The Invisible Man (8 page)

"I'm sorry to handle you so 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 quite chilly. I want clothing—and
other accommodation; and I must also have those three books."

It is unavoidable that at this point the narrative should break off
again, for a certain very painful reason that will presently be
apparent. 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 right 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—right thur?" asked Mr. Hall, sharply, again.

The Vicar's voice answered with a curious jerking intonation:
"Quite ri-right. 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 speaking 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 aroused 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, tiptoed 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
heerd that, Mrs. 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 someone whisk round the corner
towards the 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 rear-most 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
over-hasty 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 toward the corner. "Hold him!" he
cried. "Don't let him drop that 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!"

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 on 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 cataclysmic 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 the 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.

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 slackened.

"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."