"I looked down and saw the youngsters had stopped and were gaping at the muddy footmarks I had left behind me, up the newly whitened steps. The passing people elbowed and jostled them, but their confounded intelligence was arrested. 'Thud, thud, thud, when, thud, shall we see, thud, His face, thud, thud.' 'There's a barefoot man gone up them steps, or I don't know nothing,' said one. 'And he ain't never come down again. And his foot was a-bleeding.'
"The thick of the crowd had already passed. 'Looky there, Ted,' quoth the younger of the detectives with the sharpness of surprise in his voice, and pointed straight at my feet. I looked down and saw at once the dim suggestion of their outline sketched in splashes of mud. For a moment I was paralysed.
" 'Why, that's rum!' said the elder. 'Dashed rum! It's just like the ghost of a foot, ain't it?' He hesitated and advanced with outstretched hand. A man pulled up short to see what he was catching, and then a girl. In another moment he would have touched me. Then I saw what to do. I made a step, the boy started back with an exclamation, and with a rapid movement I swung myself over into the portico of the next house. But the smaller boy was sharp enough to follow the movement, and before I was well down the steps and upon the pavement he had recovered from his momentary astonishment, and was shouting out that the feet had gone over the wall.
"They rushed round and saw my new footmarks flash into being[7] on the lower step and upon the pavement.
" 'What's up?' asked some one.
" 'Feet! Look! Feet running!'
"Everybody in the road, except my three pursuers, was pouring along after the Salvation Army, and this flow not only impeded me but them. There was an eddy of surprise and interrogation. At the cost of bowling over one young fellow I got through, and in another moment I was running headlong round the circuit of Russell Square, with six or seven astonished people following my footmarks. There was no time for explanation, or else the whole host would have been after me.
"Twice I doubled round corners, thrice I crossed the road and came back on my tracks, and then as my feet grew hot and dry the damp impressions began to fade. At last I had a breathing-space, and rubbed my feet clean with my hands, and so got away altogether. The last I saw of the chase was a little group of a dozen people, perhaps, studying with infinite perplexity a slowly drying footprint that had resulted from a puddle in Tavistock Square, a footprint as isolated and incomprehensible to them as Crusoe's solitary discovery.[8]
"This running warmed me to a certain extent, and I went on with a better courage through the maze of less frequented roads that runs thereabout. My back had now become very stiff and sore, my tonsils were painful from the cabman's fingers, and the skin of my neck had been scratched by his nails; my feet hurt exceedingly, and I was lame from a little cut on one foot. I saw in time a blind man approaching me, and fled limping, for I feared his subtle intuitions. Once or twice accidental collisions occurred, and I left people amazed with unaccountable curses ringing in their ears. Then came something silent and quiet upon my face, and across the square fell a thin veil of slowly falling flakes of snow. I had caught a cold, and do as I would I could not avoid an occasional sneeze. And every dog that came in sight, with its pointing nose and curious sniffing, was a terror to me.
"Then came men and boys running, first one then others, and shouting as they ran. It was a fire. They ran in the direction of my lodging, and looking back down a street I saw a mass of black smoke streaming up above the roofs and telephone wires. It was, I felt assured, my lodging that was burning; my clothes, apparatus, all my resources, indeed, except my cheque-book and the three volumes of memoranda that awaited me in Great Portland Street, were there. Burning! I had burnt my boats—if ever a man did! The place was blazing."
The Invisible Man paused and thought. Kemp glanced nervously out of the window. "Yes!" he said, "go on."
Chapter XXII
In The Emporium
"So last January, with the beginning of a snowstorm in the air about me—and if it settled on me it would betray me!—weary, cold, painful, inexpressibly wretched, and still but half convinced of my invisible quality, I began this new life to which I am committed.[1] I had no refuge, no appliances, no human being in the whole world in whom I could confide. To have told my secret would have given me away—made a mere show and rarity of me. Nevertheless I was half-minded to accost some passer-by and throw myself upon his mercy.[2] But I knew too clearly the terror and brutal cruelty my advances would evoke. I made no plans in the street. My sole object was to get shelter from the snow, to get myself covered and warm, then I might hope to plan. But even to me, an Invisible Man, the rows of London houses stood latched, barred, and bolted impregnably.
"Only one thing could I see clearly before me—the cold, exposure and misery of the snowstorm and night.
"And then I had a brilliant idea. I turned down one of the roads leading from Gower Street to Tottenham Court Road, and found myself outside Omniums,[3] the big establishment where everything is to be bought—you know the place: meat, grocery, linen, furniture, clothing, oil paintings even—a huge, meandering collection of shops rather than a shop. I had thought I should find the doors open, but they were closed, and as I stood in the wide entrance a carriage stopped outside, and a man in uniform—you know the kind of personage with 'Omnium' on his cap—flung open the door. I contrived to enter, and walking down the shop—it was a department where they were selling ribbons and gloves and stockings and that sort of thing—came to a more spacious region, devoted to picnic baskets and wicker furniture.
"I did not feel safe there, however, people were going to and fro, and I prowled restlessly about until I came upon a huge section in an upper floor containing multitudes of bedsteads, and over these I clambered, and found a resting-place at last among a huge pile of folded flock mattresses. The place was already lit up and agreeably warm, and I decided to remain in hiding where I was, keeping a cautious eye on the two or three sets of shopmen and customers who were meandering through the place, until closing time came. Then I should be able, I thought, to rob the place for food and clothing and disguise, prowl through it, and examine its resources, perhaps sleep on some of the bedding. That seemed an acceptable plan. My idea was to procure clothing to make myself a muffled but acceptable figure, to get money, and then to recover my books and parcels, where they awaited me, take a lodging somewhere, and elaborate plans for the complete realisation of the advantages my invisibility gave me (as I still imagined) over my fellow-men.
"Closing time arrived quickly enough. It could not have been more than an hour after I took up my position on the mattresses before I noticed the blinds of the windows being drawn, and customers being marched doorward. And then a number of brisk young men began with remarkable alacrity to tidy up the goods that remained disturbed. I left my lair as the crowds diminished and prowled cautiously out into the less desolate parts of the shop. I was really surprised to observe how rapidly the young men and women whipped away the goods displayed for sale during the day. All the boxes of goods, the hanging fabrics, the festoons of lace, the boxes of sweets in the grocery section, the displays of this and that, were being taken down, folded up, slapped into tidy receptacles, and everything that could not be taken down and put away had sheets of some coarse stuff like sacking flung over it. Finally all the chairs were turned up on the counters, leaving the floors clear. Directly each of these young people had done, he or she made promptly for the door with such an expression of animation as I have rarely observed in a shop-assistant before. Then came a lot of youngsters, scattering sawdust and carrying pails and brooms. I had to dodge to get out of the way, and as it was my ankle got stung with the sawdust. For some time, wandering through the swathed and darkened departments, I could hear the brooms at work. And at last, a good hour or more after the shop had been closed, came a noise of locking doors. Silence came upon the place, and I found myself wandering through the vast and intricate shops, galleries, and showrooms of the place alone. It was very still—in one p
lace I remember passing near one of the Tottenham Court Road entrances and listening to the tapping boot-heels of the passers-by.
"My first visit was to the place where I had seen stockings and gloves for sale. It was dark, and I had the devil of a hunt after matches, which I found at last in a drawer of the little cash desk. Then I had to get a candle. I had to tear down wrappers and ransack a number of boxes and drawers, but at last I managed to turn out what I sought: the box label called them lambswool pants and lambswool vests. Then socks, a thick comforter, and then I went to the clothing place and got trousers, a lounge jacket, an overcoat, and a slouch hat—a clerical sort of hat with the brim turned down. I began to feel a human being again, and my next thought was food.
"Upstairs was a refreshment department, and there I got cold meat. There was coffee still in the urn, and I lit the gas and warmed it up again, and altogether I did not do badly.[4] Afterwards, prowling through the place in search of blankets—I had to put up at last with a heap of down quilts—I came upon a grocery section with a lot of chocolate and crystallised fruits, more than was good for me, indeed, and some white burgundy. And near that was a toy department, and I had a brilliant idea. I found some artificial noses—dummy noses, you know, and I thought of dark spectacles. But Omniums had no optical department. My nose had been a difficulty indeed. I had thought of paint. But the discovery set my mind running on wigs and masks, and the like. Finally I went to sleep in a heap of down quilts, very warm and comfortable.
"My last thoughts before sleeping were the most agreeable I had had since the change. I was in a state of physical serenity, and that was reflected in my mind. I thought that I should be able to slip out unobserved in the morning with my clothes upon me, muffling my face with a white wrapper I had taken, purchase spectacles with the money I had stolen, and so complete my disguise. I lapsed into disorderly dreams of all the fantastic things that had happened during the last few days. I saw the ugly little Jew of a landlord[5] vociferating in his rooms, I saw his two sons marvelling, and the wrinkled old woman's gnarled face as she asked for her cat. I experienced again the strange sensation of seeing the cloth disappear, and so I came round to the windy hillside and the sniffing old clergyman mumbling. 'Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,'[6] at my father's open grave.
" 'You also,' said a voice, and suddenly I was being forced towards the grave. I struggled, shouted, appealed to the mourners, but they continued stonily following the service; the old clergyman, too, never faltered, droning and sniffing through the ritual. I realised I was invisible and inaudible, that overwhelming forces had their grip on me. I struggled in vain, I was forced over the brink, the coffin rang hollow as I fell upon it, and the gravel came flying after me, spadefuls. Nobody heeded me, nobody was aware of me. I made convulsive struggles and awoke.
"The pale London dawn had come, the place was full of a chilly gray light that filtered round the edges of the window-blinds. I sat up, and for a time I could not think where this ample apartment, with its counters, its piles of rolled stuff, its heap of quilts, and cushions, its iron pillars, might be. Then, as recollection came back to me, I heard voices in conversation.
"Then far down the place, in the brighter light of some department which had already raised its blinds, I saw two men approaching. I scrambled to my feet, looking about me for some way of escape, and even as I did so the sound of my movement made them aware of me. I suppose they saw merely a figure moving quietly and quickly away. 'Who's that?' cried one, and 'Stop there!' shouted the other. I dashed round a corner and came full tilt—a faceless figure, mind you!—on a lanky lad of fifteen. He yelled and I bowled him over, rushed past him, turned another corner, and by a happy inspiration threw myself flat behind a counter. In another moment feet went running past and I heard voices shouting, 'All hands[7] to the doors!' asking what was 'up,' and giving one another advice how to catch me.
"Lying on the ground, I felt scared out of my wits.[8] But, odd as it may seem, it did not occur to me at the moment to take off my clothes, as I should have done, I had made up my mind, I suppose, to get away in them, and that ruled me. And then down the vista of the counters came a bawling of, 'Here he is!'
"I sprang to my feet, whipped a chair off the counter, and sent it whirling at the fool who had shouted, turned, came into another round a corner, sent him spinning, and rushed up the stairs. He kept his footing, gave a view hallo, and came up the staircase hot after me. Up the staircase were piled a multitude of those bright-coloured pot things—what are they?"
"Art pots,"[9] suggested Kemp.
"That's it! Art pots. Well, I turned at the top step and swung round, plucked one out of a pile, and smashed it on his silly head as he came at me. The whole pile of pots went headlong, and I heard shouting and footsteps running from all parts. I made a mad rush for the refreshment place, and there was a man in white like a man cook, who took up the chase. I made one last desperate turn and found myself among lamps and ironmongery. I went behind the counter of this and waited for my cook, and as he bolted in at the head of the chase, I doubled him up with a lamp. Down he went, and I, crouching behind the counter, began whipping off my clothes as fast as I could. Coat, jacket, trousers, shoes, were all right, but a lambswool vest fits a man like a skin. I heard more men coming, my cook was lying quiet on the other side of the counter, stunned or scared speechless, and I had to make another dash for it, like a rabbit hunted out of a wood pile.
" This way, Policeman,' I heard some one shouting. I found myself in my bedstead storeroom again, and at the end a wilderness of wardrobes. I rushed among them, went flat, got rid of my vest after infinite wriggling, and stood a free man again, panting and scared, as the policeman and three of the shopmen came round the corner. They made a rush for the vest and pants and collared the trousers. 'He's dropping his plunder,' said one of the young men. 'He must be somewhere here.'
"But they did not find me all the same.
"I stood watching them hunt for me for a time, and cursing my ill-luck in losing the clothes. Then I went into the refreshment room, drank a little milk I found there, and sat down by the fire to consider my position.
"In a little while two assistants came in and began to talk over the business very excitedly, and like the fools they were. I heard a magnified account of my depredations, and other speculations as to my whereabouts. Then I fell to scheming[10] again. The insurmountable difficulty of the place, especially now it was alarmed, was to get any plunder out of it. I went down into the warehouse to see if there was any chance of packing and addressing a parcel, but I could not understand the system of checking. About eleven o'clock, the snow having thawed as it fell, and the day being finer and a little warmer than the previous one, I decided that the Emporium was hopeless, and went out again exasperated at my want of success, and with only the vaguest plans of action in my mind.
Chapter XXIII
In Drury Lane
"But you begin to realise now," said the Invisible Man, "the full disadvantage of my condition. I had no shelter—no covering—to get clothing was to forgo all my advantage, to make of myself a strange and terrible thing. I was fasting; for to eat, to fill myself with unassimilated matter, would be to become grotesquely visible again."
"I never thought of that," said Kemp.
"Nor had I. And the snow had warned me of other dangers. I could not go abroad in snow—it would settle on me and expose me. Rain, too, would make me a watery outline, a glistening surface of a man—a bubble. And fog—I should be like a fainter bubble in a fog, a surface, a greasy glimmer of humanity. Moreover, as I went abroad—in the London air—I gathered dirt about my ankles, floating smuts and dust upon my skin. I did not know, how long it would be before I should become visible from that cause also. But I saw clearly it could not be very long."
"Not in London at any rate."
"I went into the slums towards Great Portland Street and found myself at the end of the street in which I had lodged. I did not go that way because
of the crowd halfway down it opposite to the still smoking ruins of the house I had fired. My most immediate problem was to get clothing. Then I saw in one of those little miscellaneous shops—news, sweets, toys, stationery, belated Christmas tomfoolery, and so forth—an array of masks and noses, and recalled the idea Omnium's toys had suggested. I turned about, no longer aimless, and went circuitously, in order to avoid the busy ways, towards the back streets north of the Strand; for I remembered, though not very distinctly where, that some theatrical costumiers had shops in that district.
"The day was cold, with a nipping wind down the northward running streets. I walked fast to avoid being overtaken. Every crossing was a danger, every passenger a thing to watch alertly. One man, as I was about to pass him at the top of Bedford Street, turned upon me abruptly and came into me, sending me into the road, and almost under the wheel of a passing hansom. The verdict of the cab-rank[1] was that he had had some sort of stroke. I was so unnerved by this encounter that I went into Covent Garden Market[2] and sat down for some time in a quiet corner by a stall of violets, panting and trembling. I found I had caught a fresh cold, and had to turn out after a time lest my sneezes should attract attention.
"At last I reached the object of my quest, a dirty, flyblown little shop in a by-way near Drury Lane, with a window full of tinsel robes, sham jewels, wigs, slippers, dominoes, and theatrical photographs. The shop was old-fashioned and low and dark, and the house rose above it for four storeys, dark and dismal. I peered through the window, and, seeing no one within, entered. The opening of the door set a clanking bell ringing. I left it open, and walked round a bare costume stand, into a corner behind a cheval-glass. For a minute or so no one came. Then I heard heavy feet striding across a room, and a man appeared down the shop.
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