e. Gryphon, said Kemp. Gryphon answered the voice. A younger student than you were, almost an albino, six feet high and broad, with a pink and white face and red eyes who won the medal for chemistry. I'm confused, said Kemp. My brain is rioting. What is this to do with Gryphon? I am Gryphon. Kemp thought. It's horrible, he said. But what devilry must happen to make a man invisible? It's no devilry. It's a process, sane and intelligible enough. It's horrible, said Kemp. How on earth? It's horrible enough, but I'm wounded and in pain and tired. Great God, Kemp! You are a man. Take it steady. Give me some food and drink and sit down here. Kemp stared at the bandages that moved across the room, then saw a basket chair dragged across the floor and come to rest near the bed. It creaked and the seat was depressed a quarter of an inch or so. He rubbed his eyes and felt his neck again. This beats ghosts, he said and laughed stupidly. That's better. Think heaven, you're getting sensible. Oh, silly! said Kemp and knuckled his eyes. Whisky, I'm near dead. It didn't feel so. Where are you? If I get up, shall I run into you? There. All right. Whisky, here. Where shall I give it to you? The chair creaked and Kemp felt the glass drawn away from him. He let go by an effort. His instinct was all against it. It came to rest poised twenty inches above the front edge of the seat of the chair. He stared at it in infinite perplexity. This is... This must be hypnotism. You have suggested you are invisible. Nonsense, said the voice. It's frantic. Listen to me. I demonstrated conclusively this morning, began Kemp, that invisibility never mind what you've demonstrated. I'm starving, said the voice, and the night is chilly to a man without clothes. Food, said Kemp. The tumbler of Whisky tilted itself. Yes, said the invisible man, wrapping it down. Have you a dressing-gown? Kemp made some exclamation in an undertone. He walked to a wardrobe and produced a robe of dingy scarlet. This, too, he asked. It was taken from him. It hung limp for a moment in mid-air, fluttered weirdly, stood full and decorous, buttoning itself and sat down in his chair. Draw socks, slippers, would be a comfort, said the unseen, curtly. And food. Nothing, but this is the insaneest thing I ever was in in my life. He turned out his drawers for the articles, and then went downstairs to ransack his larder. He came back with some cold cutlets and bread, pulled up a light table and placed them before his guest. Never mind knives, said his visitor, and a cutlet hung in mid-air with a sound of gnawing. Invisible, said Kemp, and sat down on a bedroom chair. Looks like to get something about me before I eat, said the invisible man, with a full mouth, eating greedily. Queer fancy. I suppose that wrist is all right, said Kemp. Trust me, said the invisible man. A father strange and wonderful. Exactly. But it's all that I should blunder into your house to get my bandaging, my first stroke of luck. Anyhow, I meant to sleep in this house tonight. You must stand that. Since my blood-showing, isn't it? Quite a clot over there. Gets visible as it coagulates, I see. It's only the living tissue I've changed and only for as long as I'm alive. I've been in the house three hours. But how's it done? began Kemp in a tone of exasperation. Confounded, the whole business! It's unreasonable from beginning to end. Quite reasonable, said the invisible man. Perfectly reasonable. He reached over and secured the whiskey-bottle. Kemp stared at the devouring dressing-gap. Array of candle-light penetrating a torn patch in the right shoulder made a triangle of light under the left ribs. What were the shots, he asked? How did the shooting begin? It was a real fool of a man, a sort of confederate of mine. Curse him, who tried to steal my money. Has done so. Is he invisible too? No.  I'm hungry, in pain, and you want me to tell stories. Kemp got up. You didn't do any shooting, he asked. Not me, said his visitor. Some fool I'd never seen fired at random. A lot of them got scared. They all got scared at me. Curse them. I say, I want more to eat than this, Kemp. I'll see what there is to eat downstairs, said Kemp. Not much, I'm afraid. After he had done eating and he made a heavy meal, the invisible man demanded a cigar. He bit the end savagely before Kemp could find a knife and cursed when the outer leaf loosened. It was strange to see him smoking.  This blessed gift of smoking, he said, and puffed vigorously. I'm lucky to have fallen upon you, Kemp. You must help me. Fancy tumbling on you just now. I'm in a devilish scrape. I've been mad, I think. The things I've been through. But we will do things yet. Let me tell you. He helped himself to more whiskey and soda. Kemp got up, looked about him and fetched a glass from his spare room. It's wild, but I suppose I may drink. You haven't changed much, Kemp, these dozen years. You fair men don't. Call in methodical after the first collapse. I must tell you, we will work together. But how is it all done, said Kemp? And how did you get like this? For God's sake, let me smoke in peace for a little while, and then I will begin to tell you. But the story was not told that night. The invisible man's wrist was growing painful. He was feverish, exhausted, and his mind came round to brood upon his chase down the hill and the struggle about the inn. He spoke in fragments of marvel. He smoked faster. His voice grew angry. Kemp tried to gather where he could. He was afraid of me. I could see that he was afraid of me. Said the invisible man, many times over. He meant to give me the slip. He was always casting about.  A kerr. I should have killed him. Where did you get the money? Asked Kemp abruptly. The invisible man was silent for a space. I can't tell you tonight, he said. He groaned suddenly, lean forward, supporting his invisible head on invisible hands. Kemp, he said, I've had no sleep for near three days. Except a couple of doses of an hour or so. I must sleep soon. Well, have my room, have this room. But how can I sleep? If I sleep, you will get away. Ah! What does it matter? What's the short wound? asked Kemp abruptly. Nothing. Scratch and blood. Oh! God! How I want sleep. Why not? The invisible man appeared to be regarding Kemp. Because of a particular objection to being caught by me. Because of a particular objection to being caught by my fellow men. He said slowly. Kemp started. Fool that I am. Said the invisible man, striking the table smartly. I've put the idea into your head. End of chapter 16 and 17. Chapter 18 and 19 of The Invisible Man. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells. Chapter 18. The Invisible Man Sleeps. Exhausted and wounded as the Invisible Man was, he refused to accept Kemp's word that his freedom should be respected. He examined the two windows of the bedroom, drew up the blinds and opened the sashes to confirm Kemp's statement that a retreat by them would be possible. Outside the night was very quiet and still, and the new moon was setting over the down. Then he examined the keys of the bedroom and the two dressing-room doors to satisfy himself that these also could be made an assurance of freedom. Finally he expressed himself satisfied. He stood on the hearth-rug and Kemp heard the sound of a yawn. I'm sorry, said the Invisible Man, if I cannot tell you all that I have done tonight. But I am worn out. It's grotesque, no doubt. It's horrible, but believe me, Kemp, in spite of your arguments of this morning it is quite a possible thing. I've made a discovery. I meant to keep it to myself. I must have a partner. And you, we can do such things. But tomorrow, now, Kemp, I feel as though I must sleep or perish. Kemp stood in the middle of the room staring at the headless garment. I suppose I must leave you, he said. It's incredible. Three things happening like this, overturning all my preconceptions would make me insane. But it's real. Is there anything more that I can get you? Only bid me good night, said Griffin. Good night, said Kemp, and shook an invisible hand. He walked sideways to the door. Suddenly the dressing-gown walked quickly towards him. Understand me, said the dressing-gown. No attempts to hamper me or capture me. Well, Kemp's face changed a little. I thought I'd give you my word, he said. Kemp closed the door softly behind him and the key was turned upon him forthwith. Then as he stood with an expression of passive amazement on his face the rapid feet came to the door of the dressing-room and that, too, was locked. Kemp slapped his brow with his hand. Am I dreaming? Has the world gone mad? Why have I? He laughed and put his hand to the locked door. But out of my own bedroom by a flagrant absurdity, he said. He walked to the head of the staircase, turned and stared at the locked doors. It's fact, he said. He put his fingers to his slightly bruised neck. Undeniable fact.  He lit the dining-room lamp, got out a cigar and began pacing the room, ejaculating. Now and then he would argue with himself. Invisible, he said. Is there such a thing as an invisible animal? In the sea, yes. Thousands, millions. All the larvae, all the little noplii and tornarias, all the microscopic things, the jellyfish. In the sea there are more things invisible than visible. I never thought of that before. And in the ponds, too, all those little pond-life things, specks of colourless, translucent jelly. But in air? No. It can't be. But after all, why not? If a man was made of glass, he would still be visible. His meditation became profound. The bulk of three cigars had passed into the invisible or diffused as a white ash over the carpet before he spoke again. Then it was merely an exclamation. He turned aside, walked out of the room, and went into his little consulting-room and lit the gas there. It was a little room because Dr. Kemp did not live by practice and in it were the day's newspapers. The morning's paper lay carelessly opened and thrown aside. He caught it up, turned it over, and read the account of a strange story from Iping that the mariner at Port Stowe had spelt over so painfully to Mr. Marvell. Kemp read it swiftly. Wrapped up, said Kemp, disguised, hiding it. Now it seems to have been aware of his misfortune.  He dropped the paper and his eye went seeking. Ah! he said, and caught up the St. James Gazette lying folded up as it arrived. Now we shall get at the truth, said Dr. Kemp. He rent the paper open. A couple of columns confronted him. An entire village in Sussex goes mad, was the heading. Good heavens! said Kemp, reading eagerly an incredulous account of the events in Iping of the previous afternoon that have already been described. Over the leaf the report in the morning paper had been reprinted. He re-read it. Ran through the street striking right and left. Jaffers insensible. Mr. Huckster in great pain still unable to describe what he saw. Painful humiliation, vicar, woman ill with terror. Windows smashed. This extraordinary story, probably a fabrication, too good not to print. Comgrano. He dropped the paper and stared blankly in front of him. Probably a fabrication. He caught up the paper again and re-read the whole business. But when does the tramp come in? Why the deuce was he chasing a tramp? He sat down abruptly on the surgical bench. He's not only invisible, he said, but he's mad, homicidal. When dawn came to mingle its pallor with the lamp-light and cigar smoke of the dining-room, Kemp was still pacing up and down, trying to grasp the incredible. He was altogether too excited to sleep. His servants, descending sleepily, discovered him and were inclined to think that over-study had worked this ill on him. He gave them extraordinary but quite explicit instructions to lay breakfast for two in the Belvedere study and then to confine themselves to the basement and ground floor. Then he continued to pace the dining-room until the morning's paper came. That had much to say and little to tell beyond the confirmation of the evening before and a very badly written account of another remarkable tale from Port Burdick. This gave Kemp the essence of the happenings of the jolly cricketers. And the name of Marvel. He has made me keep with him twenty-four hours, Marvel testified. Certain minor facts were added to the Iping story, notably the cutting of the village telegraph wire. But there was nothing to throw light on the connection between the invisible man and the tramp for Mr. Marvel had supplied no information about the three books or the money with which he was linked. The incredulous tone had vanished and a shawl of reporters and inquirers were already at work elaborating the matter. Kemp read every scrap of the report and sent his housemaid out to get every one of the morning papers she could. These also he devoured. He is invisible, he said, and it reads like rage growing to mania. The things he may do. The things he may do. And he's upstairs, free as the air. What on earth ought I to do? For instance, would it be a breach of faith if... No. He went to a little untidy desk in the corner and began a note. He tore this up half-written and wrote another. He read it over and considered it. Then he took an envelope and addressed it to Colonel Addy, Port Burdick. The invisible man awoke even as Kemp was doing this. He awoke in an evil temper and Kemp, alert for every sound, heard his pattering feet rush suddenly across the bedroom overhead. Then a chair was flung over and the wash-stand tumbler smashed. Kemp hurried upstairs and rapped eagerly. Chapter 19 Certain First Principles What's the matter? asked Kemp when the invisible man admitted him. Nothing was the answer. But confounded the smash. Fit of temper, said the invisible man. Forgot this arm and it saw. Rather liable to that sort of thing. I am. Kemp walked across the room and picked up the fragments of broken glass.  All that happened in Iping and down the hill. The world has become aware of its invisible citizen, but no one knows you are here. The invisible man swore. The secret's out. I gather it was a secret. I don't know what your plans are, but of course I'm anxious to help you. The invisible man sat down on the bed. There's breakfast upstairs, said Kemp, speaking as easily as possible and he was delighted to find his strange guest rose willingly. Kemp led the way up the narrow staircase to the Belvedere. Before we can do anything else, said Kemp, I must understand a little more about this invisibility of yours. He'd sat down after one nervous glance out of the window with the air of a man who has talking to do. His doubts of the sanity of the entire business flashed and vanished again as he looked across to where Griffin sat at the breakfast-table, a headless, handless dressing-gown, wiping unseen lips on a miraculously held serviette. It's simple enough, incredible enough, said Griffin, putting the serviette aside and leaning the invisible head on an invisible hand. No doubt to you, but— Kemp laughed. Well, yes, to me it seemed wonderful at first, no doubt, but now, great God, but we will do great things yet. I came on the store first at Chesilstow. Chesilstow? I went there after I left London. You know, I dropped medicine and took up physics. No, well, I did. Light fascinated me. Ah! optical density! The whole subject is a network of riddles, a network with solutions glimmering elusively through, and being but two-and-twenty and full of enthusiasm, I said, I will devote my life to this. This is worthwhile. You know what fools we are at two-and-twenty. Fools then or fools now, said Kemp, as though knowing could be any satisfaction to a man. But I went to work, like a slave, and I had hardly worked and thought about them out of six months before a light came through one of the meshes suddenly, blindingly. I found a general principle of pigments and refraction, a formula, a geometrical expression involving four dimensions. Fools, common men, even common mathematicians, do not know anything of what some general expression may mean to the student of molecular physics. In the books, the books that Kemp has hidden, there are marvels, miracles, but this was not a method, it was an idea that might lead to a method by which it would be possible, without changing any other property of matter, except, in some instances, colours, to lower the refractive index of a substance solid or liquid to that of air, so far as all practical purposes are concerned. Phew! said Kemp. That's odd, but still I don't see quite. I can understand that thereby you could spoil a valuable stone, but personal invisibility is a far cry. Precisely, said Griffin. But consider, visibility depends on the action of the visible bodies on light. Either a body absorbs light, or it reflects or refracts it, or does all these things. If it neither reflects nor refracts nor absorbs light, it cannot of itself be visible. You see an opaque red box, for instance, because the colour absorbs some of the light and reflects the rest, all the red part of the light, to you. If it did not absorb any particular part of the light, but reflected at all, then it would be a shining white box, silver. A diamond box would neither absorb much of the light, nor reflect much from the general surface, but just here and there, where the surfaces were favourable, the light would be reflected and refracted, so that you would get a brilliant appearance of flashing reflections and translucencies, a sort of skeleton of light. A glass box would not be so brilliant, nor so clearly visible as a diamond box, because there would be less refraction and reflection. See that? From certain points of view you would see quite clearly through it. Some kinds of glass would be more visible than others. A box of flint glass would be brighter than a box of ordinary window glass. A box of very thin, common glass would be hard to see in a bad light, because it would absorb hardly any light and reflect and reflect very little. And if you put a sheet of common white glass in water, still more if you put it in some denser liquid than water, it would vanish almost altogether because light passing from water to glass is only slightly refracted or reflected or indeed affected in any way. It is almost as invisible as a jet of coal-gas or hydrogen is in air and for a precise little same reason. Yes, said Kemp, that is pretty plain sailing. And here's another fact you will know to be true. If a sheet of glass is smashed, Kemp, and beaten into a powder, it becomes much more visible while it is in the air. It becomes at last an opaque white powder. This is because the powdering multiplies the surfaces of the glass at which refraction and reflection occur. In the sheet of glass there are only two surfaces. In the powder the light is reflected or refracted by each grain it passes through and very little gets right through the powder. But if the white powdered glass is put into water, it forthwith vanishes. The powdered glass and water have much the same refractive index, that is the light undergoes very little refraction or reflection in passing from one to the other. You make the glass invisible by putting it into a liquid of nearly the same refractive index. A transparent thing becomes invisible if it is put in any medium of almost the same refractive index. And if you will consider only second, you will see also that the powder of glass might be made to vanish in air if its refractive index could be made the same as that of air. For then there would be no refraction or reflection as the light passed from glass to air. Yes, yes, said Kemp, but a man's not powdered glass. No, said Griffin, he's more transparent. Nonsense! That from a doctor! Oh, one forgets!  Just think of all the things that are transparent and seem not to be so. Paper, for instance, is made up of transparent fibres and it is white and opaque only for the same reason that a powder of glass is white and opaque. Oil-white paper fill up the interstices between the particles with oil so that there is no longer refraction or reflection except at the surfaces and it becomes as transparent as glass and not only paper but cotton fibre, linen fibre, wool fibre, woody fibre and bone Kemp, flesh Kemp, hair Kemp, nails and nerves Kemp.  For the most part the fibres of a living creature are no more opaque than water. Great heavens, cried Kemp! Of course! Of course! I was thinking only last night of the sea larva and all jellyfish. Now you have me! And all that I knew and had in mind a year after I left London, six years ago, but I kept it to myself. I had to do my work under frightful disadvantages. All of them, my professor, was a scientific bounder, a journalist by instinct, a thief of ideas. He was always prying. And you know the navish system of the scientific world. I simply would not publish and let him share my credit. I went on working. I got near and nearer making my formula into an experiment, a reality. I told no living soul because I meant to flush my work upon the world with a 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 discovered physiology. 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 then sometimes till dawn. Suddenly splendid and complete in my mind. I was alone. The laboratory was still with the tall lights burning brightly and silently. In all my great moments I have been alone. 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 overwhelming. I left the filtering I was doing for hours. 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. If you camp, if you, anyone I tell you would have flung themselves 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 with this everlasting question and the students, the cramped means three years I had of it. And after three years of secrecy and exasperation 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 around abruptly. I robbed the old man. Robbed my father. The money was not his and he shot himself. End of CHAPTERS 18 & 19 CHAPTERS 20 & 21 OF THE INVISIBLE MAN This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells CHAPTER 20 AT THE HOUSE IN GREAT PORTLAND STREET For a moment Kemp sat in silence staring at the back of the headless figure at the window.  You're tired, he said.  Have my chair. He placed himself between Gryphon and the nearest window. For a space Gryphon sat silent and then he resumed abruptly. I'd left the Chelsea Stoke cottage already, he said, when that happened. It was last December. I'd taken a room in London, a large, unfurnished room and a big, ill-managed lodging-house in a slum near Great Portland Street.  Successfully, drawing near an end I was like a man emerging from a thicket and suddenly coming on some unmeaning tragedy. I went to bury him.  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 shabby, black, bent old man with a snivelling cold. I was in the house 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 in the desecrated fields and ended in rubble-heaps and rank wet weeds. I remember myself as a gaunt-black figure walking along the slippery, shiny pavement and the strange sense of detachment I felt from the squalid respectability, the sordid commercialism of the place. I did not feel a bit sorry for my father. He seemed to me to be the victim of his own foolish sentimentality. The current can't required my attendance at his funeral, but it was really not my affair. But going along the high street my old life came back to me for a space for I met the girl I had known ten years since. Our eyes met. Something moved me to turn back and talk to her. She was a very ordinary person. It was all I could dream that visit to the old places. I did not feel then that I was lonely that I had come out from the world into a desolate place. I appreciated my loss of sympathy but I put it down to the general nanity of things. 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. I 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 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 those Röntgen vibrations. I don't know that these others of mine have been described. Yet they are obvious enough. 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 in the flicker of the flashes, soft and white, 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 little trouble finding it again. And then came a curious experience. I heard a meow behind me and turning saw a lean white cat very dirty on the cistern cover outside the window. A thought came into my head. Everything 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. I could have seen her spit at it but I made her comfortable on the pillow of my chuckle-bed and I gave her butter to get her to wash. And you processed her? I 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 a cat, 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 in the pillow she was sleeping on, on the apparatus and after all the rest had faded and vanished there remained two little ghosts of her eyes. Odd? I can't explain it. She was bandaged and clamped, of course, so I heard her safe. But she woke while she was still misty and meowed dismally and someone came knocking.  I whipped out some chloroform, applied it and answered the door. Did I hear cat? she said. My cat? Not here, I said, 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, chuckle-bed with the gas engine vibrating and the seethe of the radiant points and that faint ghastly 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 of the coloured hairs and, as I say, the back part of the eye, tough iridescent stuff it is, wouldn't go at all. It 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 and 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 over and over again were 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 meowing 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 when striking the 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 meowed 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. Then it began meowing in different parts of the room. At last I opened the window and made a bustle. I suppose it went out at last and never saw any more of it. Then, heaven knows why I felt thinking of my father's funeral again and the dismal windy hillside until the day had come. I found sleeping 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, said Kemp. If it hasn't been killed, said the invisible 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 Titchfield Street because I saw a crowd round the place trying to see whence the meowing 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. I remember the barracks in Albany Street and the horse soldiers coming out and at last I found 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. I remember that morning before the change 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 of 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 that either by drugs or rest it would be possible to recover my energies. 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 that a visible man would have in the world. After a time I crawled home took some food in a strong dose of strictening and went to sleep in my clothes on my unmade bed. Strictening is a grand tonic camp to take the flabbiness out of a man. It's the devil, said Kemp. It's the paleolithic in a bottle. I awoke vastly and rather irritable. You know, I know this stuff. And there was someone wrapping at the door. It was my landlord with threats and inquiries, an old Polish Jew in a long grey coat and greasy slippers. I'd 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 in this country against a vivisection were very severe. He might be liable. I denied the cat. Then the vibration of the little gas engine could be felt all over the house, he said. That was true, certainly. He had drowned me into the room peering about over his German silver spectacles and a sudden dread came into my mind to carry away something 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 but the usual rent. His had always been a most respectable house in a disreputable neighbourhood. 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, everything ripped and he went spinning out into his own passage. I slammed and locked the door and sat down, quivering. 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. All together 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, a sacking of my room. At the thought of the possibility of my work being exposed or interrupted at its very climax I became very angry and active. I hurried out with my three books of notes, my checkbook, the tramp house 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 noiselessly. Coming in I found my landlord going quietly upstairs, yet with the door closed I suppose. You would have loved 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 floor, hesitate and go down. I set to work upon my preparations forthwith. It was all done that evening and night. While I was still sitting under the sickly drowsy influence of the drugs that decolorize 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 flung the door wide open. Now, then, said I. It was my landlord with a notice of ejectment of 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 together and went blundering down the dark passage I shut the door, locked it and went to the looking-glass. Then I understood his terror. My face was white, like white stone. But it was all horrible. I had not expected the suffering. A night of racking anguish, sickness and fainting. I set my teeth, though my skin was presently a fire, all my body a fire. But I lay there like grim death. I understood now how it was the cat had howled until I chloroformed it. Lucky it was I lived alone and attended in my room. There were times when I sobbed and groaned and talked, but I stuck to it. I became insensible and walk languid in the darkness. The pain had passed. I thought I was killing myself and I did not care. I shall never forget that dawn and the strange horror of seeing that my hands had become as clouded glass and watching grow clear and thinner as the day went by until at last I could see the sickly disorder became glassy, the bones and arteries faded, vanished and the little white nerves went last. I gritted my teeth and stayed there to the end. At last only the dead tips of the fingernails remained pallid and white and the brown stain of some acid upon my fingers. I struggled up. At first I was as incapable as a swallowed infant, stepping with limbs I could not see. I was weak and very hungry. I went and stared at nothing in my shaving-glass. They were an attenuated pigment still remained behind the retina of my eyes, fainter than mist. I had to hang on to the table and press my forehead against the glass. It was only by a frantic effort of will that I dragged myself back to the apparatus and completed the process. I slept during the forenoon, pulling the sheet over my eyes to shut out the light and about midday I was awakened again by a knocking. My strength had returned. I sat up and listened and heard a whispering. I sprang to the noise as see as possible, began to detach the connections of my apparatus and to distribute it about the room so as to destroy the suggestions of its arrangement. Presently the knocking was renewed and voices called, first my landlords and then two others. To gain time I answered them. The invisible rag and pillow came to hand and I opened the window and pitched them out onto the cistern cover. As the window opened a heavy crash came at the door. Someone had charged it with the idea of smashing the lock, and I had screwed up some days before stopped him. That startled me, made me angry. I began to tremble and do things hurdly. I tossed together some loose paper, straw, packing paper and so forth in the middle of the room and turned on the gas. Heavy blows began to rain upon the door. I could not find the matches. I beat my hands on the wall with rage. I turned down the gas again, stepped out of the window on the cistern cover, very softly lowered the sash and sat down, secure and invisible but quivering with anger to what events. They split a panel I saw and in another moment they had broken away the staples of the bolts and stood in the open doorway. It was the landlord and his two step-sons, sturdy young men of three or four and twenty. Behind them flooded the old hag of a woman from downstairs. You may imagine their astonishment to find the room empty. One of the younger men rushed to the window at once, flung it up and stared out.  I was half-minded to hit his silly countenance but I rested my doubled fist. He stared right through me so did the others as they joined him. The old man went and peered under the bed and then they all made a rush for the cupboard. They had to argue about it at length in Yiddish and Cockney English. They concluded I had not answered them that their imagination had deceived them. A feeling of extraordinary elation took the place of my anger as I sat outside the window and watched these four people. The old lady came in, glancing suspiciously about her like a cat, trying to understand the riddle of my behaviour. The old man, so far as I could understand his patois, agreed with the old lady that I was a vivisectionist. The sons protested in garbled English that I was an electrician and appealed to the dynamoes and radiators. They were all nervous about my arrival although I found subsequently that they had bolted the front door. The old lady peered into the cupboard and under the bed and one of the young men pushed up the register at the chimney. One of my fellow lodgers, a costumonger who shared the opposite room with a butcher, appeared on the landing and he was called in and told incoherent things. It occurred to me that the radiators, if they fell into the hands of some acute well-educated person, would give me away too much and, watching my opportunity, I came into the room and tilted one of the little dynamoes off its fellow on which it was standing and smashed both apparatus. Then, while they were trying to explain the smash, I dodged out of the room and went softly downstairs. I went into one of the sitting rooms and waited until they came down, still speculating and argumentative. All a little disappointed at finding no horrors and all a little puzzled how they stood legally towards me. Then I slipped up again with a box of matches, fired my heap of paper and rubbish, put the chairs and bedding thereby, led the gas to the affair by means of an India rubber tube and waving a fair well to the room, left it for the last time. You fired the house! exclaimed Kemp. Fired the house. It was the only way to cover my trail and no doubt it was insured. I slipped the bolts of the front door quietly and went out into the street. I was invisible and I was only just beginning to realize the extraordinary advantage my invisibility gave me. My head was already teeming with plans of all the wild and wonderful things I had now impunity to do. Chapter Twenty One in Oxford Street In going downstairs the first time I found an unexpected difficulty because I could not see my feet. Indeed, I stumbled twice and there was an unaccustomed clumsiness in gripping the bolt. By not looking down, however, I managed to walk on the level passably well. My mood, I say, was one of exaltation. I felt as a seeing-man might do with padded feet in noiseless clothes in a city of the blind. I experienced a wild impulse to just to startle people, to clap men on the back, fling people's hats and generally revel in my extraordinary advantage. But hardly had I emerged upon Great Portland Street, however. My lodging was close to the big draper shop there when I heard a clashing concussion and was hit violently behind and turning saw a man carrying a basket of soda water siphons and looking in amazement at his burden. Although the blow had really hurt me I found something so irresistible in his astonishment that I laughed aloud. The devil's in the basket, I said, and suddenly twisted it out of his hand. He let it go incontinently and I swung the whole weight into the air. But a fool of a cabman standing outside a public-house made a sudden rush for this and his extending fingers took me with excruciating violence out of the ear. I let the hole down with a smash on the cabman and then with shouts and the clatter of feet about me people coming out of shops, vehicles pulling up, I realized what I had done for myself and cursing my folly backed against a shop window and prepared to dodge out of the confusion. At the moment I should be wedged into a crowd and inevitably discovered. I pushed by a butcher boy who luckily did not turn to see the nothingness that shoved him aside and dodged behind the cabman's four-wheeler. I do not know how they settled the business. I heard straight across the road which was happily clear and hardly heeding which way I went in the fright of detection the incident had given me plunged into the afternoon throng of Oxford Street. I tried to get into the stream of people but they were heels were being trodden upon. I took to the gutter the roughness of which I found painful to my feet and forthwith the shaft of a crawling handsome dug me forcibly under the shoulder-blade reminding me that I was already bruised severely. I staggered out of the way of the cab, avoided a perambulator by a convulsive movement and found myself behind the handsome. A happy thought saved me and as this drove slowly along I followed in its immediate wake, trembling in a astonish to the turn of my adventure not only trembling but shivering. It was a bright day in January and I was stark-naked and the thin slime of mud that covered the road was freezing. Foolish as it seems to be now I had not reckoned that, transparent or not, I was still amenable to the weather and all its consequences. Then suddenly a bright idea came into my head. I ran round and got into the cab and so shivering, scared and sniffing with the first intimations of a cold and with the bruises and the small of my back growing upon my attention. Slowly along Oxford Street and past Tottenham Court Road, my mood was as different from that in which I had saluted forth ten minutes ago as it is possible to imagine. This invisibility, indeed, the one thought that possessed me was how was I to get out of the scrape I was in. We crawled past Moody's and there a tall woman with five or six yellow labelled books held my cab and I sprang out just in time to escape her, shaving a railway van narrowly in my flight. I made off up the roadway to Bloomsbury Square, intending to strike north past the museum and so get into the quiet district. I was now cruelly chilled and the strangeness of my situation so unnerved me that I wimpered as I ran. At the northward corner of the square a little white dog ran out of the pharmaceutical society's offices and incontinently made for me nose down. I'd never realised it before, but the nose is to the mind of a dog, with the eye is to the mind of a seeing man. Dogs perceive the scent of a man moving as men perceive his vision. This brute began barking and leaping, showing as it seemed to me only too plainly that he was aware of me. I crossed Great Russell Street, glancing of my shoulder as I did so, and went somewhere along Montague Street before I realised what I was running towards. Then I became aware of a blair of music and looking along the street saw a number of people advancing out of Russell Square, red shirts and the banner of the Salvation Army to the fore. Such a crowd chanting in the roadway and scoffing I could not hope to penetrate and dread in to go back and farther from home again and deciding on the spur of the moment I ran up the white steps of a house facing the museum railings and stood there until the crowd should have passed. Happily the dog strapped at the noise of the band too, hesitated and turned tail running back to Bloomsbury Square again. On came the band, bawling with unconscious irony some hymn about when shall we see his face, and it seemed an interminable time to me before the tide of the crowd washed along Thud, thud, thud, came the drum with a vibrating resonance and for the moment I did not notice too urchin stopping at the railings by me. See him! said one. See what! said the other. Why them footmarks! Bear! Like what you make sin mud! I looked down and saw the youngsters had stopped and were gaping at the muddy footmarks I had left behind me up the newly whitened steps. The passing people elbowed and jostled them, but their confounded intelligence was said when, thud, shall we see thud, his face, thud, thud. There's a barefoot lamb gone up them steps or I don't know nothing said one, and he ain't never come down again, and his foot was a bleeding. The thick of the crowd had already passed. Look there, Ted, quoth the younger of the detectives with the sharpness of surprise in his voice and pointed straight to my feet. I looked down and saw at once the dim suggestion of their outline sketched in splashes of mud. For a moment I was paralyzed. Why, that's rum, said the elder. Dashed rum? It's just like the ghost of a foot, ain't it? He hesitated in advance with outstretched hand. A man pulled up short to see what he was catching, and then a girl. In another moment he would have touched me. Then I saw what to do. I made a step. The boys started back with an exclamation and with a rapid movement I swung myself over into the portico of the next house. But the smaller boy was sharp-eyed enough to follow the steps and upon the pavement he had recovered from his momentary astonishment and was shouting out that the feet had gone over the wall. 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 when 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. Thrice 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 dropped 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, starting with infinite perplexity, a slowly drying footprint that had resulted from a puddle in Tabastock Square, a footprint as isolated and incomprehensible to them as crucial as 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 as I would I could not avoid an occasional sneeze and every dog that came inside with its pointing nose and curious sniffing was a tear 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 checkbook and the three volumes of memoranda that awaited me in Great Portland Street were there. Burning! I'd burnt my boats if ever a man did. The place was blazing. The invisible man paused and thought, kept glanced nervously out of the window. Yes, he said, go on. End of Chapter 21 and 22 Chapter 22 and 23 of The Invisible Man This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells Chapter 22 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, 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 passerby 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 in the night. Then I had a brilliant idea. I turned down one of the roads leading from Gowstree 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 there 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 a 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 lairs, 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 onto the counters, leaving the floor clear. Directly each of these young people had done what 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 straw dust and carrying pills and brooms. I had to dodge to get out of the way, and as it was my ankle got stung with the straw dust. For some time, wandering through the swalded 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 of wandering through the vast and intricate shops, galleries, showrooms 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 bootheels 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 draw 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 of lambswool vests.  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 thought of paint, but the discovery set my mind running on wigs in 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 muffling my face with the white wrapper I had taken, the 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 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 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 stonely following the service. The old clergyman, too, never faltered, droning and sniffing through the ritual. I realized 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 conversive struggles and awoke. The pale London dawn had come. The place was full of a chilly grey light that filled around 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 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? Stop there, shouted the other.  Yeld 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 hence to the doors, asking what was up, asking what was up, and giving one another advice how to catch me. Lying on the ground 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'd made up my mind, I suppose, to get away in them, and that ruled me. Then down the vista of the counters came a bawling of here he is. I sprang to my feet, whipped a chair off the counter and sent it whirling at the fool who had shouted, turned, came into another rounder corner, sent him spinning, and rushed up the stairs. He kept his footing, and came up the staircase, hot after me. Up the staircase were piled a multitude of those bright-coloured pot-things. What are they? Art-pots, suggested Kemp. That's it, art-pots. Well, I turned at the top-step and swung round, plucked one out of a pile, and smashed it on his silly head as he came at me. The whole pile of pots went headlong, and I heard shouting and footsteps running from all parts. I made a mad rush for the refreshment place, and there was a man in white like a man-cook who took up the chase. I passed desperate turn and found myself among lamps and iron-mongery. I went behind the counter of this, and waited for my cook, and as he bolded in at the head of the chase I doubled him up with a lamp. Down he went, and I crouched behind the counter and began whipping off my clothes as fast as I could. Coat, jacket, trousers, shoes were all right, but a lamb's wool-vest fits a man like a skin. I had more men coming, my cook was lying quiet on the other side of the dash for it like a rabbit hunted out of a wood-pile. This way, policeman, I heard someone shouting. I found myself in my bedstead storeroom again, and at the end of a wilderness of wardrobes. I rushed among them, went flat, got rid of my vest after infinite wriggling, and stood a free man again, panting and scared as the policeman and three of the shopmen came round the corner. They made a rush for the vest and pants, and collared the trousers. He's dropping his clothes. He must be somewhere here. But they did not find me all the same. I stood watching them hunt for me for a time, and cursing my ill luck in losing the clothes. Then I went into the refreshment room, drank a little milk I found there, and sat down by the fire to consider my position. In a little while two assistants came in and began to talk over the business very excitedly like the fools they were. I had a magnified account of my depredations and other speculations Then I felt a scheming again. The insurmountable difficulty of the place, especially now it was alarmed, was to get any plunder out of it. I went down into the warehouse to see if there was any chance of packing and addressing a parcel, but I could not understand the system of checking. About eleven o'clock the snow having thawed as it fell, and the day being finer and a little warmer than the previous one, I decided that the emporium was hopeless, and went out again, exasperated at my want of the biggest plans of action in my mind. Chapter 23 In Drury Lane But you begin now to realize, said the invisible man, the faultless advantage of my condition. I had no shelter, no covering. To get clothing was to forego all my advantage, to make myself a strange and terrible thing. I was fasting, for to eat, to fill myself with unassimilated matter would be to become grotesquely visible again. I never thought of that, said Kemp. Nor had I, and the snow had warned me of other dangers. I could not go abroad in snow. It would settle on me and expose me. Rain, too, would make me a watery outline, a glistening surface of a man, a bubble. And fog, I should be like a fainter bubble in a fog, a surface, a greasy glimmer of humanity. Moreover, as I went abroad in the London air, I gathered dirt about my ankles, floating to smuts and dust upon my skin. I did not know how long it would be before I should become visible from that cause also. But I saw clearly it could not be for long. Not in London at any rate. I went into the slums towards Great Portland Street, and found myself at the end of the street in which I had lodged. I did not go that way, because of the crowd halfway down at opposite to the still smoking ruins of the house I had fired. My most immediate problem was to get clothing. What to do with my face puzzled me. Then I saw in one of those little miscellaneous shops new suites, toys, stationary, belated Christmas tomfoolery and so forth, an array of masks and noses. I realized that problem was solved. In a flash I saw my course. I turned about no longer aimless, and went circuitously in order to avoid the busy ways towards the back streets north of the strand. For I remember, though not very distinctly where, that some theatrical costumeeers had shops in that district. The day was cold, with a nipping wind down the northward running streets. I walked fast to avoid being overtaken. Every crossing was a danger, every passenger a thing to watch alertly. One man, as I was about to pass him at the top of Bedford Street, turned upon me abruptly and came into me, sending me into the road and almost under the street of a passing handsome. The verdict of the cab rank was that he had had some sort of stroke. I was so unnerved by this encounter that I went into Covent Garden Market and sat down for some time in a quiet corner by a stall of violets, panting and trembling. I found I had caught a fresh cold and had to turn out after a time, thus my sneezes should attract attention.  The shop was all fashioned and low and dark, and the house rose above it for four stories, dark and dismal. I peered through the window and, seeing no one within, entered. The opening of the door set a clanking bell ringing. I left it open and walked round a bare costume stand into a corner behind a chivalr glass. For a minute or so no one came. Then I heard heavy feats driving across a room and a man appeared down the shop. My plans were now perfectly definite. I proposed to make my way into the house, secrete myself upstairs, watch my opportunity, and when everything was quiet, big, mask, spectacles and costume, and go into the world, perhaps a grotesque but still incredible figure. And incidentally, of course, I could rob the house of any available money. The man who had just entered the shop was a short, slight, hunched, beetle-browed man, with long arms and very short, bandy legs. Apparently I had interrupted a meal. He stared about the shop with an expression of expectation. This gave way to surprise and then to anger as he saw the shop empty. He slammed the boys, he said. He went to stare up and down the street. He came in again in a minute, kicked the door too with his foot spitefully and went muttering back to the house door. I came forward to follow him and at the noise of my movement he stopped dead. I did so too, startled by his quickness of ear. He slammed the house door in my face. I stood hesitating. Suddenly I heard his quick footsteps returning and the door reopened. He stood looking about the shop like one satisfied. Then, murmuring to himself, he examined the back of the counter and peered behind some fixtures. Then he stood doubtful. He had left the house door open and I slipped into the inner room.  On the table was his belated breakfast and it was a confoundedly exasperating thing for me camped to have to sniff his coffee and stand watching while he came in and resumed his meal. The windows were irritating. Three doors opened into the little room one going upstairs and one down but they were all shut. I could not get out of the room while he was there I could scarcely move because of his alertness and there was a draft down my back. Twice I strangled a sneeze just in time. The spectacular quality of my sensations was curious and novel but for all that I was heartily tired and angry long before he had done his eating but at last he made an end really crockery on the black tin tray upon which he had had his teapot and gathering all the crumbs up on the mustard stained cloth he took the whole lot of things after him. His burden prevented his shutting the door behind him as he would have done and I saw such a man for shutting doors and I followed him into a very dirty underground kitchen and scullery. I had the pleasure of seeing him begin to wash up and then finding no good in keeping down there and the brick floor being cold on my feet I returned upstairs and sat in his chair by the fire. It was burning low and scarcely thinking I put on a little coal. The noise of this brought him up at once and he stood aglaire. He peered about the room and was within an ace of touching me. Even after that examination he scarcely seemed satisfied. He stopped in the doorway and took a final inspection before he went down. I waited in the little parlour for an aid and at last he came up and opened the upstairs door but just managed to get by him. On the staircase he stopped suddenly so that I very nearly blended into him. He stood looking back right into my face and listening. I could have sworn, he said. His long hairy hand pulled at his lower lip. His eye went up and down the staircase. Then he granted and went on up again. His hand was on the handle of a door and then he stopped again with the same puzzled anger on his face. It was becoming aware of the faint sounds of my movements about him. The man must have had diabolically acute hearing. He suddenly flashed into rage. If there's any one in this house he cried within an oath and left the threat unfinished. He put his hand in his pocket, failed to find what he wanted and rushing past me went blundering noiselessly and pugnitiously downstairs. But I did not follow him. I sat on the head of the staircase until his return. Presently he came up again, still muttering. He opened the door of the room and before I could enter slammed it in my face. I went into the house and spent some time in doing so noiselessly as possible. The house was very old and tumbled down, damp so that the paper in the attics was peeling from the walls and rat-infested. Some of the door handles were stiff and I was afraid to turn them. Several rooms I did inspect were unfinished and others were littered with theatrical lumber bought secondhand I judged from its appearance. In one room next to his I found a lot of old clothes. I began rooting among these and in my eagerness forgot again the sharpness of his ears. I heard a stealthy footsteps and looking up just in time saw him peering in at the tumbled heap and holding an old-fashioned revolver in his hand. I stood perfectly still while he stared about open, mild and suspicious. It must have been her, he said slowly.  He shut the door quietly and immediately I heard the key turn in the lock. Then his footsteps retreated. I realised abruptly that I was locked in. In a minute I did not know what to do. I walked from door to window and back and stood perplexed. A gust of anger came upon me but I decided to inspect the clothes before I did anything further and my first attempt brought down a pile from an upper shelf. This brought him back more sinister than ever. That time he actually touched me jumped back with amazement and stood astonished in the middle of the room. Presently he calmed a little. Rats he said in an undertone and was evidently a little scared. I urged quietly out of the room but a plank creaked. Then the infernal little brute started going all over the house, revolver in hand and locking door after door and pocketing the keys. When I realised what he was up to I had a fit of rage. I could hardly control myself sufficiently to watch my opportunity. By this time I knew he was alone in the house and so I made no more a dew but knocked him on the head. He stood him as he was going downstairs hit him from behind with a stool that stood on the landing. He went downstairs like a bag of old boots. But I say the common conventions of humanity are all very well for common people but the point was, Kemp, that I had to get out of that house in a disguise without his seeing me. I couldn't think of any other way of doing it and then I gagged him with a Louis Cato's vest and tied him up in a sheet. Tied him up in a sheet.  My dear Kemp, it's no good you're sitting glaring as though I was a murderer. It had to be done. He had his revolver. If once he saw me he would be able to describe me. But still, said Kemp, in England to-day and the man was in his own house and you were well, robbing. Robbing! Confounded! You'll call me a thief next. Surely, Kemp, you're not fool enough to dance on the old strings. Can't you see my position? And his, too, said Kemp. The invisible man stood up sharply. What do you mean to say? Kemp's face grew a trifle hard. He was about to speak and checked himself. I suppose, after all, he said with a sudden change of manner, the thing had to be done. You were in a fix. Still, of course I was in a fix, and he made me wild, too, hunting me about the house, fooling about with his revolver, locking and unlocking doors. He was simply exasperating. You don't blame me, do you? You don't blame me. I never blame anyone, said Kemp. It's quite out of fashion. What did you do next? I was hungry. Downstairs I found a loaf and some ranked cheese, more than sufficient to satisfy my hunger. I took some brandy and water and was lying quite still to the room containing the old clothes. This looked out upon the street, two lace curtains brown with dirt guarding the window. I went and peered out through their interstices. Outside the day was bright, by contrast with the brown shadows of the dismal house in which I found myself dazzlingly bright.  To the shadowy fixtures behind me my excitement was giving place to a clear apprehension of my position again. The room was full of a faint scent of benzoline used, I suppose, in cleaning the garments. I began a systematic search of the place. I should judge the hunchback had been alone in the house for some time. It was a curious person. Everything that could possibly be of service to me I collected in the clothes-store room and then I made a deliberate selection. I found a handbag I thought a suitable possession of powder, rouge and sticking plaster. I thought of painting and powdering my face and all that there was to show of me in order to render myself visible, but the disadvantage of this lay in the fact that I should require turpentine in other appliances and a considerable amount of time before I could vanish again. Finally I chose a mask of the better type, slightly grotesque but not more so than many human beings, dark glasses, grayish whiskers and a wig. I could find no under-clothing, subsequently, and for the time I swathed myself in calico dominoes and some white cashmere scarves. I could find no socks but the hunchback's boots were rather a loose fit and sufficed. In a desk in the shop were three sovereigns and about thirty shillings worth of silver, and in a locked cupboard I burst in the inner room where eight pounds in gold. I could go forth into the world again, equipped. Then came a curious hesitation. It was my appearance really credible. I tried myself with a little looking-glass, inspecting myself from every point of view to discover any forgotten chink, but it all seemed sound. I was grotesque to the theatrical pitch, a stage-miser but it was certainly not a physical impossibility. Gathering confidence I took my looking-glass down into the shop, pulled down the shop-lines and surveyed myself from every point of view with the help of the chivalre-glass in the corner.  In five minutes a dozen turnings intervened between me and the costumee's shop. No one appeared to notice me very pointedly. My last difficulty seemed to overcome. He stopped again. And he travelled no more about the hunchback, said Kemp. No, said the invisible man. Nor have I heard what became of him. I suppose he untied himself or kicked himself out. The knots were pretty tight. He came silent and went to the window and stared out. What happened when you went out into the strand? Oh! Disillusionment again. I thought my troubles were over. Practically I thought I had impunity to do whatever I chose. Everything saved to give away my secret. So I thought. Whatever I did, whatever the consequences might be, was nothing to me. I'd merely to fling aside my garments and vanish. No person could hold me. I could take my money where I found it. To treat myself to a sumptuous feast and then put up at a good hotel and accumulate a new outfit of property. I felt amazingly confident.  I went into a place and was already ordering lunch when it occurred to me that I could not eat unless I exposed my invisible face. I finished ordering the lunch, told the man I should be back in ten minutes and went out exasperated. I don't know if you have ever been disappointed in your appetite. It was a good camp, but I can imagine it. I could have smashed the silly devils. At last, faint with the desire for tasteful food, I went into another place and demanded a private room. I disfigured, I said, badly. They looked at me curiously, but of course it was not their affair and so at last I got my lunch. It was not particularly well served but it sufficed, and when I had had it I sat off a cigar trying to plan my line of action. And outside a snowstorm was beginning. The more I thought it over, Kemp, the more I realized what a helpless absurdity an invisible man was in a cold and dirty climate and a crowded civilized city. Before I made this mad experiment I dreamt of a thousand advantages. That afternoon it seemed all disappointment. I went over the heads of the things a man reckons desirable. No doubt invisibility made it possible to get them, but it made it impossible to enjoy them when they are got. Ambition! What is the good of pride when you cannot appear there? What is the good of the love of woman when her name must need be Delilah? I have no taste for politics, for the blabberdisms of fame, for philanthropy, for sport. What was I to do? And for this I had become a wrapped up mystery, a swildened and bandaged caricature of the man. He paused and his attitude suggested a roving glance at the window. But how did you get twiping? said Kemp, anxious to keep twiping. I went there to work. I had one hope. It was a half-idea. I have it still. It is a full-blown idea now, and a way of getting back, of restoring what I have done, when I choose, when I have done all I mean to do invisibly, and that is what I chiefly want to talk to you about now. You went straight to Iping. Yes, I had simply to get my three volumes of memoranda in my check-book, my luggage and under-clothing, order a quantity of chemicals to work out and show you the calculations as soon as I get my books. Then I started. Chove! I remember the snowstorm now, and the accursed bother it was to keep the snow from damping my paste-board nose. At the end, said Kemp, the day before yesterday, when they found you out, you, rather, to judge by the papers. I did, rather.  No, said Kemp. He is expected to recover. That is his luck then. I clean lost my temper the fools. Why couldn't they leave me alone, and that grosser out? There are no deaths expected, said Kemp. I don't know about that tramp of mine, said the invisible man, with an unpleasant laugh. By heaven, Kemp, you don't know what rage is.  Every conceivable sort of silly creature that has ever been created has been sent to cross me. If I have much more of it, I shall go wild. I shall start mowing them. As it is, they've made things a thousand times more difficult. No doubt it's exasperating, said Kemp, dryly. End of chapters 22 and 23 But now, said Kemp, with a side-glance out of the window, what are we to do? He moved nearer his guest as he spoke, in such a manner as to prevent the possibility of a sudden glimpse of the three men who were advancing up the hill-road, with an intolerable slowness as it seemed to Kemp. What were you planning to do when you were heading for Port Burdick? Had you any plan? I was going to clear out of the country, but I have altered that plan rather since seeing you. I thought it would be wise, now the weather is hot and invisibility possible, to make for the south, especially as my secret was known and everyone would be on the lookout for a masked and muffled man. You have a line of steamers from here to France. My idea was to get aboard one and run the risks of the passage. Thence I could go by train into Spain or else get to Algiers. It would not be difficult. There a man might always be invisible and yet live, and do things. I was using that tram as a money-box and luggage-carrier until I decided how to get my books and things sent over to meet me. That's clear. Then the filthy brute must need to try and rob me. He has hidden my books, Kemp, hidden my books if I can lay my hands on him. Best plan to get the books out of him first. But where is he? Do you know? He's in the town police station, locked up by his own request in the strongest cell in the place. Said the invisible man.  He must get those books. Those books are vital. Certainly, said Kemp, a little nervously, wondering if he heard footsteps outside. Certainly we must get those books. But that won't be difficult if he doesn't know there for you. No, said the invisible man and thought. Kemp tried to think of something to keep the talk going, but the invisible man resumed of his own accord. Blundering into your house, Kemp, he said, changes all my plans, for you are a man that can understand. In spite of all that has happened, in spite of this publicity of the loss of my books, of what I have suffered, there still remain great possibilities, huge possibilities. You have told no one I am here, he asked abruptly. Kemp hesitated. That was implied, he said. No one? insisted Griffin. Not a soul. Ah, now. The invisible man stood up and sticking his arms at Kimbo began to pace the study. I made a mistake, Kemp, a huge mistake in carrying this thing through alone. I have wasted strength, time, opportunities. Alone it is wonderful how little a man can do alone. To rob a little, to hurt a little, and there is the end. What I want, Kemp, is a goalkeeper, a place, an arrangement where I can sleep and eat and rest in peace, and unsuspected. I must have a confederate. With a confederate, with food and dressed, a thousand things are possible. Here the two I have gone on vague lines. We have to consider all that invisibility means, all that it does not mean. It means little advantage for eavesdropping and so forth, when makes sounds, it's of little help, a little help perhaps, in house-breaking and so forth. You've caught me, you could easily imprison me. But on the other hand, I'm hard to catch. Disinvisibility, in fact, is only good in two cases. It's useful in getting away, it's useful in approaching, it's particularly useful, therefore, in killing. I can walk round among whatever weapon he has, choose my point, strike as I like, dodge as I like, escape as I like. Kemp's hand went to his mustache. Was that a movement downstairs? And it is killing we must do, Kemp. It is killing we must do, repeated Kemp. I'm listening to your plan, Griffin, but I'm not agreeing, mind. Why killing? Not wanton killing, but a judicious slaying. The point is, they know there is an invisible man, as well as we know there is an invisible man, and that invisible man, Kemp, must now establish a reign of terror. Yes, no doubt it's startling, but I mean it, a reign of terror. He must take some town like your Burdock and terrify and dominate it. He must issue his orders. He can do that in a thousand ways. Scraps of paper thrust under doors would suffice, and all who disobey his orders he must kill, and kill all who would defend them. Hmm! said Kemp, no longer listening to Griffin, but to the sound of his front door opening and closing. It seems to me, Griffin, he said, to cover his wandering attention, that your confederate would be in a difficult position. No one would know he was a confederate, said the invisible man, eagerly, and then suddenly, Hush! what sat downstairs? Nothing, said Kemp, and suddenly began to speak loud and fast. I don't agree to this, Griffin, he said. Understand me, I don't agree to this. Why dream of playing a game against the race? How can you hope to gain happiness?  Publish your results. Take the world. Take the nation, at least, into your confidence. Think what you might do with a million helpers. The invisible man interrupted, arm extended. There are footsteps coming upstairs, he said in a low voice. Nonsense, said Kemp. Let me see, said the invisible man, and advanced arm extended to the door. And then things happened very swiftly. Kemp hesitated for a second and then moved to intercept him. The invisible man started and stood still. Traitor, cried the voice and suddenly the dressing-gown opened and sitting down the unseen began to disrobe. Kemp made three swift steps to the door and forthwith the invisible man, his legs had vanished, sprang to his feet with a shout. Kemp flung the door open. As it opened there came a sound of hurrying feet downstairs and voices. With a quick movement Kemp thrust the invisible man back, sprang aside and slammed the door. The key was outside and ready. In another moment Griffin would have been alone in the Belvedere study, a prisoner. Save for one little thing. The key had been slipped in hastily that morning. As Kemp slammed the door it fell noisily upon the carpet. Kemp's face became white. He tried to grip the door handle with both hands. For a moment he stood lugging. Then the door gave six inches. But he got it closed again. The second time it was jerked a foot wide and the dressing-gown came wedging itself into the opening. His throat was gripped by invisible fingers and he left his hold on the handle to defend himself. He was forced back, tripped and pitched heavily into the corner of the landing. The empty dressing-gown was flung on the top of him. Halfway up the staircase was Colonel Addy, the recipient of Kemp's letter, the chief of the Burdick police. He was staring aghast at the sudden appearance of Kemp followed by the extraordinary sight of clothing tossing empty in the air. He saw Kemp felled and struggling to his feet. He saw him rush forward and go down again, felled like an ox. Then suddenly he was struck violently by nothing. A vast weight it seemed leapt upon him and he was hurled headlong down the staircase with a grip on his throat and a knee in his groin. An invisible foot trod on his back, a ghostly patter passed downstairs. He heard the two police officers in the hall shout and run and the front door of the house slammed violently. He rolled over and sat up, staring.  My God! cried Kemp. The game's up! He's gone! Chapter 25 The Hunting of the Invisible Man For a space Kemp was too inarticulate to make Addy understand the swift things that had just happened. They stood on the landing, Kemp speaking swiftly, the grotesque swathings of griffin still on his arm. But presently Addy began to grasp something of the situation. He is mad, said Kemp. Inhuman! He is pure selfishness. He thinks of nothing but his own advantage, his own safety. I have listened to such a story this morning of brutal self-seeking. He has wounded men. He will kill them unless we can prevent him. Nothing can stop him. He's going out now, furious. You must be caught, said Addy. That is certain. But how! cried Kemp, and suddenly became full of ideas. You must begin at once. You must set every available man to work. You must prevent his leaving this district. Once he gets away, he may go through the countryside as he wills, killing and maiming. He dreams of a reign of terror.  You must set a watch on trains and roads the gas and must help. You must wire for help. The only thing that may keep him here is the thought of recovering some books of notes he counts of value. I will tell you of that. There is a man in your police station, Marvel. Ah, no, said Addy. Ah, no, those books, yes. But the tramp says he hasn't them, but he thinks the tramp has, and you must prevent him from eating or sleeping. Day and night the country must be a stir for him. Food must be locked up and secured, all food, so that he will have to break his way to it. The houses everywhere must be barred against him. Heaven send us cold nights and rain. The whole countryside must begin hunting and keep hunting.  Unless he is pinned and secured, it is frightful to think of the things that may happen. What else can we do? Said Addy. I must go down at once and begin organising. But why not come? Yes, you come too. Come, and we must hold a sort of council of war. Get ops to help, and the railway managers. I show if it's urgent. Come along, tell me as we go. What else is there we can do? Put that stuff down. In another moment, Addy was leading the way downstairs. They found the front door open, and the policemen standing outside, staring at empty air. It's got away, sir, said one. We must go to the central station at once, said Addy.  And now, Kemp, what else? Dogs, said Kemp. Get dogs. They don't see him, but they wind him. Get dogs. Good, said Addy. It's not generally known, but the prison officials over at Allstead know a man with blowdowns. Dogs, what else? Bear in mind, said Kemp, his food shows. After eating, his food shows until it is assimilated, so that he has to hide after eating. You must keep on beating every thicket, every quiet corner, and put all weapons, all implements that might be weapons, away. He can't carry such things for long, and what he can snatch up and strike men with must be hidden away. Good again, said Addy. We shall have him yet. And on the roads, said Kemp, and hesitated. Yes, said Addy. Powdered glass, said Kemp. It's cruel, I know, but think of what he may do. Addy drew the air in sharply between his teeth. It sounds sportsman-like. I don't know. But I'll have powdered glass got ready if he goes too far.  I'm assure you'll establish a reign of terror so soon as he has got over the emotions of this escape, as I am sure I am talking to you. Our only chance is to be ahead. He has cut himself off from his kind.  Chapter 26. The Wicks-Dead Murder The Invisible Man seems to have rushed out of Kemp's house in a state of blind fury. A little child playing near Kemp's gateway was violently caught up and thrown aside so that its ankle was broken and thereafter, for some hours, the Invisible Man passed out of human perceptions. No one knows where he went nor what he did. But one can imagine him hurrying through the hot June 4 noon up the hill and onto the open downland behind Port Burdick, raging and sparing at his intolerable fate and sheltering at last, heated and weary, amid the thickets of hint and deen to piece together again his shattered schemes against his species. That seems the most probable refuge for him, for there it was he reasserted himself in a grimly tragical manner about two in the afternoon. One wonders what his state of mind may have been during that time and what plans he devised. No doubt he was almost ecstatically defeated by Kemp's treachery, and though we may be able to understand the motives that led to that deceit, we may still imagine and even sympathise a little with the fury the attempted surprise must have occasioned. Perhaps something of the stunned astonishment of his Oxford Street experiences may have returned to him, for he had evidently counted on Kemp's cooperation in his brutal dream of a terrorised world. At any rate, he vanished from human can about midday, and no living witness can tell what he did until about half past two. It was a fortunate thing perhaps for humanity, but for him it was a fatal inaction. During that time a growing multitude of men scattered over the countryside were busy. In the morning he had still been simply a legend, a terror. In the afternoon, by virtue chiefly of Kemp's dryly worded proclamation he was presented as a tangible antagonist to be wounded, captured or overcome, beside began organising itself with inconceivable rapidity. By two o'clock even he might still have removed himself out of the district by getting aboard a train, but after two that became impossible. Every passenger train along the lines on a great parallelogram between Southampton, Manchester, Brighton and Horsham travelled with locked doors and the goods traffic was almost entirely suspended. And in a great circle of twenty miles round Port Burdick, men armed with guns and bludgeons were presently setting out in groups of three and four with dogs to beat the roads and fields. Mounted policemen rode along the country lanes stopping at every cottage and warning the people to lock up their houses and keep indoors unless they were armed and all the elementary schools had broken up by three o'clock and the children, scared and keeping together in groups, were hurrying home. Kemp's proclamation, signed indeed by Addy, was posted over almost the whole district by four or five o'clock in the afternoon. It gave briefly but clearly all the conditions of the struggle the necessity of keeping the invisible man from food and sleep, the necessity for incessant watchfulness and for prompt attention to any evidence of his movements. And so swift and decided was the action of the authorities so prompt and universal was the belief in this strange being that before nightfall an area of several hundred square miles was in a stringent state of siege and before nightfall too a thrill of horror went through the whole watching nervous countryside going from whispering mouth to mouth swift and certain over the length and breadth of the country past the story of the murder of Mr. Wicksteed. If our supposition that the invisible man's refuge was the hint and dean thickets then we must suppose that in the early afternoon he sallied out again bent upon some project that involved the use of a weapon. We cannot know what the project was but the evidence that he had the iron rod in hand before he met Wicksteed is to me at least overwhelming. Of course we can know nothing of the details of that encounter. It occurred on the edge of a gravel pit not two hundred yards from Lord Burdick's lodge gate. Everything points to a desperate struggle. The trampled ground the numerous wounds Mr. Wicksteed received his splintered walking stick but why the attack was made save an emergerous frenzy it is impossible to imagine. Indeed the theory of madness is almost unavoidable. Mr. Wicksteed was a man of forty-five or forty-six Stuart to Lord Burdick of inoffensive habits and appearance the very last person in the world to provoke such a terrible antagonist. Against him it would seem the invisible man used an iron rod dragged from a broken piece of fence.  Of course he must have dragged this rod out of the fencing before he met his victim. He must have been carrying it ready in his hand. Only two details beyond what has already been stated seem to bear on the matter. One is the circumstance that the gravel pit was not in Mr. Wicksteed's direct path home but nearly a couple of hundred yards out of his way. The other is the assertion of a little girl to the effect that going to her afternoon school she saw the murdered man trotting in a peculiar manner across the field towards the gravel pit. Her pantomime of his action suggests a man pursuing something on the ground before him and striking at it ever and again with his walking stick. She was the last person to see him alive. He passed out of her sight to his death the struggle being hidden from her only by a clump of beech trees and a slight depression in the ground. Now this, to the present writer's mind at least, lifts the murder out of the realm of the absolutely wanton. We may imagine that Griffin had taken the rod as a weapon indeed but without any deliberate intention of using it in murder. Wicksteed may then have come by and noticed this rod inexplicably moving through the air. Without any thought of the invisible man for Port Burdick is ten miles away he may have pursued it. It is quite conceivable that he may not have pursued the invisible man. One can then imagine the invisible man making off quietly in order to avoid discovering his presence in the neighborhood and Wicksteed excited and curious pursuing this unaccountably locomotive object finally striking at it. No doubt the invisible man could easily have distanced his middle-aged pursuer under ordinary circumstances but the position in which Wicksteed's body was found suggests that he had the ill luck to drive his quarry into a corner between nettles and the gravel pit. To those who appreciate the extraordinary harassability of the invisible man the rest of the encounter will be easy to imagine. But this is pure hypothesis. The only undeniable facts for stories of children are often unreliable are the discovery of Wicksteed's body done to death and of the blood-stained iron rod flung among the nettles. The abandonment of the rod by Griffin suggests that in the emotional excitement the purpose for which he took it if he had a purpose was abandoned. He was certainly an intensely egotistical and unfeeling man but the sight of his victim, his first victim bloody and pitiful at his feet may have released some long pent fountain of remorse which for a time may have flooded whatever scheme of action he had contrived. After the murder of Mr. Wicksteed he would seem to have struck across the country towards the downland. There is a story of a voice heard about a couple of men in a field near Fernbottom. It was wailing and laughing sobbing and groaning and ever and again it shouted.  It drove up across the middle of the clover-field and died away towards the hills. That afternoon the invisible man must have learned something of the rapid use Kemp had made of his confidences. He must have found houses locked and secured. He may have loitered about railway stations and prowled about inns he read the proclamations and realized something of the nature of the campaign against him and as the evening advanced the fields became dotted here and there with groups of three or four men and noisy with the yelping of dogs. These men-hunters had particular instructions in the case of an encounter as to the way they should support one another but he avoided them all. We may understand something of his exasperation and it could have been none the less because he himself had supplied the information he was being used so remorselessly against him. For that day at least he lost heart. For nearly twenty-four hours save when he turned on Wicksteed he was a hunted man. In the night he must have eaten and slept for in the morning he was himself again active, powerful, angry and malignant prepared for his last great struggle against the world. End of Chapter 24 25 and 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 and Epilogue of the Invisible Man This liprivox recording is in the public domain The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells Chapter 27 The Siege of Kemp's House Kemp read a strange missive written in pencil on a greasy sheet of paper. You have been amazingly energetic and clever this letter ran though what you stand to gain by it I cannot imagine you are against me for a whole day you have chased me and you have tried to rob me of a night's rest but I have had food in spite of you I have slept in spite of you and the game is only beginning the game is only beginning there's nothing for it but to start the terror this announces the first day of the terror Port Burdick is no longer under the queen tell your colonel of police and the rest of them it is under me the terror this is day one of year one of the new Epoch the Epoch of the Invisible Man I am Invisible Man the first to begin with the rule will be easy the first day there will be one execution for the sake of example a man named Kemp death starts for him today he may lock himself away hide himself away get guards about him put on armor if he likes death the unseen death is coming let him take precautions it will impress my people death starts from the pillar box by midday the letter will fall in as the postman comes along then off the game begins death starts help him not my people lest death fall upon you also today Kemp is to die Kemp read this letter twice it's no hoax he said that's his voice and he means it he turned the folder sheet over and saw on the addressed side of it the postmark hint and dean the rosaic title tuppence to pay he got up slowly leaving his lunch unfinished the letter had come by the one o'clock post and went into his study he rang for his housekeeper and told her to go round the house at once examine all the fastenings of the windows and close all the shutters he closed the shutters of his study himself from a locked drawer in his bedroom he took a little revolver examined it carefully he wrote a number of brief notes one to Colonel Addy gave them to his servant to take with explicit instructions as to her way of leaving the house there's no danger, he said and added a mental reservation to you he remained meditative for a space after doing this and then returned to his cooling lunch he ate with gaps of thought finally he struck the table sharply we will have him he said, and I am the bait he will come too far he went up to the Belvedere carefully shutting every door after him it's a game, he said an odd game but the chances are all for me, Mr Griffin in spite of your invisibility Griffin contra mundum with a vengeance he stood at the window staring at the hot hillside he must get food every day and I don't envy him did he really sleep last night out in the open somewhere secure from collisions I wish we could get some cold wet weather instead of the heat he may be watching me now he went close to the window something wrapped smartly against the brickwork over the frame and made him start violently back I'm getting nervous, said Kemp but it was five minutes before he went to the window again it must have been a sparrow, he said presently he heard the front doorbell ringing and hurried downstairs young bolded and unlocked the door examined the chain, put it up and opened cautiously without showing himself a familiar voice hailed him it was Addy your servant's been assaulted Kemp he said round the door what? exclaimed Kemp at that note of yours taken away from her he's close about here let me in Kemp released the chain and Addy entered through as narrow an opening as possible he stood in the hall looking with infinite relief at Kemp refastening the door note was snatched out of her end scared irorably she's down at the station, hysterics he's close here what was it about? Kemp swore what a fool I was, said Kemp I might have known it's not an hour's walk from Hinton Dean already what's up? said Addy look here, said Kemp he handed Addy the invisible man's letter Addy read it and whispered softly you, said Addy proposed a trap like a fool, said Kemp and sent my proposal out by a maid servant to him Addy followed Kemp's profanity you clear out, said Addy not he, said Kemp a resounding smash of glass came from upstairs Addy had a silvery glimpse of a little revolver half out of Kemp's pocket it's a window upstairs, said Kemp and led the way up there came a second smash while they were still on the staircase when they reached the study they found two of the three windows smashed half the room littered with splintered glass and one big flint lying on the writing table the two men stopped in the doorway contemplating the wreckage Kemp swore again and as he did so the third window went with a snap like a pistol hung stard for a moment and collapsed and jagged shivering triangles into the room what's this for, said Addy it's a beginning, said Kemp there's no way of climbing up here not for a cat, said Kemp no shutters not here, all the downstairs rooms hello smash and then whack of boards had hard came from downstairs confound him, said Kemp that must be yes, it's one of the best must be, yes, it's one of the bedrooms he's going to do all the house but he's a fool the shutters are up and the glass will fall outside he'll cut his feet another window proclaimed its destruction the two men stood on the landing perplexed I have it, said Addy let me have a stick or something and I'll go down to the station and get the blood-downs put on that ought to settle him there aren't by, not ten minutes another window went the way of its fellows you haven't a revolver, asked Addy Kemp's hand went to his pocket then he hesitated I haven't one, at least to spare I'll bring it back, said Addy you'll be safe here Kemp, ashamed of his momentary lapse from truthfulness, handed him the weapon now for the door, said Addy as they stood hesitating in the hall they heard one of the first floor bedroom windows crack and clash Kemp went to the door Addy slipped the bolts as silently as possible his face was a little paler than usual you must step right out, said Kemp in another moment Addy was on the doorstep and the bolts were dropping back into the staples he hesitated for a moment feeling more comfortable with his back against the door then he marched upright and square down the steps he crossed the lawn and approached the gate a little breeze seemed to ripple over the grass something moved near him stop a bit, said a voice and Addy stopped dead in his hand tightened on the revolver well, said Addy white and grim and every nerve tense obliged me by going back to the house said the voice as tense and grim as Addy's sorry, said Addy a little hoarsely and moistened his lips with his tongue the voice was on his left front, he thought suppose he were to take his luck with a shot what are you going for? said the voice and there was a quick movement of the two and a flash of sunlight from the open lip of Addy's pocket Addy desisted and thought where I go? he said slowly is my own business the words were still on his lips when an arm came round his neck his back felt a knee and he was sprawling backward he drew clumsily and fired absurdly and in another moment he was struck in the mouth and the revolver rested from his grip he made a vain clutch at a slippery limb tried to struggle up and fell back damn, said Addy the voice laughed I'd kill you now if it wasn't the waste of a bullet it said he saw the revolver in midair six feet off covering him well, said Addy, sitting up get up, said the voice Addy stood up attention, said the voice and then furiously don't try any games remember, I can see your face if you can't see mine you've got to go back to the house you won't let me in, said Addy that's a pity, said the invisible man I've got no coil with you Addy moistened his lips again he glanced away from the barrel of the revolver and saw the sea far off, very blue and dark under the midday sun the smooth green down the white cliff of the head and the multitudinous town and suddenly he knew that life was very sweet his eyes came back to this little metal thing hanging between heaven and earth six yards away what am I to do, he said sullenly what am I to do, asked the invisible man you will get help, the only thing is for you to go back I will try, if he lets me in will you promise not to rush the door I've got no coil with you, said the voice Kemp had hurried upstairs after letting Addy out and now crouching among the broken glass unconsciously over the edge of the study window sill he saw Addy stand parleying with the unseen why doesn't he fire, whispered Kemp to himself then the revolver moved a little and the glint of the sunlight flashed in Kemp's eyes he shaded his eyes and tried to see the source of the blinding beam surely, he said, Addy has given up the revolver promise not to rush the door, Addy was saying don't push a winning game too far, give a man a chance you go back to the house, I tell you flatly I will not promise anything Addy's decision seemed suddenly made he turned towards the house, walking slowly with his hands behind him Kemp watched him, puzzled the revolver vanished, flashed again into sight vanished again and became evident on a closer scrutiny as a little dark object following Addy then things happened very quickly Addy leapt backwards, swung around, clutched at this little object missed it, threw up his hands and fell forward on his face leaving a little puff of blue in the air Kemp did not hear the sound of the shot Addy writhed, raised himself on one arm fell forward and lay still for a space Kemp remained staring at the quiet carelessness of Addy's attitude the afternoon was very hot and still nothing seemed stirring in all the world save a couple of yellow butterflies chasing each other through the shrubbery between the house and the road gate Addy lay on the lawn near the gate the blinds of all the villas down the hill-road were drawn but in one little green summer house was a white figure apparently an old man asleep Kemp scrutinized the surroundings of the house for a glimpse of the revolver but it had vanished his eyes came back to Addy the game was opening well then came a ringing and knocking at the front door that grew at last tumultuous but pursuant to Kemp's instructions the servants had locked themselves into their rooms this was followed by a silence Kemp sat listening and then began peering cautiously out of the three windows one after another he went to the staircase head and stood listening uneasily he armed himself with his bedroom poker and went to examine the interior fastenings of the ground floor windows again everything was safe and quiet he returned to the Belvedere Addy lay motionless over the edge of the gravel just as he had fallen coming along the road by the villas where the house made and two policemen everything was deadly still the three people seemed very slow and approaching he wondered what his antagonist was doing he started there was a smash from below he hesitated and went downstairs again suddenly the house resounded with heavy blows and the splintering of wood he heard a smash and the destructive clang of the iron fastenings of the shutters he turned the key and opened the kitchen door as he did so the shutters split and splintering came flying inward he stood aghast the window frame saved for one cross-bar was still intact but only little teeth of glass remained in the frame the shutters had been driven in with an axe and now the axe was descending and sweeping blows upon the window frame and the iron bars defending it then suddenly it leapt aside and vanished he saw the revolver lying on the path outside and then a little weapon sprang into the air he dodged back the revolver cracked just too late and a splinter from the edge of the closing door flashed over his head he slammed and locked the door and as he stood outside he heard griffon shouting and laughing then the blows of the axe with its splitting and smashing consequences were resumed Kemp stood in the passage trying to think in a moment the invisible man would be in the kitchen this door would not keep him a moment and then a ringing came at the front door again it would be the policeman he ran into the hall, put up the chain and drew the bolts he made the girl speak before he dropped the chain and the three people blundered into the house in a heap and slammed the door again the invisible man said Kemp he has a revolver with two shots left he's killed Addy, shot him anyhow didn't you see him on the lawn? he's lying there who? said one of the policemen Addy? said Kemp we came in the back way said the girl what's that smashing? asked one of the policemen is in the kitchen or will be he has found an axe suddenly the house was full of the invisible man's resounding blows on the kitchen door the girl stared towards the kitchen shuddered and retreated into the dining-room Kemp tried to explain in broken sentences they heard the kitchen door give this way said Kemp starting into activity and bundled the policemen into the dining-room doorway Poka said Kemp and rushed to the fender he handed the poker he had carried to the policeman and the dining-room one to the other he suddenly flung himself backward what? said one policeman ducked and caught the axe on his poker the pistol snapped its penultimate shot and ripped a valuable Sydney Cooper the second policeman brought his poker down on the little weapon as one might knock down a wasp and sent it rattling to the floor at the first clash the girl screamed stood screaming for a moment by the fireplace and then ran to the open shutters possibly with an idea of escaping by the shattered window the axe receded into the passage and fell to a position about two feet from the ground they could hear the invisible man breathing stand away you two he said I want that man Kemp we want you said the first policeman making a quick step forward and wiping with his poker at the voice the invisible man must have started back and he blundered into the umbrella stand then as the policeman staggered with the swing of the blow he had aimed the invisible man countered with the axe the helmet crumpled like paper and the blow sent the man spinning to the floor at the head of the kitchen stairs but the second policeman aiming behind the axe with his poker hit something soft that snapped there was a sharp exclamation of pain and then the axe fell to the ground the policeman wiped again at vacancy and hit nothing he put his foot on the axe and struck again then he stood poker clubbed listening intent for the slightest movement he heard the dining room window open and a quick rush of feet within his companion rolled over and sat up with the blood running down between his eye and ear where is he? asked the man on the floor to know I've hit him he's standing somewhere in the hall unless he slipped past you Dr. Kemp sir pause Dr. Kemp cried the policeman again the second policeman began struggling to his feet he stood up suddenly the faint pad of bare feet on the kitchen stairs could be heard yep cried the first policeman and incontinently flung his poker it smashed a little gas bracket he made as if he would pursue the invisible man downstairs then he thought better of it and stepped into the dining room Dr. Kemp he began and stopped short Dr. Kemp's a hero he said as his companion looked over his shoulder the dining room window was wide open and neither house made nor Kemp was to be seen the second policeman's opinion of Kemp was terse and vivid Chapter 28 The Hunter-Hunted Mr. Helus Dr. Kemp's nearest neighbor among the villa-holders was asleep in his summer house when the siege of Kemp's house began Mr. Helus was one of the sturdy minority who refused to believe in all this nonsense about an invisible man his wife however as he was subsequently to be reminded did he insisted upon walking about his garden just as if nothing was the matter and he went to sleep in the afternoon in accordance with the custom of years he slept through the smashing of the windows and then woke up suddenly with a curious persuasion of something wrong he looked across at Kemp's house rubbed his eyes and looked again then he put his feet to the ground and sat listening he said he was damned but still the strange thing was visible the house looked as though it had been deserted a violent riot every window was broken and every window saved those of the Belvedere study was blinded by the internal shutters ah could have sworn it was all right he looked at his watch twenty minutes ago he became aware of a measured concussion and the clash of glass far away in the distance and then as he sat open mouth came a still more wonderful thing the shutters of the drawing-room window were flung open violently and the housemaid in her outdoor hat and garments appeared struggling in a frantic manner to throw up the sash suddenly a man appeared beside her helping her Dr. Kemp in another moment the window was open and the housemaid was struggling out she pitched forward and vanished among the shrubs Mr. Helus stood up exclaiming vaguely and vehemently at all these wonderful things he saw Kemp stand on the sill spring from the window and reappear almost instantaneously running along a path in the shrubbery like a man who evades observation he vanished behind a labyrinum and appeared again clambering over a fence that abutted on the open down in a second he had tumbled over and was running at a tremendous pace down the slope towards Mr. Helus low cried Mr. Helus struck with an idea it's that invisible man broom it's right up, it's right after all with Mr. Helus to think things like that was to act and his cook watching him from the top window was amazed to see him come pelting towards the house at a good nine miles an hour there was a slamming of doors a ringing of bells and the voice of Mr. Helus bellowing like a bull shut the doors, shut the windows shut everything the invisible man is coming instantly the house was full of screams and directions and scurrying feet he ran himself to shut the French windows that opened on the veranda as he did so Kemp's head and shoulders and knee appeared over the edge of the garden fence in another moment Kemp had plowed through the asparagus and was running across the tennis lawn to the house you can't come in said Mr. Helus, shutting the bolts I'm very sorry if he's after you but you can't come in Kemp appeared with a face of terror close to the glass wrapping and then shaking frantically at the French window then seeing his efforts were useless he ran along the veranda again and went to hammer at the side door then he ran round by the side gate to the front of the house and so into the hill road and Mr. Helus, staring from his window a face of horror had scarcely witnessed Kemp vanish ere the asparagus was being trampled this way and that by feet unseen at that Mr. Helus fled precipitately upstairs and the rest of the chase is beyond his purview but as he passed the staircase window he heard the side gate slam emerging into the hill road Kemp naturally took the downward direction and so it was he came to run in his own person the very race he had watched with such a critical eye from the Belvedere study only four days ago he ran it well for a man out of training and though his face was white and wet his wits were cool to the last he ran with wide strides and wherever a patch of rough ground intervened wherever there came a patch of raw flints or a bit of broken glass shone dazzling he crossed it and left the bare invisible feet that followed to take what line they would for the first time in his life Kemp discovered that the hill road was indescribably vast and desolate and at the beginnings of the town far below at the hill foot were strangely remote never had there been a slower or more painful method of progression than running all the gaunt villas sleeping in the afternoon sun looked locked and barred no doubt they were locked and barred by cricketers but at any rate they might have kept a lookout for an eventuality like this the town was rising up now the sea had dropped out of sight behind it and people down below were stirring a tram was just arriving at the hill foot beyond that was the police station was that footsteps he heard behind him spurt the people below were staring at him one or two were running and his breath was beginning to soar in his throat the tram was quite near now and the jolly cricketers was noisily barring its doors beyond the tram were posts and heaps of gravel the drainage works he had a transitory idea of jumping into the tram and slamming the doors and then he resolved to go for the police station in another moment he had passed the door of the jolly cricketers and was in the blistering fag end of the street with human beings about him the tram driver and his helper arrested by the sight of his furious haste stood staring with the tram horses unhitched further on the astonished features of navies appeared above the mounds of gravel his pace broke a little and then he heard the swift pad of his pursuer and leapt forward again the invisible man he cried to the navies with a vague indicative gesture and by an inspiration leapt the excavation and placed a burly group between him and the chase then abandoning the idea of the police station he turned into a little side street rushed by a green grocers cart hesitated for the tenth of a second at the door of a sweet stuff shop and then made for the mouth of an alley that ran back into the main hill street again two or three little children were playing here and shrieked and scattered at his apparition and forthwith doors and windows open and excited mothers revealed their hearts out he shot into hill street again three hundred yards from the tram line end and immediately he became aware of a tumultuous vociferation and running people up the street towards the hill hardly a dozen yards off ran a huge navvy cursing in fragments and slashing viciously with a spade and hard behind him came the tram conductor with his fists clenched up the street others followed these two striking and shouting down towards the town men and women were running and he noticed clearly one man coming out of a shop door with a stick in his hand spread out spread out cried someone Kemp suddenly grasped the altered condition of the chase he stopped and looked round panting he's close here he cried form a line across he was hit hard under the ear and went reeling trying to face round towards his unseen antagonist he just managed to keep his feet and he struck a vain counter in the air then he was hit again under the jar and sprawled headlong on the ground in another moment a knee compressed his diaphragm and a couple of eager hands gripped his throat but the grip of one was weaker than the other he grasped the wrists heard a cry of pain from his assailant and then the spade of a navvy came whirling through the air above him and struck something with a dull thud he felt a drop of moisture on his face the grip at his throat suddenly relaxed and with a convulsive effort Kemp loosed himself grasped a limp shoulder and rolled uppermost he gripped the unseen elbows near the ground I've got him! screamed Kemp help! help! hold! he's down! hurt his feet in another second there was a simultaneous rush upon the struggle and a stranger coming into the road suddenly might have thought an exceptionally savage game of rugby football was in progress and there was no shouting after Kemp's cry only a sound of blows in feet and heavy breathing then came a mighty effort and the invisible man threw off a couple of his antagonists and rose to his knees Kemp clung to him in front like a hound to a stag and a dozen hands gripped, clutched and tore at the unseen the tram conductor suddenly got the neck and shoulders and lugged him back down went the heap of struggling men again and rolled over there was, I am afraid, some savage kicking then suddenly a wild scream of mercy! mercy! that died down swiftly to a sound like choking get back you fools cried the muffled voice of Kemp and there was a vigorous shoving back of stalwart forms he's hurt, I tell you, stand back there was a brief struggle to clear a space and then the circle of eager faces saw the doctor kneeling as it seemed fifteen inches in the air and holding invisible arms to the ground behind him a constable gripped invisible ankles don't you let go of him cried the big navvy holding a bloodstained spade he's not shaming, said the doctor cautiously raising his knee and I'll hold him his face was bruised and already going red he spoke thickly because of a bleeding lip he released one hand and seemed to be feeling at the face the mouth's all wet, he said and then good God! he stood up abruptly and then knelt down on the ground by the side of the thing unseen there was a pushing and shuffling a sound of heavy feet as fresh people turned up to increase the pressure of the crowd people now were coming out of the houses the doors of the jolly cricketers stood suddenly wide open very little was said Kemp felt about his hand seeming to path through empty air he's not breathing he said and then I can't feel his heart his side ugh suddenly an old woman peering under the arm of the big navvy screamed sharply look there she said and thrust out a wrinkled finger and looking where she pointed everyone saw faint and transparent as though it was made of glass so that veins and arteries and bones and nerves could be distinguished the outline of a hand a hand limp and prone it grew clouded and opaque even as they stared hello cried the constable is his feet a-showing and so slowly beginning at his hands and feet and creeping along his limbs to the vital centers of his body that strange change continued it was like the slow spreading of a poison first came the little white nerves a hazy gray sketch of a limb then the glassy bones and intricate arteries then the flesh and skin first a faint fogginess and then growing rapidly dense and opaque presently they could see his crushed chest and his shoulders and the dim outline of his drawn and battered features when at last the crowd made way for Kemp to stand erect there lay naked and pitiful on the ground the bruised and broken body of a young man about thirty his hair and brow were white not gray with age but white with the whiteness of albinism and his eyes were like garnets his hands were clenched his eyes wide open and his expression was one of anger and dismay cover his face said a man for God's sake cover that face and three little children pushing forward through the crowd were suddenly twisted round and sent packing off again someone brought a sheet from the jolly cricketers and having covered him they carried him into that house and there it was on a shabby bed in a tawdry ill-lighted bedroom surrounded by a crowd of ignorant and excited people broken and wounded betrayed and unpittied the first of all men to make himself invisible Griffin the most gifted physicist the world has ever seen ended in infinite disaster his strange and terrible career the epilogue so ends the story of the strange and evil experiments of the invisible man and if you would learn more of him you must go to a little inn near Port Stowe and talk to the landlord the sign of the inn is an empty board saved for a hat and boots and it's the title of this story the landlord is a short and corpulent little man with a nose of cylindrical proportions wiry hair and a sporadic rosiness of visage drink generously and he will tell you generously of all the things that happened to him after that time and how the lawyers tried to do him out of the treasure found upon him when they found they couldn't prove it was money was which huh, blessed, he says if they didn't try to make me a blooming treasure trove do I look like a treasure trove and then a gentleman gave me a guinea night to tell the story at the empire musical just to tell me my own words bar in one and if you want to cut off the flow of his reminiscences abruptly you can always do so by asking if there weren't three manuscript books in the story he admits there were and proceeds to explain with the severations that everybody thinks he has them but bless you he hasn't the invisible man it was took him off to item when I caught and ran for Port Stowe is that Mr. Kemp put people on with the idea of my having him and then he subsides into a pensive state watches you furtively bustles nervously with glasses and presently leaves the bar he is a bachelor man his tastes were ever bachelor and there are no women folk in the house outwardly he buttons it is expected of him but in his more vital privacies in the matter of braces for example he still turns to string he conducts his house without enterprise but with eminent decorum his movements are slow and he's a great thinker but he has a reputation for wisdom and for a respectable parsimony in the village and his knowledge of the roads of the south of England would beat Cobbitt and on Sunday mornings every Sunday morning all the year round while he is closed to the outer world and every night after ten he goes into his bar parlor bearing a glass of gin faintly tinged with water he placed this down he locks the door and examines the blinds and even looks under the table and then being satisfied of his solitude he unlocks the cupboard and a box in the cupboard and a drawer in that box and produces three volumes bound in brown leather and places them solemnly in the middle of the table the covers are weather-worn and tinged with an algal green for once they sojourned in a ditch and some of the pages have been washed blank by dirty water and an armchair fills a long clay pipe slowly gloating over the books the while then he pulls one towards him and opens it and begins to study it turning over the leaves backwards and forwards his brows are knit and his lips move painfully hecks hecks little two