Section 2

i iat nae red i Plage ON bcs Pinan
Pi ys ~ INTRODUCTION oy unexplored country, But it is boring to climb up
from ridge to ridge and never to reach the top, |
because the top is in infinity,
Yet in these novels of adventure into the unknown there are still some that have lost none of their magic. We shall reach the moon, we encircle the globe in a couple of days, we have been deep into the sea and the earth and we know that the North Pole is not there. But some things we shall never do although Wwe can, in some accounts of them, believe in them. However cynical we become about ‘ science,’ there are still-mysteries, and we can read with the same feeling of réality, as we could have felt on the day when they were written, of working miracles, of travelling in time, and of the grotesque romance of The Invisible Man.
. Frank WELLS
I
“Oo Cn Ho fS OF ND
CONTENTS
HERBERT GEORGE WELLS INTRODUCTION The Strange Man’s Arrival
Mre Teddy Henfrey’s First Impressions
The Thousand and One Bottles Mr. Cuss Interviews the Stranger The Burglary at the Vicarage The Furniture that Went Mad The Unveiling of the Stranger In Transit e Mr. Thomas Marvel
Mr. Marvel’s Visit to Iping
In the “‘ Coach and Horses *
The Invisible Man Loses His Temper Mr. Marvel Discusses His Resignaton At Port Stowe
‘The Man Who Was Running
In the “ Folly Cricketers” Dr. Kemp’s Visitor ; IQ
PAGE
II Qi 29 36 43 52 56 62 73
74 82
86 | gI 98 102
/ 110
113 11g
The Invisible Man Sleeps ne 19. Certain. First ‘Principles:
ttn Oxford Street
2 In the Emporium
bgt 3 In Drury Lane
ag The Plan that Foiled ~
‘The Wicksteed Murder
2 The Siege of Kemp's House
28 ‘The Hunter Hunted OP ic The Epilogue Bey : ee Veins 8
At the House in Great Parilend om
25 The Hunting of the Invisible Man
141
154
| 161 |
181
I The Strange Man’s Arrival
4 Mong stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking from Bramblehurst Railway Station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly-gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face save the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled itself — against his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to the burden he carried. He staggered into the “‘ Coach and Horses” more dead than alive, and flung his portmanteau down. “A fire,” he cried, “in the name of human charity! A room and a fire! ” He stamped and shook the snow from off himself in the bar, and followed Mrs. Hall into her guest parlour to strike his bargain. And with that much introduction, that and a couple of | sovereigns flung upon the table, he took up his — quarters in the inn.
_ Mrs, Hall lit the fire and left him there while she went to prepare him a meal with her own hands. , guest to stop at Iping in the winter time was an nheard-of piece of luck, let alone a guest who was o “ haggler,” and she was resolved to show herself worthy of her good fortune.
As soon as the bacon was well under way, and 21
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22 | ‘THE INVISIBLE MAN . Millie, her lymphatic aid, had been brisked up a bit by a few deftly chosen expressions of contempt, she carried the cloth, plates, and glasses into the parlour, and began to lay them with the utmost élat. Although the fire was burning up briskly, she was surprised to see that her visitor still wore his hat and coat, and stood with his back to her and staring out of the window at the talling snow in the yard,
His gloved hands were clasped behind him, and he seemed to be lost in thought. She noticed that the melted snow that still sprinkled his shoulders dripped upon her carpet,
“Can I take your hat and coat, sir,” she said, “ and give them a good dry in the kitchen? ”
“ No,” he said, without turning.
She was not sure she had heard him, and was ab ut to repeat her question,
He turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder, “ J preter to keep them on,”’ he said with emphasis; and she noticed that he wore big blue spectacles with side-lights, and had a bushy side whisker over his coat collar that completely hid his face.
“Very well, sir,” she said. “ As you like. In a bit the room will be warmer.” (
He made no answer, and turned his face away
from her again, and Mrs. Hall, feeling that her con-
versational advances were ill-timed, laid the rest of the table things in a quick staccato manner, and
whisked out of the room. When she returned he
was still standing there like a man of stone, his
_ back hunched, his collar turned up, his dripping
hat-brim turned down, hiding his face and ears with
_THE STRANGE MAN’S ARRIVAL 23 considerable emphasis, and called rather than said to him:
** Your lunch is served, sir.”
* Thank you,” he said at the same time, and did
not stir until she was closing the door. Then he swung round and approached the table with a certain eagerness. _ As she went behind the bar to the kitchen she heard a sound repeated at regular intervals. Chirk, chirk, chirk, it went, the sound of a spoon being whisked rapidly round a basin. “ That girl!” she said. “ There! I clean forgot it. It’s her being so long!” And while she herself finished mixing the mustard, she gave Millie a few verbal stabs for her excessive slowness. She had cooked the ham and eggs, laid the table, and done everything, while Millie (help, indeed!) had only succeeded in delaying the mustard. And him a new guest, and wanting to stay! Then she filled the mustard-pot, and, putting it with some stateliness upon a gold and black tea-tray, carried it into the parlour.
She rapped and entered promptly. As she did so her visitor moved quickly, so that she got but a limpse of a white object disappearing behind the ble. It would seem he was picking something m the floor. She rapped down the mustard-pot — m the table, and then she noticed the overcoat and at had been taken off and put over a chair in front the fire. A pair of wet boots threatened rust to aer steel fender. f She went to these things resolutely. ‘I suppose may have them to dry now?” she said, in a ice that brooked no denial.
-“ Leave the hat,” said her visitor in a muffled
24 __ THE INVISIBLE MAN
voice, and turning, she saw he had raised his: head and was looking at her.
- For a moment she stood gazing at him, too surprised to speak.
He held a white cloth—it was a serviette he had
brought with him—over the lower part of the face, so that his mouth and jaws were completely hidden, and that was the reason of his muffled voice. But it was not that’which startled Mrs. Hall. It was the fact that all the forehead above his blue glasses was covered by a white bandage, and that another covered his ears, leaving not a scrap of his face exposed excepting only his pink, peaked nose. It was bright pink, and shining, just as it had been at first. He wore a dark brown velvet jacket, with a high, black, linen-lined collar turned up about his neck. The thick black hair, escaping as it could below and between the cross bandages, projected in curious tails and horns, giving him the strangest appearance conceivable. This muffled and bandaged head was so unlike what she had anticipated that for a moment she was rigid.
He did not remove the serviette, but remained holding it, as she saw now, with a brown gloved hand, and regarding her with his inscrutable blank glasses. | “ Leave the hat,” he said, speaking indistinctly through the white cloth.
Her nerves began to recover trom the shock they had received. She placed the hat on the chair agair by the fire. “I didn’t know, sir,” she began, “ that 2? And she stopped, embarrassed.
“Thank you,” he said dryly, glancing from he:
to the door, and then at her again. — ahs “Tl have them nicely dried, sir, at once,” sh
pretng.- THE STRANGE. MAN’S ARRIVAL 85
said, and carried his clothes out of the room. She — glanced at his white-swathed head and blank
_ goggles again as she was going out of the door; but his napkin was still in front of his face. She shivered — a little as she closed the door behind her, and her
face was eloquent of her surprise and perplexity.
“I never! she whispered. ‘‘ There! ”? She went
quite softly to the kitchen, and was too preoccupied
to ask Millie what she was messing about with now,
when she got there.
The visitor sat and listened to her retreating feet. He glanced inquiringly at the window before he removed his serviette, and resumed his meal. He took a mouthful, glanced suspiciously at the window, took another mouthful; then rose and, taking the serviette in his hand, walked across the room and _ pulled the blind down to the top of the white muslin that obscured the lower panes. This plunged the room in twilight. He returned with an easier air to the table and his meal.”
* The poor soul’s had an accident, or an op’ration , or somethin’,”? said Mrs. Hall. “ What a turn them — bandages did give me to be sure! ”
_ She put on some more coal, unfolded the clothes- horse, and extended the traveller’s coat upon this. “And the goggles! Why, he looked more like a
divin’ *elmet than a human man!” She hung his - ve
muffler on a corner of the horse. ‘* And holding that handkerchief over his mouth all the time. Talkin’
through it! ... ne ae his mouth was hurt too— _ ‘
maybe.” —
She turned ean as one who suddenly remem- — =
4 9?
bers. “ Bless my soul alive!
a tangent, “ ain’t you done them taters yet, Millie? ”
she said, going off at
26 ‘THE INVISIBLE MAN _
When Mrs. Hall went to clear away the stranger’s lunch her idea that his mouth must also have been cut or disfigured in the accident she supposed him to have suffered was confirmed, for he was smoking a pipe, and all the time that she was in the room he never loosened the silk muffler he had wrapped round the lower part of his face to put the mouth- piece to his lips. Yet it was not forgetfulness, for she saw he glanced at the tobacco as it smouldered out. He sat in the corner with his back to the window- blind, and spoke now, having eaten and drunk and being comfortably warmed through, with less aggressive brevity than before. The reflection of the fire lent a kind of red animation to his big spectacles they had lacked hitherto.
“I have some luggage,” he said, “ at Bramble- hurst Station,” and he asked her how he could have it sent. He bowed his bandaged head quite politely in acknowledgment of her explanation, “ To- morrow! ” he said. “ There is no speedier delivery?” and seemed disappointed when she answered “ No.” “Was she quite sure? No man with a trap who would go over? ”
Mrs. Hall, nothing loath, answered his questions, and then developed a conversation. “ It’s a steep road by the down, sir,” she said, in answer to the question about a trap; and then snatching at an opening said “ It was there a carriage was upsettled, a year ago and more. A gentleman killed, besides his coachman. Accidents, sir, happen.in a moment, don’t they? ”
But the visitor was not to be drawn so easily. ** They do,” he said, through his muffler, eyeing ther ° quietly from behind his impenetrable glasses. .
| _" THE STRANGE MAN’S ARRIVAL 27
.
_ But they take long enough to get well, sir, don’t § Sieh
they? There was my sister’s son, Tom, jest cut his
arm with a scythe—tumbled on it in the ’ayfield— and bless me! he was three months tied up, sir. You’d hardly believe it. It’s regular give me a dread of a scythe, sir.”
** I can quite understand that,” said the visitor.
** We was afraid, one time, that he’d have to are
an op’ration, he was that bad, sir.”
The visitor laughed abruptly—a bark of a ieah
that he seemed to bite and kill in his mouth. “ Was.
he?” he said. “ He was, sir. And no laughing matter to them as had the doing for him as I had, my sister being
took up with her little ones so much. There was
_ if I may make so bold as to say it, sir
bandages to do, sir, and bandages to undo. So that
“Will you get me some matches?” said the
_ Misitor quite abruptly. “‘ My pipe is out.”
Mrs. Hall was pulled up suddenly. It was
- certainly rude of him after telling him all she had
done. She gasped at him for a moment, and remembered the two sovereigns. She went for the
matches. ' “ Thanks,”? he said concisely, as she put them: ces
down, and turned his shoulder upon her and stared out of the window again. Evidently he was sensitive on the topic of operations and bandages. She did
not “ make so bold as to say,” after all. But his _ snubbing way had irritated her, and Millie had a hot time of it that afternoon.
The visitor remained in the parlour until four o'clock, without giving the ghost of an excusé for
an intrusion. For the most part he was quite still
Siti smoking by the Grelight-—perhays, ‘dozing. ae] Once or twice a curious listener might have heard him at the coals, and for the space of five minutes he was audible pacing the room. He seemed to be _ talking to himself. Then the arm-chair creaked as we sat down again.
2
Mr. Teddy Henfrey’s First Impressions
x T four o’clock, when it was fairly dark, and Mrs. Hall was screwing up her courage to go in and ask her visitor if he would take some tea, Teddy Henfrey, the clock-jobber, came into the bar. “ My sakes, Mrs. Hall,” said he, “but this is terrible weather for thin boots! * The snow Gseevarvsy : was falling faster.
Mrs. Hall agreed, and then noticed he had his
bag with him. “ Now you’re here, Mr. Teddy,” said she, “‘ I’d be glad if you’d give th’ old clock in the parlour a bit of a look. "Tis going, and it strikes well, and hearty, but the hour hand won *t do. nuthin’ but point at six.’ And leading the way, she went across to the parlour door and rapped and entered.
_. Her visitor, she saw, as she opened the door, was seated in the arm-chair before the fire, dozing, it would seem, with his bandaged head drooping on one side. The only light in the room was the red glow from the fire. Everything was ruddy, shadowy, and indistinct to her, the more so since she had just been lighting the bar lamp, and her eyes were dazzled. But for a second it seemed to her that the
man she looked at had an enormous mouth wide
open, a vast and incredible mouth that swallowed
the whole of the lower portion of his face. It was
the sensation of a moment; the white-bound head, as
30 THE INVISIBLE MAN
the monstrous goggle eyes, and this huge* yawn below it. Then he stirred, started up in his chair, put up his hand. She opened the door wide so that the room was lighter, and she saw him more clearly, with the muffler held to his face, just as she had seen him hold the serviette before. The shadows, she fancied, had tricked her.
* Would you mind, sir, this man a-coming to look at the clock, sir?” she said, recovering from her momentary disorder.
** Look at the clock? ” he said, staring round in a _ drowsy manner, and speaking over his hand; and then, getting more fully awake, ‘‘ Certainly.”
Mrs. Hall went away to get a lamp, and he rose and stretched himself. Then came the light, and Mr. Teddy Henfrey, entering, was contronted by this bandaged person. He was, ‘he says, “ taken aback.”
** Good afternoon,” said the stranger, regarding him—as Mr. Henfrey says, with a vivid sense of the - dark spectacles—“‘ like a lobster.”
*T hope,” said Mr. Hentrey, “that it’s no intrusion.”
** None whatever,” said the stranger. “ Though I understand,” he said, turning to Mrs. Hall, “ that this room is really to be mine for my own private use.”
aa thought, sir,” said Mrs. Hall, “ you’d prefer the clock