H G Wells Omnibus, page 128
“I daresay so,” said Cuss. “My nerves are all loose to-day. It quite made me jump—the door opening like that.”
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.”
Some one sniffed as he did so.
“One thing is indisputable,” said Bunting, drawing up a chair next to that of Cuss. “There certainly have been very strange things happening in Iping during the last few days—very strange. I cannot of course believe in this absurd invisibility story—”
“It’s incredible,” said Cuss, “—incredible. But the fact remains that I saw—I certainly saw right down his sleeve—”
“But did you—are you sure? Suppose a mirror, for instance,—hallucinations are so easily produced. I don’t know if you have ever seen a really good conjuror—”
“I won’t argue again,” said Cuss. “We’ve thrashed that out, Bunting. And just now there’s these books—Ah! here’s some of what I take to be Greek! Greek letters certainly.”
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 horrified reflection of his own sickly astonishment.
“I’m sorry to handle you roughly,” said the voice, “but it’s unavoidable.
“Since when did you learn to pry into an investigator’s private memoranda,” said the voice; and two chins struck the table simultaneously, and two sets of teeth rattled.
“Since when did you learn to invade the private rooms of a man in misfortune?” and the concussion was repeated.
“Where have they put my clothes?
“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 handy—besides being invisible. There’s not the slightest doubt that I could kill you both and get away quite easily if I wanted to—do you understand? Very well. If I let you go will you promise not to try any nonsense and do what I tell 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 red in the face and wriggling their heads.
“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 clothing—and other accommodation; and I must also have those three books.”
XII
The Invisible Man Loses His Temper
IT IS UNAVOIDABLE that at this point the narrative should break off again, for a certain very painful reason that will presently be apparent. And 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 Henfrey discussing in a state of cloudy puzzlement the one Iping topic.
Suddenly there came a violent thud against the door of the parlour, a sharp cry, and then—silence.
“Hul—lo!” said Teddy Henfrey.
“Hul—lo!” from the Tap.
Mr. Hall took things in slowly but surely. “That ain’t right,” he said, and came round from behind the bar towards the parlour door.
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 muffled sound of conversation, very rapid and subdued.
“You all raight thur?” asked Hall, rapping.
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 a chair, a brief struggle. Silence again.
“What the dooce?” exclaimed Henfrey, sotto voce.
“You—all—raight—thur?” asked Mr. Hall, sharply, again.
The vicar’s voice answered with a curious jerking intonation: “Quite ri—ght. Please don’t—interrupt.”
“Odd!” said Mr. Henfrey.
“Odd!” said Mr. Hall.
“Says, ‘Don’t interrupt,’ ” said Henfrey.
“I heerd’n,” said Hall.
“And a sniff,” said Henfrey.
They remained listening. The conversation was rapid and subdued. “I can’t,” said Mr. Bunting, his voice rising; “I tell you sir, I will not.”
“What was that?” asked Henfrey.
“Says he wi’ nart,” said Hall. “Warn’t speakin’ to us, wuz he?”
“Disgraceful!” said Mr. Bunting, within.
“ ‘Disgraceful,’ ” said Mr. Henfrey. “I heard it—distinct.
“Who’s that speaking now?” asked Henfrey.
“Mr. Cuss, I s’pose,” said Hall. “Can you hear—anything?”
Silence. The sounds within indistinct and perplexing.
“Sounds like throwing the table-cloth about,” said Hall.
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 do—busy day like this?”
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, tip-toed 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.
“I heered that, Mis’ Hall,” said Henfrey.
“Like as not—” began Mrs. Hall.
“Hsh!” said Mr. Teddy Henfrey. “Didn’t I hear the window?”
“What window?” asked Mrs. Hall.
“Parlour window,” said Henfrey.
Everyone 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 shop-front 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 vanished.
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 pell-mell 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 them.
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 overhasty people.
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 clothes!
“ ’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. Everyone 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 someone’s face. He recognised the voice as that of the Invisible Man, and the note was that of a man suddenly infuriated by a painful blow.
In another moment Mr. Cuss was back in the parlour. “He’s coming back, Bunting!” he said, rushing in. “Save yourself! He’s gone mad!”
Mr. Bunting was standing in the window engaged in an attempt to clothe himself in the hearth-rug 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! Mad!”
In another moment he was out in the yard.
“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 overthrowing, for the mere satisfaction of hurting.
You must figure the street full of running figures, of doors slamming and fights for hiding-places. 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 street 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 Adderdean road. And after that, as his peculiar qualities allowed, he passed out of human perceptions altogether, and he was neither heard, seen, nor felt in Iping any more. He vanished absolutely.
But it was the best part of two hours before any human being ventured out again into the desolation of Iping Street.
XIII
Mr. Marvel Discusses His Resignation
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, thick-set 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 table-cloth. 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—”
“Lord!” said Mr. Marvel. “That shoulder’s a mass of bruises as it is.”
“—on my honour,” said the voice, “I will kill you.”
“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 been knocked about—”
“You’ll get knocked about a great deal more if you don’t mind,” said the voice, and Mr. Marvel abruptly became silent. He blew out his cheeks, and his eyes were eloquent of despair.
“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 I—No one knew I was invisible! And now what am I to do?”
“What am I to do?” asked Marvel, sotto voce.
“It’s all about. It will be in the papers! Everybody will be looking for me; everyone on their guard—” The voice broke off into vivid curses and ceased.
The despair of Mr. Marvel’s face deepened, and his pace slacked.
“Go on!” said the voice.
Mr. Marvel’s face assumed a greyish tint between the ruddier patches.
“Don’t drop those books, stupid,” said the voice, sharply—overtaking him.
“The fact is,” said the voice, “I shall have to make use of you. You’re a poor tool, but I must.”
“I’m a miserable tool,” said Marvel.
“You are,” said the voice.
“I’m the worst possible tool you could have,” said Marvel.
“I’m not strong,” he said after a discouraging silence.
“I’m not over strong,” he repeated.
“No?”
“And my heart’s weak. That little business—I pulled it through, of course—but bless you! I could have dropped.”
“Well?”
“I haven’t the nerve and strength for the sort of thing you want.”
“I’ll stimulate you.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t like to mess up your plans, you know. But I might,—out of sheer funk and misery.”
“You’d better not,” said the voice, with quiet emphasis.
“I wish I was dead,” said Marvel.
“It ain’t justice,” he said; “you must admit—It seems to me I’ve a perfect right—”
“Get on!” said the voice.
Mr. Marvel mended his pace, and for a time they went in silence again.
“It’s devilish hard,” said Mr. Marvel.
This was quite ineffectual. He tried another tack.
“What do I make by it?” he began again in a tone of unendurable wrong.
“Oh! shut up!” said the voice, with sudden amazing vigour. “I’ll see to you all right. You do what you’re told. You’ll do it all right. You’re a fool and all that, but you’ll do—”
“I tell you, sir, I’m not the man for it. Respectfully—but it is so—”
“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 straight through and try no foolery. It will be the worse for you if you do.”
“I know that,” sighed Mr. Marvel, “I know all that.”
The unhappy-looking figure in the obsolete silk hat passed up the street of the little village with his burdens, and vanished into the gathering darkness beyond the lights of the windows.
XIV
At Port Stowe
TEN O ’ CLOCK the next morning found Mr. Marvel, unshaven, dirty, and travel-stained, 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 pine woods 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 ever and again to his various pockets with a curious nervous fumbling.
