then he examined the keys of the bedroom and the two

dressingroom doors, to satisfy himself that these also could be made an assurance of freedom. Finally he

expressed himself satisfied. He stood on the hearthrug and Kemp heard the sound of a yawn.

"I'm sorry," said the Invisible Man, "if I cannot tell you all that I have done tonight. But I am worn out. It's

grotesque, no doubt. It's horrible! But believe me, Kemp, it is quite a possible thing. I have made a discovery.

I meant to keep it to myself. I can't. I must have a partner. And youWe can do such thingsBut

Kemp stood in the middle of the room staring at the headless garment. "I suppose I must leave you," he said.

"It'sincredible. Three things happening like this, overturning all my preconceptions, would make me

"Goodnight," said Kemp, and shook an invisible hand. He walked sideways to the door. Suddenly the

dressinggown walked quickly towards him. "Understand me!" said the dressinggown. "No attempts to

Kemp closed the door softly behind him, and the key was turned upon him forthwith. Then, as he stood with

an expression of passive amazement on his face, the rapid feet came to the door of the dressingroom and

that too was locked. Kemp slapped his brow with his hand. "Am I dreaming? Has the world gone mador

He laughed, and put his hand to the locked door. "Barred out of my own bedroom, by a flagrant absurdity!"

He walked to the head of the staircase, turned, and stared at the locked doors. "It's fact," he said. He put his

He lit the diningroom lamp, got out a cigar, and began pacing the room, ejaculating. Now and then he would

"Is there such a thing as an invisible animal? In the sea, yes. Thousands! millions! All the larvae, all the little

nauplii and tornarias, all the microscopic things, the jellyfish. In the sea there are more things invisible than

visible! I never thought of that before. And in the ponds too! All those little pondlife things specks of

His meditation became profound. The bulk of three cigars had passed into the invisible or diffused as a white

ash over the carpet before he spoke again. Then it was merely an exclamation. He turned aside, walked out of

the room, and went into his little consulting room and lit the gas there. It was a little room, because Dr.

Kemp did not live by practice, and in it were the day's newspapers. The morning's paper lay carelessly

opened and thrown aside. He caught it up, turned it over, and read the account of a "Strange Story from

Iping" that the Mariner at Port Stowe had spelt over so painfully to Mr. Marvel. Kemp read it swiftly.

"Wrapped up!" said Kemp. "Disguised! Hiding it! 'No one seems to have been aware of his misfortune.' What

He dropped the paper, and his eye went seeking. "Ah!" he said, and caught up the St. James' Gazette, lying

folded up as it arrived. "Now we shall get at the truth," said Dr. Kemp. He rent the paper open; a couple of

"Good Heavens!" said Kemp, reading eagerly an incredulous account of the events in Iping the previous

afternoon, that have already been described. Over the leaf the report in the morning paper had been reprinted.

He reread it. "Ran through the streets striking right and left. Jaffers insensible. Mr. Huxter in great

painstill unable to describe what he saw. Painful humiliationvicar. Women ill with terror! Windows

smashed. This extraordinary story probably a fabrication. Too good not to printcum grano!"

He dropped the paper and stared blankly in front of him. "Probably a fabrication!"

He caught up the paper again, and reread the whole business. "But where does the Tramp come in? Why the

He sat down abruptly on the surgical couch. "He's not only invisible," he said, "but he's mad! Homicidal!"

When dawn came to mingle its pallor with the lamplight and cigar smoke of the diningroom, Kemp was

He was altogether too excited to sleep. His servants, descending sleepily, discovered him, and were inclined

to think that overstudy had worked this ill on him. He gave them extraordinary but quite explicit instructions

to lay breakfast for two in the belvedere studyand then to confine themselves to the basement and ground

floor. Then he continued to pace the diningroom until the morning's paper came. That had much to say and

little to tell, beyond the confirmation of the evening before and a very baldly written account of another

remarkable tale from Port Burdock. This gave Kemp the essence of the happenings at the Jolly Cricketers,

and the name of Marvel. "He has made me keep with him twentyfour hours," Marvel testified. Certain

minor facts were added to the Iping story, notably the cutting of the village telegraphwire. But there was

nothing to throw light on the connection between the Invisible Man and the Tramp; for Mr. Marvel had

supplied no information about the three books, or the money with which he was lined. The incredulous tone

had vanished and a shoal of reporters and inquirers were already at work elaborating the matter.

Kemp read every scrap of the report and sent his housemaid out to get every one of the morning papers she

"He is invisible!" he said. "And it reads like rage growing to mania! The things he may do! The things he

He went to a little untidy desk in the corner, and began a note. He tore this up half written, and wrote another.

He read it over and considered it. Then he took an envelope and addressed it to "Colonel Adye, Port

The Invisible Man awoke even as Kemp was doing this. He awoke in an evil temper, and Kemp, alert for

every sound, heard his pattering feet rush suddenly across the bedroom overhead. Then a chair was flung over

and the washhand stand tumbler smashed. Kemp hurried upstairs and rapped eagerly.

Kemp walked across the room and picked up the fragments of broken glass. "All the facts are out about you,"

said Kemp, standing up with the glass in his hand; "all that happened in Iping, and down the hill. The world

"The secret's out. I gather it was a secret. I don't know what your plans are, but of course I'm anxious to help

"There's breakfast upstairs," said Kemp, speaking as easily as possible, and he was delighted to find his

strange guest rose willingly. Kemp led the way up the narrow staircase to the belvedere.

"Before we can do anything else," said Kemp, "I must understand a little more about this invisibility of

yours." He had sat down, after one nervous glance out of the window, with the air of a man who has talking

to do. His doubts of the sanity of the entire business flashed and vanished again as he looked across to where

Griffin sat at the breakfasttable,a headless, handless dressing gown, wiping unseen lips on a

"It's simple enoughand credible enough," said Griffin, putting the serviette aside and leaning the invisible

"Well, yes; to me it seemed wonderful at first, no doubt. But now, great God!But we will do great things

"I went there after I left London. You know I dropped medicine and took up physics? No?well, I did.

"Optical density! The whole subject is a network of riddles a network with solutions glimmering elusively

through. And being but twoandtwenty and full of enthusiasm, I said, 'I will devote my life to this. This is

"But I went to worklike a nigger. And I had hardly worked and thought about the matter six months before

light came through one of the meshes suddenlyblindingly! I found a general principle of pigments and

refraction,a formula, a geometrical expression involving four dimensions. Fools, common men, even

common mathematicians, do not know anything of what some general expression may mean to the student of

molecular physics. In the booksthe books that Tramp has hiddenthere are marvels, miracles! But this

was not a method, it was an idea that might lead to a method by which it would be possible, without changing

any other property of matter,except, in some instances, colours,to lower the refractive index of a

substance, solid or liquid, to that of airso far as all practical purposes are concerned."

"Phew!" said Kemp. "That's odd! But still I don't see quite I can understand that thereby you could spoil a

"Precisely," said Griffin. "But consider: Visibility depends on the action of the visible bodies on light. Either

a body absorbs light, or it reflects or refracts it, or does all these things. If it neither reflects nor refracts nor

absorbs light, it cannot of itself be visible. You see an opaque red box, for instance, because the colour

absorbs some of the light and reflects the rest, all the red part of the light, to you. If it did not absorb any

particular part of the light, but reflected it all, then it would be a shining white box. Silver! A diamond box

would neither absorb much of the light nor reflect much from the general surface, but just here and there

where the surfaces were favourable the light would be reflected and refracted, so that you would get a

brilliant appearance of flashing reflections and translucencies,a sort of skeleton of light. A glass box would

not be so brilliant, not so clearly visible, as a diamond box, because there would be less refraction and

reflection. See that? From certain points of view you would see quite clearly through it. Some kinds of glass

would be more visible than others, a box of flint glass would be brighter than a box of ordinary window glass.

A box of very thin common glass would be hard to see in a bad light, because it would absorb hardly any

light and refract and reflect very little. And if you put a sheet of common white glass in water, still more if

you put it in some denser liquid than water, it would vanish almost altogether, because light passing from

water to glass is only slightly refracted or reflected or indeed affected in any way. It is almost as invisible as a

"And here is another fact you will know to be true. If a sheet of glass is smashed, Kemp, and beaten into a

powder, it becomes much more visible while it is in the air; it becomes at last an opaque white powder. This

is because the powdering multiplies the surfaces of the glass at which refraction and reflection occur. In the

sheet of glass there are only two surfaces; in the powder the light is reflected or refracted by each grain it

passes through, and very little gets right through the powder. But if the white powdered glass is put into

water, it forthwith vanishes. The powdered glass and water have much the same refractive index; that is, the

light undergoes very little refraction or reflection in passing from one to the other.

"You make the glass invisible by putting it into a liquid of nearly the same refractive index; a transparent

thing becomes invisible if it is put in any medium of almost the same refractive index. And if you will

consider only a second, you will see also that the powder of glass might be made to vanish in air, if its

refractive index could be made the same as that of air; for then there would be no refraction or reflection as

"That from a doctor! How one forgets! Have you already forgotten your physics, in ten years? Just think of

all the things that are transparent and seem not to be so. Paper, for instance, is made up of transparent fibres,

and it is white and opaque only for the same reason that a powder of glass is white and opaque. Oil white

paper, fill up the interstices between the particles with oil so that there is no longer refraction or reflection

except at the surfaces, and it becomes as transparent as glass. And not only paper, but cotton fibre, linen fibre,

wool fibre, woody fibre, and bone, Kemp, flesh, hair, nails and nerves, Kemp, in fact the whole fabric of a

man except the red of his blood and the black pigment of hair, are all made up of transparent, colourless

tissue. So little suffices to make us visible one to the other. For the most part the fibres of a living creature are

"Great Heavens!" cried Kemp. "Of course, of course! I was thinking only last night of the sea larvae and all

"Now you have me! And all that I knew and had in mind a year after I left Londonsix years ago. But I kept

it to myself. I had to do my work under frightful disadvantages. Oliver, my professor, was a scientific

bounder, a journalist by instinct, a thief of ideas,he was always prying! And you know the knavish system

of the scientific world. I simply would not publish, and let him share my credit. I went on working. I got

nearer and nearer making my formula into an experiment, a reality. I told no living soul, because I meant to

flash my work upon the world with crushing effect,to become famous at a blow. I took up the question of

pigments to fill up certain gaps. And suddenly, not by design but by accident, I made a discovery in

"You know the red colouring matter of blood; it can be made whitecolourlessand remain with all the

The Invisible Man rose and began pacing the little study. "You may well exclaim. I remember that night. It

was late at night, in the daytime one was bothered with the gaping, silly students, and I worked then

sometimes till dawn. It came suddenly, splendid and complete into my mind. I was alone; the laboratory was

still, with the tall lights burning brightly and silently. In all my great moments I have been alone. 'One could

make an animala tissue transparent! One could make it invisible! All except the pigments. I could be

invisible!' I said, suddenly realising what it meant to be an albino with such knowledge. It was overwhelming.

I left the filtering I was doing, and went and stared out of the great window at the stars. 'I could be invisible!'

"To do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of

all that invisibility might mean to a man,the mystery, the power, the freedom. Drawbacks I saw none. You

have only to think! And I, a shabby, povertystruck, hemmedin demonstrator, teaching fools in a provincial

college, might suddenly becomethis. I ask you, Kemp, if youAny one, I tell you, would have flung

himself upon that research. And I worked three years, and every mountain of difficulty I toiled over showed

another from its summit. The infinite details! And the exasperation,a professor, a provincial professor,

always prying. 'When are you going to publish this work of yours?' was his everlasting question. And the

"And after three years of secrecy and exasperation, I found that to complete it was impossible,impossible."

For a moment Kemp sat in silence, staring at the back of the headless figure at the window. Then he started,

struck by a thought, rose, took the Invisible Man's arm, and turned him away from the outlook.

"I had left the Chesilstowe cottage already," he said, "when that happened. It was last December. I had taken

a room in London, a large unfurnished room in a big illmanaged lodginghouse in a slum near Great

Portland Street. The room was soon full of the appliances I had bought with his money; the work was going

on steadily, successfully, drawing near an end. I was like a man emerging from a thicket, and suddenly

coming on some unmeaning tragedy. I went to bury him. My mind was still on this research, and I did not lift

a finger to save his character. I remember the funeral, the cheap hearse, the scant ceremony, the windy

frostbitten hillside, and the old college friend of his who read the service over him,a shabby, black, bent

"I remember walking back to the empty home, through the place that had once been a village and was now

patched and tinkered by the jerry builders into the ugly likeness of a town. Every way the roads ran out at last

into the desecrated fields and ended in rubble heaps and rank wet weeds. I remember myself as a gaunt black

figure, going along the slippery, shiny pavement, and the strange sense of detachment I felt from the squalid

"I did not feel a bit sorry for my father. He seemed to me to be the victim of his own foolish sentimentality.

The current cant required my attendance at his funeral, but it was really not my affair.

"But going along the High Street, my old life came back to me for a space, for I met the girl I had known ten

"Something moved me to turn back and talk to her. She was a very ordinary person.

"It was all like a dream, that visit to the old places. I did not feel then that I was lonely, that I had come out

from the world into a desolate place. I appreciated my loss of sympathy, but I put it down to the general

inanity of things. Reentering my room seemed like the recovery of reality. There were the things I knew and

loved. There stood the apparatus, the experiments arranged and waiting. And now there was scarcely a

"I will tell you, Kemp, sooner or later, all the complicated processes. We need not go into that now. For the

most part, saving certain gaps I chose to remember, they are written in cypher in those books that tramp has

hidden. We must hunt him down. We must get those books again. But the essential phase was to place the

transparent object whose refractive index was to be lowered between two radiating centres of a sort of

ethereal vibration, of which I will tell you more fully later. No, not these Rntgen vibrationsI don't know

that these others of mine have been described. Yet they are obvious enough. I needed two little dynamos, and

these I worked with a cheap gas engine. My first experiment was with a bit of white wool fabric. I was the

strangest thing in the world to see it in the flicker of the flashes soft and white, and then to watch it fade like a

"I could scarcely believe I had done it. I put my hand into the emptiness, and there was the thing as solid as

ever. I felt it awkwardly, and threw it on the floor. I had a little trouble finding it again.

"And then came a curious experience. I heard a miaow behind me, and turning, saw a lean white cat, very

dirty, on the cistern cover outside the window. A thought came into my head. 'Everything ready for you,' I

said, and went to the window, opened it, and called softly. She came in, purring,the poor beast was

starving,and I gave her some milk. All my food was in a cupboard in the corner of the room. After that she

went smelling round the room,evidently with the idea of making herself at home. The invisible rag upset

her a bit; you should have seen her spit at it! But I made her comfortable on the pillow of my trucklebed.

"I processed her. But giving drugs to a cat is no joke, Kemp! And the process failed."

"In two particulars. These were the claws and the pigment stuffwhat is it?at the back of the eye in a cat.

"Yes, the tapetum. It didn't go. After I'd given the stuff to bleach the blood and done certain other things to

her, I gave the beast opium, and put her and the pillow she was sleeping on, on the apparatus. And after all

"I can't explain it. She was bandaged and clamped, of course, so I had her safe; but she woke while she

was still misty, and miaowed dismally, and some one came knocking. It was an old woman from downstairs,

who suspected me of vivisecting,a drinksodden old creature, with only a white cat to care for in all the

world. I whipped out some chloroform, and applied it, and answered the door. 'Did I hear a cat?' she asked.

'My cat?' 'Not here,' said I, very politely. She was a little doubtful and tried to peer past me into the room;

strange enough to her no doubt,bare walls, uncurtained windows, trucklebed, with the gas engine

vibrating, and the seethe of the radiant points, and that faint ghastly stinging of chloroform in the air. She had

"Three or four hoursthe cat. The bones and sinews and the fat were the last to go, and the tips of the

coloured hairs. And, as I say, the back part of the eye, tough iridescent stuff it is, wouldn't go at all.

"It was night outside long before the business was over, and nothing was to be seen but the dim eyes and the

claws. I stopped the gas engine, felt for and stroked the beast, which was still insensible, and then, being

tired, left it sleeping on the invisible pillow and went to bed. I found it hard to sleep. I lay awake thinking

weak aimless stuff, going over the experiment over and over again, or dreaming feverishly of things growing

misty and vanishing about me, until everything, the ground I stood on, vanished, and so I came to that sickly

falling nightmare one gets. About two, the cat began miaowing about the room. I tried to hush it by talking to

it, and then I decided to turn it out. I remember the shock I had when striking a lightthere were just the

round eyes shining greenand nothing round them. I would have given it milk, but I hadn't any. It wouldn't

be quiet, it just sat down and miaowed at the door. I tried to catch it, with an idea of putting it out of the

window, but it wouldn't be caught, it vanished. Then it began miaowing in different parts of the room. At last

I opened the window and made a bustle. I suppose it went out at last. I never saw any more of it.

"ThenHeaven knows whyI fell thinking of my father's funeral again, and the dismal windy hillside, until

the day had come. I found sleeping was hopeless, and, locking my door after me, wandered out into the

"It's very probably been killed," said the Invisible Man. "It was alive four days after, I know, and down a

grating in Great Titchfield Street; because I saw a crowd round the place, trying to see whence the miaowing

"I remember that morning before the change very vividly. I must have gone up Great Portland Street. I

remember the barracks in Albany Street, and the horse soldiers coming out, and at last I found myself sitting

in the sunshine and feeling very ill and strange, on the summit of Primrose Hill. It was a sunny day in

January,one of those sunny, frosty days that came before the snow this year. My weary brain tried to

"I was surprised to find, now that my prize was within my grasp, how inconclusive its attainment seemed. As

a matter of fact I was worked out; the intense stress of nearly four years' continuous work left me incapable of

any strength of feeling. I was apathetic, and I tried in vain to recover the enthusiasm of my first inquiries, the

passion of discovery that had enabled me to compass even the downfall of my father's grey hairs. Nothing

seemd to matter. I saw pretty clearly this was a transient mood, due to overwork and want of sleep, and that

"All I could think clearly was that the thing had to be carried through; the fixed idea still ruled me. And soon,

for the money I had was almost exhausted. I looked about me at the hillside, with children playing and girls

watching them, and tried to think of all the fantastic advantages an invisible man would have in the world.

After a time I crawled home, took some food and a strong dose of strychnine, and went to sleep in my clothes

on my unmade bed. Strychnine is a grand tonic, Kemp, to take the flabbiness out of a man."

"And there was some one rapping at the door. It was my landlord with threats and inquiries, an old Polish Jew

in a long grey coat and greasy slippers. I had been tormenting a cat in the night he was sure,the old

woman's tongue had been busy. He insisted on knowing all about it. The laws of this country against

vivisection were very severe,he might be liable. I denied the cat. Then the vibration of the little gas engine

could be felt all over the house, he said. That was true, certainly. He edged round me into the room, peering

about over his Germansilver spectacles, and a sudden dread came into my mind that he might carry away

something of my secret. I tried to keep between him and the concentrating apparatus I had arranged, and that

only made him more curious. What was I doing? Why was I always alone and secretive? Was it legal? Was it

dangerous? I paid nothing but the usual rent. His had always been a most respectable housein a

disreputable neighbourhood. Suddenly my temper gave way. I told him to get out. He began to protest, to

jabber of his right of entry. In a moment I had him by the collar; something ripped, and he went spinning out

"But this brought matters to a crisis. I did not know what he would do, nor even what he had power to do. To

move to fresh apartments would have meant delay; altogether I had barely twenty pounds left in the

world,for the most part in the bank,and I could not afford that. Vanish! It was irresistible. Then there

"At the thought of the possibility of my work being exposed or interrupted at its very climax, I became angry

and active. I hurried out with my three books of notes, my chequebook,the tramp has them now,and

directed them from the nearest Post Office to a house of call for letters and parcels in Great Portland Street. I

tried to go out noiselessly. Coming in, I found my landlord going quietly upstairs; he had heard the door

close, I suppose. You would have laughed to see him jump aside on the landing as I came tearing after him.

He glared at me as I went by him, and I made the house quiver with the slamming of my door. I heard him

come shuffling up to my floor, hesitate, and go down. I set to work upon my preparations forthwith.

"It was all done that evening and night. While I was still sitting under the sickly, drowsy influence of the

drugs that decolourise blood, there came a repeated knocking at the door. It ceased, footsteps went away and

returned, and the knocking was resumed. There was an attempt to push something under the doora blue

paper. Then in a fit of irritation I rose and went and flung the door wide open. 'Now then?' said I.

"It was my landlord, with a notice of ejectment or something. He held it out to me, saw something odd about

"For a moment he gaped. Then he gave a sort of inarticulate cry, dropped candle and writ together, and went

blundering down the dark passage to the stairs. I shut the door, locked it, and went to the lookingglass. Then

"But it was all horrible. I had not expected the suffering. A night of racking anguish, sickness and fainting. I

set my teeth, though my skin was presently afire; all my body afire; but I lay there like grim death. I

understood now how it was the cat had howled until I chloroformed it. Lucky it was I lived alone and

untended in my room. There were times when I sobbed and groaned and talked. But I stuck to it. I became

"The pain had passed. I thought I was killing myself and I did not care. I shall never forget that dawn, and the

strange horror of seeing that my hands had become as clouded glass, and watching them grow clearer and

thinner as the day went by, until at last I could see the sickly disorder of my room through them, though I

closed my transparent eyelids. My limbs became glassy, the bones and arteries faded, vanished, and the little

white nerves went last. I ground my teeth and stayed there to the end. At last only the dead tips of the

fingernails remained, pallid and white, and the brown stain of some acid upon my fingers.

"I struggled up. At first I was as incapable as a swathed infant,stepping with limbs I could not see. I was

weak and very hungry. I went and stared at nothing in my shavingglass, at nothing save where an attenuated

pigment still remained behind the retina of my eyes, fainter than mist. I had to hang on to the table and press

"It was only by a frantic effort of will that I dragged myself back to the apparatus and completed the process.

"I slept during the forenoon, pulling the sheet over my eyes to shut out the light, and about midday I was

awakened again by a knocking. My strength had returned. I sat up and listened and heard a whispering. I

sprang to my feet and as noiselessly as possible began to detach the connections of my apparatus, and to

distribute it about the room, so as to destroy the suggestions of its arrangement. Presently the knocking was

renewed and voices called, first my landlord's, and then two others. To gain time I answered them. The

invisible rag and pillow came to hand and I opened the window and pitched them out on to the cistern cover.

As the window opened, a heavy crash came at the door. Some one had charged it with the idea of smashing

the lock. But the stout bolts I had screwed up some days before stopped him. That startled me, made me

"I tossed together some loose paper, straw, packing paper and so forth, in the middle of the room, and turned

on the gas. Heavy blows began to rain upon the door. I could not find the matches. I beat my hands on the

wall with rage. I turned down the gas again, stepped out of the window on the cistern cover, very softly

lowered the sash, and sat down, secure and invisible, but quivering with anger, to watch events. They split a

panel, I saw, and in another moment they had broken away the staples of the bolts and stood in the open

doorway. It was the landlord and his two stepsons, sturdy young men of three or four and twenty. Behind

"You may imagine their astonishment on finding the room empty. One of the younger men rushed to the

window at once, flung it up and stared out. His staring eyes and thicklipped bearded face came a foot from

my face. I was half minded to hit his silly countenance, but I arrested my doubled fist. He stared right through

me. So did the others as they joined him. The old man went and peered under the bed, and then they all made

a rush for the cupboard. They had to argue about it at length in Yiddish and Cockney English. They

concluded I had not answered them, that their imagination had deceived them. A feeling of extraordinary

elation took the place of my anger as I sat outside the window and watched these four peoplefor the old

lady came in, glancing suspiciously about her like a cat, trying to understand the riddle of my behaviour.

"The old man, so far as I could understand his patois, agreed with the old lady that I was a vivisectionist. The

sons protested in garbled English that I was an electrician, and appealed to the dynamos and radiators. They

were all nervous against my arrival, although I found subsequently that they had bolted the front door. The

old lady peered into the cupboard and under the bed, and one of the young men pushed up the register and

stared up the chimney. One of my fellow lodgers, a costermonger who shared the opposite room with a

butcher, appeared on the landing, and he was called in and told incoherent things.

"It occurred to me that the radiators, if they fell into the hands of some acute welleducated person, would

give me away too much, and watching my opportunity, I came into the room and tilted one of the little

dynamos off its fellow on which it was standing, and smashed both apparatus. Then, while they were trying

"I went into one of the sittingrooms and waited until they came down, still speculating and argumentative,

all a little disappointed at finding no 'horrors,' and all a little puzzled how they stood with regard to me. Then

I slipped up again with a box of matches, fired my heap of paper and rubbish, put the chairs and bedding

thereby, led the gas to the affair, by means of an india rubber tube, and waving a farewell to the room left it

"Fired the house. It was the only way to cover my trailand no doubt it was insured. I slipped the bolts of

the front door quietly and went out into the street. I was invisible, and I was only just beginning to realise the

extraordinary advantage my invisibility gave me. My head was already teeming with plans of all the wild and

"In going downstairs the first time I found an unexpected difficulty because I could not see my feet; indeed I

stumbled twice, and there was an unaccustomed clumsiness in gripping the bolt. By not looking down,

"My mood, I say, was one of exaltation. I felt as a seeing man might do, with padded feet and noiseless

clothes, in a city of the blind. I experienced a wild impulse to jest, to startle people, to clap men on the back,

"But hardly had I emerged upon Great Portland Street, however (my lodgings was close to the big draper's

shop there), when I heard a clashing concussion and was hit violently behind, and turning saw a man carrying

a basket of sodawater siphons, and looking in amazement at his burden. Although the blow had really hurt

me, I found something so irresistible in his astonishment that I laughed aloud. 'The devil's in the basket,' I

said, and suddenly twisted it out of his hand. He let go incontinently, and I swung the whole weight into the

"But a fool of a cabman, standing outside a public house, made a sudden rush for this, and his extending

fingers took me with excruciating violence under the ear. I let the whole down with a smash on the cabman,

and then, with shouts and the clatter of feet about me, people coming out of shops, vehicles pulling up, I

realised what I had done for myself, and cursing my folly, backed against a shop window and prepared to

dodge out of the confusion. In a moment I should be wedged into a crowd and inevitably discovered. I pushed

by the butcher boy, who luckily did not turn to see the nothingness that shoved him aside, and dodged behind

the cabman's fourwheeler. I do not know how they settled the business. I hurried straight across the road,

which was happily clear, and hardly heeding which way I went, in the fright of detection the incident had

"I tried to get into the stream of people, but they were too thick for me, and in a moment my heels were being

trodden upon. I took to the gutter, the roughness of which I found painful to my feet, and forthwith the shaft

of a crawling hansom dug me forcibly under the shoulder blade, reminding me that I was already bruised

severely. I staggered out of the way of the cab, avoided a perambulator by a convulsive movement, and found

myself behind the hansom. A happy thought saved me, and as this drove slowly along I followed in its

immediate wake, trembling and astonished at the turn of my adventure. And not only trembling, but

shivering. It was a bright day in January and I was stark naked and the thin slime of mud that covered the

road was freezing. Foolish as it seems to me now, I had not reckoned that, transparent or not, I was still

"Then suddenly a bright idea came into my head. I ran round and got into the cab. And so, shivering, scared,

and sniffing with the first intimations of a cold, and with the bruises in the small of my back growing upon

my attention. I drove slowly along Oxford Street and past Tottenham Court Road. My mood was as different

from that in which I had sallied forth ten minutes ago as it is possible to imagine. This invisibility indeed!

The one thought that possessed me washow was I to get out of the scrape I was in.

"We crawled past Mudie's, and there a tall woman with five or six yellowlabelled books hailed my cab, and

I sprang out just in time to escape her, shaving a railway van narrowly in my flight. I made off up the

roadway to Bloomsbury Square, intending to strike north past the Museum and so get into the quiet district. I

was not cruelly chilled, and the strangeness of my situation so unnerved me that I whimpered as I ran. At the

northward corner of the Square a little white dog ran out of the Pharmaceutical Society's offices, and

"I had never realised it before, but the nose is to the mind of a dog what the eye is to the mind of a seeing

man. Dogs perceive the scent of a man moving as men perceive his vision. This brute began barking and

leaping, showing, as it seemed to me, only too plainly that he was aware of me. I crossed Great Russell

Street, glancing over my shoulder as I did so, and went some way along Montague Street before I realised

"Then I became aware of a blare of music, and looking along the street saw a number of people advancing

out of Russell Square, red shirts, and the banner of the Salvation Army to the fore. Such a crowd, chanting in

the roadway and scoffing on the pavement, I could not hope to penetrate, and dreading to go back and farther

from home again, and deciding on the spur of the moment, I ran up the white steps of a house facing the

Museum railings, and stood there until the crowd should have passed. Happily the dog stopped at the noise of

the band too, hesitated, and turned tail, running back to Bloomsbury Square again.

"On came the band, bawling with unconscious irony some hymn about 'When shall we see his Face?' and it

seemed an interminable time to me before the tide of the crowd washed along the pavement by me. Thud,

thud, thud, came the drum with a vibrating resonance, and for the moment I did not notice two urchins

stopping at the railings by me. 'See 'em,' said one. 'See what?' said the other. 'Whythem footmarksbare.

"I looked down and saw the youngsters had stopped and were gaping at the muddy footmarks I had left

behind me up the newly whitened steps. The passing people elbowed and jostled them, but their confounded

intelligence was arrested. 'Thud, thud, thud, When, thud, shall we see, thud, his face, thud, thud.' 'There's a

barefoot man gone up them steps, or I don't know nothing,' said one. 'And he ain't never come down again.

"The thick of the crowd had already passed. 'Looky there, Ted,' quoth the younger of the detectives, with the

sharpness of surprise in his voice, and pointed straight to my feet. I looked down and saw at once the dim

suggestion of their outline sketched in splashes of mud. For a moment I was paralysed.

"'Why, that's rum,' said the elder. 'Dashed rum! It's just like the ghost of a foot, ain't it?' He hesitated and

advanced with outstretched hand. A man pulled up short to see what he was catching, and then a girl. In

another moment he would have touched me. Then I saw what to do. I made a step, the boy started back with

an exclamation, and with a rapid movement I swung myself over into the portico of the next house. But the

smaller boy was sharpeyed enough to follow the movement and before I was well down the steps and upon

the pavement, he had recovered from his momentary astonishment and was shouting out that the feet had

"They rushed round and saw my new footmarks flash into being on the lower step and upon the pavement.

'What's up?' asked some one. 'Feet! Look! Feet running!' Everybody in the road, except my three pursuers,

was pouring along after the Salvation Army, and this not only impeded me but them. There was an eddy of

surprise and interrogation. At the cost of bowling over one young fellow I got through, and in another

moment I was rushing headlong round the circuit of Russell Square, with six or seven astonished people

following my footmarks. There was no time for explanation, or else the whole host would have been after me.

"Twice I doubled round corners, thrice I crossed the road and came back on my tracks, and then, as my feet

grew hot and dry, the damp impressions began to fade. At last I had a breathing space and rubbed my feet

clean with my hands, and so got away altogether. The last I saw of the chase was a little group of a dozen

people perhaps, studying with infinite perplexity a slowly drying footprint that had resulted from a puddle in

Travistock Squarea footprint as isolated and incomprehensible to them as Crusoe's solitary discovery.

"This running warmed me to a certain extent, and I went on with a better courage through the maze of less

frequented roads that runs hereabouts. My back had now become very stiff and sore, my tonsils were painful

from the cabman's fingers, and the skin of my neck had been scratched by his nails; my feet hurt exceedingly

and I was lame from a little cut on one foot. I saw in time a blind man approaching me, and fled limping, for I

feared his subtle intuitions. Once or twice accidental collisions occurred and I left people amazed, with

unaccountable curses ringing in their ears. Then came something silent and quiet against my face, and across

the Square fell a thin veil of slowly falling flakes of snow. I had caught a cold, and do as I would I could not

avoid an occasional sneeze. And every dog that came in sight, with its pointing nose and curious sniffing, was

"Then came men and boys running, first one and then others, and shouting as they ran. It was a fire. They ran

in the direction of my lodging, and looking back down a street I saw a mass of black smoke streaming up

above the roofs and telephone wires. It was my lodging burning; my clothes, my apparatus, all my resources

indeed, except my chequebook and the three volumes of memoranda that awaited me in Great Portland

Street, were there. Burning! I had burnt my boatsif ever a man did! The place was blazing."

The Invisible Man paused and thought. Kemp glanced nervously out of the window. "Yes?" he said. "Go on."

"So last January, with the beginning of a snowstorm in the air about meand if it settled on me it would

betray me!weary, cold, painful, inexpressibly wretched, and still but half convinced of my invisible

quality, I began this new life to which I am committed. I had no refuge, no appliances, no human being in the

world in whom I could confide. To have told my secret would have given me awaymade a mere show and

rarity of me. Nevertheless, I was half minded to accost some passerby and throw myself upon his mercy.

But I knew too clearly the terror and brutal cruelty my advances would evoke. I made no plans in the street.

My sole object was to get shelter from the snow, to get myself covered and warm; then I might hope to plan.

But even to me, an Invisible Man, the rows of London houses stood latched, barred, and bolted impregnably.

"Only one thing could I see clearly before me, the cold exposure and misery of the snowstorm and the night.

"And then I had a brilliant idea. I turned down one of the roads leading from Gower Street to Tottenham

Court Road, and found myself outside Omniums, the big establishment where everything is to be

boughtyou know the placemeat, grocery, linen, furniture, clothing, oil paintings evena huge

meandering collection of shops rather than a shop. I had thought I should find the doors open, but they were

closed, and as I stood in the wide entrance a carriage stopped outside, and a man in uniformyou know the

kind of personage with 'Omnium' on his capflung open the door. I contrived to enter, and walking down

the shopit was a department where they were selling ribbons and gloves and stockings and that kind of

thingcame to a more spacious region devoted to picnic baskets and wicker furniture.

"I did not feel safe there, however; people were going to and fro, and I prowled restlessly about until I came

upon a huge section in an upper floor containing scores and hundreds of bedsteads, and beyond these I found

a restingplace at last among a huge pile of folded flock mattresses. The place was already lit up and

aggreeably warm, and I decided to remain where I was, keeping a cautious eye on the two or three sets of

shopmen and customers who were meandering through the place until closing time came. Then I should be

able, I thought, to rob the place for food and clothing, and disguised, prowl through it and examine its

resources, perhaps sleep on some of the bedding. That seemed an acceptable plan. My idea was to procure

clothing to make myself a muffled but acceptable figure, to get money, and then to recover my books and

parcels where they awaited me, take a lodging somewhere and elaborate plans for the complete realisation of

"Closing time arrived quickly enough; it could not have been more than an hour after I took up my position

on the mattresses before I noticed the blinds of the windows being drawn, and customers being marched

doorward. And then a number of brisk young men began with remarkable alacrity to tidy up the goods that

remained disturbed. I left my lair as the crowds diminished, and prowled cautiously out into the less desolate

parts of the shop. I was really surprised to observe how rapidly the young men and women whipped away the

goods displayed for sale during the day. All the boxes of goods, the hanging fabrics, the festoons of lace, the

boxes of sweets in the grocery section, the displays of this and that, were being whipped down, folded up,

slapped into tidy receptacles, and everything that could not be taken down and put away had sheets of some

coarse stuff like sacking flung over it. Finally all the chairs were turned up on to the counters, leaving the

floor clear. Directly each of these young people had done, he or she made promptly for the door with such an

expression of animation as I have rarely observed in a shop assistant before. Then came a lot of youngsters

scattering sawdust and carrying pails and brooms. I had to dodge to get out of the way, and as it was, my

ankle got stung with the sawdust. For some time, wandering through the swathed and darkened departments, I

could hear the brooms at work. And at last a good hour or more after the shop had been closed, came a noise

of locking doors. Silence came upon the place, and I found myself wandering through the vast and intricate

shops, galleries and showrooms of the place, alone. It was very still; in one place I remember passing near

one of the Tottenham Court Road entrances and listening to the tapping of bootheels of the passersby.

"My first visit was to the place where I had seen stockings and gloves for sale. It was dark, and I had the devil

of a hunt after matches, which I found at last in the drawer of the little cash desk. Then I had to get a candle. I

had to tear down wrappings and ransack a number of boxes and drawers, but at last I managed to turn out

what I sought; the box label called them lambswool pants, and lambswool vests. Then socks, a thick

comforter, and then I went to the clothing place and got trousers, a lounge jacket, an overcoat and a slouch

hat a clerical sort of hat with the brim turned down. I began to feel a human being again, and my next

"Upstairs was a refreshment department, and there I got cold meat. There was coffee still in the urn, and I lit

the gas and warmed it up again, and altogether I did not do badly. Afterwards, prowling through the place in

search of blanketsI had to put up at last with a heap of down quiltsI came upon a grocery section with a

lot of chocolate and candied fruits, more than was good for me indeedand some white burgundy. And near

that was a toy department, and I had a brilliant idea. I found some artificial nosesdummy noses, you know,

and I thought of dark spectacles. But Omniums had no optical department. My nose had been a difficulty

indeedI had thought of paint. But the discovery set my mind running on wigs and masks and the like.

"My last thoughts before sleeping were the most agreeable I had had since the change. I was in a state of

physical serenity, and that was reflected in my mind. I thought that I should be able to slip out unobserved in

the morning with my clothes upon me, muffling my face with a white wrapper I had taken, purchase, with the

money I had taken, spectacles and so forth, and so complete my disguise. I lapsed into disorderly dreams of

all the fantastic things that had happened during the last few days. I saw the ugly little Jew of a landlord

vociferating in his rooms; I saw his two sons marvelling, and the wrinkled old woman's gnarled face as she

asked for her cat. I experienced again the strange sensation of seeing the cloth disappear, and so I came round

to the windy hillside and the sniffing old clergyman mumbling 'Dust to dust, earth to earth,' and my father's

"'You also,' said a voice, and suddenly I was being forced towards the grave. I struggled, shouted, appealed to

the mourners, but they continued stonily following the service; the old clergyman, too, never faltered droning

and sniffing through the ritual. I realised I was invisible and inaudible, that overwhelming forces had their

grip on me. I struggled in vain, I was forced over the brink, the coffin rang hollow as I fell upon it, and the

gravel came flying after me in spadefuls. Nobody heeded me, nobody was aware of me. I made convulsive

"The pale London dawn had come, the place was full of a chilly grey light that filtered round the edges of the

window blinds. I sat up, and for a time I could not think where this ample apartment, with its counters, its

piles of rolled stuff, its heaps of quilts and cushions, its iron pillars, might be. Then, as recollection came

"Then far down the place, in the brighter light of some department which had already raised its blinds, I saw

two men approaching. I scrambled to my feet, looking about me for some way of escape, and even as I did so

the sound of my movement made them aware of me. I suppose they saw merely a figure moving quietly and

quickly away. 'Who's that?' cried one, and 'Stop there,' shouted the other. I dashed round a corner and came

full tilta faceless figure, mind you!on a lanky lad of fifteen. He yelled and I bowled him over, rushed

past him, turned another corner, and by a happy inspiration threw myself flat behind a counter. In another

moment feet went running past and I heard voices shouting, 'All hands to the doors!' asking what was 'up,'

"Lying on the ground, I felt scared out of my wits. Butodd as it may seemit did not occur to me at the

moment to take off my clothes as I should have done. I had made up my mind, I suppose, to get away in

them, and that ruled me. And then down the vista of the counters came a bawling of 'Here he is!'

"I sprang to my feet, whipped a chair off the counter, and sent it whirling at the fool who had shouted, turned,

came into another round a corner, sent him spinning, and rushed up the stairs. He kept his footing, gave a

view hallo! and came up the staircase hot after me. Up the staircase were piled a multitude of those bright

"That's it! Art pots. Well, I turned at the top step and swung round, plucked one out of a pile and smashed it

on his silly head as he came at me. The whole pile of pots went headlong, and I heard shouting and footsteps

running from all parts. I made a mad rush for the refreshment place, and there was a man in white like a man

cook, who took up the chase. I made one last desperate turn and found myself among lamps and

ironmongery. I went behind the counter of this, and waited for my cook, and as he bolted in at the head of the

chase, I doubled him up with a lamp. Down he went, and I crouched behind the counter and began whipping

off my clothes as fast as I could. Coat, jacket, trousers, shoes were all right, but a lambswool vest fits a man

like a skin. I heard more men coming, my cook was lying quiet on the other side of the counter, stunned or

scared speechless, and I had to make another dash for it, like a rabbit hunted out of a woodpile.

"'This way, policeman!' I heard some one shouting. I found myself in my bedstead storeroom again, and at

the end a wilderness of wardrobes. I rushed among them, went flat, got rid of my vest after infinite wriggling,

and stood a free man again, panting and scared, as the policeman and three of the shopmen came round the

corner. They made a rush for the vest and pants, and collared the trousers. 'He's dropping his plunder,' said

"I stood watching them hunt for me for a time, and cursing my illluck in losing the clothes. Then I went into

the refreshment room, drank a little milk I found there, and sat down by the fire to consider my position.

"In a little while two assistants came and began to talk over the business very excitedly and like the fools they

were. I heard a magnified account of my depredations, and other speculations as to my whereabouts. Then I

fell to scheming again. The insurmountable difficulty of the place, especially now it was alarmed, was to get

any plunder out of it. I went down into the warehouse to see if there was any chance of packing and

addressing a parcel, but I could not understand the system of checking. About eleven o'clock, the snow

having thawed as it fell, and the day being finer and a little warmer than the previous one, I decided that the

Emporium was hopeless, and went out again, exasperated at my want of success, with only the vaguest plans

"But you begin to realise now," said the Invisible Man, "the full disadvantage of my condition. I had no

shelter, no covering. To get clothing was to forego all my advantage, to make of myself a strange and terrible

thing. I was fasting; for to eat, to fill myself with unassimilated matter, would be to become grotesquely

"Nor had I. And the snow had warned me of other dangers. I could not go abroad in snowit would settle on

me and expose me. Rain, too, would make me a watery outline, a glistening surface of a mana bubble. And

fogI should be like a fainter bubble in a fog, a surface, a greasy glimmer of humanity. Moreover, as I went

abroadin the London airI gathered dirt about my ankles, floating smuts and dust upon my skin. I did not

know how long it would be before I should become visible from that cause also. But I saw clearly it could not

"I went into the slums towards Great Portland Street, and found myself at the end of the street in which I had

lodged. I did not go that way, because of the crowd halfway down it opposite to the still smoking ruins of the

house I had fired. My most immediate problem was to get clothing. What to do with my face puzzled me.

Then I saw in one of those little miscellaneous shopsnews, sweets, toys, stationery, belated Christmas

tomfoolery, and so forthan array of masks and noses. I realised that problem was solved. In a flash I saw

my course. I turned about, no longer aimless, and went circuitously in order to avoid the busy ways,

towards the back streets north of the Strand; for I remembered, though not very distinctly where, that some

"The day was cold, with a nipping wind down the northward running streets. I walked fast to avoid being

overtaken. Every crossing was a danger, every passenger a thing to watch alertly. One man as I was about to

pass him at the top of Bedford Street, turned upon me abruptly and came into me, sending me into the road

and almost under the wheel of a passing hansom. The verdict of the cabrank was that he had had some sort

of stroke. I was so unnerved by this encounter that I went into Covent Garden Market and sat down for some

time in a quiet corner by a stall of violets, panting and trembling. I found I had caught a fresh cold, and had to

"At last I reached the object of my quest, a dirty flyblown little shop in a byway near Drury Lane, with a

window full of tinsel robes, sham jewels, wigs, slippers, dominoes and theatrical photographs. The shop was

oldfashioned and low and dark, and the house rose above it for four storeys, dark and dismal. I peered

through the window and, seeing no one within, entered. The opening of the door set a clanking bell ringing. I

left it open, and walked round a bare costume stand, into a corner behind a cheval glass. For a minute or so no

one came. Then I heard heavy feet striding across a room, and a man appeared down the shop.

"My plans were now perfectly definite. I proposed to make my way into the house, secrete myself upstairs,

watch my opportunity, and when everything was quiet, rummage out a wig, mask, spectacles, and costume,

and go into the world, perhaps a grotesque but still a credible figure. And incidentally of course I could rob

"The man who had entered the shop was a short, slight, hunched, beetlebrowed man, with long arms and

very short bandy legs. Apparently I had interrupted a meal. He stared about the shop with an expression of

expectation. This gave way to surprise, and then anger, as he saw the shop empty. 'Damn the boys!' he said.

He went to stare up and down the street. He came in again in a minute, kicked the door to with his foot

"I came forward to follow him, and at the noise of my movement he stopped dead. I did so too, startled by his

"I stood hesitating. Suddenly I heard his quick footsteps returning, and the door reopened. He stood looking

about the shop like one who was still not satisfied. Then, murmuring to himself, he examined the back of the

counter and peered behind some fixtures. Then he stood doubtful. He had left the house door open and I

"It was a queer little room, poorly furnished and with a number of big masks in the corner. On the table was

his belated breakfast, and it was a confoundedly exasperating thing for me, Kemp, to have to sniff his coffee

and stand watching while he came in and resumed his meal. And his table manners were irritating. Three

doors opened into the little room, one going upstairs and one down, but they were all shut. I could not get out

of the room while he was there, I could scarcely move because of his alertness, and there was draught down

"The spectacular quality of my sensations was curious and novel, but for all that I was heartily tired and

angry long before he had done his eating. But at last he made an end and putting his beggarly crockery on the

black tin tray upon which he had had his teapot, and gathering all the crumbs up on the mustardstained

cloth, he took the whole lot of things after him. His burden prevented his shutting the door behind himas

he would have done; I never saw such a man for shutting doorsand I followed him into a very dirty

underground kitchen and scullery. I had the pleasure of seeing him begin to wash up, and then, finding no

good in keeping down there, and the brick floor being cold to my feet, I returned upstairs and sat in his chair

by the fire. It was burning low, and scarcely thinking, I put on a little coal. The noise of this brought him up

at once, and he stood aglare. He peered about the room and was within an ace of touching me. Even after that

examination, he scarcely seemed satisfied. He stopped in the doorway and took a final inspection before he

"I waited in the little parlour for an age, and at last he came up and opened the upstairs door. I just managed

"On the staircase he stopped suddenly, so that I very nearly blundered into him. He stood looking back right

into my face and listening. 'I could have sworn,' he said. His long hairy hand pulled at his lower lip. His eye

"His hand was on the handle of a door, and then he stopped again with the same puzzled anger on his face.

He was becoming aware of the faint sounds of my movements about him. The man must have had

diabolically acute hearing. He suddenly flashed into rage. 'If there's any one in this house,' he cried with an

oath, and left the threat unfinished. He put his hand in his pocket, failed to find what he wanted, and rushing

past me went blundering noisily and pugnaciously downstairs. But I did not follow him. I sat on the head of

"Presently he came up again, still muttering. He opened the door of the room, and before I could enter,

"I resolved to explore the house, and spent some time in doing so as noiselessly as possible. The house was

very old and tumbledown, damp so that the paper in the attics was peeling from the walls, and ratinfested.

Some of the door handles were stiff and I was afraid to turn them. Several rooms I did inspect were

unfurnished, and others were littered with theatrical lumber, bought secondhand, I judged, from its

appearance. In one room next to his I found a lot of old clothes. I began routing among these, and in my

eagerness forgot again the evident sharpness of his ears. I heard a stealthy footstep and, looking up just in

time, saw him peering in at the tumbled heap and holding an oldfashioned revolver in his hand. I stood

perfectly still while he stared about openmouthed and suspicious. 'It must have been her,' he said slowly.

"He shut the door quietly, and immediately I heard the key turn in the lock. Then his footsteps retreated. I

realised abruptly that I was locked in. For a minute a did not know what to do. I walked from door to window

and back, and stood perplexed. A gust of anger came upon me. But I decided to inspect the clothes before I

did anything further, and my first attempt brought down a pile from an upper shelf. This brought him back,

more sinister than ever. That time he actually touched me, jumped back with amazement and stood

"Presently he calmed a little. 'Rats,' he said in an undertone, fingers on lip. He was evidently a little scared. I

edged quietly out of the room, but a plank creaked. Then the infernal little brute started going all over the

house, revolver in hand and locking door after door and pocketing the keys. When I realised what he was up

to I had a fit of rageI could hardly control myself sufficiently to watch my opportunity. By this time I

knew he was alone in the house, and so I made no more ado, but knocked him on the head."

"Yesstunned himas he was going downstairs. Hit him from behind with a stool that stood on the

"Are all very well for common people. But the point was, Kemp, that I had to get out of that house in a

disguise without his seeing me. I couldn't think of any other way of doing it. And then I gagged him with a

"Made a sort of bag of it. It was rather a good idea to keep the idiot scared and quiet, and a devilish hard thing

to get out of head away from the string. My dear Kemp, it's no good your sitting and glaring as though I

was a murderer. It had to be done. He had his revolver. If once he saw me he would be able to describe

"But still," said Kemp, "in Englandtoday. And the man was in his own house, and you werewell,

"Robbing! Confound it! You'll call me a thief next! Surely, Kemp, you're not fool enough to dance on the old

Kemp's face grew a trifle hard. He was about to speak and checked himself. "I suppose, after all," he said

with a sudden change of manner, "the thing had to be done. You were in a fix. But still"

"Of course I was in a fixan infernal fix. And he made me wild toohunting me about the house, fooling

about with his revolver, locking and unlocking doors. He was simply exasperating. You don't blame me, do

"I never blame any one," said Kemp. "It's quite out of fashion. What did you do next?"

"I was hungry. Downstairs I found a loaf and some rank cheese more than sufficient to satisfy my hunger.

I took some brandy and water, and then went up past my impromptu baghe was lying quite stillto the

room containing the old clothes. This looked out upon the street, two lace curtains brown with dirt guarding

the window. I went and peered out through their interstices. Outside the day was brightby contrast with the

brown shadows of the dismal house in which I found myself, dazzlingly bright. A brisk traffic was going by,

fruit carts, a hansom, a fourwheeler with a pile of boxes, a fishmonger's cart. I turned with spots of colour

swimming before my eyes to the shadowy fixtures behind me. My excitement was giving place to a clear

apprehension of my position again. The room was full of a faint scent of benzoline, used, I suppose, in

"I began a systematic search of the place. I should judge the hunchback had been alone in the house for some

time. He was a curious person. Everything that could possibly be of service to me I collected in the clothes

storeroom, and then I made a deliberate selection. I found a handbag I thought a suitable possession, and

"I had thought of painting and powdering my face and all that there was to show of me, in order to render

myself visible, but the disadvantage of this lay in the fact that I should require turpentine and other appliances

and a considerable amount of time before I could vanish again. Finally I chose a mask of the better type,

slightly grotesque but not more so than many human beings, dark glasses, greyish whiskers, and a wig. I

could find no underclothing, but that I could buy subsequently, and for the time I swathed myself in calico

dominoes and some white cashmere scarfs. I could find no socks, but the hunchback's boots were rather a

loose fit and sufficed. In a desk in the shop were three sovereigns and about thirty shillings' worth of silver,

and in a locked cupboard I burst in the inner room were eight pounds in gold. I could go forth into the world

"Then came a curious hesitation. Was my appearance really credible? I tried myself with a little bedroom

lookingglass, inspecting myself from every point of view to discover any forgotten chink, but it all seemed

sound. I was grotesque to the theatrical pitch, a stage miser, but I was certainly not a physical impossibility.

Gathering confidence, I took my lookingglass down into the shop, pulled down the shop blinds, and

surveyed myself from every point of view with the help of the cheval glass in the corner.

"I spent some minutes screwing up my courage and then unlocked the shop door and marched out into the

street, leaving the little man to get out of his sheet again when he liked. In five minutes a dozen turnings

intervened between me and the costumier's shop. No one appeared to notice me very pointedly. My last

"No," said the Invisible Man. "Nor have I heard what became of him. I suppose he untied himself or kicked

"Oh!disillusionment again. I thought my troubles were over. Practically I thought I had impunity to do

whatever I chose, everythingsave to give away my secret. So I thought. Whatever I did, whatever the

consequences might be, was nothing to me. I had merely to fling aside my garments and vanish. No person

could hold me. I could take my money where I found it. I decided to treat myself to a sumptuous feast, and

then put up at a good hotel, and accumulate a new outfit of property. I felt amazingly confidentit's not

particularly pleasant recalling that I was an ass. I went into a place and was already ordering a lunch, when it

occurred to me that I could not eat unless I exposed my invisible face. I finished ordering the lunch, told the

man I should be back in ten minutes, and went out exasperated. I don't know if you have ever been

"I could have smashed the silly devils. At last, faint with the desire for tasteful food, I went into another place

and demanded a private room. 'I am disfigured,' I said. 'Badly.' They looked at me curiously, but of course it

was not their affairand so at last I got my lunch. It was not particularly well served, but it sufficed; and

when I had had it, I sat over a cigar, trying to plan my line of action. And outside a snowstorm was

"The more I thought it over, Kemp, the more I realised what a helpless absurdity an Invisible Man wasin a

cold and dirty climate and a crowded civilised city. Before I made this mad experiment I had dreamt of a

thousand advantages. That afternoon it seemed all disappointment. I went over the heads of the things a man

reckons desirable. No doubt invisibility made it possible to get them, but it made it impossible to enjoy them

when they are got. Ambitionwhat is the good of pride of place when you cannot appear there? What is the

good of the love of woman when her name must needs be Delilah? I have no taste for politics, for the

blackguardisms of fame, for philanthropy, for sport. What was I to do? And for this I had become a

"But how did you get to Iping?" said Kemp, anxious to keep his guest busy talking.

"I went there to work. I had one hope. It was a half idea! I have it still. It is a full blown idea now. A way of

getting back! Of restoring what I have done. When I choose. When I have done all I mean to do invisibly.

"Yes. I had simply to get my three volumes of memoranda and my chequebook, my luggage and

underclothing, order a quantity of chemicals to work out this idea of mineI will show you the calculations

as soon as I get my booksand then I started. Jove! I remember the snowstorm now, and the accursed bother

"At the end," said Kemp, "the day before yesterday, when they found you out, you ratherto judge by the

"That's his luck, then. I clean lost my temper, the fools! Why couldn't they leave me alone? And that grocer

"I don't know about that tramp of mine," said the Invisible Man, with an unpleasant laugh.

"By Heaven, Kemp, you don't know what rage is! To have worked for years, to have planned and plotted, and

then to get some fumbling purblind idiot messing across your course! Every conceivable sort of silly creature

"But now," said Kemp, with a side glance out of the window, "what are we to do?"

He moved nearer his guest as he spoke in such a manner as to prevent the possibility of a glimpse of the three

men who were advancing up the hill roadwith an intolerable slowness, as it seemed to Kemp.

"What were you planning to do when you were heading for Port Burdock? Had you any plan?"

"I was going to clear out of the country. But I have altered that plan rather since seeing you. I thought it

would be wise, now the weather is hot and invisibility possible, to make for the South. Especially as my

secret was known, and every one would be on the lookout for a masked and muffled man. You have a line of

steamers from here to France. My idea was to get aboard one and run the risks of the passage. Thence I could

go by train into Spain, or else get to Algiers. It would not be difficult. There a man might always be

invisibleand yet live. And do things. I was using that tramp as a money box and luggage carrier, until I

"And then the filthy brute must needs try and rob me! He has hidden my books, Kemp. Hidden my books! If I

"He's in the town police station, locked up, by his own request, in the strongest cell in the place."

"Certainly," said Kemp, a little nervously, wondering if he heard footsteps outside. "Certainly we must get

Kemp tried to think of something to keep the talk going, but the Invisible Man resumed of his own accord.

"Blundering into your house, Kemp," he said, "changes all my plans. For you are a man that can understand.

In spite of all that has happened, in spite of this publicity, of the loss of my books, of what I have suffered,

"Ah! Now" The Invisible Man stood up, and sticking his arms akimbo began to pace the study.

"I made a mistake, Kemp, a huge mistake, in carrying this thing through alone. I have wasted strength, time,

opportunities. Aloneit is wonderful how little a man can do alone! To rob a little, to hurt a little, and there

"What I want, Kemp, is a goalkeeper, a helper, and a hiding place, an arrangement whereby I can sleep

and eat and rest in peace, and unsuspected. I must have a confederate. With a confederate, with food and

"Hitherto I have gone on vague lines. We have to consider all that invisibility means, all that it does not

mean. It means little advantage for eavesdropping and so forthone makes sounds. It's of little help, a little

help perhapsin housebreaking and so forth. Once you've caught me you could easily imprison me. But on

the other hand I am hard to catch. This invisibility, in fact, is only good in two cases: It's useful in getting

away, it's useful in approaching. It's particularly useful, therefore, in killing. I can walk round a man,

whatever weapon he has, choose my point, strike as I like. Dodge as I like. Escape as I like."

"It is killing we must do," repeated Kemp. "I'm listening to your plan, Griffin, but I'm not agreeing, mind.

"Not wanton killing but a judicious slaying. The point is they know there is an Invisible Manas well as we

know there is an Invisible Man. And that Invisible Man, Kemp, must now establish a Reign of Terror.

Yesno doubt it's startling. But I mean it. A Reign of Terror. He must take some town like your Burdock

and terrify and dominate it. He must issue his orders. He can do that in a thousand waysscraps of paper

thrust under doors would suffice. And all who disobey his orders he must kill, and kill all who would defend

"Humph!" said Kemp, no longer listening to Griffin but to the sound of his front door opening and closing.

"It seems to me, Griffin," he said, to cover his wandering attention, "that your confederate would be in a

"No one would know he was a confederate," said the Invisible Man, eagerly. And then suddenly, "Hush!

"Nothing," said Kemp, and suddenly began to speak loud and fast. "I don't agree to this, Griffin," he said.

"Understand me, I don't agree to this. Why dream of playing a game against the race? How can you hope to

gain happiness? Don't be a lone wolf. Publish your results; take the worldtake the nation at leastinto

The Invisible Man interrupted Kemp. "There are footsteps coming upstairs," he said in a low voice.

Kemp hesitated for a second and then moved to intercept him. The Invisible Man started and stood still.

"Traitor!" cried the Voice, and suddenly the dressinggown opened, and sitting down the Unseen began to

disrobe. Kemp made three swift steps to the door, and forthwith the Invisible Manhis legs had

With a quick movement Kemp thrust the Invisible Man back, sprang aside, and slammed the door. The key

was outside and ready. In another moment Griffin would have been alone in the belvedere study, a prisoner.

Save for one little thing. The key had been slipped in hastily that morning. As Kemp slammed the door it fell

Kemp's face became white. He tried to grip the door handle with both hands. For a moment he stood lugging.

Then the door gave six inches. But he got it closed again. The second time it was jerked a foot wide, and the

dressinggown came wedging itself into the opening. His throat was gripped by invisible fingers, and he left

his hold on the handle to defend himself. He was forced back, tripped and pitched heavily into the corner of

Halfway up the staircase was Colonel Adye, the recipient of Kemp's letter, the chief of the Burdock police.

He was staring aghast at the sudden appearance of Kemp, followed by the extraordinary sight of clothing

tossing empty in the air. He saw Kemp felled, and struggling to his feet. He saw him rush forward, and go

Then suddenly he was struck violently. By nothing! A vast weight, it seemed, leapt upon him, and he was

hurled headlong down the staircase, with a grip at his throat and a knee in his groin. An invisible foot trod on

his back, a ghostly patter passed downstairs, he heard the two police officers in the hall shout and run, and the

He rolled over and sat up staring. He saw, staggering down the staircase, Kemp, dusty and dishevelled, one

side of his face white from a blow, his lip bleeding, holding a pink dressinggown and some underclothing in

For a space Kemp was too inarticulate to make Adye understand the swift things that had just happened. The

two men stood on the landing, Kemp speaking swiftly, the grotesque swathings of Griffin still on his arm.

"He's mad," said Kemp; "inhuman. He is pure selfishness. He thinks of nothing but his own advantage, his

own safety. I have listened to such a story this morning of brutal selfseeking! He has wounded men. He will

kill them unless we can prevent him. He will create a panic. Nothing can stop him. He is going out

"But how?" cried Kemp, and suddenly became full of ideas. "You must begin at once. You must set every

available man to work. You must prevent his leaving this district. Once he gets away he may go through the

countryside as he wills, killing and maiming. He dreams of a reign of terror! A reign of terror, I tell you. You

must set a watch on trains and roads and shipping. The garrison must help. You must wire for help. The only

thing that may keep him here is the thought of recovering some books of notes he counts of value. I will tell

"And you must prevent him from eating or sleeping; day and night the country must be astir for him. Food

must be locked up and secured, all food, so that he will have to break his way to it. The houses everywhere

must be barred against him. Heaven send us cold nights and rain! The whole countryside must begin hunting

and keep hunting. I tell you, Adye, he is a danger, a disaster; unless he is pinned and secured, it is frightful to

"What else can we do?" said Adye. "I must go down at once and begin organising. But why not come?

Yesyou come too! Come, and we must hold a sort of council of war,get Hopps to helpand the railway

managers. By jove! it's urgent. Come alongtell me as we go. What else is there we can do? Put that stuff

In another moment Adye was leading the way downstairs. They found the front door open and the policemen

"We must go to the central station at once," said Adye. "One of you go on down and get a cab to come up and

"Good," said Adye. "It's not generally known, but the prison officials over at Halstead know a man with

"Bear in mind," said Kemp, "his food shows. After eating, his food shows until it is assimilated. So that he

has to hide after eating. You must keep on beatingevery thicket, every quiet corner. And put all weapons,

all implements that might be weapons, away. He can't carry such things for long. And what he can snatch up

Adye drew the air in between his teeth sharply. "It's unsportsmanlike. I don't know. But I'll have powdered

"The man's become inhuman, I tell you," said Kemp. "I am as sure he will establish a reign of terrorso

soon as he has got over the emotions of this escapeas I am sure I am talking to you. Our only chance is to

be ahead. He has cut himself off from his kind. His blood be upon his own head."

The Invisible Man seems to have rushed out of Kemp's house in a state of blind fury. A little child playing

near Kemp's gateway was violently caught up and thrown aside, so that its ankle was broken, and thereafter

for some hours the Invisible Man passed out of human perceptions. No one knows where he went nor what he

did. But one can imagine him hurrying through the hot June forenoon, up the hill and on to the open

downland behind Port Burdock, raging and despairing at his intolerable fate, and sheltering at last, heated and

weary, amid the thickets of Hintondean, to piece together again his shattered schemes against his species.

That seems the most probable refuge for him, for there it was he reasserted himself in a grimly tragical

One wonders what his state of mind may have been during that time, and what plans he devised. No doubt he

was almost ecstatically exasperated by Kemp's treachery, and though we may be able to understand the

motives that led to that deceit, we may still imagine and even sympathise a little with the fury the attempted

surprise must have occasioned. Perhaps something of the stunned astonishment of his Oxford Street

experiences may have returned to him, for evidently he had counted on Kemp's cooperation in his brutal

dream of a terrorised world. At any rate he vanished from human ken about midday, and no living witness

can tell what he did until about halfpast two. It was a fortunate thing, perhaps, for humanity, but for him it

During that time a growing multitude of men scattered over the countryside were busy. In the morning he had

still been simply a legend, a terror; in the afternoon, by virtue chiefly of Kemp's drily worded proclamation,

he was presented as a tangible antagonist, to be wounded, captured, or overcome, and the countryside began

organising itself with inconceivable rapidity. By two o'clock even he might still have removed himself out of

the district by getting aboard a train, but after two that became impossible. Every passenger train along the

lines on a great parallelogram between Southampton, Manchester, Brighton, and Horsham, travelled with

locked doors, and the goods traffic was almost entirely suspended. And in a great circle of twenty miles

round Port Burdock, men armed with guns and bludgeons were presently setting out in groups of three and

Mounted policemen rode along the country lanes, stopping at every cottage and warning the people to lock up

their houses, and keep indoors unless they were armed, and all the elementary schools had broken up by three

o'clock, and the children, scared and keeping together in groups, were hurrying home. Kemp's

proclamationsigned indeed by Adyewas posted over almost the whole district by four or five o'clock in

the afternoon. It gave briefly but clearly all the conditions of the struggle, the necessity of keeping the

Invisible Man from food and sleep, the necessity for incessant watchfulness and for a prompt attention to any

evidence of his movements. And so swift and decided was the action of the authorities, so prompt and

universal was the belief in this strange being, that before nightfall an area of several hundred square miles

was in a stringent state of siege. And before nightfall, too, a thrill of horror went through the whole watching

nervous countryside. Going from whispering mouth to mouth, swift and certain over the length and breadth

If our supposition that the Invisible Man's refuge was the Hintondean thickets, then we must suppose that in

the early afternoon he sallied out again bent upon some project that involved the use of a weapon. We cannot

know what the project was, but the evidence that he had the iron rod in hand before he met Wicksteed is to

We can know nothing of the details of the encounter. It occurred on the edge of a gravel pit, not two hundred

yards from Lord Burdock's Lodge gate. Everything points to a desperate struggle,the trampled ground, the

numerous wounds Mr. Wicksteed received, his splintered walkingstick; but why the attack was madesave

in a murderous frenzyit is impossible to imagine. Indeed the theory of madness is almost unavoidable. Mr.

Wicksteed was a man of fortyfive or fortysix, steward to Lord Burdock, of inoffensive habits and

appearance, the very last person in the world to provoke such a terrible antagonist. Against him it would seem

the Invisible Man used an iron rod dragged from a broken piece of fence. He stopped this quiet man, going

quietly home to his midday meal, attacked him, beat down his feeble defences, broke his arm, felled him, and

He must have dragged this rod out of the fencing before he met his victim; he must have been carrying it

ready in his hand. Only two details beyond what has already been stated seem to bear on the matter. One is

the circumstance that the gravel pit was not in Mr. Wicksteed's direct path home, but nearly a couple of

hundred yards out of his way. The other is the assertion of a little girl to the effect that, going to her afternoon

school, she saw the murdered man "trotting" in a peculiar manner across a field towards the gravel pit. Her

pantomime of his action suggests a man pursuing something on the ground before him and striking at it ever

and again with his walkingstick. She was the last person to see him alive. He passed out of her sight to his

death, the struggle being hidden from her only by a clump of beech trees and a slight depression in the

Now this, to the present writer's mind at least, lifts the murder out of the realm of the absolutely wanton. We

may imagine that Griffin had taken the rod as a weapon indeed, but without any deliberate intention of using

it in murder. Wicksteed may then have come by and noticed this rod inexplicably moving through the air.

Without any thought of the Invisible Manfor Port Burdock is ten miles awayhe may have pursued it. It

is quite conceivable that he may not even have heard of the Invisible Man. One can then imagine the Invisible

Man making offquietly in order to avoid discovering his presence in the neighbourhood, and Wicksteed,

excited and curious, pursuing this unaccountably locomotive objectfinally striking at it.

No doubt the Invisible Man could easily have distanced his middleaged pursuer under ordinary

circumstances, but the position in which Wicksteed's body was found suggests that he had the ill luck to drive

his quarry into a corner between a drift of stinging nettles and the gravel pit. To those who appreciate the

extraordinary irascibility of the Invisible Man, the rest of the encounter will be easy to imagine.

But this is pure hypothesis. The only undeniable factsfor stories of children are often unreliableare the

discovery of Wicksteed's body, done to death, and of the bloodstained iron rod flung among the nettles. The

abandonment of the rod by Griffin, suggests that in the emotional excitement of the affair, the purpose for

which he took itif he had a purposewas abandoned. He was certainly an intensely egotistical and

unfeeling man, but the sight of his victim, his first victim, bloody and pitiful at his feet, may have released

some long pent fountain of remorse to flood for a time whatever scheme of action he had contrived.

After the murder of Mr. Wicksteed, he would seem to have struck across the country towards the downland.

There is a story of a voice heard about sunset by a couple of men in a field near Fern Bottom. It was wailing

and laughing, sobbing and groaning, and ever and again it shouted. It must have been queer hearing. It drove

That afternoon the Invisible Man must have learnt something of the rapid use Kemp had made of his

confidences. He must have found houses locked and secured; he may have loitered about railway stations and

prowled about inns, and no doubt he read the proclamations and realised something of the nature of the

campaign against him. And as the evening advanced, the fields became dotted here and there with groups of

three or four men, and noisy with the yelping of dogs. These menhunters had particular instructions as to the

way they should support one another in the case of an encounter. He avoided them all. We may understand

something of his exasperation, and it could have been none the less because he himself had supplied the

information that was being used so remorselessly against him. For that day at least he lost heart; for nearly

twentyfour hours, save when he turned on Wicksteed, he was a hunted man. In the night, he must have eaten

and slept; for in the morning he was himself again, active, powerful, angry, and malignant, prepared for his

"You have been amazingly energetic and clever," this letter ran, "though what you stand to gain by it I cannot

imagine. You are against me. For a whole day you have chased me; you have tried to rob me of a night's rest.

But I have had food in spite of you, I have slept in spite of you, and the game is only beginning. The game is

only beginning. There is nothing for it, but to start the Terror. This announces the first day of the Terror. Port

Burdock is no longer under the Queen tell your Colonel of Police, and the rest of them; it is under methe

Terror! This is day one of year one of the new epoch the Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am Invisible Man

the First. To begin with the rule will be easy. The first day there will be one execution for the sake of

examplea man named Kemp. Death starts for him today. He may lock himself away, hide himself away,

get guards about him, put on armour if he likes; Death, the unseen Death, is coming. Let him take

precautions; it will impress my people. Death starts from the pillarbox by midday. The letter will fall in as

the postman comes along, then off! The game begins. Death starts. Help him not, my people, lest Death fall

Kemp read this letter twice. "It's no hoax," he said. "That's his voice! And he means it."

He turned the folded sheet over and saw on the addressed side of it the postmark Hintondean, and the prosaic

He got up, leaving his lunch unfinishedthe letter had come by the one o'clock postand went into his

study. He rang for his housekeeper, and told her to go round the house at once, examine all the fastenings of

the windows, and close all the shutters. He closed the shutters of his study himself. From a locked drawer in

his bedroom he took a little revolver, examined it carefully, and put it into the pocket of his lounge jacket. He

wrote a number of brief notes, one to Colonel Adye, gave them to his servant to take, with explicit

instructions as to her way of leaving the house. "There is no danger," he said, and added a mental reservation,

"to you." He remained meditative for a space after doing this, and then returned to his cooling lunch.

He ate with gaps of thought. Finally he struck the table sharply. "We will have him!" he said; "and I am the

He went up to the belvedere, carefully shutting every door after him. "It's a game," he said, "an odd

gamebut the chances are all for me, Mr. Griffin, in spite of your invisibility. Griffin contra mundumwith

He stood at the window staring at the hot hillside. "He must get food every dayand I don't envy him. Did

he really sleep last night? Out in the open somewheresecure from collisions. I wish we could get some

He went close to the window. Something rapped smartly against the brickwork over the frame, and made him

"I'm getting nervous," said Kemp. But it was five minutes before he went to the window again. "It must have

Presently he heard the frontdoor bell ringing, and hurried downstairs. He unbolted and unlocked the door,

examined the chain, put it up, and opened cautiously without showing himself. A familiar voice hailed him. It

Kemp released the chain, and Adye entered through as narrow an opening as possible. He stood in the hall,

looking with infinite relief at Kemp refastening the door. "Note was snatched out of her hand. Scared her

horribly. She's down at the station. Hysterics. He's close here. What was it about?"

"What a fool I was," said Kemp. "I might have known. It's not an hour's walk from Hintondean. Already!"

"Look here!" said Kemp, and led the way into his study. He handed Adye the Invisible Man's letter. Adye

"Proposed a traplike a fool," said Kemp, "and sent my proposal out by a maid servant. To him."

A resounding smash of glass came from upstairs. Adye had a silvery glimpse of a little revolver half out of

Kemp's pocket. "It's a window, upstairs!" said Kemp, and led the way up. There came a second smash while

they were still on the staircase. When they reached the study they found two of the three windows smashed,

half the room littered with splintered glass, and one big flint lying on the writing table. The two men stopped

in the doorway, contemplating the wreckage. Kemp swore again, and as he did so the third window went with

a snap like a pistol, hung starred for a moment, and collapsed in jagged, shivering triangles into the room.

Smash, and then whack of boards hit hard came from downstairs. "Confound him! said Kemp. "That must

beyesit's one of the bedrooms. He's going to do all the house. But he's a fool. The shutters are up, and

Another window proclaimed its destruction. The two men stood on the landing perplexed. "I have it! said

Adye. "Let me have a stick or something, and I'll go down to the station and get the bloodhounds put on. That

Kemp's hand went to his pocket. Then he hesitated. "I haven't oneat least to spare."

As they stood hesitating in the hall, they heard one of the firstfloor bedroom windows crack and clash.

Kemp went to the door and began to slip the bolts as silently as possible. His face was a little paler than

usual. "You must step straight out," said Kemp. In another moment Adye was on the doorstep and the bolts

were dropping back into the staples. He hesitated for a moment, feeling more comfortable with his back

against the door. Then he marched, upright and square, down the steps. He crossed the lawn and approached

the gate. A little breeze seemed to ripple over the grass. Something moved near him. "Stop a bit," said a

"Oblige me by going back to the house," said the Voice, as tense and grim as Adye's.

"Sorry," said Adye a little hoarsely, and moistened his lips with his tongue. The Voice was on his left front,

"What are you going for?" said the Voice, and there was a quick movement of the two, and a flash of sunlight

Adye desisted and thought. "Where I go," he said slowly, "is my own business." The words were still on his

lips, when an arm came round his neck, his back felt a knee, and he was sprawling backward. He drew

clumsily and fired absurdly, and in another moment he was struck in the mouth and the revolver wrested from

his grip. He made a vain clutch at a slippery limb, tried to struggle up and fell back. "Damn!" said Adye. The

Voice laughed. "I'd kill you now if it wasn't the waste of a bullet," it said. He saw the revolver in midair, six

"Attention" said the Voice, and then fiercely, "Don't try any games. Remember I can see your face if you

Adye moistened his lips again. He glanced away from the barrel of the revolver and saw the sea far off very

blue and dark under the midday sun, the smooth green down, the white cliff of the Head, and the

multitudinous town, and suddenly he knew that life was very sweet. His eyes came back to this little metal

thing hanging between heaven and earth, six yards away. "What am I to do?" he said sullenly.

"What am I to do?" asked the Invisible Man. "You will get help. The only thing is for you to go back."

Kemp had hurried upstairs after letting Adye out, and now crouching among the broken glass and peering

cautiously over the edge of the study windowsill, he saw Adye stand parleying with the Unseen. "Why

doesn't he fire?" whispered Kemp to himself. Then the revolver moved a little and the glint of the sunlight

flashed in Kemp's eyes. He shaded his eyes and tried to see the source of the blinding beam.

"Promise not to rush the door," Adye was saying. "Don't push a winning game too far. Give a man a chance."

Adye's decision seemed suddenly made. He turned towards the house, walking slowly with his hands behind

him. Kemp watched him puzzled. The revolver vanished, flashed again into sight, vanished again, and

became evident on a closer scrutiny as a little dark object following Adye. Then things happened very

quickly. Adye leapt backwards, swung round, clutched at this little object, missed it, threw up his hands and

fell forward on his face, leaving a little puff of blue in the air. Kemp did not hear the sound of the shot. Adye

For a space Kemp remained staring at the quiet carelessness of Adye's attitude. The afternoon was very hot

and still, nothing seemed stirring in all the world save a couple of yellow butterflies chasing each other

through the shrubbery between the house and the road gate. Adye lay on the lawn near the gate. The blinds of

all the villas down the hillroad were drawn, but in one little green summerhouse was a white figure,

apparently an old man asleep. Kemp scrutinised the surroundings of the house for a glimpse of the revolver,

Then came a ringing and knocking at the front door, that grew at last tumultuous, but pursuant to Kemp's

instructions the servants had locked themselves into their rooms. This was followed by a silence. Kemp sat

listening and then began peering cautiously out of the three windows, one after another. He went to the

staircase head and stood listening uneasily. He armed himself with his bedroom poker, and went to examine

the interior fastenings of the groundfloor windows again. Everything was safe and quiet. He returned to the

belvedere. Adye lay motionless over the edge of the gravel just as he had fallen. Coming along the road by

Everything was deadly still. The three people seemed very slow in approaching. He wondered what his

He started. There was a smash from below. He hesitated and went downstairs again. Suddenly the house

resounded with heavy blows and the splintering of wood. He heard a smash and the destructive clang of the

iron fastenings of the shutters. He turned the key and opened the kitchen door. As he did so, the shutters, split

and splintering, came flying inward. He stood aghast. The window frame, save for one cross bar, was still

intact, but only little teeth of glass remained in the frame. The shutters had been driven in with an axe, and

now the axe was descending in sweeping blows upon the window frame and the iron bars defending it. Then

suddenly it leapt aside and vanished. He saw the revolver lying on the path outside, and then the little weapon

sprang into the air. He dodged back. The revolver cracked just too late, and a splinter from the edge of the

closing door flashed over his head. He slammed and locked the door, and as he stood outside he heard Griffin

shouting and laughing. Then the blows of the axe, with their splitting and smashing accompaniments, were

Kemp stood in the passage trying to think. In a moment the Invisible Man would be in the kitchen. This door

A ringing came at the front door again. It would be the policemen. He ran into the hall, put up the chain, and

drew the bolts. He made the girl speak before he dropped the chain, and the three people blundered into the

"The Invisible Man!" said Kemp. "He has a revolver, with two shotsleft. He's killed Adye. Shot him

Suddenly the house was full of the Invisible Man's resounding blows on the kitchen door. The girl stared

towards the kitchen, shuddered, and retreated into the diningroom. Kemp tried to explain in broken

"This way," cried Kemp, starting into activity, and bundled the policemen into the diningroom doorway.

"Poker," said Kemp, and rushed to the fender. He handed a poker to each policeman. He suddenly flung

"Whup!" said one policeman, ducked, and caught the axe on his poker. The pistol snapped its penultimate

shot and ripped a valuable Sidney Cooper. The second policeman brought his poker down on the little

At the first clash the girl screamed, stood screaming for a moment by the fireplace, and then ran to open the

The axe receded into the passage, and fell to a position about two feet from the ground. They could hear the

Invisible Man breathing. "Stand away, you two," he said. "I want that man Kemp."

"We want you," said the first policeman, making a quick step forward and wiping with his poker at the Voice.

The Invisible Man must have started back. He blundered into the umbrella stand. Then, as the policeman

staggered with the swing of the blow he had aimed, the Invisible Man countered with the axe, the helmet

crumpled like paper, and the blow sent the man spinning to the floor at the head of the kitchen stairs. But the

second policeman, aiming behind the axe with his poker, hit something soft that snapped. There was a sharp

exclamation of pain and the axe fell to the ground. The policeman wiped again at vacancy and hit nothing; he

put his foot on the axe, and struck again. Then he stood, poker clubbed, listening intent for the slightest

He heard the diningroom window open, and a quick rush of feet within. His companion rolled over and sat

up with the blood running down between his eye and ear. "Where is he?" asked the man on the floor.

"Don't know. I've hit him. He's standing somewhere in the hall. Unless he's slipped past you. Doctor

The second policeman struggled to his feet. He stood up. Suddenly the faint pad of bare feet on the kitchen

stairs could be heard. "Yap!" cried the first policeman and incontinently flung his poker. It smashed a little

He made as if he would pursue the Invisible Man downstairs. Then he thought better of it and stepped into the

The diningroom window was wide open, and neither housemaid nor Kemp was to be seen.

Mr. Heelas, Mr. Kemp's nearest neighbour among the villa holders, was asleep in his summer house when the

siege of Kemp's house began. Mr. Heelas was one of the sturdy minority who refused to believe "in all this

nonsense" about an Invisible Man. His wife, however, as he was to be reminded subsequently, did. He

insisted upon walking about his garden just as if nothing was the matter, and he went to sleep in the afternoon

in accordance with the custom of years. He slept through the smashing of the windows, and then woke up

suddenly with a curious persuasion of something wrong. He looked across at Kemp's house, rubbed his eyes

and looked again. Then he put his feet to the ground, and sat listening. He said he was damned, and still the

strange thing was visible. The house looked as though it had been deserted for weeksafter a violent riot.

Every window was broken, and every window, save those of the belvedere study, was blinded by the internal

"I could have sworn it was all right"he looked at his watch "twenty minutes ago."

He became aware of a measured concussion and the clash of glass, far away in the distance. And then, as he

sat openmouthed, came a still more wonderful thing. The shutters of the drawingroom window were flung

open violently, and the housemaid in her outdoor hat and garments, appeared struggling in a frantic manner to

throw up the sash. Suddenly a man appeared beside her, helping herDr. Kemp! In another moment the

window was open, and the housemaid was struggling out; she pitched forward and vanished among the

shrubs. Mr. Heelas stood up, exclaiming vaguely and vehemently at all these wonderful things. He saw Kemp

stand on the sill, spring from the window, and reappear almost instantaneously running along a path in the

shrubbery and stooping as he ran, like a man who evades observation. He vanished behind a laburnum, and

appeared again clambering a fence that abutted on the open down. In a second he had tumbled over and was

"Lord!" cried Mr. Heelas, struck with an idea; "it's that Invisible Man brute! It's right, after all!"

With Mr. Heelas to think things like that was to act, and his cook watching him from the top window was

amazed to see him come pelting towards the house at a good nine miles an hour. "Thought he wasn't afraid,"

said the cook. "Mary, just come here!" There was a slamming of doors, a ringing of bells, and the voice of

Mr. Heelas bellowing like a bull. "Shut the doors, shut the windows, shut everything! the Invisible Man is

coming!" Instantly the house was full of screams and directions, and scurrying feet. He ran to shut the French

windows himself that opened on the veranda; as he did so Kemp's head and shoulders and knee appeared over

the edge of the garden fence. In another moment Kemp had ploughed through the asparagus, and was running

"You can't come in," said Mr. Heelas, shutting the bolts. "I'm very sorry if he's after you, but you can't come

Kemp appeared with a face of terror close to the glass, rapping and then shaking frantically at the French

window. Then, seeing his efforts were useless, he ran along the veranda, vaulted the end, and went to hammer

at the side door. Then he ran round by the side gate to the front of the house, and so into the hillroad. And

Mr. Heelas staring from his windowa face of horrorhad scarcely witnessed Kemp vanish, ere the

asparagus was being trampled this way and that by feet unseen. At that Mr. Heelas fled precipitately upstairs,

and the rest of the chase is beyond his purview. But as he passed the staircase window, he heard the side gate

Emerging into the hillroad, Kemp naturally took the downward direction, and so it was he came to run in his

own person the very race he had watched with such a critical eye from the belvedere study only four days

ago. He ran it well for a man out of training; and though his face was white and wet, his wits were cool to the

last. He ran with wide strides, and wherever a patch of rough ground intervened, wherever there came a patch

of raw flints, or a bit of broken glass shone dazzling, he crossed it and left the bare invisible feet that followed

For the first time in his life Kemp discovered that the hill road was indescribably vast and desolate, and that

the beginnings of the town far below at the hill foot were strangely remote. Never had there been a slower or

more painful method of progression than running. All the gaunt villas, sleeping in the afternoon sun, looked

locked and barred; no doubt they were locked and barredby his own orders. But at any rate they might

have kept a lookout for an eventuality like this! The town was rising up now, the sea had dropped out of sight

behind it, and people down below were stirring. A tram was just arriving at the hill foot. Beyond that was the

The people below were staring at him, one or two were running, and his breath was beginning to saw in his

throat. The tram was quite near now, and the Jolly Cricketers was noisily barring its doors. Beyond the tram

were posts and heaps of gravelthe drainage works. He had a transitory idea of jumping into the tram and

slamming the doors, and then he resolved to go to the police station. In another moment he had passed the

door of the Jolly Cricketers, and was in the blistering fag end of the street, with human beings about him. The

tram driver and his helperarrested by the sight of his furious haste stood staring with the tram horses

unhitched. Further on the astonished features of navvies appeared above the mounds of gravel.

His pace broke a little, and then he heard the swift pad of his pursuer, and leapt forward again. "The Invisible

Man!" he cried to the navvies, with a vague indicative gesture, and by an inspiration leapt the excavation and

placed a burly group between him and the chase. Then abandoning the idea of the police station he turned

into a little side street, rushed by a greengrocer's cart, hesitated for the tenth of a second at the door of a

sweetstuff shop, and then made for the mouth of an alley that ran back into the main Hill Street again. Two or

three little children were playing here, and shrieked and scattered running at his apparition, and forthwith

doors and windows opened and excited mothers revealed their hearts. Out he shot into Hill Street again, three

hundred yards from the tramline end, and immediately he became aware of a tumultuous vociferation and

He glanced up the street towards the hill. Hardly a dozen yards off ran a huge navvy, cursing in fragments

and slashing viciously with a spade, and hard behind him came the tram conductor with his fists clenched. Up

the street others followed these two, striking and shouting. Down towards the town, men and women were

running, and he noticed clearly one man coming out of a shopdoor with a stick in his hand. "Spread out!

Spread out!" cried some one. Kemp suddenly grasped the altered condition of the chase. He stopped and

He was hit hard under the ear, and went reeling, trying to face round towards his unseen antagonist. He just

managed to keep his feet, and he struck a vain counter in the air. Then he was hit again under the jaw, and

sprawled headlong on the ground. In another moment a knee compressed his diaphragm, and a couple of

eager hands gripped his throat, but the grip of one was weaker than the other; he grasped the wrists, heard a

cry of pain from his assailant, and then the spade of the navvy came whirling through the air above him, and

struck something with a dull thud. He felt a drop of moisture on his face. The grip at his throat suddenly

relaxed, and with a convulsive effort Kemp loosed himself, grasped a limp shoulder, and rolled uppermost.

He gripped the unseen elbows near the ground. "I've got him!" screamed Kemp. "Help! Help! hold! He's

In another second there was a simultaneous rush upon the struggle, and a stranger coming into the road

suddenly might have thought an exceptionally savage game of Rugby football was in progress. And there was

no shouting after Kemp's cryonly a sound of blows and feet and a heavy breathing.

Then came a mighty effort, and the Invisible Man threw off a couple of his antagonists and rose to his knees.

Kemp clung to him in front like a hound to a stag, and a dozen hands gripped, clutched, and tore at the

Unseen. The tram conductor suddenly got the neck and shoulders and lugged him back.

Down went the heap of struggling men again and rolled over. There was, I am afraid, some savage kicking.

Then suddenly a wild scream of "Mercy! Mercy!" that died down swiftly to a sound like choking.

"Get back, you fools!" cried the muffled voice of Kemp, and there was a vigorous shoving back of stalwart

There was a brief struggle to clear a space, and then the circle of eager eyes saw the doctor kneeling, as it

seemed, fifteen inches in the air, and holding invisible arms to the ground. Behind him a constable gripped

"Don't you leave go of en," cried the big navvy, holding a bloodstained spade; "he's shamming."

"He's not shamming," said the doctor, cautiously raising his knee; "and I'll hold him." His face was bruised

and already going red; he spoke thickly because of a bleeding lip. He released one hand and seemed to be

He stood up abruptly and then knelt down on the ground by the side of the thing unseen. There was a pushing

and shuffling, a sound of heavy feet as fresh people turned up to increase the pressure of the crowd. People

now were coming out of the houses. The doors of the Jolly Cricketers were suddenly wide open. Very little

Kempt felt about, his hand seeming to pass through empty air. "He's not breathing," he said, and then, "I can't

Suddenly an old woman, peering under the arm of the big navvy, screamed sharply. "Looky there!" she said,

And looking where she pointed, every one saw, faint and transparent as though it was made of glass, so that

veins and arteries and bones and nerves could be distinguished, the outline of a hand, a hand limp and prone.

And so, slowly, beginning at his hands and feet and creeping along his limbs to the vital centres of his body,

that strange change continued. It was like the slow spreading of a poison. First came the little white nerves, a

hazy grey sketch of a limb, then the glassy bones and intricate arteries, then the flesh and skin, first a faint

fogginess and then growing rapidly dense and opaque. Presently they could see his crushed chest and his

When at last the crowd made way for Kemp to stand erect, there lay, naked and pitiful on the ground, the

bruised and broken body of a young man about thirty. His hair and beard were whitenot grey with age but

white with the whiteness of albinism, and his eyes were like garnets. His hands were clenched, his eyes wide

"Cover his face!" said a man. "For Gawd's sake, cover that face!" and three little children, pushing forward

Some one brought a sheet from the Jolly Cricketers; and having covered him, they carried him into that

So ends the story of the strange and evil experiment of the Invisible Man. And if you would learn more of

him you must go to a little inn near Port Stowe and talk to the landlord. The sign of the inn is an empty board

save for a hat and boots, and the name is the title of this story. The landlord is a short and corpulent little man

with a nose of cylindrical protrusion, wiry hair, and a sporadic rosiness of visage. Drink generously, and he

will tell you generously of all the things that happened to him after that time, and of how the lawyers tried to

"When they found they couldn't prove who's money was which, I'm blessed," he says, "if they didn't try to

make me out a blooming treasure trove! Do I look like a Treasure Trove? And then a gentleman gave me a

guinea a night to tell the story at the Empire Music 'alljust tell 'em in my own wordsbarring one."

And if you want to cut off the flow of his reminiscences abruptly, you can always do so by asking if there

weren't three manuscript books in the story. He admits there were and proceeds to explain, with asseverations

that everybody thinks he has 'em! But bless you! he hasn't. "The Invisible Man it was took 'em off to hide 'em

when I cut and ran for Port Stowe. It's that Mr. Kemp put people on with the idea of my having 'em."

And then he subsides into a pensive state, watches you furtively, bustles nervously with glasses, and

He is a bachelor manhis tastes were ever bachelor, and there are no women folk in the house. Outwardly

he buttonsit is expected of himbut in his more vital privacies, in the matter of braces for example, he

still turns to string. He conducts his house without enterprise, but with eminent decorum. His movements are

slow, and he is a great thinker. But he has a reputation for wisdom and for a respectable parsimony in the

village, and his knowledge of the roads of the South of England would beat Cobbett.

And on Sunday mornings, every Sunday morning all the year round, while he is closed to the outer world,

and every night after ten, he goes into his bar parlour bearing a glass of gin faintly tinged with water; and

having placed this down, he locks the door and examines the blinds, and even looks under the table. And

then, being satisfied of his solitude, he unlocks the cupboard and a box in the cupboard and a drawer in that

box, and produces three volumes bound in brown leather, and places them solemnly in the middle of the

table. The covers are weatherworn and tinged with an algal greenfor once they sojourned in a ditch and

some of the pages have been washed blank by dirty water. The landlord sits down in an armchair, fills a long

clay pipe slowly, gloating over the books the while. Then he pulls one towards him and opens it, and begins

His brows are knit and his lips move painfully. "Hex, little two up in the air, cross and a fiddlededee. Lord!

Presently he relaxes and leans back, and blinks through his smoke across the room at things invisible to other

So he lapses into a dream, the undying wonderful dream of his life. And though Kemp has fished

unceasingly, and Adye has questioned closely, no human being save the landlord knows those books are

there, with the subtle secret of invisibility and a dozen other strange secrets written therein. And none other