Section 12

“Now you have me! And all that I knew and — ae
had in mind a year after I left London—six years - sa
ago. But I kept it to myself. I had to do my work under frightful disadvantages. Hobbema, my professor, was a scientific bounder, a thief of ideas— he was always prying! And you know the knayish system of the scientific world. I simply would not publish and let him share my credit. I went on working; I got nearer and nearer making my formula into an experiment—a reality. I told no living soul, because I meant to flash my work upon the world with crushing effect and become famous at a blow. I took up the question of pigments to fill up certain gaps, and suddenly—not by design, but by accident—I made a discovery in physiology.” 6é Yes? ”
*You know the red colouring matter of blood— it can be made white—colourless—and remain with all the functions it has now! ”
Kemp gave a cry of incredulous amazement.
The Invisible Man rose and began pacing the little study. ‘“‘ You may well exclaim. I remember, that night. It was late at night—in the daytime one was bothered with the gaping, silly students —and I worked there sometimes till dawn. It came suddenly, splendid and complete, into my mind, I was alone, the laboratory was still, with the tall lights burning brightly and silently. . .. ‘ One could make an animal—a tissue—transparent! One could make it invisible! All except the pigments. I could be Invisible,’ I said, suddenly realising what it meant to be an albino with such knowledge. It was
140 THE INVISIBLE MAN
overwhelming. I left the filtering I was doing, and went and stared out of the great window at the stars, ‘I could be Invisible,’ I repeated.
** To do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that Invisibility might mean to a man, The mystery, the power, the freedom. Drawbacks I saw none. You have only to think! And I, a shabby, poverty-struck, hemmed in demonstrator, teaching fools in a provincial college, might suddenly become—this. I ask you, Kemp, ifyou. ... Anyone, _ I tell you, would have flung himself upon that research. And I worked three years, and every mountain of difficulty I toiled over showed another from its summit. The infinite details! And the exasperation! A professor, a provincial professor, always prying. ‘When are you going to publish this work of yours?’ was his everlasting question. And the students, the cramped means! Three years I had of it—
* And after three years of secrecy and trouble, I found that to complete it was impossible— impossible.”
** How? ” asked Kemp.
** Money,” said the Invisible Man, and went again — to stare out of the window.
He turned round abruptly. “I robbed the old man—robbed my father.
* The money was not his, and he shot himself.”
20 At the House in Great Poriland Street
Fe a moment Kemp sat in silence, staring at the back of the headless figure at the window. Then he started, struck by a thought, rose, took the Invisible Man’s arm, and turned him away from the outlook.
* You are tired,” he said, “ and while I sit you walk about. Have my chair.”
He placed himself between Griffin and the nearest window.
For a space Griffin sat silent, and then he resumed abruptly:
“T had left the Chesilstowe College already,” he said, “ when that happened. It was last December. I had taken a room in London, a large unfurnished room in a big, ill-managed lodging-house in a slum near Great Portland Street. The room was soon full of the appliances I had bought with his money, | and the work was going on steadily, successtully, drawing near an end. I was like a man emerging from a thicket, and suddenly coming on some un- meaning tragedy, I went to bury my father. My -, mind was still on this research, and I did not lift a finger to save his character. I remember the
funeral, the cheap hearse, the scant ceremony, the
windy, frost-bitten hillside, and the old college
friend of his who read the service over him—a 14l Ai
142 THE INVISIBLE MAN
shabby, black, bent old man with a snivelling cold.
-“T remember walking back to the empty home through the place that had once been a village and was now patched and tinkered by the jerry builders into the ugly likeness of a town. Every way the roads ran out at last into the desecrated fields and ended in rubble heaps and rank, wet weeds. I remember myself as a gaunt, black figure, going along the slippery, shiny side-walk, and the strange sense of detachment I felt from the squalid respect- ability, the sordid commercialism of the place. ...
~“T did not feel a bit sorry for my father. He seemed to me to be the victim of his own foolish sentimentality. The current cant required my attendance at his funeral, but it was really not my _ affair.
“ But going aoue de High Street my old life came back to me for a space. I met the girl I had known ten years since. Our eyes met... .
“Something moved me to turn back and eas to her. She was a very ordinary person.
“It was all like a dream, that visit to the old place. I did not feel then that I was lonely, that I had come out from the world into a desolation. I appreciated my loss of sympathy, but I put it down to the general inanity of life. Re-entering my room -seemed like the recovery of reality. There were the _ things I knew and loved. There stood the apparatus, the experiments arranged and waiting. And now there was scarcely a difficulty left, beyond the planning of details.
‘J will tell you, Kemp, sooner or later, all the complicated processes. We need not go into that now. For the most part, saving certain gaps I chose
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AT THE HOUSE IN GREAT PORTLAND ST. 143 to remember, they are written in cipher in those — books that tramp has hidden. We must hunt him
down. We must get those books again. But the _
essential phase was to place the transparent object whose refractive index was to be lowered, between two radiating centres of a sort of ethereal vibration, of which I will tell you more fully later. No—not these R6ntgen vibrations; I don’t know that these others of mine have been described, yet they are obvious enough. I needed two little dynamos— principally, and these I worked with a cheap gas- engine... . My first experiment was with a bit of white wool fabric. It was the strangest thing in the’ world to see it soft and white in the flicker of the flashes, and then to watch it fade like a wreath of smoke and vanish.
* I could scarcely believe I had done it. I put my hand into the emptiness and there was the thing as solid as ever. I felt it awkwardly, and threw it on the floor. I had a little trouble finding it again.
“ And then came a curious experience. I heard a miaow behind me, and, turning, saw a lean white cat, very dirty, on the cistern cover outside the window. A thought came into my head. ‘ Every- thing ready for you,’ I said, and went to the window, opened it, and called softly. She came in, purring —the poor beast was starving—and I gave her some milk. All my food was in a cupboard in the corner of the room. After that she went smelling round. the room, evidently with the idea of making herself’ at home. The invisible rag upset her a bit; you should have seen her spit at it! But I made her comfortable on the pillow of my truckle-bed, and I gave her butter to get her to wash.”
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THE INVISIBLE MAN
Ss And you processed her? ”
_ “T processed her. But giving drugs to a cat is no joke, Kemp! And the process failed.”
“ Failed? ”
* In two particulars. These were the claws and the pigment stuff—what is it? At the back of the © eye in acat. You know?”
* Tapetum.”
* Yes, the tapetum. It didn’t go. After I’d given the stuff to bleach the blood and done certain other things to her, I gave the beast opium, and put her and the pillow she was sleeping on, on the apparatus. And after all the rest had faded and vanished, there remained the two little ghosts of her eyes.”
6 Odd. 39
“IT can’t explain it. She was bandaged and — clamped of course—so I had her safe, but she awoke while she was still misty, and miawled dismally, and someone came knocking. It was an old woman from downstairs, who suspected me of vivisecting—a drink-sodden old creature, with only a cat to care for in all the world. I whipped out some chloroform, applied it, and answered the door. ‘Did I hear a cat?’ she asked. ‘My cat?’ ‘ Not here,’ said I, very politely. She was a little doubtful, and tried to peer past me into the room—strange enough to her, no doubt, bare walls, uncurtained windows, truckle-bed, with the gas-engine vibrating, and the seethe of the radiant points, and that faint stinging of chloroform in the air. She had to be satisfied at last, and went away again.”
** How long did it take? ” asked Kemp.
* Three or four hours—the cat. The bones and sinews and the fat were the last to go, and the tips
*
AT THE HOUSE IN GREAT PORTLAND S&T. 145
of the coloured hairs. And, as I say, the back part of the eye, tough, iridescent stuff it is, wouldn’t go at all.
“Tt was night outside long before the business was over, and nothing was to be seen but the dim eyes and the claws. I stopped the gas-engine, felt for and stroked the beast, which was still insensible, released its fastenings, and then, being tired, left it . sleeping on the invisible pillow and went to bed. I found it hard to sleep. I lay awake thinking weak, aimless stuff, going over the experiment again and again, or dreaming feverishly of things growing misty and vanishing about me until everything, the ground I stood on, vanished, and so I came to that sickly, falling nightmare one gets. About two the cat began miawling about the room. I tried to hush . it by talking to it, and then I decided to turn it out. I remember the shock I had striking a light— there were just the round eyes shining green—and nothing round them. I would have given it milk, but I hadn’t any. It wouldn’t be quiet, it just sat down and miaowed at the door. I tried to catch it, with an idea of putting it out of the window, but it wouldn’t be caught, it vanished. It kept on miaowing in different parts of the room. At last I opened the window and made a bustle. I suppose it went out at last. I never saw nor heard any more of it. Then—Heaven knows why—I fell thinking of my father’s funeral again, and the dismal, windy hillside, until the day had come. I found sleep was hopeless, and, locking my door after me, wandered out into the morning streets.”
“You don’t mean to say there’s an Invisible Cat
at large i in the world? ” said Kemp.
146 THE INVISIBLE MAN
“ If it hasn’t been killed,” said the Towiaihle Man. “ Why not? ”
“Why not?” said Kemp. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“ It’s very probably been killed,” said the Invisible Man. “It was alive four days after, I know, and down a grating in Great Tichfield Street, because I saw a crowd round the place trying to see whence the miaowing came.”
He was silent for the best part of a minute. Then he resumed abruptly: “I remember that morning before the change very vividly.
“I must have gone up Great Portland Street— for I remember the barracks in Albany Street and the horse soldiers coming out, and at last I found myself sitting in the sunshine and feeling ‘very ill and strange on the summit of Primrose Hill. It was a sunny day in January—one of those sunny, frosty days that came before the snow this year. My weary © brain tried to formulate the position, to plot out a plan of action.
“I was surprised to find, now that my prize was within my grasp, how inconclusive its attainment seemed. As a matter of fact I was worked out, the intense stress of nearly four years’ continuous work left me incapable of any strength or feeling. I was apathetic, and I tried in vain to recover the enthusiasm of my first inquiries, the passion of discovery that had enabled me to compass even the downfall of my father’s grey hairs. Nothing seemed to matter. I saw pretty clearly this was a transient — mood, due to overwork and want of sleep, and that
either by drugs or rest it would be possible to recover my energies.
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AT THE HOUSE IN GREAT PORTLAND ST. 147 a
** All I could think clearly was that the thing had to be carried through; the fixed idea still ruled me. And soon, for the money I had was almost exhausted. I looked about me at the hillside with children playing and girls watching them, and tried to think of all the fantastic advantages an invisible man would have in the world. After a time I crawled home, took some food and a strong dose of strychnine, and went to sleep in my clothes on my unmade bed.
. Strychnine is a grand tonic, Kemp, to take the flabbiness out of a man.”
* It’s the devil,” said Kemp. “ It’s the paleolithic in a bottle.”
“I awoke vastly invigorated and rather irritable. You know? ”
« T know the stuff.”
“** And there was someone rapping at the door. It was my landlord with threats and inquiries, an old Polish Jew in a long grey coat and greasy slippers. I had been tormenting a cat in the night, he was sure—the old woman’s tongue had been busy. He insisted on knowing all about it. The laws of this country against vivisection were very severe—he might be liable. I denied the cat. Then the vibra- tion of the little gas-engine could be felt all over the house, he said. That was true, certainly. He edged round me into the room, peering about over his German silver spectacles, and a sudden dread came into my mind that he might carry away some- thing of my secret. I tried to keep between him and the concentrating apparatus I had arranged, and that only made him more curious. What was I doing? Why was I always alone and secretive? Was it legal? Was it dangerous? I paid nothing
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mG 148 - ‘THE INVISIBLE MAN
but the usual rent. His had always fe a most respectable house—in a disreputable neighbour- _ hood. Suddenly my temper gave way. I told him to get out. He began to protest, to jabber of his right of entry. In a moment I had him by the collar—something ripped—and he went spinning out into his own passage. I slammed and locked the door and sat down quivering. x |
** He made a fuss outside, which I disregarded, and after a time he went away.
** But this brought matters to a crisis. I did not ‘know what he would do, nor even what he had the power to do. To move to fresh apartments would have meant delay—altogether I had barely twenty pounds left in the world, for the most part in a bank —and I could not afford that. Vanish! It was irresistible. Then there would be an inquiry, the sacking of my room.
*“ At the thought of the possibility of my work being exposed or interrupted at its very climax, I became angry and active. I hurried out with my three books of notes, my cheque book—the tramp has them now—and directed them from the nearest Post Office to a house of call for letters and parcels - in Great Portland Street. I tried to go out noise- lessty. Coming in, I found my landlord gomg quietly upstairs—he had heard the door close, I suppose. You would have laughed to see him jump
_ aside on the landing as I came tearing after him, . He glared at me as I went by him, and I made the house quiver with the slamming of my door. I heard him come shuffling up to my door, hesitate, and go down. I set to work upon ay preparations forthwith.
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AT THE HOUSE IN GREAT PORTLAND ST. 149 _
“Tt was all done that evening and night. While I was still sitting under the sickly, drowsy influence of the drugs that decolourise blood, there came a repeated knocking at the door. It ceased, footsteps went away and returned, and the knocking was resumed. There was an attempt to push something under the door—a blue paper. Then in a fit of
irritation I rose, and went and fiung the door wide _
open. ‘ Now then?’ said I.
“It was the landlord, with a notice of ejectment or something. He held it out to me, saw something odd about my hands, I expect, and lifted his eyes to my face.
“For a moment he gaped. Then he gave a sort of inarticulate cry, dropped candle and writ to- gether, and went blundering down the dark passage to the stairs.