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The Invisible Man
Chapter 19. 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.
Then he started, struck by a thought, rose, took the Invisible Man's arm, and turned him away from the outlook.
"You're tired," he said, "and while I sit, you walk about. Have my chair."
He placed himself between Griffin and the nearest window.
For a space Griffin sat silent, and then he started again suddenly,
"I had already left the Chesilstowe cottage," he said, "when that happened".
That happened in the last December, not long before the winter snow came.
I had taken a room in London, a large unfurnished room in a big badly-managed lodging-house in a poor area near Great Portland Street.
The room was soon full of the equipment I had bought with his money, the work was going on steadily, successfully, getting near an end.
I was like a man coming out of a thick forest, and suddenly finding some meaningless tragedy.
I went to bury him, My mind was still on this research, and I did nothing to save his good name.
I remember the funeral, there was a cheap hearse and a small ceremony.
The hillside was windy and frozen.
An old college friend of his read the service.
He was a shabby, bent old man with a runny nose from a cold.
"I remember walking back to the empty house, through the place that had once been a village."
"It was now patched and fixed by cheap builders into the ugly look of a town."
Every way the roads ran out at last into the ruined fields and ended in piles of rubbish and wet weeds.
I remember myself as a thin black figure, walking along the slippery, shiny pavement.
I remember the strange feeling of separation I had from the poor respectable life and the dirty business of the place.
"I didn't feel a bit sorry for my father".
He seemed to me to be the victim of his own foolish feelings.
The usual talk required me to go to his funeral, but it was really not my business.
"But walking along the High Street, my old life came back to me for a while, because I met the girl I had known ten years before".
For a moment our eyes met, and an old feeling came back to me.
"Something made me turn back and talk to her".
She was a very ordinary person.
"It was all like a dream, that visit to the old places".
I didn't feel then that I was lonely, that I had come out from the world into a lonely place.
I understood my loss of connection with others, but I thought it was because of the general emptiness of things.
Going back into my room felt like finding reality again.
There were the things I knew and loved.
There stood the equipment, the experiments arranged and waiting.
And now there was hardly a difficulty left, except for planning the details.
"I'll tell you, Kemp, sooner or later, all the complicated processes".
We don't need to go into that now.
For the most part, except for some gaps I chose to remember, they're written in code in those books that tramp has hidden.
We must hunt him down, we must get those books again.
The main step was to put the transparent object between two radiating centres.
These centres produced a kind of ethereal vibration.
I'll tell you more about this later.
No, not those Rontgen vibrations - I don't know if these others of mine have been described.
But they're clear enough, I needed two small dynamos, and I worked these with a cheap gas engine.
My first experiment was with a piece of white wool cloth.
It was very strange to see it soft and white in the flash.
Then I watched it disappear like a cloud of smoke and go away.
"I could hardly believe I had done it".
I put my hand into the empty space, and there was the thing as solid as ever.
I felt it awkwardly, and threw it on the floor.
I had a little trouble finding it again.
"And then came a strange experience."
"I heard a miaow behind me, and turning, saw a thin white cat, very dirty, on the water tank 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 animal 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 around the room, clearly with the idea of making herself at home."
"The invisible cloth upset her a bit, you should have seen her spit at it!"
"But I made her comfortable on the pillow of my small bed."
"And I gave her butter to get her to wash herself."
"And you processed her?"
"I processed her. But giving drugs to a cat is no joke, Kemp! And the process failed."
"Failed!"
"In two ways. These were the claws and the coloured stuff, what's it? - at the back of the eye in a cat. You know?"
"Tapetum."
"Yes, the tapetum."
"It didn't go."
"I gave her the stuff to make the blood pale."
"I did certain other things to her."
"Then I gave the animal opium."
"I put her and the pillow she was sleeping on, on the equipment."
"And after all the rest had disappeared and vanished, there remained two small ghosts of her eyes."
"Strange!"
"I can't explain it."
"She was bandaged and held down, of course - so I had her safe,"
"But she woke while she was still unclear, and miaowed sadly, and someone came knocking."
It was an old woman from downstairs who thought I did experiments on animals, a drunk with only a white cat.
"I quickly took out some chloroform, used it, and answered the door. 'Did I hear a cat?' she asked. 'My cat?' 'Not here,' I said, very politely."
"She was a little unsure."
"She tried to look past me into the room."
"It seemed strange to her, with bare walls and uncovered windows."
"There was a small bed, a shaking gas engine, and the sound of radiating points."
"The faint, terrible smell of chloroform hung 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 muscles 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, a hard, shiny stuff it's, wouldn't go at all.
"It was night outside long before the work was over, and nothing could be seen but the dim eyes and the claws".
I stopped the gas engine, felt for and touched the animal, which was still unconscious.
Being tired, I left it sleeping on the invisible pillow and went to bed.
I found it hard to sleep.
I lay awake thinking weak, pointless things.
I went over the experiment again and again.
I dreamed feverishly of things becoming unclear and vanishing around me.
Then everything, even the ground I stood on, vanished.
I came to that sick falling nightmare one gets.
About two, the cat began miaowing around the room.
I tried to quiet it by talking to it, and then I decided to put it out.
I remember the shock I had when I lit a light - there were just the round eyes shining green - and nothing around them.
I'd have given it milk, but I didn't have any.
It wouldn't be quiet, it just sat down and miaowed 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 miaowing in different parts of the room.
At last I opened the window and made a noise.
I suppose it went out at last.
I never saw any more of it.
"Then - Heaven knows why - I started thinking of my father's funeral again, and the sad windy hillside, until the day had come."
"I found sleeping was impossible, and, locking my door after me, walked out into the morning streets."
"You don't mean to say there's an invisible cat free!" 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 later and was down a drain in Great Titchfield Street, where I saw a crowd trying to find the miaowing.
He was silent for most of a minute, then he started again suddenly,
"I remember that morning before the change very clearly".
I must have gone up Great Portland Street.
I remember the army buildings in Albany Street, and the horse soldiers coming out, and at last I found the top of Primrose Hill.
It was a sunny day in January - one of those sunny, frosty days that came before the snow this year.
My tired brain tried to form the situation, to plan out a course of action.
"I was surprised to find, now that my prize was within my reach, how unsatisfying its achievement seemed".
In fact I was exhausted, the intense pressure of nearly four years' continuous work left me unable to feel anything strongly.
I was without feeling, I tried in vain to get back the excitement of my first investigations.
That passion of discovery had allowed me to cause even the fall of my father's grey hairs, Nothing seemed to matter.
I saw clearly this was a passing mood from overwork and lack of sleep.
I thought I could get my energy back by drugs or rest.
"All I could think clearly was that the thing had to be finished, the fixed idea still controlled me."
"And soon, because the money I had was almost gone."
I looked around the hillside, children playing and girls watching, and tried to think of the advantages an invisible man would have.
"After a time I went home, took some food and a strong dose of strychnine, and went to sleep in my clothes on my unmade bed."
"Strychnine is a great tonic, Kemp, to take the weakness out of a man."
"It's the devil," said Kemp.
"It's the ancient world in a bottle."
"I woke up very refreshed and rather angry. You know?"
"I know the stuff."
"And there was someone knocking at the door".
It was my landlord with threats and questions, an old Polish Jew in a long grey coat and greasy slippers.
I had been hurting a cat in the night, he was sure - the old woman had been talking.
He insisted on knowing all about it.
The laws in this country against experiments on animals were very severe - he might be responsible.
I said there was no cat.
Then the shaking of the little gas engine could be felt all over the house, he said, that was true, certainly.
He moved past me into the room and looked over his German-silver glasses.
A sudden fear came into my mind that he might take away something of my secret.
I tried to stay between him and the concentrating equipment I had set up, 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 bad neighbourhood.
Suddenly I lost my temper, I told him to get out.
He began to protest, to talk about his right to enter.
In a moment I had him by the collar, something tore, and he went spinning out into his own passage.
I slammed and locked the door and sat down shaking.
"He made a fuss outside, which I ignored, and after a time he went away".
"But this brought matters to a crisis".
I didn't know what he'd do, or even what he had the power to do.
To move to new rooms would have meant delay.
In total I had barely twenty pounds left, mostly in a bank, so I couldn't afford it.
Vanish! It was impossible to resist.
Then there would be an investigation, the searching of my room.
"At the thought of the possibility of my work being discovered or interrupted at its very peak, I became very angry and active".
I hurried out with my three books of notes and my cheque-book, the tramp has them now.
From the nearest Post Office I sent them to a place for letters and parcels in Great Portland Street.
I tried to go out without making a noise.
Coming in, I found my landlord going quietly upstairs, he had heard the door close, I suppose.
You'd have laughed to see him jump aside on the landing as I came running after him.
He stared at me as I went by him, and I made the house shake with the slamming of my door.
I heard him come shuffling up to my floor, stop, and go down.
I started work on my preparations immediately.
"It was all done that evening and night".
While I was still sitting under the sick, sleepy influence of the drugs that make blood colourless, there came a repeated knocking at the door.
It stopped, footsteps went away and came back, and the knocking started again.
There was an attempt to push something under the door - a blue paper.
Then in a fit of anger I got up and went and threw the door wide open, 'Now then?' I said.
"It was my landlord, with a notice to leave or something".
He held it out to me, saw something strange about my hands, I expect, and lifted his eyes to my face.
"For a moment he stared with his mouth open".
Then he gave a sort of unclear cry, dropped candle and paper together, and went stumbling down the dark passage to the stairs.
I shut the door, locked it, and went to the mirror.
Then I understood his terror, My face was white - like white stone.
"But it was all horrible".
I hadn't expected the pain, a night of terrible suffering, sickness and fainting.
I set my teeth, though my skin was soon on fire, all my body on fire.
But I lay there like death itself.
I understood now how it was the cat had howled until I put it to sleep with chloroform.
Lucky it was I lived alone and without help in my room.
There were times when I sobbed and groaned and talked.
But I kept going, I became unconscious and woke weak in the darkness.
"The pain had passed".
I thought I was killing myself and I didn't care.
I shall never forget that dawn.
I felt a strange horror when I saw my hands had become like cloudy glass.
My arms and legs became glassy, the bones and blood vessels 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, pale and white, and the brown stain of some acid upon my fingers.
"I struggled up".
At first I was as helpless as a wrapped baby - stepping with arms and legs I couldn't see.
I was weak and very hungry.
I stared into my shaving mirror at the faint colour left behind the backs of my eyes, paler than mist.
I had to hold on to the table and press my forehead against the glass.
"It was only by a desperate effort of will that I pulled myself back to the equipment and finished the process".
"I slept during the morning, pulling the sheet over my eyes to block out the light, and about midday I was woken again by a knocking".
My strength had returned, I sat up and listened and heard whispering.
I jumped to my feet and, as quietly as possible, began to take apart the connections of my equipment.
I spread the parts around the room to destroy the signs of its arrangement.
Soon the knocking started again and voices called, first my landlord's, and then two others.
To gain time I answered them.
The invisible cloth and pillow came to hand and I opened the window and threw them out onto the water tank cover.
As the window opened, a heavy crash came at the door.
Someone had hit it with the idea of breaking the lock.
But the strong bolts I had put in some days before stopped him.
That startled me, made me angry.
I began to shake and do things quickly.
"I threw 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 hit the door.
I couldn't find the matches, I beat my hands on the wall with anger.
I turned down the gas again and stepped out of the window onto the water tank cover.
I very softly lowered the window, sat down safe and invisible, and watched events while shaking with anger.
They broke a panel, I saw, and in another moment they had broken the staples of the bolts and stood in the open doorway.
It was the landlord and his two step-sons, strong young men of three or four and twenty.
Behind them came the old woman from downstairs.
"You can imagine their surprise to find the room empty".
One of the younger men rushed to the window at once, threw it up and stared out.
His staring eyes and thick-lipped bearded face came a foot from my face.
I was half minded to hit his silly face, but I stopped my closed fist.
He stared right through me, so did the others as they joined him.
The old man went and looked 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 decided I hadn't answered them, that their imagination had tricked them.
A feeling of great excitement took the place of my anger.
I sat outside the window and watched these four people.
The old lady came in, looking around suspiciously like a cat.
She tried to understand the mystery of my behaviour.
"The old man, as far as I could understand his language, agreed with the old lady that I did experiments on animals".
The sons said in broken English that I was an electrician, and pointed to the dynamos and radiators.
They were all nervous about my arrival, although I found later that they had locked the front door.
The old lady looked in cupboard and under bed, one young man pushed up register and stared up chimney.
One of my fellow lodgers, a street seller who shared the opposite room with a butcher, appeared on the landing.
And he was called in and told unclear things.
It occurred to me that the radiators would give me away too much.
They could fall into the hands of some clever, well-educated person.
Watching my chance, I came into the room.
I pushed one small dynamo off its partner and broke both pieces of equipment.
Then, while they were trying to explain the break, I slipped out of the room and went quietly downstairs.
I went into one of the sitting-rooms and waited until they came down.
They were still arguing, disappointed at finding no 'horrors' and confused about their legal standing toward me.
I slipped up again with a box of matches.
I set fire to my pile of paper and rubbish.
Then I put the chairs and bedding near it.
I led the gas to the fire with a rubber tube.
I waved goodbye to the room and left it for the last time.
"You set the house on fire!" shouted Kemp.
"Set the house on fire."
"It was the only way to cover my tracks - 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 understand the amazing advantage my invisibility gave me."
"My head was already full of plans of all the wild and wonderful things I could now do without fear."