The Invisible Man Read online

  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.

  She could hear the murmur of voices for the next ten minutes, then a cry of surprise, a stirring of feet, a chair flung aside, a bark of laughter, quick steps to the door, and Cuss appeared, his face white, his eyes staring over his shoulder. He left the door open behind him, and, without looking at her, strode across the hall and went down the steps, and she heard his feet hurrying along the road. He carried his hat in his hand. She stood behind the bar, looking at the open door of the parlour. Then she heard the stranger laughing quietly, and his footsteps came across the room. She could not see his face where she stood. The parlour door slammed, and the place was silent again.

  Cuss went straight up the village to Bunting, the vicar.

  ‘Am I mad?’ Cuss began abruptly, as he entered the shabby little study. ‘Do I look like an insane person?’

  ‘What’s happened?’ said the vicar, putting the ammonite* on the loose sheets of his forthcoming sermon.

  ‘That chap at the inn——’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Give me something to drink,’ said Cuss, and he sat down.

  When his nerves had been steadied by a glass of cheap sherry — the only drink the good vicar had available — he told him of the interview he had just had.

  ‘Went in,’ he gasped, ‘and began to demand a subscription for that nurse fund. He’d stuck his hands in his pockets as I came in, and he sat down lumpily in his chair. Sniffed. I told him I’d heard he took an interest in scientific things. He said, ‘Yes.’ Sniffed again. Kept on sniffing all the time, evidently recently caught an infernal cold. No wonder — wrapped up like that. I developed the nurse idea, and all the while kept my eyes open. Bottles — chemicals — everywhere. Balance, test tubes, in stands, and a smell of — evening primrose. Would he subscribe? Said he’d consider it. Asked him point blank was he researching. Said he was. A long research? Got quite cross, a ‘damnable long research,’ said he, blowing the cork out, so to speak. ‘Oh?’ said I. And out came the grievance. The man was just on the boil, and my question boiled him over. He had been given a prescription — most valuable prescription — what for he wouldn’t say. Was it medical? ‘Damn you! what are you fishing after?’ I apologised. Dignified sniff and cough. He resumed. He’d read it. Five ingredients. Put it down; turned his head. Draught of air from window lifted the paper. Swish, rustle. He was working in a room with an open fireplace, he said. Saw a flicker, and there was the prescription burning and lifting chimneyward. Rushed towards it just as it whisked up chimney. So! Just at that point, to illustrate his story, out came his arm.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘No hand. Just an empty sleeve. Lord! I thought, that’s a deformity! Got a cork arm,* I suppose, and has taken it off. Then, I thought, there’s something odd in that. What the devil keeps that sleeve up and open if there’s nothing in it? There was nothing in it, I tell you. Nothing down it, right down to the joint. I could see right down it to the elbow, and there was a glimmer of light shining through a tear of the cloth. “Good God!” I said. Then he stopped. Stared at me with those blank, goggled eyes of his, and then at his sleeve.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘That’s all. He never said a word, just glared and put his sleeve back in his pocket quickly, “I was saying,” said he, “that there was the prescription burning, wasn’t I?” Interrogative cough. “How the devil,” said I, “can you move an empty sleeve like that?” “Empty sleeve?” “Yes,” said I, “an empty sleeve.”

  ‘ “It’s an empty sleeve, is it? You saw it was an empty sleeve?” He stood up right away. I stood up, too. He came towards me in three very slow steps, and stood quite close. Sniffed venomously. I didn’t flinch, though I’m hanged if that bandaged knob of his, and those blinkers, aren’t enough to unnerve any one, coming quietly up to you.

  ‘ “You said it was an empty sleeve?” he said. “Certainly,” I said. At staring and saying nothing a bare-faced man, unspectacled, starts scratch. Then very quietly he pulled his sleeve out of his pocket again, and raised his arm towards me, as though he would show it to me again. He did it very, very slowly. I looked at it. Seemed an age. “Well?” said I, clearing my throat; “there’s nothing in it.”

  ‘Had to say something. I was beginning to feel frightened. I could see right down it. He extended it straight towards me, slowly, slowly — just like that — until the cuff was six inches from my face. Queer thing to see an empty sleeve come at you like that! And then——’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Something — exactly like a finger and a thumb it felt — nipped my nose.’

  Bunting began to laugh.

  ‘There wasn’t anything there!’ said Cuss — his voice running up into a shriek at the ‘there.’ ‘It’s all very well for you to laugh, but I tell you I was so startled, I hit his cuff hard, and turned round and cut out of the room — I left him——’

  Cuss stopped. There was no mistaking the sincerity of his panic. He turned round in a helpless way, and took a second glass of the excellent vicar’s very inferior sherry. ‘When I hit his cuff,’ said Cuss, ‘I tell you, it felt exactly like hitting an arm.

  ‘And there wasn’t an arm! There wasn’t the ghost of an arm!’

  Mr Bunting thought it over. He looked suspiciously at Cuss. ‘It’s a most remarkable story,’ he said. He looked very wise and grave indeed. ‘It’s really,’ said Mr Bunting with judicial emphasis, ‘a most remarkable story.’

  V

  The Burglary at the Vicarage

  The facts of the burglary at the Vicarage come to us chiefly through the medium of the vicar and his wife. It occurred in the small hours of Whit Monday, the day devoted in Iping to the Club festivities.* Mrs Bunting, it seems, woke up suddenly in the stillness that comes before the dawn, with a strong impression that the door of their bedroom had opened and closed. She did not arouse her husband at first, but sat up in bed listening. She then distinctly heard the pad, pad, pad of bare feet coming out of the adjoining dressing-room and walking along the passage towards the staircase. So soon as she felt assured of this, she aroused the Rev.

  Mr Bunting as quietly as possible. He did not strike a light, but putting on his spectacles, her dressing gown, and his bath slippers, went out on the landing to listen. He heard quite distinctly a fumbling going on at his study desk downstairs, and then a violent sneeze.

  At that he returned to his bedroom, armed himself with the most obvious weapon, the poker, and descended the staircase as noiselessly as possible. Mrs Bunting came out on the landing.

  The hour was about four, and the ultimate darkness of the night was passed. There was a faint shimmer of light in the hall, but the study doorway yawned impenetrably black. Everything was still, except the faint creaking of the stairs under Mr Bunting’s tread, and the slight movements in the study. Then something snapped, the drawer was opened, and there was a rustle of papers. Then came an imprecation, and a match was struck, and the study was flooded with yellow light. Mr Bunting was now in the hall, and through the crack of the door he could see the desk and the open drawer, and a candle burning on the desk. But the robber he could not see. He stood there in the hall undecided what to do, and Mrs Bunting, her face white and intent, crept slowly downstairs after him. One thing kept up Mr Bunting’s courage. The persuasion that this burglar was a resident in the village.

  They heard the chink of money, and realised that the robber had found the housekeeping reserve of gold — two pounds ten in half sovereigns* altogether. At that sound Mr Bunting was nerved to abrupt action. Gripping the poker firmly he rushed into the room, closely followed by Mrs Bunting.

  ‘Surrender!’ cried Mr Bunting fiercely, and then stopped amazed. Apparently the room was perfectly empty.

 
Yet their conviction that they had that very moment heard somebody moving in the room had amounted to a certainty. For half a minute perhaps they stood gasping, then Mrs Bunting went across the room and looked behind the screen, while Mr Bunting, by a kindred impulse, peered under the desk. Then Mrs Bunting turned back the window curtains, and Mr Bunting looked up the chimney, and probed it with the poker. Then Mrs Bunting scrutinised the waste-paper basket, and Mr Bunting opened the coal-scuttle. Then they came to a stop, and stood with eyes interrogating one another.

  ‘I could have sworn——’ said Mr Bunting.

  ‘The candle!’ said Mr Bunting. ‘Who lit the candle?’

  ‘The drawer!’ said Mrs Bunting. ‘And the money’s gone!’

  She went hastily to the doorway.

  ‘Of all the extraordinary occurrences——’

  There was a violent sneeze in the passage. They rushed out, and as they did so the kitchen door slammed. ‘Bring the candle!’ said Mr Bunting, and led the way. They both heard the sound of bolts being hastily shot back.

  As he opened the kitchen door he saw through the scullery that the back door was just opening, and the faint light of early dawn displayed the dark masses of the garden beyond. He was certain that nothing went out of the door. It opened, stood open for a moment, and then closed with a slam. As it did so, the candle Mrs Bunting was bringing from the study flickered and flared… . It was a minute or more before they entered the kitchen.

  The place was empty. They refastened the back door, examined the kitchen, pantry, and scullery thoroughly, and at last went down into the cellar. There was not a soul to be found in the house, search as they would.

  Daylight found the vicar and his wife, a quaintly costumed little couple, still marvelling about on their own ground floor by the unnecessary light of a guttering candle.

  ‘Of all the extraordinary affairs,’ began the vicar for the twentieth time.

  ‘My dear,’ said Mrs Bunting, ‘there’s Susie coming down. Just wait here until she has gone into the kitchen, and then slip upstairs.’

  VI

  The Furniture that Went Mad

  Now it happened that in the early hours of Whit Monday, before Millie was hunted out for the day, Mr Hall and Mrs Hall both rose and went noiselessly down into the cellar. Their business there was of a private nature, and had something to do with the specific gravity of their beer.

  They had hardly entered the cellar when Mrs Hall found she had forgotten to bring down a bottle of sarsaparilla* from their joint room. As she was the expert and principal operator in this affair, Hall very properly went upstairs for it.

  On the landing he was surprised to see that the stranger’s door was ajar. He went on into his own room and found the bottle as he had been directed.

  But returning with the bottle, he noticed that the bolts on the front door had been shot back — that the door was, in fact, simply on the latch. And, with a flash of inspiration, he connected this with the stranger’s room upstairs and the suggestions of Mr Teddy Henfrey. He distinctly remembered holding the candle while Mrs Hall shot these bolts overnight. At the sight he stopped, gaping; then, with the bottle still in his hands, went upstairs again. He rapped at the stranger’s door. There was no answer. He rapped again; then pushed the door wide open and entered.

  It was as he expected. The bed, the room also, was empty. And what was queerer, even to his heavy intelligence, on the bedroom chair and along the rail of the bed were scattered the garments, the only garments so far as he knew, and the bandages of their guest. His big slouch hat* even was cocked jauntily over the bedpost.

  As Hall stood there he heard his wife’s voice coming out of the depth of the cellar, and with that rapid telescoping of the syllables and interrogative cocking up of the final words to a high note, by which the West Sussex villager is wont to indicate a brisk impatience. ‘Gearge! You gart whad a wand?’

  At that he turned and hurried down to her. ‘Janny,’ he said over the rail of the cellar steps, ‘’tas the truth what Henfrey sez. ’E’s not in uz room, ’e en’t. And the front door’s onbolted.’

  At first Mrs Hall did not understand, and so soon as she did she resolved to see the empty room for herself. Hall, still holding the bottle, went first. ‘If ’e en’t there,’ he said, ‘’is close are. And what’s ’e doin’ ’ith-out ’is close, than? ’Tas a most curius basness.’

  As they came up the cellar steps they both, it was afterwards ascertained, fancied they heard the front door open and shut, but, seeing it closed and nothing there, neither said a word to the other about it at the time. Mrs Hall passed her husband in the passage, and ran on first upstairs. Some one sneezed on the staircase. Hall, following six steps behind, thought that he heard her sneeze; she, going on first, was under the impression that Hall was sneezing. She flung open the door and stood regarding the room. ‘Of all the curious!’ she said.

  She heard a sniff close behind her head, as it seemed, and, turning, was surprised to see Hall a dozen feet off on the topmost stair. But in another moment he was beside her. She bent forward and put her hand on the pillow and then under the clothes.

  ‘Cold,’ she said. ‘He’s been up this hour or more.’

  As she did so a most extraordinary thing happened. The bed-clothes gathered themselves together, leapt up suddenly into a sort of peak, and then jumped headlong over the bottom rail. It was exactly as if a hand had clutched them in the centre and flung them aside. Immediately after, the stranger’s hat hopped off the bedpost, described a whirling flight in the air through the better part of a circle, and then dashed straight at Mrs Hall’s face. Then as swiftly came the sponge from the washstand, and then the chair, flinging the stranger’s coat and trousers carelessly aside, and laughing drily in a voice singularly like the stranger’s, turned itself up with its four legs at Mrs Hall, seemed to take aim at her for a moment, and charged at her. She screamed and turned, and then the chair legs came gently but firmly against her back and impelled her and Hall out of the room. The door slammed violently, and was locked. The chair and bed seemed to be executing a dance of triumph for a moment, and then abruptly everything was still.

  Mrs Hall was left almost in a fainting condition in Mr Hall’s arms on the landing. It was with the greatest difficulty that Mr Hall and Millie, who had been roused by her scream of alarm, succeeded in getting her downstairs, and applying the restoratives customary in such cases.

  ‘’Tas sperits,’ said Mrs Hall. ‘I know ’tas sperits. I’ve read in papers of en. Tables and chairs leaping and dancing …’

  ‘Take a drop more, Janny,’ said Hall. ‘’Twill steady ye.’

  ‘Lock him out,’ said Mrs Hall. ‘Don’t let him come in again. I half guessed … I might ha’ known. With them goggling eyes and bandaged head, and never going to church of a Sunday. And all they bottles — more’n it’s right for any one to have. He’s put the sperits into the furniture… . My good old furniture! ’Twas in that very chair my poor dear mother used to sit when I was a little girl. To think it should rise up against me now …’

  ‘Just a drop more, Janny,’ said Hall. ‘Your nerves is all upset.’

  They sent Millie across the street through the golden five o’clock sunshine to rouse up Mr Sandy Wadgers, the blacksmith.

  Mr Hall’s compliments, and the furniture upstairs was behaving most extraordinary. Would Mr Wadgers come round?

  He was a knowing man, was Mr Wadgers, and very resourceful. He took quite a grave view of the case. ‘Arm darmed if thet ent witchcraft,’ was the view of Mr Sandy Wadgers. ‘You warnt horseshoes* for such gentry as he.’

  He came round greatly concerned. They wanted him to lead the way upstairs to the room; but he didn’t seem to be in any hurry. He preferred to talk in the passage. Over the way Huxter’s apprentice came out, and began taking down the shutters of the tobacco window. He was called over to join the discussion. Mr Huxter naturally followed over in the course of a few minutes. The Anglo-Saxon genius for parliam
entary government asserted itself: there was a great deal of talk and no decisive action.

  ‘Let’s have the facts first,’ insisted Mr Sandy Wadgers. ‘Let’s be sure we’d be acting perfectly right in bustin’ that there door open. A door onbust is always open to bustin’, but ye can’t onbust a bust door once you’ve busted en.’

  And suddenly and most wonderfully the door of the room upstairs opened of its own accord, and as they looked up in amazement, they saw descending the stairs the muffled figure of the stranger, staring more blackly and blankly than ever with those unreasonably large glass eyes of his. He came down stiffly and slowly, staring all the time; he walked across the passage, staring, then stopped.

  ‘Look there!’ he said, and their eyes followed the direction of his gloved finger, and saw a bottle of sarsaparilla hard by the cellar door. Then he entered the parlour, and suddenly, swiftly, viciously, slammed the door in their faces.

  Not a word was spoken until the last echoes of the slam had died away. They stared at one another.

  ‘Well, if that don’t lick everything!’ said Mr Wadgers, and left the alternative unsaid.

  ‘I’d go in and ask’n ’bout it,’ said Wadgers to Mr Hall. ‘I’d d’mand an explanation.’

  It took some time to bring the landlady’s husband up to that pitch. At last he rapped, opened the door, and got as far as:

  ‘Excuse me——’

  ‘Go to the devil!’ said the stranger in a tremendous voice, and ‘Shut that door after you.’

  So this brief interview terminated.

  VII

  The Unveiling of the Stranger

  The stranger went into the little parlour of the ‘Coach and Horses’ about half-past five in the morning, and there he remained until near midday, the blinds down, the door shut, and none, after Hall’s repulse, venturing near him.