The Invisible Man Read Free Page B

outside the "Coach and Horses." There was Fearenside telling
about it all over again for the second time; there was Mrs. Hall
saying his dog didn't have no business to bite her guests; there
was Huxter, the general dealer from over the road, interrogative;
and Sandy Wadgers from the forge, judicial; besides women and
children, all of them saying fatuities: "Wouldn't let en bite
me
, I knows"; "'Tasn't right
have
such dargs"; "Whad
'e
bite
'n for, than?" and so forth.
    Mr. Hall, staring at them from the steps and listening, found it
incredible that he had seen anything so very remarkable happen
upstairs. Besides, his vocabulary was altogether too limited to
express his impressions.
    "He don't want no help, he says," he said in answer to his wife's
inquiry. "We'd better be a-takin' of his luggage in."
    "He ought to have it cauterised at once," said Mr. Huxter;
"especially if it's at all inflamed."
    "I'd shoot en, 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 muffled 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 is stated by an anonymous bystander that his trousers
and gloves had been changed.
    "Was you hurt, sir?" said Fearenside. "I'm rare sorry the darg—"
    "Not a bit," said the stranger. "Never broke the skin. Hurry up
with those things."
    He then swore to himself, so Mr. Hall asserts.
    Directly the first crate was, in accordance with his directions,
carried into the parlour, the stranger flung himself upon it with
extraordinary eagerness, and began to unpack it, scattering the
straw with an utter disregard of Mrs. Hall's carpet. And from it he
began to produce bottles—little fat bottles containing powders,
small and slender bottles containing coloured and white fluids,
fluted blue bottles labeled Poison, bottles with round bodies and
slender necks, large green-glass bottles, large white-glass bottles,
bottles with glass stoppers and frosted labels, bottles with fine
corks, bottles with bungs, bottles with wooden caps, wine bottles,
salad-oil bottles—putting them in rows on the chiffonnier, on the
mantel, on the table under the window, round the floor, on the
bookshelf—everywhere. The chemist's shop in Bramblehurst could not
boast half so many. Quite a sight it was. Crate after crate yielded
bottles, until all six were empty and the table high with straw; the
only things that came out of these crates besides the bottles were
a number of test-tubes and a carefully packed balance.
    And directly the crates were unpacked, the stranger went to the
window and set to work, not troubling in the least about the litter
of straw, the fire which had gone out, the box of books outside,
nor for the trunks and other luggage that had gone upstairs.
    When Mrs. Hall took his dinner in to him, he was already so
absorbed in his work, pouring little drops out of the bottles into
test-tubes, that he did not hear her until she had swept away the
bulk of the straw and put the tray on the table, with some little
emphasis perhaps, seeing the state that the floor was in. Then he
half turned his head and immediately turned it away again. But she
saw he had removed his glasses; they were beside him on the table,
and it seemed to her that his eye sockets were extraordinarily
hollow. He put on his spectacles again, and then turned and faced
her. She was about to complain of the straw on the floor when he
anticipated her.
    "I wish you wouldn't come in without knocking," he said in the tone
of abnormal exasperation that seemed so characteristic of him.
    "I knocked, but seemingly—"
    "Perhaps you did. But in my investigations—my really very urgent
and necessary investigations—the slightest disturbance, the jar
of a door—I must ask you—"
    "Certainly, sir. You can turn the lock if you're like that, you
know. Any time."
    "A very good idea," said the