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The Invisible Man

 

A Grotesque Romance

 

By H. G. Wells

 

CONTENTS

 

I The strange Man's Arrival

II Mr. Teddy Henfrey's first Impressions

III The thousand and one Bottles

IV Mr. Cuss interviews the Stranger

V The Burglary at the Vicarage

VI The Furniture that went mad

VII The Unveiling of the Stranger

VIII In Transit

IX Mr. Thomas Marvel

X Mr. Marvel's Visit to Iping

XI In the "Coach and Horses"

XII The invisible Man loses his Temper

XIII Mr. Marvel discusses his Resignation

XIV At Port Stowe

XV The Man who was running

XVI In the "Jolly Cricketers"

XVII Dr. Kemp's Visitor

XVIII The invisible Man sleeps

XIX Certain first Principles

XX At the House in Great Portland Street

XXI In Oxford Street

XXII In the Emporium

XXIII In Drury Lane

XXIV The Plan that failed

XXV The Hunting of the invisible Man

XXVI The Wicksteed Murder

XXVII The Siege of Kemp's House

XXVIII The Hunter hunted

The Epilogue

 

 

CHAPTER I

 

THE STRANGE MAN'S ARRIVAL

 

 

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 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, 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 couple of sovereigns flung upon the table,

he took up his quarters in the inn.

 

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 unheard-of 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 _eclat_.

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 melting 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 the kitchen?"

 

"No," he said without turning.

 

She was not sure she had heard him, and was about to repeat her

question.

 

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 bush side-whisker

over his coat-collar that completely hid his cheeks and face.

 

"Very well, sir," she said. "_As_ you like. In a bit the room will

be warmer."

 

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

hat-brim 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 and approached the table

with a certain eager quickness.

 

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 black tea-tray, carried

it into the parlour.

 

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, and 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 and looking at her.

 

For a moment she stood gaping at him, too surprised to speak.

 

He held a white cloth--it was a serviette he had brought with

him--over 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 dark-brown

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 was rigid.

 

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 white cloth.

 

Her nerves began to recover from the shock they had received. She

placed the hat on the chair again by the fire. "I didn't know, sir,"

she began, "that--" and she stopped embarrassed.

 

"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 white-swathed 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 a twilight. This done, he returned with an easier

air to the table and his meal.

 

"The poor soul's had an accident or an op'ration or somethin'," said

Mrs. Hall. "What a turn them bandages did give me, to be sure!"

 

She put on some more coal, unfolded the clothes-horse, 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 mouth was

hurt too--maybe."

 

She turned round, as one who suddenly remembers. "Bless my soul

alive!" she said, going off at a tangent; "ain't you done them

taters _yet_, Millie?"

 

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 window-blind 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. "To-morrow?" he

said. "There is no speedier delivery?" and seemed quite disappointed

when she answered, "No." Was she quite sure? No man with a trap who

would go over?

 

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,

happen in a moment, don't they?"

 

But the visitor was not to be drawn so easily. "They do," he said

through his muffler, eyeing her quietly through his impenetrable

glasses.

 

"But they take long enough to get well, 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 believe it. It's regular given me a dread of a scythe,

sir."

 

"I can quite understand that," said the visitor.

 

"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 said.

 

"He was, sir. And no laughing matter to them as had the doing for

him, as I had--my 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 bold as to say it, sir--"

 

"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,

and Millie had a hot time of it that afternoon.

 

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 the firelight--perhaps dozing.

 

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 again.

 

CHAPTER II

 

MR. TEDDY HENFREY'S FIRST IMPRESSIONS

 

 

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 clock-jobber, 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, and then noticed he had his bag with him. "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 strikes

well and hearty; but the hour-hand won't do nuthin' but point at

six."

 

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 fire--which lit his eyes like adverse railway signals,

but left his downcast face in darkness--and 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 up to his face just as she

had seen him hold the serviette before. The shadows, she fancied,

had tricked her.

 

"Would you mind, sir, this man a-coming to look at the clock, sir?"

she said, recovering from the momentary shock.

 

"Look at the clock?" he said, staring round in a drowsy manner,

and speaking over his hand, and then, getting more fully awake,

"certainly."

 

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."

 

"Good afternoon," said the stranger, regarding him--as Mr. Henfrey

says, with a vivid sense of the dark spectacles--"like a lobster."

 

"I hope," said Mr. Henfrey, "that it's no intrusion."

 

"None whatever," said the stranger. "Though, I understand," he said

turning to Mrs. Hall, "that this room is really to be mine for my

own private use."

 

"I thought, sir," said Mrs. Hall, "you'd prefer the clock--"

 

"Certainly," said the stranger, "certainly--but, 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 turned round with his back to the

fireplace and put his hands behind his back. "And presently," he

said, "when the clock-mending is over, I think I should like to

have some tea. But not till the clock-mending is over."

 

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.

 

She was certain, with a marked coldness.

 

"I should explain," he added, "what I was really too cold and

fatigued to do before, that I am an experimental investigator."

 

"Indeed, sir," said Mrs. Hall, much impressed.

 

"And my baggage contains apparatus and appliances."

 

"Very useful things indeed they are, sir," said Mrs. Hall.

 

"And I'm very naturally anxious to get on with my inquiries."

 

"Of course, sir."

 

"My reason for coming to Iping," he proceeded, with a certain

deliberation of manner, "was ... a desire for solitude. I do not

wish to be disturbed in my work. In addition to my work, an

accident--"

 

"I thought as much," said Mrs. Hall to herself.

 

"--necessitates a certain retirement. My eyes--are sometimes so

weak and painful that I have to shut myself up in the dark for

hours together. Lock myself up. Sometimes--now 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

annoyance to me--it is well these things should be understood."

 

"Certainly, sir," said Mrs. Hall. "And if I might make so bold as

to ask--"

 

"That I think, is all," said the stranger, with that quietly

irresistible air of finality he could assume at will. Mrs. Hall

reserved her question and sympathy for a better occasion.

 

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

works--a quite unnecessary proceeding--with 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 uncanny 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 you've got to do is to

fix the hour-hand on its axle. You're simply humbugging--"

 

"Certainly, sir--one minute more. I overlooked--" and Mr. Henfrey

finished and went.

 

But he went feeling excessively annoyed. "Damn it!" said Mr. Henfrey

to himself, trudging down the village through the thawing snow; "a

man must do a clock at times, sure-ly."

 

And again "Can't a man look at you?--Ugly!"

 

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,

to judge by his driving. "'Ow do, Teddy?" he said, passing.

 

"You got a rum un up home!" said Teddy.

 

Hall very sociably pulled up. "What's that?" he asked.

 

"Rum-looking customer stopping at the 'Coach and Horses,'" said

Teddy. "My sakes!"

 

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."

 

"You don't say so!" said Hall, who was a man of sluggish apprehension.

 

"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

to-morrow, 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."

 

Teddy trudged on his way with his mind considerably relieved.

 

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 half-past nine, Mr. Hall went very

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 computations 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.

 

"You mind you own business, Hall," said Mrs. Hall, "and I'll mind

mine."

 

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 sleep again.

 

CHAPTER III

 

THE THOUSAND AND ONE BOTTLES

 

 

So it was that on the twenty-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 were 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 straw--glass 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 being them in. Out he came,

not noticing Fearenside's dog, who was sniffing in a _dilettante_

spirit at Hall's legs. "Come along with those boxes," he said.

"I've been waiting long enough."

 

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 his whip.

 

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 swift half-minute. No one spoke, everyone 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 swiftly 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 him through the wheel.

"Come here," said Fearenside--"You'd better."

 

Hall had stood gaping. "He wuz bit," said Hall. "I'd better go and

see to en," and he trotted after the stranger. He met Mrs. Hall in

the passage. "Carrier's darg," he said "bit en."

 

He went straight upstairs, and the stranger's door being ajar, he

pushed it open and was entering without any ceremony, being of a

naturally sympathetic turn of mind.

 

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. It was so

rapid that it gave him 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.

 

A couple of minutes after, 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, than?" and so forth.

 

Mr. Hall, staring at them from the steps and listening, found it

incredible that he had seen anything so 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

inquiry. "We'd better be a-takin' of his luggage in."

 

"He ought to have it cauterised at once," said Mr. Huxter;

"especially if it's at all inflamed."

 

"I'd shoot en, that's what I'd do," said a lady in the group.

 

Suddenly the dog began growling again.

 

"Come along," cried an angry voice in the doorway, and there stood

the muffled stranger with his collar turned up, and his hat-brim

bent down. "The sooner you get those things in the better I'll be

pleased." It is stated by an anonymous bystander that his trousers

and gloves had been changed.

 

"Was you hurt, sir?" said Fearenside. "I'm rare sorry the darg--"

 

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

with those things."

 

He then swore to himself, so Mr. Hall asserts.

 

Directly the first crate was, in accordance with his directions,

carried into the parlour, 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 bottles--little fat bottles containing powders,

small and slender bottles containing coloured and white fluids,

fluted blue bottles labeled Poison, bottles with round bodies and

slender necks, large green-glass bottles, large white-glass bottles,

bottles with glass stoppers and frosted labels, bottles with fine

corks, bottles with bungs, bottles with wooden caps, wine bottles,

salad-oil bottles--putting them in rows on the chiffonnier, 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 test-tubes and a carefully packed balance.

 

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 other luggage that had gone upstairs.

 

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

test-tubes, 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

anticipated her.

 

"I wish you wouldn't come in without knocking," he said in the tone

of abnormal exasperation that seemed so characteristic of him.

 

"I knocked, but seemingly--"

 

"Perhaps you did. But in my investigations--my really very urgent

and necessary investigations--the slightest disturbance, the jar

of a door--I must ask you--"

 

"Certainly, sir. You can turn the lock if you're like that, you

know. Any time."

 

"A very good idea," said the stranger.

 

"This stror, sir, if I might make so bold as to remark--"

 

"Don't. If the straw makes trouble put it down in the bill." And he

mumbled at her--words suspiciously like curses.

 

He was so odd, standing there, so aggressive and explosive, bottle

in one hand and test-tube 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 you consider--"

 

"A shilling--put down a shilling. Surely a shilling's enough?"

 

"So be it," said Mrs. Hall, taking up the table-cloth and beginning

to spread it over the table. "If you're satisfied, of course--"

 

He turned and sat down, with his coat-collar toward her.

 

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 matter," she went to the door and listened, not caring to

knock.

 

"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!

fool!"

 

There was a noise of hobnails on the bricks in the bar, and Mrs.

Hall had very reluctantly 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 occasional clink of a bottle.

It was all over; the stranger had resumed work.

 

When she took in his tea she saw broken glass in the corner of the

room under the concave mirror, and a golden stain that had been

carelessly wiped. She called attention to it.

 

"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 beer-shop of

Iping Hanger.

 

"Well?" said Teddy Henfrey.

 

"This chap you're speaking of, what my dog bit. Well--he's black.

Leastways, his legs are. I seed through the tear of his trousers

and the tear of his glove. You'd have expected a sort of pinky to

show, wouldn't you? Well--there wasn't none. Just blackness. I

tell you, he's as black as my hat."

 

"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

there--in patches. And he's ashamed of it. He's a kind of half-breed,

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 any one

can see."

 

CHAPTER IV

 

MR. CUSS INTERVIEWS THE STRANGER

 

 

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 April,

when the first signs of penury began, he over-rode 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'd 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 what she heard.

 

He rarely went abroad by daylight, but at twilight he would go out

muffled up invisibly, 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 home-going labourers, and Teddy

Henfrey, tumbling out of the "Scarlet Coat" one night, at half-past

nine, was scared shamefully by the stranger's skull-like head (he

was walking hat in hand) lit by the sudden light of the opened inn

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 reverse; but there was certainly a vivid enough dislike

on either side.

 

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 such things as that,

and would thus 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 the stranger, leading questions about him. But

he detected nothing.

 

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. That had the

advantage of accounting for everything straight away.

 

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. Even then it was only credited

among the women folk.

 

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 brain-worker, 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 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 lamps--who could agree with such

goings on? They drew aside as he passed down the village, and when

he had gone by, young humourists would up with coat-collars and

down with hat-brims, 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 "Bogey

Man!" after him, and make off tremulously elated.

 

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, but

hit upon the subscription-list 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. Hall--an 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

slammed, and the place was silent again.

 

Cuss went straight up the village to Bunting the vicar. "Am I mad?"

Cuss began abruptly, as he entered the shabby little study. "Do I

look like an insane person?"

 

"What's happened?" said the vicar, putting the ammonite on the

loose sheets of his forth-coming sermon.

 

"That chap at the inn--"

 

"Well?"

 

"Give me something to drink," said Cuss, and he sat down.

 

When his nerves had been steadied by a glass of cheap sherry--the

only drink the good vicar had available--he 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. Bottles--chemicals--everywhere. Balance, test-tubes

in stands, and a smell of--evening primrose. Would he subscribe?

Said he'd consider it. Asked him, point-blank, 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 the

chimney. So! Just at that point, to illustrate his story, out came

his arm."

 

"Well?"

 

"No hand--just 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."

 

"Well?"

 

"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

up to you.

 

"'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 that--until the cuff was six inches from my

face. Queer thing to see an empty sleeve come at you like that!

And then--"

 

"Well?"

 

"Something--exactly like a finger and thumb it felt--nipped my

nose."

 

Bunting began to laugh.

 

"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

around, and cut out of the room--I left him--"

 

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 story."

 

CHAPTER V

 

THE BURGLARY AT THE VICARAGE

 

 

The facts of the burglary at the vicarage came to us chiefly

through the medium of the vicar and his wife. It occurred in the

small hours of Whit Monday, the 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 dressing-room 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 dressing-gown and his bath

slippers, he went out on the landing to listen. He heard quite

distinctly a fumbling going on at his study desk down-stairs, and

then a violent sneeze.

 

At that he returned to his bedroom, armed himself with the most

obvious weapon, the poker, and descended the staircase as

noiselessly as possible. Mrs. Bunting came out on the landing.

 

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 Mr. Bunting's courage; the persuasion that this burglar was a

resident in the village.

 

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

found the housekeeping reserve of gold--two 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 stooped 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

window-curtains, and Mr. Bunting looked up the chimney and probed it

with the poker. Then Mrs. Bunting scrutinised the waste-paper basket

and Mr. Bunting opened the lid of the coal-scuttle. Then they came

to a stop and stood with eyes interrogating each other.

 

"I could have sworn--" said Mr. Bunting.

 

"The candle!" said Mr. Bunting. "Who lit the candle?"

 

"The drawer!" said Mrs. Bunting. "And the money's gone!"

 

She went hastily to the doorway.

 

"Of all the strange occurrences--"

 

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 back.

 

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 quaintly-costumed little

couple, still marvelling about on their own ground floor by the

unnecessary light of a guttering candle.

 

CHAPTER VI

 

THE FURNITURE THAT WENT MAD

 

 

Now it happened that in the early hours of Whit Monday, 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 joint-room. 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 found the bottle as he had

been directed.

 

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 these 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 open and entered.

 

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 the bed-post.

 

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. "George! You gart whad a wand?"

 

At that he turned and hurried down to her. "Janny," he said, over

the rail of the cellar steps, "'tas the truth what Henfrey sez.

'E's not in uz room, 'e en't. And the front door's onbolted."

 

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 en't there," he said, "'is close are.

And what's 'e doin' 'ithout 'is close, then? 'Tas a most curious

business."

 

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. Someone 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

curious!" she said.

 

She he


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