The Invisible Man

by H.G. Wells

He felt alone in the room and looked up, and there, grey and dim, was the bandaged head and huge blue lenses staring fixedly, with a mist of green spots drifting in front of them.

She was all the more inclined to snap at Hall because the stranger was undoubtedly an unusually strange sort of stranger, and she was by no means assured about him in her own mind. In the middle of the night she woke up dreaming of huge white heads like turnips, that came trailing after her, at the end of interminable necks, and with vast black eyes. But being a sensible woman, she subdued her terrors and turned over and went to sleep again.

Besides, his vocabulary was altogether too limited to express his impressions.

And directly the crates were unpacked, the stranger went to the window and set to work, not troubling in the least about the litter of straw, the fire which had gone out, the box of books outside, nor for the trunks and other luggage that had gone upstairs.

“I can’t go on,” he was raving. “I can’t go on. Three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand! The huge multitude! Cheated! All my life it may take me! . . . Patience! Patience indeed! . . . Fool! fool!”

Mrs. Hall was sensitive on the point. When questioned, she explained very carefully that he was an “experimental investigator,” going gingerly over the syllables as one who dreads pitfalls. When asked what an experimental investigator was, she would say with a touch of superiority that most educated people knew such things as that, and would thus explain that he “discovered things.”

Yet another view explained the entire matter by regarding

the stranger as a harmless lunatic. That had the advantage of accounting for everything straight away.

Cuss, the general practitioner, was devoured by curiosity. The bandages excited his professional interest, the report of the thousand and one bottles aroused his jealous regard.

Cuss rapped at the parlour door and entered. There was a fairly audible imprecation from within. “Pardon my intrusion,” said Cuss, and then the door closed and cut Mrs. Hall off from the rest of the conversation.

Mrs. Hall was left almost in a fainting condition in Mr. Hall’s arms on the landing.

“Just a drop more, Janny,” said Hall. “Your nerves is all upset.”

“Go to the devil!” said the stranger in a tremendous voice, and “Shut that door after you.” So that brief interview terminated.

Everyone tumbled on everyone else down the steps. For the man who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar of him, and then—nothingness, no visible thing at all!

A small group supported Mrs. Hall, who was picked up in a state of collapse.

Mr. Hall marched up the steps, marched straight to the door of the parlour and flung it open. “Constable,” he said, “do your duty.”

“Hold him!” said Jaffers, loudly. “Once he gets the things off—”

Gibbons had heard nothing of the morning’s occurrences, but the phenomenon was so striking and disturbing that his philosophical tranquillity vanished; he got up hastily, and hurried down the steepness of the hill towards the village, as fast as he could go.

“Look here,” said Mr. Marvel. “I’m too flabbergasted. Don’t knock me about any more. And leave me go. I must get steady a bit. And you’ve pretty near broken my toe. It’s all so unreasonable. Empty downs, empty sky. Nothing visible for miles except the bosom of Nature. And then comes a voice. A voice out of heaven! And stones! And a fist—Lord!”

It is so much easier not to believe in an invisible man; and those who had actually seen him dissolve into air, or felt the strength of his arm, could be counted on the fingers of two hands.

Great and strange ideas transcending experience often have less effect upon men and women than smaller, more tangible considerations.

“Hold him!” he bawled. “He’s got my trousers! And every stitch of the Vicar’s clothes!”

In another moment Mr. Cuss was back in the parlour. “He’s coming back, Bunting!” he said, rushing in. “Save yourself!”

“Another of those fools,” said Dr. Kemp. “Like that ass who ran into me this morning round a corner, with the ‘‘Visible Man a-coming, sir!’ I can’t imagine what possesses people. One might think we were in the thirteenth century.”

Then the policeman, who had been trying to pass the barman, rushed in, followed by one of the cabmen, gripped the wrist of the invisible hand that collared Marvel, was hit in the face and went reeling back.

A silence followed. “Five cartridges,” said the man with the black beard. “That’s the best of all. Four aces and a joker. Get a lantern, someone, and come and feel about for his body.”

“Hullo!” said Dr. Kemp, putting his pen into his mouth again and listening. “Who’s letting off revolvers in Burdock? What are the asses at now?”

All men, however highly educated, retain some superstitious inklings.

“Keep your nerve,” said the Voice. “I’m an Invisible Man.”

“It didn’t feel so. Where are you? If I get up shall I run into you? There! all right. Whiskey? Here. Where shall I give it to you?”