The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance
man for me.’ So I turned back and came to you—you. And—”
“_Lord_!” said Mr. Marvel. “But I’m all in a tizzy. May I ask—How is
it? And what you may be requiring in the way of help?—Invisible!”
“I want you to help me get clothes—and shelter—and then, with other
things. I’ve left them long enough. If you won’t—well! But you
_will—must_.”
“Look here,” said Mr. Marvel. “I’m too flabbergasted. Don’t knock me
about any more. And leave me go. I must get steady a bit. And you’ve
pretty near broken my toe. It’s all so unreasonable. Empty downs, empty
sky. Nothing visible for miles except the bosom of Nature. And then
comes a voice. A voice out of heaven! And stones! And a fist—Lord!”
“Pull yourself together,” said the Voice, “for you have to do the job
I’ve chosen for you.”
Mr. Marvel blew out his cheeks, and his eyes were round.
“I’ve chosen you,” said the Voice. “You are the only man except some of
those fools down there, who knows there is such a thing as an invisible
man. You have to be my helper. Help me—and I will do great things for
you. An invisible man is a man of power.” He stopped for a moment to
sneeze violently.
“But if you betray me,” he said, “if you fail to do as I direct you—”
He paused and tapped Mr. Marvel’s shoulder smartly. Mr. Marvel gave a
yelp of terror at the touch. “I don’t want to betray you,” said Mr.
Marvel, edging away from the direction of the fingers. “Don’t you go
a-thinking that, whatever you do. All I want to do is to help you—just
tell me what I got to do. (Lord!) Whatever you want done, that I’m most
willing to do.”
CHAPTER X.
MR. MARVEL’S VISIT TO IPING
After the first gusty panic had spent itself Iping became
argumentative. Scepticism suddenly reared its head—rather nervous
scepticism, not at all assured of its back, but scepticism
nevertheless. It is so much easier not to believe in an invisible man;
and those who had actually seen him dissolve into air, or felt the
strength of his arm, could be counted on the fingers of two hands. And
of these witnesses Mr. Wadgers was presently missing, having retired
impregnably behind the bolts and bars of his own house, and Jaffers was
lying stunned in the parlour of the “Coach and Horses.” Great and
strange ideas transcending experience often have less effect upon men
and women than smaller, more tangible considerations. Iping was gay
with bunting, and everybody was in gala dress. Whit Monday had been
looked forward to for a month or more. By the afternoon even those who
believed in the Unseen were beginning to resume their little amusements
in a tentative fashion, on the supposition that he had quite gone away,
and with the sceptics he was already a jest. But people, sceptics and
believers alike, were remarkably sociable all that day.
Haysman’s meadow was gay with a tent, in which Mrs. Bunting and other
ladies were preparing tea, while, without, the Sunday-school children
ran races and played games under the noisy guidance of the curate and
the Misses Cuss and Sackbut. No doubt there was a slight uneasiness in
the air, but people for the most part had the sense to conceal whatever
imaginative qualms they experienced. On the village green an inclined
strong [rope?], down which, clinging the while to a pulley-swung
handle, one could be hurled violently against a sack at the other end,
came in for considerable favour among the adolescents, as also did the
swings and the cocoanut shies. There was also promenading, and the
steam organ attached to a small roundabout filled the air with a
pungent flavour of oil and with equally pungent music. Members of the
club, who had attended church in the morning, were splendid in badges
of pink and green, and some of the gayer-minded had also adorned their
bowler hats with brilliant-coloured favours of ribbon. Old Fletcher,
whose conceptions of holiday-making were severe, was visible through
the jasmine about his window or through the open door (whichever way
you chose to look), poised delicately on a plank supported on two
chairs, and whitewashing the ceiling of his front room.
About four o’clock a stranger entered the village from the direction of
the downs. He was a short, stout person in an extraordinarily shabby
top hat, and he appeared to be very much out of breath. His cheeks were
alternately limp and tightly puffed. His mottled face was apprehensive,
and he moved with a sort of reluctant alacrity. He turned the corner of
the church, and directed his way to the “Coach and Horses.” Among
others old Fletcher remembers seeing him, and indeed the old gentleman
was so struck by his peculiar agitation that he inadvertently allowed a
quantity of whitewash to run down the brush into the sleeve of his coat
while regarding him.
This stranger, to the perceptions of the proprietor of the cocoanut
shy, appeared to be talking to himself, and Mr. Huxter remarked the
same thing. He stopped at the foot of the “Coach and Horses” steps,
and, according to Mr. Huxter, appeared to undergo a severe internal
struggle before he could induce himself to enter the house. Finally he
marched up the steps, and was seen by Mr. Huxter to turn to the left
and open the door of the parlour. Mr. Huxter heard voices from within
the room and from the bar apprising the man of his error. “That room’s
private!” said Hall, and the stranger shut the door clumsily and went
into the bar.
In the course of a few minutes he reappeared, wiping his lips with the
back of his hand with an air of quiet satisfaction that somehow
impressed Mr. Huxter as assumed. He stood looking about him for some
moments, and then Mr. Huxter saw him walk in an oddly furtive manner
towards the gates of the yard, upon which the parlour window opened.
The stranger, after some hesitation, leant against one of the
gate-posts, produced a short clay pipe, and prepared to fill it. His
fingers trembled while doing so. He lit it clumsily, and folding his
arms began to smoke in a languid attitude, an attitude which his
occasional glances up the yard altogether belied.
All this Mr. Huxter saw over the canisters of the tobacco window, and
the singularity of the man’s behaviour prompted him to maintain his
observation.
Presently the stranger stood up abruptly and put his pipe in his
pocket. Then he vanished into the yard. Forthwith Mr. Huxter,
conceiving he was witness of some petty larceny, leapt round his
counter and ran out into the road to intercept the thief. As he did so,
Mr. Marvel reappeared, his hat askew, a big bundle in a blue
table-cloth in one hand, and three books tied together—as it proved
afterwards with the Vicar’s braces—in the other. Directly he saw Huxter
he gave a sort of gasp, and turning sharply to the left, began to run.
“Stop, thief!” cried Huxter, and set off after him. Mr. Huxter’s
sensations were vivid but brief. He saw the man just before him and
spurting briskly for the church corner and the hill road. He saw the
village flags and festivities beyond, and a face or so turned towards
him. He bawled, “Stop!” again. He had hardly gone ten strides before
his shin was caught in some mysterious fashion, and he was no longer
running, but flying with inconceivable rapidity through the air. He saw
the ground suddenly close to his face. The world seemed to splash into
a million whirling specks of light, and subsequent proceedings
interested him no more.
CHAPTER XI.
IN THE “COACH AND HORSES”
Now in order clearly to understand what had happened in the inn, it is
necessary to go back to the moment when Mr. Marvel first came into view
of Mr. Huxter’s window.
At that precise moment Mr. Cuss and Mr. Bunting were in the parlour.
They were seriously investigating the strange occurrences of the
morning, and were, with Mr. Hall’s permission, making a thorough
examination of the Invisible Man’s belongings. Jaffers had partially
recovered from his fall and had gone home in the charge of his
sympathetic friends. The stranger’s scattered garments had been removed
by Mrs. Hall and the room tidied up. And on the table under the window
where the stranger had been wont to work, Cuss had hit almost at once
on three big books in manuscript labelled “Diary.”
“Diary!” said Cuss, putting the three books on the table. “Now, at any
rate, we shall learn something.” The Vicar stood with his hands on the
table.
“Diary,” repeated Cuss, sitting down, putting two volumes to support
the third, and opening it. “H’m—no name on the fly-leaf.
Bother!—cypher. And figures.”
The vicar came round to look over his shoulder.
Cuss turned the pages over with a face suddenly disappointed. “I’m—dear
me! It’s all cypher, Bunting.”
“There are no diagrams?” asked Mr. Bunting. “No illustrations throwing
light—”
“See for yourself,” said Mr. Cuss. “Some of it’s mathematical and some
of it’s Russian or some such language (to judge by the letters), and
some of it’s Greek. Now the Greek I thought _you_—”
“Of course,” said Mr. Bunting, taking out and wiping his spectacles and
feeling suddenly very uncomfortable—for he had no Greek left in his
mind worth talking about; “yes—the Greek, of course, may furnish a
clue.”
“I’ll find you a place.”
“I’d rather glance through the volumes first,” said Mr. Bunting, still
wiping. “A general impression first, Cuss, and _then_, you know, we can
go looking for clues.”
He coughed, put on his glasses, arranged them fastidiously, coughed
again, and wished something would happen to avert the seemingly
inevitable exposure. Then he took the volume Cuss handed him in a
leisurely manner. And then something did happen.
The door opened suddenly.
Both gentlemen started violently, looked round, and were relieved to
see a sporadically rosy face beneath a furry silk hat. “Tap?” asked the
face, and stood staring.
“No,” said both gentlemen at once.
“Over the other side, my man,” said Mr. Bunting. And “Please shut that
door,” said Mr. Cuss, irritably.
“All right,” said the intruder, as it seemed in a low voice curiously
different from the huskiness of its first inquiry. “Right you are,”
said the intruder in the former voice. “Stand clear!” and he vanished
and closed the door.
“A sailor, I should judge,” said Mr. Bunting. “Amusing fellows, they
are. Stand clear! indeed. A nautical term, referring to his getting
back out of the room, I suppose.”
“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.”
Someone 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 happen 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