H G Wells Omnibus, page 129
When he had been sitting for the best part of an hour, however, an elderly mariner, carrying a newspaper, came out of the inn and sat down beside him. “Pleasant day,” said the mariner.
Mr. Marvel glanced about him with something very like terror. “Very,” he said.
“Just reasonable weather for the time of year,” said the mariner, taking no denial.
“Quite,” said Mr. Marvel.
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 to a topic that had taken a curiously firm hold of his imagination.
“Books?” he said suddenly, noisily finishing with the toothpick.
Mr. Marvel started and looked at them. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, they’re books.”
“There’s some extra-ordinary things in books,” said the mariner.
“I believe you,” said Mr. Marvel.
“And some extra-ordinary things out of ’em,” said the mariner.
“True likewise,” said Mr. Marvel. He eyed his interlocutor, and then glanced about him.
“There’s some extra-ordinary things in newspapers, for example,” said the mariner.
“There are.”
“In this newspaper,” said the mariner.
“Ah!” said Mr. Marvel.
“There’s a story,” said the mariner, fixing Mr. Marvel with an eye that was firm and deliberate; “there’s a story about an invisible man, for instance.”
Mr. Marvel pulled his mouth askew and scratched his cheek and felt his ears glowing. “What will they be writing next?” he asked faintly. “Ostria, or America?”
“Neither,” said the mariner. “Here!”
“Lord!” said Mr. Marvel, starting.
“When I say here,” said the mariner, to Mr. Marvel’s intense relief, “I don’t of course mean here in this place. I mean hereabouts.”
“An invisible man!” said Mr. Marvel. “And what’s he been up to?”
“Everything,” said the mariner, controlling Marvel with his eye, and then amplifying: “Every Blessed Thing.”
“I ain’t seen a paper these four days,” said Marvel.
“Iping’s the place he started at,” said the mariner.
“In-deed!” said Mr. Marvel.
“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 strong—extra-ordinary.”
“Lord!” said Mr. Marvel.
“But then, it’s a extra-ordinary story. There is a clergyman and a medical gent witnesses,—saw ’im all right and proper—or 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 ob-served 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? Extra-ordinary, I call it. Never heard tell of invisible men before, I haven’t, but nowadays one hears such a lot of extra-ordinary things—that—”
“That all he did?” asked Marvel, trying to seem at his ease.
“It’s enough, ain’t it?” said the mariner.
“Didn’t go back by any chance?” asked Marvel. “Just escaped and that’s all, eh?”
“All!” said the mariner. “Why!—ain’t it enough?”
“Quite enough,” said Marvel.
“I should think it was enough,” said the mariner. “I should think it was enough.”
“He didn’t have any pals—it 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 has—taken—took, I suppose they mean—the 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 rob—who 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—”
“He’s got a tremenjous advantage, certainly,” said Mr. Marvel. “And—well.”
“You’re right,” said the mariner. “He has.”
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 the mariner, and lowered his voice: “The fact of it is—I happen—to know just a thing or two about this invisible man. From private sources.”
“Oh!” said the mariner, interested. “You?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Marvel. “Me.”
“Indeed!” said the mariner. “And may I ask—”
“You’ll be astonished,” said Mr. Marvel behind his hand. “It’s tremenjous.”
“Indeed!” said the mariner.
“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!” he said.
“What’s up?” said the mariner, concerned.
“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 going to tell me about this here invisible man!” protested the mariner. Mr. Marvel seemed to consult with himself. “Hoax,” said a voice. “It’s a hoax,” said Mr. Marvel.
“But it’s in the paper,” said the mariner.
“Hoax all the same,” said Marvel. “I know the chap that started the lie. There ain’t no invisible man whatsoever—Blimey.”
“But how ’bout this paper? D’you mean to say—?”
“Not a word of it,” said Marvel, stoutly.
The mariner stared, paper in hand. Mr. Marvel jerkily faced about. “Wait a bit,” said the mariner, rising and speaking slowly. “D’you mean to say—?”
“I do,” said Mr. Marvel.
“Then why did you let me go on and tell you all this blarsted stuff, then? What d’yer mean by letting a man make a fool of himself like that for? Eigh?”
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 pot-bellied, leathery-faced son of an old boot, couldn’t have the elementary manners—”
“Don’t you come bandying words with me,” said Mr. Marvel.
“Bandying words! I’m a jolly good mind—”
“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 road he began a muttered monologue, protests and recriminations.
“Silly devil!” said the mariner, legs wide apart, elbows akimbo, watching the receding figure. “I’ll show you, you silly ass,—hoaxing me! It’s here—on the paper!”
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 extraordinary asses,” he said softly to himself. “Just to take me down a bit—that was his silly game—It’s on the paper.”
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 “fistful 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 bit too stiff. Afterwards, however, he began to think things over.
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 inns—doors standing that sunny weather entirely open—money 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.
XV
The Man Who Was Running
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 covered with books and scientific publications, and a broad writing-table, 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, the fellowship of the Royal Society, so highly did he think of it.
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 hill-brow towards him. He was a shortish little man, and he wore a high hat, and he was running so fast that his legs verily twinkled.
“Another of those fools,” said Doctor Kemp. “Like that ass who ran into me this morning round a corner, with his ‘ ’Visible Man a-coming, sir!’ I can’t imagine what possesses people. One might think we were in the thirteenth century.”
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 full of lead, he couldn’t run heavier.
“Spurt sir,” said Doctor Kemp.
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 detached houses that came next, and the terrace hid him.
“Asses!” said Doctor Kemp, swinging round on his heel and walking back to his writing-table.
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 well-filled 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 ill-shaped 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 inkling of discomfort for the reason of his haste.
And then presently, far up the hill, a dog playing in the road yelped and ran under a gate, and as they still wondered, something,—a wind—a 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 striding by, rushed ahead of him, and in a moment had seized the town.
“The Invisible Man is coming! The Invisible Man!”
XVI
In the Jolly Cricketers
THE JOLLY CRICKETERS is just at the bottom of the hill, where the tram-lines begin. The barman leant his fat red arms on the counter and talked of horses with an anæmic 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 anæmic 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 shut the door. It was held half open by a strap.
“Coming!” he bawled, his voice shrieking with terror. “He’s coming. The ’Visible Man! After me! For Gawd’s sake! Elp! Elp! Elp!”
“Shut the doors,” said the policeman. “Who’s coming? What’s the row?” He went to the door, released the strap, and it slammed. The American closed the other door.
“Lemme go inside,” said Marvel, staggering and weeping, but still clutching the books. “Lemme go inside. Lock me in—somewhere. 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 me—he’s got a knife or something. For Gawd’s sake!”
“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. “Please don’t open the door. Where shall I hide?”
“This, this Invisible Man, then?” asked the man with the black beard, with one hand behind him. “I guess it’s about time we saw him.”
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 bar-parlour 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 door. “Once we open, in he comes. There’s no stopping him.”
“Don’t you be in too much hurry about that door,” said the anæmic cabman, anxiously.
“Draw the bolts,” said the man with the black beard, “and if he comes—” He showed a revolver in his hand.
“That won’t do,” said the policeman; “that’s murder.”
“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. Barman, cabman, and policeman faced about.
“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 bar-parlour and supplied information. “Are all the doors of the house shut?” asked Marvel. “He’s going round—prowling round. He’s as artful as the devil.”
“Good Lord!” said the burly barman. “There’s the back! Just watch them doors! I say!—” He looked about him helplessly. The bar-parlour door slammed and they heard the key turn. “There’s the yard door and the private door. The yard door—”
He rushed out of the bar.
In a minute he reappeared with a carving-knife in his hand. “The yard door was open!” he said, and his fat underlip dropped. “He may be in the house now!” said the first cabman.
“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—”
“Have you fastened it?” asked the first cabman.
“I’m out of frocks,” said the barman.
