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The Invisible Man
Chapter 18. CERTAIN FIRST PRINCIPLES
"What's the matter?" asked Kemp, when the Invisible Man let him in.
"Nothing," was the answer.
"But, confound it! The crash?"
"Fit of temper," said the Invisible Man.
"I forgot this arm, and it's sore."
"You're rather likely to do that sort of thing."
"I'm."
Kemp walked across the room and picked up the pieces of broken glass.
"All the facts are out about you," said Kemp, standing up with the glass in his hand.
"All that happened in Iping, and down the hill. The world knows about its invisible citizen. But no one knows you're here."
The Invisible Man swore, his voice sharp with anger and pain from the arm.
"The secret's out. I think it was a secret. I don't know what your plans are, but of course I want 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 glad to find his strange guest got up willingly.
Kemp led the way up the narrow stairs to the belvedere.
"Before we can do anything else," said Kemp.
"I must understand a little more about this invisibility of yours."
He had sat down, after one nervous look out of the window, with the air of a man who has things to say.
His doubts about the sanity of the whole thing came and went.
He looked across to where Griffin sat at the breakfast-table.
It was a headless, handless dressing-gown, wiping unseen lips on a miraculously held napkin.
"It's simple enough - and believable enough," said Griffin, putting the napkin 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'll do great things yet!"
"I first found the stuff at Chesilstowe."
"Chesilstowe?"
"I went there after I left London. You know I stopped medicine and started physics? No, well, I did. Light fascinated me."
"Ah!"
"Optical density! The whole subject is a network of puzzles, with solutions shining through but hard to catch."
"Being only twenty-two and eager, I said, 'I'll give my life to this. This is worth it.' You know what fools we're at twenty-two?"
"Fools then or fools now," said Kemp.
"As if knowing could be any satisfaction to a man"!
"But I went to work - like a slave".
And I had hardly worked and thought about the matter for six months before light came through one of the holes suddenly - blindingly!
I found a general rule about pigments and refraction - a formula, a geometrical expression involving four dimensions.
Fools, common men, even common mathematicians, don't know anything of what some general expression may mean to the student of molecular physics.
In the books - the books that tramp has hidden - there are marvels, miracles!
This wasn't a method, but an idea.
It might lead to a method to lower a substance's refractive index to that of air.
This wouldn't change other properties, except sometimes colours.
"Phew!" said Kemp.
"That's odd! But still I don't see quite . I can understand that you could spoil a valuable stone, but personal invisibility is a very different thing."
"Exactly," said Griffin.
"But think about it. Visibility depends on the action of 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 can't of itself be visible."
You see a not clear red box because its colour absorbs some light and reflects the red part of the light to you.
"If it didn't absorb any particular part of the light, but reflected it all,"
"Then it would be a shining white box."
"A diamond box would not absorb much light and would not reflect much from its general surface."
"But where the surfaces fit right, light would be reflected and refracted."
"This would make a brilliant show of flashing reflections and thin light areas."
"It would look like a skeleton of light."
"A glass box would be less bright and sometimes nearly invisible, some glass types and water bend light so objects can almost disappear."
"Yes," said Kemp, "that's pretty clear."
"And here's another fact you'll know to be true".
If a sheet of glass is smashed, Kemp, and beaten into a powder, it becomes much more visible in the air.
At last it becomes an opaque white powder.
This is because the powdering multiplies the surfaces of the glass where refraction and reflection happen.
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, so very little gets through.
But if the white powdered glass is put into water, it immediately disappears.
Powdered glass and water have nearly the same refractive index, so light has little refraction or reflection between them.
"You make the glass invisible by putting it into a liquid with nearly the same refractive index."
"A transparent thing also becomes invisible if you put it into any medium with almost the same refractive index."
Think for just a second, You'll see that glass powder could disappear in air.
This would happen if its refractive index matched air.
Then light would have no refraction or reflection as it 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!"
"How one forgets!"
"Have you already forgotten your physics, in ten years?"
"Just think of all the things that are transparent and seem not to be so."
"Paper, for example, is made up of transparent fibres, and it's white and opaque only for the same reason that a powder of glass is white and opaque."
"Oil white paper, fill up the spaces between the particles with oil so that there's no longer refraction or reflection except at the surfaces,"
"And it becomes as transparent as glass."
"Paper is made of transparent, colourless tissue."
"So are cotton fibre, linen fibre, wool fibre, woody fibre, and bone."
"Kemp, even flesh, hair, nails, and nerves are made of it."
"In fact, the whole fabric of a man is transparent and colourless, except for red blood and black hair."
"So little is needed to make us visible to each other."
"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 larvae and all jelly-fish!"
"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 terrible disadvantages."
"Oliver, my professor, was a scientific cheat, a journalist by nature, a thief of ideas - he was always prying!"
"And you know the dishonest system of the scientific world."
"I simply wouldn't publish, and let him share my credit."
"I went on working."
"I got nearer and nearer to making my formula into an experiment, a reality."
"I told no living soul, because I meant to flash my work upon the world with crushing effect and become famous at one blow."
"I took up the question of pigments to fill up certain gaps."
"And suddenly, not by design but by accident, I made a discovery in physiology."
"Yes?"
"You know the red colouring matter of blood, it can be made white - colourless - and stay with all the functions it has now!"
Kemp gave a cry of shocked amazement.
The Invisible Man got up and began walking around the little study.
"You may well shout".
I remember that night, it was late at night - in the daytime one was bothered with the staring, silly students -.
I worked then sometimes till dawn.
It came suddenly, splendid and complete in my mind.
I was alone, the laboratory was quiet, 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 colours - I could be invisible!' I said, suddenly realizing what it meant to be an albino with such knowledge.
It was overwhelming, I left the filtering I was doing, and went and stared out of the big window at the stars.
'I could be invisible!' I repeated.
"To do such a thing would be beyond magic".
And I saw, without any doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility could mean to a man - the mystery, the power, the freedom.
I saw no problems, You have only to think!
And I, a shabby, poor, trapped demonstrator, teaching fools in a small college, could suddenly become - this.
I ask you, Kemp if you .
Anyone, I tell you, would have thrown himself upon that research.
And I worked three years, and every mountain of difficulty I climbed over showed another from its top.
The endless details! And the anger!
A professor, a small college professor, always prying.
'When are you going to publish this work of yours?' was his never-ending question.
And the students, the limited means!
Three years I had of it -
"And after three years of secrecy and anger, I found that to finish it was impossible - impossible."
"How?" asked Kemp.
"Money," said the Invisible Man, and went again to stare out of the window.
He turned around suddenly and faced Kemp, his eyes showing a wild, scared look.
"I robbed the old man - robbed my father".
"The money wasn't his, and he shot himself."