The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance
“They rushed round and saw my new footmarks flash into being on the
lower step and upon the pavement. ‘What’s up?’ asked someone. ‘Feet!
Look! Feet running!’
“Everybody in the road, except my three pursuers, was pouring along
after the Salvation Army, and this blow 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
upon 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 Tavistock Square, a 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 a terror to me.
“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
cheque-book and the three volumes of memoranda that awaited me in Great
Portland Street, were there. Burning! I had burnt my boats—if 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.”
CHAPTER XXII.
IN THE EMPORIUM
“So last January, with the beginning of a snowstorm in the air about
me—and 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 away—made a mere
show and rarity of me. Nevertheless, I was half-minded to accost some
passer-by 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
bought—you know the place: meat, grocery, linen, furniture, clothing,
oil paintings even—a 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 uniform—you know the kind of personage with ‘Omnium’ on his
cap—flung open the door. I contrived to enter, and walking down the
shop—it was a department where they were selling ribbons and gloves and
stockings and that kind of thing—came 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 multitudes of bedsteads, and over these I clambered,
and found a resting-place at last among a huge pile of folded flock
mattresses. The place was already lit up and agreeably 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 the
advantages my invisibility gave me (as I still imagined) over my
fellow-men.
“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 them.
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, show-rooms 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
boot-heels of the passers-by.
“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 thought was food.
“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 blankets—I had to put up at last with a heap of
down quilts—I came upon a grocery section with a lot of chocolate and
candied fruits, more than was good for me indeed—and some white
burgundy. And near that was a toy department, and I had a brilliant
idea. I found some artificial noses—dummy noses, you know, and I
thought of dark spectacles. But Omniums had no optical department. My
nose had been a difficulty indeed—I had thought of paint. But the
discovery set my mind running on wigs and masks and the like. Finally I
went to sleep in a heap of down quilts, very warm and comfortable.
“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 ‘Earth to
earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ at my father’s open grave.
“‘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
struggles and awoke.
“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 heap of quilts and cushions,
its iron pillars, might be. Then, as recollection came back to me, I
heard voices in conversation.
“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 around a
corner and came full tilt—a 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 behind a
counter. In another moment feet went running past and I heard voices
shouting, ‘All hands to the doors!’ asking what was ‘up,’ and giving
one another advice how to catch me.
“Lying on the ground, I felt scared out of my wits. But—odd as it may
seem—it 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!’