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The Invisible Man
Chapter 3. THE THOUSAND AND ONE BOTTLES
On the twenty-ninth of February, at the start of the thaw, this strange person fell out of nowhere into Iping village.
The next day his luggage arrived through the wet snow, and it was very unusual luggage.
There were a couple of trunks, such as a normal man might need.
But there was also a box of big, fat books.
Some were in handwriting that nobody could read.
There were also a dozen or more crates, boxes, and cases.
They contained things packed in straw.
As Hall pulled at the straw with casual curiosity, he saw glass bottles.
The stranger, wrapped in hat, coat, gloves, and wrapper, came out to meet Fearenside's cart while Hall talked before helping.
Out he came, not noticing Fearenside's dog, who was sniffing in a playful way at Hall's legs.
"Come along with those boxes," he said.
"I've been waiting long enough."
And he came down the steps towards the back of the cart as if to take hold of the smaller crate.
But as soon as Fearenside's dog saw him, the hair on its back stood up and it began to growl angrily.
When he rushed down the steps, the dog gave a short jump and sprang straight at his hand.
"Whoa!" cried Hall, jumping back, for he was no hero with dogs, and Fearenside shouted, "Lie down!" and grabbed his whip.
They saw the dog's teeth had missed the hand and heard a kick.
They saw the dog make a side jump, bite the stranger's leg, and heard the rip of his trousers.
Then the end of Fearenside's whip hit his dog, and the dog, yelping in fear, ran back under the wheels of the cart.
It all happened in half a minute, No one spoke, everyone shouted.
The stranger looked quickly at his torn glove and at his leg, started to bend down to the leg.
Then turned and ran quickly up the steps into the inn.
They heard him go straight across the passage and up the stairs without carpet to his bedroom.
"You brute, you!" said Fearenside, climbing off the cart with his whip in his hand, while the dog watched him through the wheel.
"Come here," said Fearenside, "You'd better."
Hall had stood with his mouth open.
"He was bit," said Hall.
"I'd better go and see to him," and he ran after the stranger.
He met Mrs. Hall in the passage.
"Carrier's dog," he said, "bit him."
He went straight upstairs, saw the stranger's door partly open, pushed it, and entered without fuss, being naturally kind.
The blind was down and the room was dark.
He caught a sight of a very strange thing.
It seemed like a handless arm waving towards him.
There was a face of three huge unclear spots on white.
It looked very like the face of a pale flower.
Then he was hit hard in the chest, thrown back, and the door was slammed in his face and locked.
It was so fast that it gave him no time to see clearly.
A waving of unclear shapes, a blow, and a shock.
There he stood on the dark little landing, wondering what it could be that he had seen.
A couple of minutes later, he joined the small group that had formed outside the "Coach and Horses."
Fearenside told the story again for the second time.
Mrs. Hall said his dog had no business to bite her guests.
Huxter, the general dealer from across the road, asked questions.
Sandy Wadgers from the forge gave opinions.
Women and children also said silly things.
They said, "Wouldn't let him bite me, I know."
They said, "It's not right to have such dogs." They said, "Why did he bite him, then?" and so forth.
Mr. Hall, staring at them from the steps and listening, found it hard to believe that he had seen anything so very unusual happen upstairs.
Besides, his vocabulary was too small to express what he had seen.
"He doesn't want any help, he says," he said in answer to his wife's question.
"We'd better be taking his luggage in."
"He ought to have it burned at once," said Mr. Huxter, "especially if it's at all red."
"I'd shoot him, that's what I'd do," said a lady in the group.
Suddenly the dog began growling again.
"Come along," cried an angry voice in the doorway, and there stood the covered stranger with his collar turned up, and his hat-brim bent down.
"The sooner you get those things in, the better I'll be pleased." It's said by someone watching that his trousers and gloves had been changed.
"Were you hurt, sir?" said Fearenside.
"I'm very sorry the dog, "
"Not at all," said the stranger.
"It never broke the skin. Hurry up with those things."
He then swore to himself, so Mr. Hall says.
The stranger directed them to carry the first crate into the sitting room.
As soon as it arrived, he threw himself on it eagerly.
He began to unpack it, scattering straw all over Mrs. Hall's carpet.
He began to take out bottles from it.
There were little fat bottles with powders.
Small thin bottles held colored and white liquids.
Blue bottles had labels marked "Poison." There were bottles with round bodies and thin necks.
Large green-glass and white-glass bottles appeared.
Some had glass stoppers and frosted labels.
Others had fine corks, plugs, or wooden caps.
Wine bottles and salad-oil bottles were also there.
He put them in rows on the cabinet, mantel shelf, table by the window, on the floor, and on the bookshelf.
The chemist's shop in Bramblehurst couldn't show half so many.
It was quite a sight, Six crates gave up bottles.
All six were empty, the table was high with straw.
The crates also held test-tubes and a carefully packed scale.
The stranger unpacked the crates, he went to the window and began to work.
He didn't worry about the straw, the dead fire, the books outside, or the luggage upstairs.
Mrs. Hall took his dinner in to him.
He was already so busy with his work, pouring little drops from bottles into test-tubes.
He didn't hear her until she had swept away most of the straw.
She put the tray on the table, with some little force perhaps, seeing the state of the floor.
Then he half turned his head and immediately turned it away again.
But she saw he had taken off his glasses, they were beside him on the table.
And it seemed to her that his eye sockets were unusually hollow.
He put on his glasses again, and then turned and faced her.
She was about to complain about the straw on the floor when he spoke first.
"I wish you wouldn't come in without knocking," he said in the tone of extreme annoyance that seemed so typical of him.
"I knocked, but it seems, "
"Maybe you did."
"But in my work, my really very urgent and necessary work, the smallest disturbance, the shake of a door."
"I must ask you,"
"Of course, sir. You can lock the door if you're like that, you know. Any time."
"A very good idea," said the stranger.
"This straw, sir, if I might be so bold as to say, "
"Don't. If the straw causes trouble, put it down in the bill." And he mumbled at her, words that sounded like curses.
He was so strange, standing there, so aggressive and explosive, bottle in one hand and test-tube in the other, that Mrs.
Hall was quite frightened.
Hall was quite frightened.
But she was a determined woman.
"In that case, I'd like to know, sir, what you think, "
"A shilling, put down a shilling. Surely a shilling's enough?"
"So be it," said Mrs. Hall, taking up the table-cloth and beginning to spread it over the table.
"If you're satisfied, of course, "
He turned and sat down, with his coat-collar towards her.
All the afternoon he worked with the door locked and, as Mrs. Hall says, for the most part in silence.
Once there was a crash and the sound of bottles hitting together, as if someone had hit the table.
Then a bottle was smashed hard and there was quick walking across the room.
Fearing "something was wrong," she went to the door and listened, not wanting to knock.
"I can't go on," he was shouting.
"I can't go on. Three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand! The huge number! Cheated! It might take all my life! . Patience! Patience indeed! . Fool! fool!"
Heavy shoes sounded on the bricks in the bar, and Mrs. Hall had to leave the rest of his talk unwillingly.
When she came back, the room was silent again, except for the soft sound of his chair and the occasional clink of a bottle.
It was all over, the stranger had started work again.
She brought his tea and saw broken glass in the corner under the curved mirror and a golden stain carelessly wiped.
She pointed it out to him, showing the broken glass and the golden stain.
"Put it down in the bill," snapped her visitor.
"For God's sake don't bother me."
"If there's damage done, put it down in the bill," And he went on ticking a list in the notebook in front of him.
"I'll tell you something," said Fearenside, mysteriously.
It was late in the afternoon, and they were in the little beer-shop of Iping Hanger.
"Well?" said Teddy Henfrey.
"This man you're talking about, the one my dog bit, is black."
"At least his legs are. I saw through the tear in his trousers and the tear in his glove."
"You would have thought pink would show, but there was none, just blackness, as black as my hat."
"My goodness!" said Henfrey.
"It's a strange case altogether. Why, his nose is as pink as paint!"
"That's true," said Fearenside.
"I know that."
"And I'll tell you what I'm thinking."
"That man's a piebald, Teddy."
"Black here and white there, in patches."
"And he's ashamed of it."
"He's a kind of half-breed, and the colour's come off in patches instead of mixing."
"I've heard of such things before."
"And it's the common way with horses, as anyone can see."