THE WICKSTEED MURDER

The Invisible Man seems to have rushed out of Kemp's house in a
state of blind fury. A little child playing near Kemp's gateway was
violently caught up and thrown aside, so that its ankle was broken,
and thereafter for some hours the Invisible Man passed out of human
perceptions. No one knows where he went nor what he did. But one
can imagine him hurrying through the hot June forenoon, up the
hill and on to the open downland behind Port Burdock, raging and
despairing at his intolerable fate, and sheltering at last, heated
and weary, amid the thickets of Hintondean, to piece together again
his shattered schemes against his species. That seems the most
probable refuge for him, for there it was he re-asserted himself in
a grimly tragical manner about two in the afternoon.

One wonders what his state of mind may have been during that time,
and what plans he devised. No doubt he was almost ecstatically
exasperated by Kemp's treachery, and though we may be able to
understand the motives that led to that deceit, we may still
imagine and even sympathise a little with the fury the attempted
surprise must have occasioned. Perhaps something of the stunned
astonishment of his Oxford Street experiences may have returned to
him, for he had evidently counted on Kemp's co-operation in his
brutal dream of a terrorised world. At any rate he vanished from
human ken about midday, and no living witness can tell what he did
until about half-past two. It was a fortunate thing, perhaps, for
humanity, but for him it was a fatal inaction.

During that time a growing multitude of men scattered over the
countryside were busy. In the morning he had still been simply a
legend, a terror; in the afternoon, by virtue chiefly of Kemp's
drily worded proclamation, he was presented as a tangible
antagonist, to be wounded, captured, or overcome, and the
countryside began organising itself with inconceivable rapidity.
By two o'clock even he might still have removed himself out of
the district by getting aboard a train, but after two that became
impossible. Every passenger train along the lines on a great
parallelogram between Southampton, Manchester, Brighton and Horsham,
travelled with locked doors, and the goods traffic was almost
entirely suspended. And in a great circle of twenty miles round Port
Burdock, men armed with guns and bludgeons were presently setting
out in groups of three and four, with dogs, to beat the roads and
fields.

Mounted policemen rode along the country lanes, stopping at every
cottage and warning the people to lock up their houses, and keep
indoors unless they were armed, and all the elementary schools had
broken up by three o'clock, and the children, scared and keeping
together in groups, were hurrying home. Kemp's proclamation--signed
indeed by Adye--was posted over almost the whole district by four or
five o'clock in the afternoon. It gave briefly but clearly all the
conditions of the struggle, the necessity of keeping the Invisible
Man from food and sleep, the necessity for incessant watchfulness
and for a prompt attention to any evidence of his movements. And
so swift and decided was the action of the authorities, so prompt
and universal was the belief in this strange being, that before
nightfall an area of several hundred square miles was in a stringent
state of siege. And before nightfall, too, a thrill of horror
went through the whole watching nervous countryside. Going from
whispering mouth to mouth, swift and certain over the length and
breadth of the country, passed the story of the murder of Mr.
Wicksteed.

If our supposition that the Invisible Man's refuge was the
Hintondean thickets, then we must suppose that in the early
afternoon he sallied out again bent upon some project that involved
the use of a weapon. We cannot know what the project was, but the
evidence that he had the iron rod in hand before he met Wicksteed
is to me at least overwhelming.

Of course we can know nothing of the details of that encounter.
It occurred on the edge of a gravel pit, not two hundred yards
from Lord Burdock's lodge gate. Everything points to a desperate
struggle--the trampled ground, the numerous wounds Mr. Wicksteed
received, his splintered walking-stick; but why the attack was made,
save in a murderous frenzy, it is impossible to imagine. Indeed the
theory of madness is almost unavoidable. Mr. Wicksteed was a man of
forty-five or forty-six, steward to Lord Burdock, of inoffensive
habits and appearance, the very last person in the world to provoke
such a terrible antagonist. Against him it would seem the Invisible
Man used an iron rod dragged from a broken piece of fence. He
stopped this quiet man, going quietly home to his midday meal,
attacked him, beat down his feeble defences, broke his arm, felled
him, and smashed his head to a jelly.

Of course, he must have dragged this rod out of the fencing before
he met his victim--he must have been carrying it ready in his hand.
Only two details beyond what has already been stated seem to bear
on the matter. One is the circumstance that the gravel pit was not
in Mr. Wicksteed's direct path home, but nearly a couple of hundred
yards out of his way. The other is the assertion of a little girl
to the effect that, going to her afternoon school, she saw the
murdered man "trotting" in a peculiar manner across a field towards
the gravel pit. Her pantomime of his action suggests a man pursuing
something on the ground before him and striking at it ever and
again with his walking-stick. She was the last person to see him
alive. He passed out of her sight to his death, the struggle being
hidden from her only by a clump of beech trees and a slight
depression in the ground.

Now this, to the present writer's mind at least, lifts the murder
out of the realm of the absolutely wanton. We may imagine that
Griffin had taken the rod as a weapon indeed, but without any
deliberate intention of using it in murder. Wicksteed may then have
come by and noticed this rod inexplicably moving through the air.
Without any thought of the Invisible Man--for Port Burdock is ten
miles away--he may have pursued it. It is quite conceivable that
he may not even have heard of the Invisible Man. One can then
imagine the Invisible Man making off--quietly in order to avoid
discovering his presence in the neighbourhood, and Wicksteed,
excited and curious, pursuing this unaccountably locomotive
object--finally striking at it.

No doubt the Invisible Man could easily have distanced his
middle-aged pursuer under ordinary circumstances, but the position
in which Wicksteed's body was found suggests that he had the
ill luck to drive his quarry into a corner between a drift of
stinging nettles and the gravel pit. To those who appreciate the
extraordinary irascibility of the Invisible Man, the rest of the
encounter will be easy to imagine.

But this is pure hypothesis. The only undeniable facts--for stories
of children are often unreliable--are the discovery of Wicksteed's
body, done to death, and of the blood-stained iron rod flung among
the nettles. The abandonment of the rod by Griffin, suggests that
in the emotional excitement of the affair, the purpose for which
he took it--if he had a purpose--was abandoned. He was certainly
an intensely egotistical and unfeeling man, but the sight of his
victim, his first victim, bloody and pitiful at his feet, may have
released some long pent fountain of remorse which for a time may
have flooded whatever scheme of action he had contrived.

After the murder of Mr. Wicksteed, he would seem to have struck
across the country towards the downland. There is a story of a
voice heard about sunset by a couple of men in a field near Fern
Bottom. It was wailing and laughing, sobbing and groaning, and ever
and again it shouted. It must have been queer hearing. It drove up
across the middle of a clover field and died away towards the
hills.

That afternoon the Invisible Man must have learnt something of
the rapid use Kemp had made of his confidences. He must have
found houses locked and secured; he may have loitered about
railway stations and prowled about inns, and no doubt he read the
proclamations and realised something of the nature of the campaign
against him. And as the evening advanced, the fields became dotted
here and there with groups of three or four men, and noisy with the
yelping of dogs. These men-hunters had particular instructions in
the case of an encounter as to the way they should support one
another. But he avoided them all. We may understand something of
his exasperation, and it could have been none the less because
he himself had supplied the information that was being used so
remorselessly against him. For that day at least he lost heart; for
nearly twenty-four hours, save when he turned on Wicksteed, he was
a hunted man. In the night, he must have eaten and slept; for in
the morning he was himself again, active, powerful, angry, and
malignant, prepared for his last great struggle against the world.

After Griffin runs out of Kemp's house, the narrator loses track of him for a day: "No one knows where he went nor what he did" . So a lot of this chapter is speculation . The narrator also has a brief moment of sympathy for Griffin. After all, Griffin was betrayed by a friend. But no one else is going to be nice to Griffin: everyone else seems to be out hunting him with guns and dogs. To make things worse, Kemp spreads the news that people need to keep the Invisible Man from eating or sleeping. Unfortunately, that doesn't keep Griffin from killing an old man named Wicksteed. Since no one was there but Griffin , we'll never know what happened, only that Wicksteed was beaten to death with an iron rod. This is getting intense. Although there were no witnesses, some men around there heard a voice "wailing and laughing, sobbing and groaning" . The narrator thinks that maybe Griffin was upset after killing Wicksteed . Griffin has trouble finding shelter. All the houses are locked and everyone is on guard against him. What's worse is that everyone seems to know the secrets he told to Kemp. Some friend he was. Sometime in that day, Griffin found the time to rest and eat, since the next day he was "himself again, active, powerful, angry, and malignant, prepared for his last great struggle against the world" . One Invisible Man versus the world - we wonder who will win.


THE SIEGE OF KEMP'S HOUSE

Kemp read a strange missive, written in pencil on a greasy sheet of
paper.

"You have been amazingly energetic and clever," this letter ran,
"though what you stand to gain by it I cannot imagine. You are
against me. For a whole day you have chased me; you have tried to
rob me of a night's rest. But I have had food in spite of you, I
have slept in spite of you, and the game is only beginning. The
game is only beginning. There is nothing for it, but to start the
Terror. This announces the first day of the Terror. Port Burdock
is no longer under the Queen, tell your Colonel of Police, and
the rest of them; it is under me--the Terror! This is day one of
year one of the new epoch--the Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am
Invisible Man the First. To begin with the rule will be easy. The
first day there will be one execution for the sake of example--a
man named Kemp. Death starts for him to-day. He may lock himself
away, hide himself away, get guards about him, put on armour
if he likes--Death, the unseen Death, is coming. Let him take
precautions; it will impress my people. Death starts from the
pillar box by midday. The letter will fall in as the postman comes
along, then off! The game begins. Death starts. Help him not, my
people, lest Death fall upon you also. To-day Kemp is to die."

Kemp read this letter twice, "It's no hoax," he said. "That's
his voice! And he means it."

He turned the folded sheet over and saw on the addressed side of it
the postmark Hintondean, and the prosaic detail "2d. to pay."

He got up slowly, leaving his lunch unfinished--the letter had
come by the one o'clock post--and went into his study. He rang
for his housekeeper, and told her to go round the house at once,
examine all the fastenings of the windows, and close all the
shutters. He closed the shutters of his study himself. From a
locked drawer in his bedroom he took a little revolver, examined it
carefully, and put it into the pocket of his lounge jacket. He
wrote a number of brief notes, one to Colonel Adye, gave them to
his servant to take, with explicit instructions as to her way of
leaving the house. "There is no danger," he said, and added a
mental reservation, "to you." He remained meditative for a space
after doing this, and then returned to his cooling lunch.

He ate with gaps of thought. Finally he struck the table sharply.
"We will have him!" he said; "and I am the bait. He will come too
far."

He went up to the belvedere, carefully shutting every door after
him. "It's a game," he said, "an odd game--but the chances are
all for me, Mr. Griffin, in spite of your invisibility. Griffin
_contra mundum_ ... with a vengeance."

He stood at the window staring at the hot hillside. "He must get
food every day--and I don't envy him. Did he really sleep last
night? Out in the open somewhere--secure from collisions. I wish
we could get some good cold wet weather instead of the heat.

"He may be watching me now."

He went close to the window. Something rapped smartly against the
brickwork over the frame, and made him start violently back.

"I'm getting nervous," said Kemp. But it was five minutes before he
went to the window again. "It must have been a sparrow," he said.

Presently he heard the front-door bell ringing, and hurried
downstairs. He unbolted and unlocked the door, examined the chain,
put it up, and opened cautiously without showing himself. A
familiar voice hailed him. It was Adye.

"Your servant's been assaulted, Kemp," he said round the door.

"What!" exclaimed Kemp.

"Had that note of yours taken away from her. He's close about here.
Let me in."

Kemp released the chain, and Adye entered through as narrow an
opening as possible. He stood in the hall, looking with infinite
relief at Kemp refastening the door. "Note was snatched out of her
hand. Scared her horribly. She's down at the station. Hysterics.
He's close here. What was it about?"

Kemp swore.

"What a fool I was," said Kemp. "I might have known. It's not an
hour's walk from Hintondean. Already?"

"What's up?" said Adye.

"Look here!" said Kemp, and led the way into his study. He handed
Adye the Invisible Man's letter. Adye read it and whistled softly.
"And you--?" said Adye.

"Proposed a trap--like a fool," said Kemp, "and sent my proposal
out by a maid servant. To him."

Adye followed Kemp's profanity.

"He'll clear out," said Adye.

"Not he," said Kemp.

A resounding smash of glass came from upstairs. Adye had a silvery
glimpse of a little revolver half out of Kemp's pocket. "It's a
window, upstairs!" said Kemp, and led the way up. There came a
second smash while they were still on the staircase. When they
reached the study they found two of the three windows smashed,
half the room littered with splintered glass, and one big flint
lying on the writing table. The two men stopped in the doorway,
contemplating the wreckage. Kemp swore again, and as he did so the
third window went with a snap like a pistol, hung starred for a
moment, and collapsed in jagged, shivering triangles into the room.

"What's this for?" said Adye.

"It's a beginning," said Kemp.

"There's no way of climbing up here?"

"Not for a cat," said Kemp.

"No shutters?"

"Not here. All the downstairs rooms--Hullo!"

Smash, and then whack of boards hit hard came from downstairs.
"Confound him!" said Kemp. "That must be--yes--it's one of the
bedrooms. He's going to do all the house. But he's a fool. The
shutters are up, and the glass will fall outside. He'll cut his
feet."

Another window proclaimed its destruction. The two men stood on the
landing perplexed. "I have it!" said Adye. "Let me have a stick or
something, and I'll go down to the station and get the bloodhounds
put on. That ought to settle him! They're hard by--not ten
minutes--"

Another window went the way of its fellows.

"You haven't a revolver?" asked Adye.

Kemp's hand went to his pocket. Then he hesitated. "I haven't
one--at least to spare."

"I'll bring it back," said Adye, "you'll be safe here."

Kemp, ashamed of his momentary lapse from truthfulness, handed him
the weapon.

"Now for the door," said Adye.

As they stood hesitating in the hall, they heard one of the
first-floor bedroom windows crack and clash. Kemp went to the door
and began to slip the bolts as silently as possible. His face was a
little paler than usual. "You must step straight out," said Kemp. In
another moment Adye was on the doorstep and the bolts were dropping
back into the staples. He hesitated for a moment, feeling more
comfortable with his back against the door. Then he marched, upright
and square, down the steps. He crossed the lawn and approached the
gate. A little breeze seemed to ripple over the grass. Something
moved near him. "Stop a bit," said a Voice, and Adye stopped dead
and his hand tightened on the revolver.

"Well?" said Adye, white and grim, and every nerve tense.

"Oblige me by going back to the house," said the Voice, as tense
and grim as Adye's.

"Sorry," said Adye a little hoarsely, and moistened his lips with
his tongue. The Voice was on his left front, he thought. Suppose he
were to take his luck with a shot?

"What are you going for?" said the Voice, and there was a quick
movement of the two, and a flash of sunlight from the open lip of
Adye's pocket.

Adye desisted and thought. "Where I go," he said slowly, "is my own
business." The words were still on his lips, when an arm came round
his neck, his back felt a knee, and he was sprawling backward. He
drew clumsily and fired absurdly, and in another moment he was
struck in the mouth and the revolver wrested from his grip. He made
a vain clutch at a slippery limb, tried to struggle up and fell
back. "Damn!" said Adye. The Voice laughed. "I'd kill you now if it
wasn't the waste of a bullet," it said. He saw the revolver in
mid-air, six feet off, covering him.

"Well?" said Adye, sitting up.

"Get up," said the Voice.

Adye stood up.

"Attention," said the Voice, and then fiercely, "Don't try any
games. Remember I can see your face if you can't see mine. You've
got to go back to the house."

"He won't let me in," said Adye.

"That's a pity," said the Invisible Man. "I've got no quarrel with
you."

Adye moistened his lips again. He glanced away from the barrel of
the revolver and saw the sea far off very blue and dark under the
midday sun, the smooth green down, the white cliff of the Head, and
the multitudinous town, and suddenly he knew that life was very
sweet. His eyes came back to this little metal thing hanging
between heaven and earth, six yards away. "What am I to do?" he
said sullenly.

"What am _I_ to do?" asked the Invisible Man. "You will get help. The
only thing is for you to go back."

"I will try. If he lets me in will you promise not to rush the
door?"

"I've got no quarrel with you," said the Voice.

Kemp had hurried upstairs after letting Adye out, and now crouching
among the broken glass and peering cautiously over the edge of the
study window sill, he saw Adye stand parleying with the Unseen.
"Why doesn't he fire?" whispered Kemp to himself. Then the revolver
moved a little and the glint of the sunlight flashed in Kemp's
eyes. He shaded his eyes and tried to see the source of the
blinding beam.

"Surely!" he said, "Adye has given up the revolver."

"Promise not to rush the door," Adye was saying. "Don't push a
winning game too far. Give a man a chance."

"You go back to the house. I tell you flatly I will not promise
anything."

Adye's decision seemed suddenly made. He turned towards the house,
walking slowly with his hands behind him. Kemp watched him--puzzled.
The revolver vanished, flashed again into sight, vanished again,
and became evident on a closer scrutiny as a little dark object
following Adye. Then things happened very quickly. Adye leapt
backwards, swung around, clutched at this little object, missed it,
threw up his hands and fell forward on his face, leaving a little
puff of blue in the air. Kemp did not hear the sound of the shot.
Adye writhed, raised himself on one arm, fell forward, and lay
still.

For a space Kemp remained staring at the quiet carelessness of
Adye's attitude. The afternoon was very hot and still, nothing
seemed stirring in all the world save a couple of yellow butterflies
chasing each other through the shrubbery between the house and the
road gate. Adye lay on the lawn near the gate. The blinds of all
the villas down the hill-road were drawn, but in one little green
summer-house was a white figure, apparently an old man asleep. Kemp
scrutinised the surroundings of the house for a glimpse of the
revolver, but it had vanished. His eyes came back to Adye. The game
was opening well.

Then came a ringing and knocking at the front door, that grew at
last tumultuous, but pursuant to Kemp's instructions the servants
had locked themselves into their rooms. This was followed by a
silence. Kemp sat listening and then began peering cautiously out
of the three windows, one after another. He went to the staircase
head and stood listening uneasily. He armed himself with his
bedroom poker, and went to examine the interior fastenings of the
ground-floor windows again. Everything was safe and quiet. He
returned to the belvedere. Adye lay motionless over the edge of the
gravel just as he had fallen. Coming along the road by the villas
were the housemaid and two policemen.

Everything was deadly still. The three people seemed very slow in
approaching. He wondered what his antagonist was doing.

He started. There was a smash from below. He hesitated and went
downstairs again. Suddenly the house resounded with heavy blows and
the splintering of wood. He heard a smash and the destructive clang
of the iron fastenings of the shutters. He turned the key and
opened the kitchen door. As he did so, the shutters, split and
splintering, came flying inward. He stood aghast. The window frame,
save for one crossbar, was still intact, but only little teeth of
glass remained in the frame. The shutters had been driven in with
an axe, and now the axe was descending in sweeping blows upon the
window frame and the iron bars defending it. Then suddenly it leapt
aside and vanished. He saw the revolver lying on the path outside,
and then the little weapon sprang into the air. He dodged back. The
revolver cracked just too late, and a splinter from the edge of the
closing door flashed over his head. He slammed and locked the door,
and as he stood outside he heard Griffin shouting and laughing.
Then the blows of the axe with its splitting and smashing
consequences, were resumed.

Kemp stood in the passage trying to think. In a moment the
Invisible Man would be in the kitchen. This door would not keep him
a moment, and then--

A ringing came at the front door again. It would be the policemen.
He ran into the hall, put up the chain, and drew the bolts. He made
the girl speak before he dropped the chain, and the three people
blundered into the house in a heap, and Kemp slammed the door
again.

"The Invisible Man!" said Kemp. "He has a revolver, with two
shots--left. He's killed Adye. Shot him anyhow. Didn't you see him on
the lawn? He's lying there."

"Who?" said one of the policemen.

"Adye," said Kemp.

"We came in the back way," said the girl.

"What's that smashing?" asked one of the policemen.

"He's in the kitchen--or will be. He has found an axe--"

Suddenly the house was full of the Invisible Man's resounding
blows on the kitchen door. The girl stared towards the kitchen,
shuddered, and retreated into the dining-room. Kemp tried to
explain in broken sentences. They heard the kitchen door give.

"This way," said Kemp, starting into activity, and bundled the
policemen into the dining-room doorway.

"Poker," said Kemp, and rushed to the fender. He handed the poker
he had carried to the policeman and the dining-room one to the
other. He suddenly flung himself backward.

"Whup!" said one policeman, ducked, and caught the axe on his poker.
The pistol snapped its penultimate shot and ripped a valuable Sidney
Cooper. The second policeman brought his poker down on the little
weapon, as one might knock down a wasp, and sent it rattling to the
floor.

At the first clash the girl screamed, stood screaming for a moment
by the fireplace, and then ran to open the shutters--possibly
with an idea of escaping by the shattered window.

The axe receded into the passage, and fell to a position about two
feet from the ground. They could hear the Invisible Man breathing.
"Stand away, you two," he said. "I want that man Kemp."

"We want you," said the first policeman, making a quick step
forward and wiping with his poker at the Voice. The Invisible Man
must have started back, and he blundered into the umbrella stand.

Then, as the policeman staggered with the swing of the blow he had
aimed, the Invisible Man countered with the axe, the helmet crumpled
like paper, and the blow sent the man spinning to the floor at the
head of the kitchen stairs. But the second policeman, aiming behind
the axe with his poker, hit something soft that snapped. There was a
sharp exclamation of pain and then the axe fell to the ground. The
policeman wiped again at vacancy and hit nothing; he put his foot on
the axe, and struck again. Then he stood, poker clubbed, listening
intent for the slightest movement.

He heard the dining-room window open, and a quick rush of feet
within. His companion rolled over and sat up, with the blood
running down between his eye and ear. "Where is he?" asked the man
on the floor.

"Don't know. I've hit him. He's standing somewhere in the hall.
Unless he's slipped past you. Doctor Kemp--sir."

Pause.

"Doctor Kemp," cried the policeman again.

The second policeman began struggling to his feet. He stood up.
Suddenly the faint pad of bare feet on the kitchen stairs could be
heard. "Yap!" cried the first policeman, and incontinently flung
his poker. It smashed a little gas bracket.

He made as if he would pursue the Invisible Man downstairs. Then he
thought better of it and stepped into the dining-room.

"Doctor Kemp--" he began, and stopped short.

"Doctor Kemp's a hero," he said, as his companion looked over his
shoulder.

The dining-room window was wide open, and neither housemaid nor
Kemp was to be seen.

The second policeman's opinion of Kemp was terse and vivid.

In the worst letter ever, Griffin tells Kemp that he is taking charge: "Port Burdock is no longer under the Queen, tell your Colonel of Police, and the rest of them; it is under me--the Terror! This is day one of year one of the new epoch--the Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am Invisible Man the First" . The letter also says that Griffin will kill Kemp that day. No big deal. What's even better is that Griffin sent that letter without a stamp, so Kemp had to pay for it upon delivery. As we said, worst letter ever. Kemp has his housekeeper lock up all the windows and gets his revolver ready. He writes a note for Adye, saying that Kemp will act as bait to catch Griffin. Adye shows up later, saying that Griffin grabbed the note from Kemp's servant. So now Griffin knows that Kemp wants to set a trap. Bummer. Then Griffin does what he does best: he breaks some windows. But there's no way for him to get into Kemp's house because they've anticipated his arrival. This is the siege of Kemp's house. Adye borrows Kemp's gun and tries to go for help, but Griffin trips him up and grabs the gun. At first, Adye refuses to help Griffin, but he changes his mind when he realizes "that life was very sweet" . The narrator switches point-of-view here, and goes from Adye to Kemp, who is watching all this from an upstairs window. Suddenly, he sees Adye attack Griffin and get shot. It sure looks like Adye is dead, but we're not sure. Kemp's housemaid is coming up the hill with two policemen. At the same time, Griffin has found an axe and is using it to break through the shutters over a window. This is what we call suspense. Luckily for Kemp, the police get there in time, and he gives them some fireplace pokers to use as clubs. So it's pokers vs. axe-and-revolver, though Griffin isn't a great shot. Griffin knocks out one of the cops, but the other cop hurts Griffin . There's a snapping sound, so maybe his arm gets broken. Griffin drops his weapons and runs away. But when the cops look around, they find that Kemp and his housemaid have also run away. That probably doesn't make them feel too great about the guy they just saved.


THE HUNTER HUNTED

Mr. Heelas, Mr. Kemp's nearest neighbour among the villa holders,
was asleep in his summer house when the siege of Kemp's house
began. Mr. Heelas was one of the sturdy minority who refused to
believe "in all this nonsense" about an Invisible Man. His wife,
however, as he was subsequently to be reminded, did. He insisted
upon walking about his garden just as if nothing was the matter,
and he went to sleep in the afternoon in accordance with the custom
of years. He slept through the smashing of the windows, and then
woke up suddenly with a curious persuasion of something wrong. He
looked across at Kemp's house, rubbed his eyes and looked again.
Then he put his feet to the ground, and sat listening. He said he
was damned, but still the strange thing was visible. The house
looked as though it had been deserted for weeks--after a violent
riot. Every window was broken, and every window, save those of the
belvedere study, was blinded by the internal shutters.

"I could have sworn it was all right"--he looked at his watch--"twenty
minutes ago."

He became aware of a measured concussion and the clash of glass,
far away in the distance. And then, as he sat open-mouthed, came a
still more wonderful thing. The shutters of the drawing-room window
were flung open violently, and the housemaid in her outdoor hat and
garments, appeared struggling in a frantic manner to throw up the
sash. Suddenly a man appeared beside her, helping her--Dr. Kemp!
In another moment the window was open, and the housemaid was
struggling out; she pitched forward and vanished among the shrubs.
Mr. Heelas stood up, exclaiming vaguely and vehemently at all these
wonderful things. He saw Kemp stand on the sill, spring from the
window, and reappear almost instantaneously running along a path in
the shrubbery and stooping as he ran, like a man who evades
observation. He vanished behind a laburnum, and appeared again
clambering over a fence that abutted on the open down. In a second
he had tumbled over and was running at a tremendous pace down the
slope towards Mr. Heelas.

"Lord!" cried Mr. Heelas, struck with an idea; "it's that Invisible
Man brute! It's right, after all!"

With Mr. Heelas to think things like that was to act, and his cook
watching him from the top window was amazed to see him come pelting
towards the house at a good nine miles an hour. There was a
slamming of doors, a ringing of bells, and the voice of Mr. Heelas
bellowing like a bull. "Shut the doors, shut the windows, shut
everything!--the Invisible Man is coming!" Instantly the house was
full of screams and directions, and scurrying feet. He ran himself
to shut the French windows that opened on the veranda; as he did so
Kemp's head and shoulders and knee appeared over the edge of the
garden fence. In another moment Kemp had ploughed through the
asparagus, and was running across the tennis lawn to the house.

"You can't come in," said Mr. Heelas, shutting the bolts. "I'm very
sorry if he's after you, but you can't come in!"

Kemp appeared with a face of terror close to the glass, rapping and
then shaking frantically at the French window. Then, seeing his
efforts were useless, he ran along the veranda, vaulted the end,
and went to hammer at the side door. Then he ran round by the side
gate to the front of the house, and so into the hill-road. And Mr.
Heelas staring from his window--a face of horror--had scarcely
witnessed Kemp vanish, ere the asparagus was being trampled this
way and that by feet unseen. At that Mr. Heelas fled precipitately
upstairs, and the rest of the chase is beyond his purview. But as
he passed the staircase window, he heard the side gate slam.

Emerging into the hill-road, Kemp naturally took the downward
direction, and so it was he came to run in his own person the very
race he had watched with such a critical eye from the belvedere
study only four days ago. He ran it well, for a man out of
training, and though his face was white and wet, his wits were cool
to the last. He ran with wide strides, and wherever a patch of
rough ground intervened, wherever there came a patch of raw flints,
or a bit of broken glass shone dazzling, he crossed it and left the
bare invisible feet that followed to take what line they would.

For the first time in his life Kemp discovered that the hill-road
was indescribably vast and desolate, and that the beginnings of the
town far below at the hill foot were strangely remote. Never had
there been a slower or more painful method of progression than
running. All the gaunt villas, sleeping in the afternoon sun,
looked locked and barred; no doubt they were locked and barred--by
his own orders. But at any rate they might have kept a lookout
for an eventuality like this! The town was rising up now, the sea
had dropped out of sight behind it, and people down below were
stirring. A tram was just arriving at the hill foot. Beyond that
was the police station. Was that footsteps he heard behind him?
Spurt.

The people below were staring at him, one or two were running, and
his breath was beginning to saw in his throat. The tram was quite
near now, and the "Jolly Cricketers" was noisily barring its doors.
Beyond the tram were posts and heaps of gravel--the drainage
works. He had a transitory idea of jumping into the tram and
slamming the doors, and then he resolved to go for the police
station. In another moment he had passed the door of the "Jolly
Cricketers," and was in the blistering fag end of the street, with
human beings about him. The tram driver and his helper--arrested
by the sight of his furious haste--stood staring with the tram
horses unhitched. Further on the astonished features of navvies
appeared above the mounds of gravel.

His pace broke a little, and then he heard the swift pad of his
pursuer, and leapt forward again. "The Invisible Man!" he cried to
the navvies, with a vague indicative gesture, and by an inspiration
leapt the excavation and placed a burly group between him and the
chase. Then abandoning the idea of the police station he turned
into a little side street, rushed by a greengrocer's cart,
hesitated for the tenth of a second at the door of a sweetstuff
shop, and then made for the mouth of an alley that ran back into
the main Hill Street again. Two or three little children were
playing here, and shrieked and scattered at his apparition, and
forthwith doors and windows opened and excited mothers revealed
their hearts. Out he shot into Hill Street again, three hundred
yards from the tram-line end, and immediately he became aware of a
tumultuous vociferation and running people.

He glanced up the street towards the hill. Hardly a dozen yards off
ran a huge navvy, cursing in fragments and slashing viciously with
a spade, and hard behind him came the tram conductor with his fists
clenched. Up the street others followed these two, striking and
shouting. Down towards the town, men and women were running, and he
noticed clearly one man coming out of a shop-door with a stick in
his hand. "Spread out! Spread out!" cried some one. Kemp suddenly
grasped the altered condition of the chase. He stopped, and looked
round, panting. "He's close here!" he cried. "Form a line across--"

He was hit hard under the ear, and went reeling, trying to face
round towards his unseen antagonist. He just managed to keep his
feet, and he struck a vain counter in the air. Then he was hit
again under the jaw, and sprawled headlong on the ground. In
another moment a knee compressed his diaphragm, and a couple of
eager hands gripped his throat, but the grip of one was weaker than
the other; he grasped the wrists, heard a cry of pain from his
assailant, and then the spade of the navvy came whirling through
the air above him, and struck something with a dull thud. He felt
a drop of moisture on his face. The grip at his throat suddenly
relaxed, and with a convulsive effort, Kemp loosed himself, grasped
a limp shoulder, and rolled uppermost. He gripped the unseen elbows
near the ground. "I've got him!" screamed Kemp. "Help! Help--hold!
He's down! Hold his feet!"

In another second there was a simultaneous rush upon the struggle,
and a stranger coming into the road suddenly might have thought an
exceptionally savage game of Rugby football was in progress. And
there was no shouting after Kemp's cry--only a sound of blows
and feet and heavy breathing.

Then came a mighty effort, and the Invisible Man threw off a couple
of his antagonists and rose to his knees. Kemp clung to him in
front like a hound to a stag, and a dozen hands gripped, clutched,
and tore at the Unseen. The tram conductor suddenly got the neck
and shoulders and lugged him back.

Down went the heap of struggling men again and rolled over. There
was, I am afraid, some savage kicking. Then suddenly a wild scream
of "Mercy! Mercy!" that died down swiftly to a sound like choking.

"Get back, you fools!" cried the muffled voice of Kemp, and there
was a vigorous shoving back of stalwart forms. "He's hurt, I tell
you. Stand back!"

There was a brief struggle to clear a space, and then the circle of
eager faces saw the doctor kneeling, as it seemed, fifteen inches
in the air, and holding invisible arms to the ground. Behind him a
constable gripped invisible ankles.

"Don't you leave go of en," cried the big navvy, holding a
blood-stained spade; "he's shamming."

"He's not shamming," said the doctor, cautiously raising his knee;
"and I'll hold him." His face was bruised and already going red; he
spoke thickly because of a bleeding lip. He released one hand and
seemed to be feeling at the face. "The mouth's all wet," he said.
And then, "Good God!"

He stood up abruptly and then knelt down on the ground by the side
of the thing unseen. There was a pushing and shuffling, a sound of
heavy feet as fresh people turned up to increase the pressure of
the crowd. People now were coming out of the houses. The doors of
the "Jolly Cricketers" stood suddenly wide open. Very little was said.

Kemp felt about, his hand seeming to pass through empty air. "He's
not breathing," he said, and then, "I can't feel his heart. His
side--ugh!"

Suddenly an old woman, peering under the arm of the big navvy,
screamed sharply. "Looky there!" she said, and thrust out a
wrinkled finger.

And looking where she pointed, everyone saw, faint and transparent
as though it was made of glass, so that veins and arteries and
bones and nerves could be distinguished, the outline of a hand, a
hand limp and prone. It grew clouded and opaque even as they stared.

"Hullo!" cried the constable. "Here's his feet a-showing!"

And so, slowly, beginning at his hands and feet and creeping along
his limbs to the vital centres of his body, that strange change
continued. It was like the slow spreading of a poison. First came
the little white nerves, a hazy grey sketch of a limb, then the
glassy bones and intricate arteries, then the flesh and skin, first
a faint fogginess, and then growing rapidly dense and opaque.
Presently they could see his crushed chest and his shoulders, and
the dim outline of his drawn and battered features.

When at last the crowd made way for Kemp to stand erect, there lay,
naked and pitiful on the ground, the bruised and broken body of a
young man about thirty. His hair and brow were white--not grey
with age, but white with the whiteness of albinism--and his eyes
were like garnets. His hands were clenched, his eyes wide open, and
his expression was one of anger and dismay.

"Cover his face!" said a man. "For Gawd's sake, cover that face!"
and three little children, pushing forward through the crowd, were
suddenly twisted round and sent packing off again.

Someone brought a sheet from the "Jolly Cricketers," and having
covered him, they carried him into that house. And there it was, on
a shabby bed in a tawdry, ill-lighted bedroom, surrounded by a crowd
of ignorant and excited people, broken and wounded, betrayed and
unpitied, that Griffin, the first of all men to make himself
invisible, Griffin, the most gifted physicist the world has ever
seen, ended in infinite disaster his strange and terrible career.

THE EPILOGUE

So ends the story of the strange and evil experiments of the
Invisible Man. And if you would learn more of him you must go to a
little inn near Port Stowe and talk to the landlord. The sign of
the inn is an empty board save for a hat and boots, and the name is
the title of this story. The landlord is a short and corpulent
little man with a nose of cylindrical proportions, wiry hair, and a
sporadic rosiness of visage. Drink generously, and he will tell you
generously of all the things that happened to him after that time,
and of how the lawyers tried to do him out of the treasure found
upon him.

"When they found they couldn't prove whose money was which, I'm
blessed," he says, "if they didn't try to make me out a blooming
treasure trove! Do I _look_ like a Treasure Trove? And then a
gentleman gave me a guinea a night to tell the story at the Empire
Music 'All--just to tell 'em in my own words--barring one."

And if you want to cut off the flow of his reminiscences abruptly,
you can always do so by asking if there weren't three manuscript
books in the story. He admits there were and proceeds to explain,
with asseverations that everybody thinks _he_ has 'em! But bless you!
he hasn't. "The Invisible Man it was took 'em off to hide 'em when
I cut and ran for Port Stowe. It's that Mr. Kemp put people on with
the idea of _my_ having 'em."

And then he subsides into a pensive state, watches you furtively,
bustles nervously with glasses, and presently leaves the bar.

He is a bachelor man--his tastes were ever bachelor, and there
are no women folk in the house. Outwardly he buttons--it is
expected of him--but in his more vital privacies, in the matter
of braces for example, he still turns to string. He conducts his
house without enterprise, but with eminent decorum. His movements
are slow, and he is a great thinker. But he has a reputation for
wisdom and for a respectable parsimony in the village, and his
knowledge of the roads of the South of England would beat Cobbett.

And on Sunday mornings, every Sunday morning, all the year round,
while he is closed to the outer world, and every night after ten,
he goes into his bar parlour, bearing a glass of gin faintly tinged
with water, and having placed this down, he locks the door and
examines the blinds, and even looks under the table. And then,
being satisfied of his solitude, he unlocks the cupboard and a box
in the cupboard and a drawer in that box, and produces three
volumes bound in brown leather, and places them solemnly in the
middle of the table. The covers are weather-worn and tinged with an
algal green--for once they sojourned in a ditch and some of the
pages have been washed blank by dirty water. The landlord sits down
in an armchair, fills a long clay pipe slowly--gloating over the
books the while. Then he pulls one towards him and opens it, and
begins to study it--turning over the leaves backwards and forwards.

His brows are knit and his lips move painfully. "Hex, little two up
in the air, cross and a fiddle-de-dee. Lord! what a one he was for
intellect!"

Presently he relaxes and leans back, and blinks through his smoke
across the room at things invisible to other eyes. "Full of
secrets," he says. "Wonderful secrets!"

"Once I get the haul of them--_Lord_!"

"I wouldn't do what _he_ did; I'd just--well!" He pulls at his
pipe.

So he lapses into a dream, the undying wonderful dream of his life.
And though Kemp has fished unceasingly, no human being save the
landlord knows those books are there, with the subtle secret of
invisibility and a dozen other strange secrets written therein.
And none other will know of them until he dies.

Before now, Kemp's neighbor, Heelas, didn't believe in the Invisible Man. But when he wakes up from a nap and sees Kemp's house broken into and Kemp running toward him, Heelas does the only sensible thing: he locks himself inside his house and refuses to help his neighbor. From Heelas's point-of-view, we see Kemp run through the garden followed closely by the Invisible Man. Kemp continues running towards Burdock . It sounds something like a nightmare: the road is long and empty, and no one in the nearby houses will help him. Still, when Kemp arrives in Burdock, he finds a couple of workmen on the road. When he yells about the Invisible Man, everyone nearby tries to find and hit the IM - shovels and all. When the Invisible Man grabs Kemp, the navvies knock the Invisible Man down. So maybe these guys are the real heroes of the book? The narrator notes that the next scene might have looked like a game of rugby, but it was actually a big fight between the crowd and the Invisible Man. Spoiler alert: the Invisible Man loses. "There was, I am afraid, some savage kicking. Then suddenly a wild scream of 'Mercy! Mercy!' that died down swiftly to a sound like choking" . Kemp tries to get people off of Griffin, but the IM is already not breathing and possibly dead. Everyone crowds around to see what happened, and slowly, the Invisible Man starts to become visible : Cool. And horrible. That's how Griffin's experiment in invisibility ends, with people covering up his "naked and pitiful" body .


THE STRANGE MAN'S ARRIVAL

The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a
biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over
the down, walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a
little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped
up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every
inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled
itself against his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to
the burden he carried. He staggered into the "Coach and Horses" more
dead than alive, and flung his portmanteau down. "A fire," he cried,
"in the name of human charity! A room and a fire!" He stamped and
shook the snow from off himself in the bar, and followed Mrs. Hall
into her guest parlour to strike his bargain. And with that much
introduction, that and a couple of sovereigns flung upon the table,
he took up his quarters in the inn.

Mrs. Hall lit the fire and left him there while she went to prepare
him a meal with her own hands. A guest to stop at Iping in the
wintertime was an unheard-of piece of luck, let alone a guest who
was no "haggler," and she was resolved to show herself worthy of her
good fortune. As soon as the bacon was well under way, and Millie,
her lymphatic maid, had been brisked up a bit by a few deftly chosen
expressions of contempt, she carried the cloth, plates, and glasses
into the parlour and began to lay them with the utmost _eclat_.
Although the fire was burning up briskly, she was surprised to see
that her visitor still wore his hat and coat, standing with his back
to her and staring out of the window at the falling snow in the yard.
His gloved hands were clasped behind him, and he seemed to be lost
in thought. She noticed that the melting snow that still sprinkled
his shoulders dripped upon her carpet. "Can I take your hat and coat,
sir?" she said, "and give them a good dry in the kitchen?"

"No," he said without turning.

She was not sure she had heard him, and was about to repeat her
question.

He turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder. "I prefer to
keep them on," he said with emphasis, and she noticed that he wore
big blue spectacles with sidelights, and had a bush side-whisker
over his coat-collar that completely hid his cheeks and face.

"Very well, sir," she said. "_As_ you like. In a bit the room will
be warmer."

He made no answer, and had turned his face away from her again, and
Mrs. Hall, feeling that her conversational advances were ill-timed,
laid the rest of the table things in a quick staccato and whisked
out of the room. When she returned he was still standing there, like
a man of stone, his back hunched, his collar turned up, his dripping
hat-brim turned down, hiding his face and ears completely. She put
down the eggs and bacon with considerable emphasis, and called
rather than said to him, "Your lunch is served, sir."

"Thank you," he said at the same time, and did not stir until she
was closing the door. Then he swung round and approached the table
with a certain eager quickness.

As she went behind the bar to the kitchen she heard a sound repeated
at regular intervals. Chirk, chirk, chirk, it went, the sound of a
spoon being rapidly whisked round a basin. "That girl!" she said.
"There! I clean forgot it. It's her being so long!" And while she
herself finished mixing the mustard, she gave Millie a few verbal
stabs for her excessive slowness. She had cooked the ham and eggs,
laid the table, and done everything, while Millie (help indeed!) had
only succeeded in delaying the mustard. And him a new guest and
wanting to stay! Then she filled the mustard pot, and, putting it
with a certain stateliness upon a gold and black tea-tray, carried
it into the parlour.

She rapped and entered promptly. As she did so her visitor moved
quickly, so that she got but a glimpse of a white object disappearing
behind the table. It would seem he was picking something from the
floor. She rapped down the mustard pot on the table, and then she
noticed the overcoat and hat had been taken off and put over a chair
in front of the fire, and a pair of wet boots threatened rust to her
steel fender. She went to these things resolutely. "I suppose I may
have them to dry now," she said in a voice that brooked no denial.

"Leave the hat," said her visitor, in a muffled voice, and turning
she saw he had raised his head and was sitting and looking at her.

For a moment she stood gaping at him, too surprised to speak.

He held a white cloth--it was a serviette he had brought with
him--over the lower part of his face, so that his mouth and jaws
were completely hidden, and that was the reason of his muffled
voice. But it was not that which startled Mrs. Hall. It was the fact
that all his forehead above his blue glasses was covered by a white
bandage, and that another covered his ears, leaving not a scrap of
his face exposed excepting only his pink, peaked nose. It was bright,
pink, and shiny just as it had been at first. He wore a dark-brown
velvet jacket with a high, black, linen-lined collar turned up about
his neck. The thick black hair, escaping as it could below and
between the cross bandages, projected in curious tails and horns,
giving him the strangest appearance conceivable. This muffled and
bandaged head was so unlike what she had anticipated, that for a
moment she was rigid.

He did not remove the serviette, but remained holding it, as she
saw now, with a brown gloved hand, and regarding her with his
inscrutable blue glasses. "Leave the hat," he said, speaking very
distinctly through the white cloth.

Her nerves began to recover from the shock they had received. She
placed the hat on the chair again by the fire. "I didn't know, sir,"
she began, "that--" and she stopped embarrassed.

"Thank you," he said drily, glancing from her to the door and then
at her again.

"I'll have them nicely dried, sir, at once," she said, and carried
his clothes out of the room. She glanced at his white-swathed head
and blue goggles again as she was going out of the door; but his
napkin was still in front of his face. She shivered a little as she
closed the door behind her, and her face was eloquent of her surprise
and perplexity. "I _never_," she whispered. "There!" She went quite
softly to the kitchen, and was too preoccupied to ask Millie what
she was messing about with _now_, when she got there.

The visitor sat and listened to her retreating feet. He glanced
inquiringly at the window before he removed his serviette, and
resumed his meal. He took a mouthful, glanced suspiciously at the
window, took another mouthful, then rose and, taking the serviette
in his hand, walked across the room and pulled the blind down to
the top of the white muslin that obscured the lower panes. This
left the room in a twilight. This done, he returned with an easier
air to the table and his meal.

"The poor soul's had an accident or an op'ration or somethin'," said
Mrs. Hall. "What a turn them bandages did give me, to be sure!"

She put on some more coal, unfolded the clothes-horse, and extended
the traveller's coat upon this. "And they goggles! Why, he looked
more like a divin' helmet than a human man!" She hung his muffler
on a corner of the horse. "And holding that handkerchief over his
mouth all the time. Talkin' through it! ... Perhaps his mouth was
hurt too--maybe."

She turned round, as one who suddenly remembers. "Bless my soul
alive!" she said, going off at a tangent; "ain't you done them
taters _yet_, Millie?"

When Mrs. Hall went to clear away the stranger's lunch, her idea
that his mouth must also have been cut or disfigured in the accident
she supposed him to have suffered, was confirmed, for he was smoking
a pipe, and all the time that she was in the room he never loosened
the silk muffler he had wrapped round the lower part of his face to
put the mouthpiece to his lips. Yet it was not forgetfulness, for
she saw he glanced at it as it smouldered out. He sat in the corner
with his back to the window-blind and spoke now, having eaten and
drunk and being comfortably warmed through, with less aggressive
brevity than before. The reflection of the fire lent a kind of red
animation to his big spectacles they had lacked hitherto.

"I have some luggage," he said, "at Bramblehurst station," and he
asked her how he could have it sent. He bowed his bandaged head
quite politely in acknowledgment of her explanation. "To-morrow?" he
said. "There is no speedier delivery?" and seemed quite disappointed
when she answered, "No." Was she quite sure? No man with a trap who
would go over?

Mrs. Hall, nothing loath, answered his questions and developed a
conversation. "It's a steep road by the down, sir," she said in
answer to the question about a trap; and then, snatching at an
opening, said, "It was there a carriage was upsettled, a year ago
and more. A gentleman killed, besides his coachman. Accidents, sir,
happen in a moment, don't they?"

But the visitor was not to be drawn so easily. "They do," he said
through his muffler, eyeing her quietly through his impenetrable
glasses.

"But they take long enough to get well, don't they? ... There was
my sister's son, Tom, jest cut his arm with a scythe, tumbled on it
in the 'ayfield, and, bless me! he was three months tied up sir.
You'd hardly believe it. It's regular given me a dread of a scythe,
sir."

"I can quite understand that," said the visitor.

"He was afraid, one time, that he'd have to have an op'ration--he
was that bad, sir."

The visitor laughed abruptly, a bark of a laugh that he seemed to
bite and kill in his mouth. "_Was_ he?" he said.

"He was, sir. And no laughing matter to them as had the doing for
him, as I had--my sister being took up with her little ones so
much. There was bandages to do, sir, and bandages to undo. So that
if I may make so bold as to say it, sir--"

"Will you get me some matches?" said the visitor, quite abruptly.
"My pipe is out."

Mrs. Hall was pulled up suddenly. It was certainly rude of him,
after telling him all she had done. She gasped at him for a moment,
and remembered the two sovereigns. She went for the matches.

"Thanks," he said concisely, as she put them down, and turned his
shoulder upon her and stared out of the window again. It was
altogether too discouraging. Evidently he was sensitive on the
topic of operations and bandages. She did not "make so bold as to
say," however, after all. But his snubbing way had irritated her,
and Millie had a hot time of it that afternoon.

The visitor remained in the parlour until four o'clock, without
giving the ghost of an excuse for an intrusion. For the most part
he was quite still during that time; it would seem he sat in the
growing darkness smoking in the firelight--perhaps dozing.

Once or twice a curious listener might have heard him at the coals,
and for the space of five minutes he was audible pacing the room.
He seemed to be talking to himself. Then the armchair creaked as
he sat down again.

The chapter opens with the protagonist as a young boy. He is recalling his grandfather's death. On his deathbed, his grandfather reveals that he has been a traitor to his race, but he encourages his grandson to do as he has done in order to survive. He encourages the protagonist to smile and agree with the whites while hoping for their death and destruction. He also tells him to pass this message along. The protagonist's parents are very dismayed and instruct him to forget this message. The boy also regards his grandfather's words as a curse. Later, the protagonist recalls graduating from high school in the late 1920s or early 1930s where he delivers the commencement speech. Because the speech is so well received, he is invited to deliver it for the town's white male leaders. However, when he arrives, he is informed that he will have to participate in a fight called "Battle Royal." In order to entertain the men, several young black boys are forced to fight one another while blindfolded until only two remain standing. Once two are remaining, they will fight for the top prize. After a brutal and bloody battle, the protagonist is one of the two left standing and he has to fight Tatlock, a large young man and skilled fighter. Afraid he would be too bruised to deliver his speech, he asks Tatlock to throw the match in exchange for sharing the prize. Tatlock doesn't accept this plea and beats the protagonist until he is bloody and winded. In order to receive pay for their efforts, all the boys have to scramble over an electrified rug to get cash and gold coins that lie there. This also provides entertainment for the men. Once these events are over, the protagonist learns that he will be allowed to give his speech. When he delivers it, he is often interrupted and made to pause on or repeat words like "social responsibility" and "social equality. " When the speech ends, he is awarded a briefcase that he is told will one day contain important papers that will help shape the destiny of his people. It also contains a scholarship to the state college for Negroes. After receiving the gift, he has a dream that he and his grandfather are at the circus and his grandfather tells him to open the briefcase; however, inside, it contains a note that states: "Keep this nigger boy running." .

. This section of the novel frequently appears in anthologies of literature. Both the grandfather's deathbed speech and the Battle Royal are events that chart the course of the protagonist's life. He experiences two major life lessons in this chapter; however, he will not come to understand them until he has grown.

The narrator begins by telling of his search for identity. He has always gone to other people for answers about himself. His search has led him to the conclusion that only he can answer the questions about his own identity, for to others he is invisible. He does not, at the start of this narrative, know who he is. He is confused and seeking. The narrators search begins with a recollection of his grandfather, a slave. He had often been ashamed of his grandfather; he believed the old man accepted a separate but equal philosophy. When his grandfather was dying, however, he spoke of his philosophy; they were the words of a covert warrior whose goal was to destroy the enemy through seeming agreement. He told his grandson to pass those words on to the next generation. This enigmatic confession and request puzzled the Invisible Man, who was warned by other adults in the house to forget what his grandfather had said. The narrator explains that the memory of his grandfather's words became a source of apprehension for him in his dealings with white people. He learned, however, that meekness was, indeed, the way to progress. The narrator found that his compliant behavior often earned him many opportunities, the most recent of which was the opportunity to give a speech to the echelons of white society--the town leaders. Before giving his speech, the narrator was asked to participate in the evening's entertainment. He accepted reluctantly, thinking it might detract from the seriousness of his presentation. He and the other black participants were asked to dress in boxing attire. They were then led into the room with the white leaders. The narrator was shocked to see the prominent men of the town nearly all drunk. He was even more shocked to see a naked blonde woman standing among the young black men, who hung their heads in fear. Although the narrator experienced conflicting emotions, he could not help but look. He found the girl beautiful, but he felt violent towards her at the same time. When the music began to plan, she started to dance, causing more of a stir. The black participants experienced great fear as the white men taunted them about the woman. The drunken white men then began grasping at the woman. She tried to remain calm and graceful, but they started howling and chasing her. The narrator recognized terror and disgust on her face, similar to that which he felt. Finally, some of the more sober white men helped her escape from her predicament. Now hysterical with fear about what was happening to them, the black participants were ordered into a boxing ring and blindfolded. Although they did not want to fight each other, they were forced to do so by the white men, who told them they would be beaten if they did not fight. The narrator felt terrified, especially with the blindfold in place causing total darkness. The town leaders began to taunt and insult the young men with name-calling and threats. Finally, the blacks responded and began to strike one another. The more the young black men fought each other, the more the white men became excited. The narrator began to receive a beating. Although he felt he was losing his dignity, he could not escape. Then the narrator found himself left in the ring with one other man, the largest of them all. The others arranged for him to be left behind to take the final beating. He tried to negotiate with the larger man, but the man was insistent upon beating him and winning the fight. The narrator grew desperate, ironically still worried about how the outcome of the fight would affect his speech. As a result, he began to fight more ferociously, determined to win at all costs. He then heard a voice in the crowd shouting in favor of the larger man; the narrator, struck by insecurity, hesitated for a moment. He next found himself coming to consciousness. His waking thought was for his speech. The boxing ring was wheeled away and a large rug was placed on the floor in its place. Gold coins were thrown on the rug, and the young black fighters were told that this was their pay for the night's work. As they sought the money, they discovered that the rug was electrified for the amusement of the white spectators. After the white men grew tired of such merciless entertainment, the narrator was finally called upon to give his speech, a version of Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition. When the narrator used the phrase "social equality," he was made to correct the phrase with the more acceptable words of "social responsibility." When his ordeal was finally over, the narrator was awarded a leather briefcase. Upon opening the briefcase, he found he had been given a scholarship to the State College for Negroes. Because of this award, he was not too upset to discover that the gold coins collected from the electric rug were only brass tokens. For once, the narrator feels he is not haunted by his grandfather's words. As a result, he can sleep soundly; ironically, he dreams about his grandfather. They are at a circus, but the grandfather will not laugh at the clowns. The grandfather tells him to open his briefcase and look in the envelope. The narrator obeys, only to find one envelope inside another, and another. He becomes tired of opening envelopes. When his grandfather instructs him to open a particular one, it says, "To whom it may concern...keep this nigger-boy running." It is a dream he will have over and over in his life, but at the time he does not know what it means.


MR. TEDDY HENFREY'S FIRST IMPRESSIONS

At four o'clock, when it was fairly dark and Mrs. Hall was screwing
up her courage to go in and ask her visitor if he would take some
tea, Teddy Henfrey, the clock-jobber, came into the bar. "My sakes!
Mrs. Hall," said he, "but this is terrible weather for thin boots!"
The snow outside was falling faster.

Mrs. Hall agreed, and then noticed he had his bag with him. "Now
you're here, Mr. Teddy," said she, "I'd be glad if you'd give th'
old clock in the parlour a bit of a look. 'Tis going, and it strikes
well and hearty; but the hour-hand won't do nuthin' but point at
six."

And leading the way, she went across to the parlour door and rapped
and entered.

Her visitor, she saw as she opened the door, was seated in the
armchair before the fire, dozing it would seem, with his bandaged
head drooping on one side. The only light in the room was the red
glow from the fire--which lit his eyes like adverse railway signals,
but left his downcast face in darkness--and the scanty vestiges of
the day that came in through the open door. Everything was ruddy,
shadowy, and indistinct to her, the more so since she had just been
lighting the bar lamp, and her eyes were dazzled. But for a second
it seemed to her that the man she looked at had an enormous mouth
wide open--a vast and incredible mouth that swallowed the whole of
the lower portion of his face. It was the sensation of a moment:
the white-bound head, the monstrous goggle eyes, and this huge yawn
below it. Then he stirred, started up in his chair, put up his hand.
She opened the door wide, so that the room was lighter, and she saw
him more clearly, with the muffler held up to his face just as she
had seen him hold the serviette before. The shadows, she fancied,
had tricked her.

"Would you mind, sir, this man a-coming to look at the clock, sir?"
she said, recovering from the momentary shock.

"Look at the clock?" he said, staring round in a drowsy manner,
and speaking over his hand, and then, getting more fully awake,
"certainly."

Mrs. Hall went away to get a lamp, and he rose and stretched
himself. Then came the light, and Mr. Teddy Henfrey, entering, was
confronted by this bandaged person. He was, he says, "taken aback."

"Good afternoon," said the stranger, regarding him--as Mr. Henfrey
says, with a vivid sense of the dark spectacles--"like a lobster."

"I hope," said Mr. Henfrey, "that it's no intrusion."

"None whatever," said the stranger. "Though, I understand," he said
turning to Mrs. Hall, "that this room is really to be mine for my
own private use."

"I thought, sir," said Mrs. Hall, "you'd prefer the clock--"

"Certainly," said the stranger, "certainly--but, as a rule, I
like to be alone and undisturbed.

"But I'm really glad to have the clock seen to," he said, seeing a
certain hesitation in Mr. Henfrey's manner. "Very glad." Mr. Henfrey
had intended to apologise and withdraw, but this anticipation
reassured him. The stranger turned round with his back to the
fireplace and put his hands behind his back. "And presently," he
said, "when the clock-mending is over, I think I should like to
have some tea. But not till the clock-mending is over."

Mrs. Hall was about to leave the room--she made no conversational
advances this time, because she did not want to be snubbed in front
of Mr. Henfrey--when her visitor asked her if she had made any
arrangements about his boxes at Bramblehurst. She told him she had
mentioned the matter to the postman, and that the carrier could
bring them over on the morrow. "You are certain that is the
earliest?" he said.

She was certain, with a marked coldness.

"I should explain," he added, "what I was really too cold and
fatigued to do before, that I am an experimental investigator."

"Indeed, sir," said Mrs. Hall, much impressed.

"And my baggage contains apparatus and appliances."

"Very useful things indeed they are, sir," said Mrs. Hall.

"And I'm very naturally anxious to get on with my inquiries."

"Of course, sir."

"My reason for coming to Iping," he proceeded, with a certain
deliberation of manner, "was ... a desire for solitude. I do not
wish to be disturbed in my work. In addition to my work, an
accident--"

"I thought as much," said Mrs. Hall to herself.

"--necessitates a certain retirement. My eyes--are sometimes so
weak and painful that I have to shut myself up in the dark for
hours together. Lock myself up. Sometimes--now and then. Not at
present, certainly. At such times the slightest disturbance, the
entry of a stranger into the room, is a source of excruciating
annoyance to me--it is well these things should be understood."

"Certainly, sir," said Mrs. Hall. "And if I might make so bold as
to ask--"

"That I think, is all," said the stranger, with that quietly
irresistible air of finality he could assume at will. Mrs. Hall
reserved her question and sympathy for a better occasion.

After Mrs. Hall had left the room, he remained standing in front of
the fire, glaring, so Mr. Henfrey puts it, at the clock-mending. Mr.
Henfrey not only took off the hands of the clock, and the face, but
extracted the works; and he tried to work in as slow and quiet and
unassuming a manner as possible. He worked with the lamp close to
him, and the green shade threw a brilliant light upon his hands,
and upon the frame and wheels, and left the rest of the room
shadowy. When he looked up, coloured patches swam in his eyes.
Being constitutionally of a curious nature, he had removed the
works--a quite unnecessary proceeding--with the idea of delaying his
departure and perhaps falling into conversation with the stranger.
But the stranger stood there, perfectly silent and still. So still,
it got on Henfrey's nerves. He felt alone in the room and looked up,
and there, grey and dim, was the bandaged head and huge blue lenses
staring fixedly, with a mist of green spots drifting in front of
them. It was so uncanny to Henfrey that for a minute they remained
staring blankly at one another. Then Henfrey looked down again. Very
uncomfortable position! One would like to say something. Should he
remark that the weather was very cold for the time of year?

He looked up as if to take aim with that introductory shot. "The
weather--" he began.

"Why don't you finish and go?" said the rigid figure, evidently in
a state of painfully suppressed rage. "All you've got to do is to
fix the hour-hand on its axle. You're simply humbugging--"

"Certainly, sir--one minute more. I overlooked--" and Mr. Henfrey
finished and went.

But he went feeling excessively annoyed. "Damn it!" said Mr. Henfrey
to himself, trudging down the village through the thawing snow; "a
man must do a clock at times, surely."

And again, "Can't a man look at you?--Ugly!"

And yet again, "Seemingly not. If the police was wanting you you
couldn't be more wropped and bandaged."

At Gleeson's corner he saw Hall, who had recently married the
stranger's hostess at the "Coach and Horses," and who now drove
the Iping conveyance, when occasional people required it, to
Sidderbridge Junction, coming towards him on his return from that
place. Hall had evidently been "stopping a bit" at Sidderbridge,
to judge by his driving. "'Ow do, Teddy?" he said, passing.

"You got a rum un up home!" said Teddy.

Hall very sociably pulled up. "What's that?" he asked.

"Rum-looking customer stopping at the 'Coach and Horses,'" said
Teddy. "My sakes!"

And he proceeded to give Hall a vivid description of his grotesque
guest. "Looks a bit like a disguise, don't it? I'd like to see a
man's face if I had him stopping in _my_ place," said Henfrey. "But
women are that trustful--where strangers are concerned. He's took
your rooms and he ain't even given a name, Hall."

"You don't say so!" said Hall, who was a man of sluggish apprehension.

"Yes," said Teddy. "By the week. Whatever he is, you can't get rid
of him under the week. And he's got a lot of luggage coming
to-morrow, so he says. Let's hope it won't be stones in boxes, Hall."

He told Hall how his aunt at Hastings had been swindled by a
stranger with empty portmanteaux. Altogether he left Hall vaguely
suspicious. "Get up, old girl," said Hall. "I s'pose I must see
'bout this."

Teddy trudged on his way with his mind considerably relieved.

Instead of "seeing 'bout it," however, Hall on his return was
severely rated by his wife on the length of time he had spent in
Sidderbridge, and his mild inquiries were answered snappishly and
in a manner not to the point. But the seed of suspicion Teddy
had sown germinated in the mind of Mr. Hall in spite of these
discouragements. "You wim' don't know everything," said Mr. Hall,
resolved to ascertain more about the personality of his guest at
the earliest possible opportunity. And after the stranger had gone
to bed, which he did about half-past nine, Mr. Hall went very
aggressively into the parlour and looked very hard at his wife's
furniture, just to show that the stranger wasn't master there,
and scrutinised closely and a little contemptuously a sheet of
mathematical computations the stranger had left. When retiring
for the night he instructed Mrs. Hall to look very closely at
the stranger's luggage when it came next day.

"You mind your own business, Hall," said Mrs. Hall, "and I'll mind
mine."

She was all the more inclined to snap at Hall because the stranger
was undoubtedly an unusually strange sort of stranger, and she was
by no means assured about him in her own mind. In the middle of the
night she woke up dreaming of huge white heads like turnips, that
came trailing after her, at the end of interminable necks, and with
vast black eyes. But being a sensible woman, she subdued her
terrors and turned over and went to sleep again.

This chapter is set on the campus of the protagonist's college in the early 1930s. He marvels at the landscape and the wonderful aspects of nature on the campus. He describes the statue of the founder lifting the veil over the head of a slave and expresses that he can't tell if the veil is being lifted or lowered. The community and its local quirks are also described. Founder's Day is approaching and many have come to celebrate it, including trustees affiliated with the college. In order to assure their comfort, students are assigned jobs to assist them in their needs during their stay. The protagonist is assigned to be the driver for Mr. Norton, a wealthy white man who is one of the college's valued trustees. During the drive, Norton explains to the protagonist that he feels that the college and its students are his destiny. Because Norton finds the drive relaxing, he asks the protagonist to drive him around the town and during this time they encounter old slave quarters that some of the local citizens still inhabit. They pass by Jim Trueblood's home and the narrator tells Norton of the disgrace Trueblood has brought on his family because of his rape and subsequent impregnation of his daughter. Instantly, Norton wants to meet him. Trueblood tells the story of how because of the cold and lack of heat, he is forced to sleep next to his wife and daughter and that during a dream, he ultimately rapes her. Alarmed by the story, Norton is visibly shaken, gives Trueblood a $100 bill and immediately requests whiskey or some kind of stimulant in order to cope with what he has just heard

His days at the Negro college offer many experiences for the narrator to recount. He remembers how he often fantasized of forbidden places, such as the road to the insane asylum. He recalls the nearby prostitutes, in whom he saw great sadness. He also remembers the perplexing statue in front of the school. It was of a father figure holding a veil halfway over a slave's head; one could not be certain if the veil were being lifted or fitted more securely. He recalls the way the school was conducted, almost militarily. He also pictures the frequent visits of the millionaire benefactors, whose contributions paid for the school. He remembers a particular occasion when he was assigned to be a driver for one of the millionaires, Mr. Norton. The narrator finds himself identifying with this rich man, who appreciates tradition and talks of his good intentions concerning black people. He tells the narrator about his grief over his deceased daughter and claims that everything he does, including deeds for the black community, is done in memory of her. As a result of the millionaires encouragement, the narrator opts to take a new route, a forbidden road. He is then overcome with guilt as he remembers his grandfathers words. The two men arrive at the house of Jim Trueblood, a black man who is looked down upon by the entire black community. Mr. Trueblood's wife and daughter are both pregnant, and the narrator tells the millionaire that Mr. Trueblood is the father of both. Mr. Norton is shocked by the incest and wants to talk to Mr. Trueblood about it. When Mr. Norton approaches him, Mr. Trueblood tells his story. He explains how poor his family is. They have no heat and no beds; when they sleep on the floor, they stay close to each other to keep warm. He claims to have been having a dream when he awoke to find himself on his daughter, Matty Lou. Kate, Matty Lou's mother, woke up and pointed a shotgun at him. Eventually, she injured him with an ax.. Mr. Trueblood says that no one in the black community believes his story, not even the preacher. Mr. Trueblood says the white men in town have asked him to re-tell his story over and over to different people, as if they were pleased with the tale. In fact, they gave him some new clothing for his family, gave him some work, and allowed him to stay on the land where he now lives. Mr. Trueblood ends by talking about his confusion; he has done one of the worst things a person can do, but the white community has seemed to embrace him for it, treating him better than he has ever been treated in his life. Mr. Norton originally wanted to shame Mr. Trueblood for his crime; instead he gave him one hundred dollars, for he was troubled by the story. After leaving Mr. Trueblood, Norton asks the narrator to take him somewhere quickly for some whiskey, for he feels a little faint over the entire incident. The narrator is worried about Mr. Norton and drives him to a nearby dive called the Golden Day, where he can get a drink.


THE THOUSAND AND ONE BOTTLES

So it was that on the twenty-ninth day of February, at the beginning
of the thaw, this singular person fell out of infinity into Iping
village. Next day his luggage arrived through the slush--and very
remarkable luggage it was. There were a couple of trunks indeed,
such as a rational man might need, but in addition there were
a box of books--big, fat books, of which some were just in an
incomprehensible handwriting--and a dozen or more crates, boxes,
and cases, containing objects packed in straw, as it seemed to
Hall, tugging with a casual curiosity at the straw--glass bottles.
The stranger, muffled in hat, coat, gloves, and wrapper, came out
impatiently to meet Fearenside's cart, while Hall was having a word
or so of gossip preparatory to helping bring them in. Out he came,
not noticing Fearenside's dog, who was sniffing in a _dilettante_
spirit 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 tail of the cart as if to
lay hands on the smaller crate.

No sooner had Fearenside's dog caught sight of him, however, than
it began to bristle and growl savagely, and when he rushed down the
steps it gave an undecided hop, and then sprang straight at his
hand. "Whup!" cried Hall, jumping back, for he was no hero with
dogs, and Fearenside howled, "Lie down!" and snatched his whip.

They saw the dog's teeth had slipped the hand, heard a kick, saw the
dog execute a flanking jump and get home on the stranger's leg, and
heard the rip of his trousering. Then the finer end of Fearenside's
whip reached his property, and the dog, yelping with dismay,
retreated under the wheels of the waggon. It was all the business of
a swift half-minute. No one spoke, everyone shouted. The stranger
glanced swiftly at his torn glove and at his leg, made as if he
would stoop to the latter, then turned and rushed swiftly up the
steps into the inn. They heard him go headlong across the passage
and up the uncarpeted stairs to his bedroom.

"You brute, you!" said Fearenside, climbing off the waggon with his
whip in his hand, while the dog watched him through the wheel.
"Come here," said Fearenside--"You'd better."

Hall had stood gaping. "He wuz bit," said Hall. "I'd better go and
see to en," and he trotted after the stranger. He met Mrs. Hall in
the passage. "Carrier's darg," he said "bit en."

He went straight upstairs, and the stranger's door being ajar, he
pushed it open and was entering without any ceremony, being of a
naturally sympathetic turn of mind.

The blind was down and the room dim. He caught a glimpse of a most
singular thing, what seemed a handless arm waving towards him, and
a face of three huge indeterminate spots on white, very like the
face of a pale pansy. Then he was struck violently in the chest,
hurled back, and the door slammed in his face and locked. It was so
rapid that it gave him no time to observe. A waving of indecipherable
shapes, a blow, and a concussion. There he stood on the dark little
landing, wondering what it might be that he had seen.

A couple of minutes after, he rejoined the little group that had
formed 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, then?" 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 stranger.

"This stror, sir, if I might make so bold as to remark--"

"Don't. If the straw makes trouble put it down in the bill." And he
mumbled at her--words suspiciously like curses.

He was so odd, standing there, so aggressive and explosive, bottle
in one hand and test-tube in the other, that Mrs. Hall was quite
alarmed. But she was a resolute woman. "In which case, I should
like to know, sir, what you consider--"

"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 toward her.

All the afternoon he worked with the door locked and, as Mrs. Hall
testifies, for the most part in silence. But once there was a
concussion and a sound of bottles ringing together as though the
table had been hit, and the smash of a bottle flung violently down,
and then a rapid pacing athwart the room. Fearing "something was
the matter," she went to the door and listened, not caring to
knock.

"I can't go on," he was raving. "I _can't_ go on. Three hundred
thousand, four hundred thousand! The huge multitude! Cheated! All
my life it may take me! ... Patience! Patience indeed! ... Fool!
fool!"

There was a noise of hobnails on the bricks in the bar, and Mrs.
Hall had very reluctantly to leave the rest of his soliloquy.
When she returned the room was silent again, save for the faint
crepitation of his chair and the occasional clink of a bottle.
It was all over; the stranger had resumed work.

When she took in his tea she saw broken glass in the corner of the
room under the concave mirror, and a golden stain that had been
carelessly wiped. She called attention to it.

"Put it down in the bill," snapped her visitor. "For God's sake
don't worry me. If there's damage done, put it down in the bill,"
and he went on ticking a list in the exercise book before 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 chap you're speaking of, what my dog bit. Well--he's black.
Leastways, his legs are. I seed through the tear of his trousers
and the tear of his glove. You'd have expected a sort of pinky to
show, wouldn't you? Well--there wasn't none. Just blackness. I
tell you, he's as black as my hat."

"My sakes!" said Henfrey. "It's a rummy case altogether. Why, his
nose is as pink as paint!"

"That's true," said Fearenside. "I knows that. And I tell 'ee what
I'm thinking. That marn'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 patchy instead of mixing. I've heard of
such things before. And it's the common way with horses, as any one
can see."

In order to find a stimulant for Norton, the protagonist heads for the nearest place-the Golden Day, a tavern and a brothel. However, before arriving, he also sees a line of black veterans who have been mentally affected by war and military service who are heading in that direction as well. They are all residents of the mental institution; however, they are allowed trips to the Golden Day for release and pleasure. These veterans had formerly been doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. Hoping to get the whiskey and exit immediately, the protagonist's plans are thwarted by Big Halley, the bartender, who will not allow a student to leave with liquor because of the tense relationship between the Golden Day and the college. Meanwhile, the Golden Day is becoming more rowdy by the minute with only an attendant named Supercargo to keep the vets in line. Eventually, a couple of veterans help to get Norton inside, after the protagonist's last desperate and unsuccessful attempt to convince Halley to let him take the whiskey from the scene. Once Mr. Norton makes it inside, the vets overtake Supercargo and chaos ensues. The protagonist and Norton are briefly separated and eventually meet back up and seek refuge at the balcony. There, one of the veterans, who is a doctor, revives Norton, who had passed out during the chaos, and they begin a conversation. The vet reveals that it was racism that kept him from practicing as a physician. He comments on the protagonist's innocence and invisibility and begins to chide Norton regarding his philosophy that the college is his destiny. His boldness clearly disturbs Norton and he and the protagonist leave the Golden Day. Mr. Norton is visibly angry and silent

Black veterans from an insane asylum are walking down the road toward the Golden Day, blocking the narrator and Mr. Norton from passing them in the car. The insane men are mostly professionals suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. The narrator tells one of the veterans that the car belongs to General Pershing in order to be allowed to pass. The narrator continues to worry, for he knows the veterans are also headed to the Golden Day to find prostitutes. On such occasions, the bar becomes quite rowdy. The narrator leaves Mr. Norton outside and goes in to order a whiskey. The bartender, Big Halley, refuses to serve him any liquor to take outside. As a result, some of the veterans help bring the faint Mr. Norton inside. To wake him up, someone hits him in the face and someone else pours brandy in his mouth. Mr. Norton is surprised by the men standing around him and wants to know where he is. Halley tells a woman upstairs to sober up Supercargo, the bouncer, and send him down. When he appears at the top of the stairs, the veterans charge up after him. The men pull him down the stairs, allowing his head to thump each step. At the bottom of the stairs, the men kick him and jump on him. They give him beer to wake him up and pounce on him until he is unconscious again. Finally, they lay his body on the bar, as if he were dead. Halley serves them drinks while the narrator searches for Mr. Norton, who lies unconscious again under the stairs. The narrator yells at Mr. Norton to wake up, fearing that something bad has happened to him. The crowd reacts by pushing him on top of the millionaire. Finally, one of the veterans steps in to help. The man arranges for Mr. Norton to be taken upstairs to a clean bed, where he begins to perform a medical examination on him. He tells the narrator that though he is now a patient at the insane asylum, he was once a physician. Edna, a prostitute, and her friend enter the room where Mr. Norton has been put. She comments to her friend that she likes white men because they cannot ever get enough sex. The friend says she would rather kill the whites. The veteran asks the two women to leave the room, fearing they will shock the fainting white man. When the veteran begins talking to Mr. Norton about his condition, the millionaire is amazed at his knowledge and wants to hear the veteran's story. The veteran says he was trained as a surgeon, but was chased and beaten for trying to practice medicine in the United States. The conversation changes to Mr. Norton and the narrator. The veteran tells Mr. Norton that the narrator is an invisible man, an automaton. The narrator is extremely uncomfortable with the free and somewhat alarming conversation between the crazy black man and the rich white benefactor. Mr. Norton becomes equally distressed and wants to leave. As they try to depart, the veteran surgeon threatens them, and the mob downstairs attacks them. Halley helps them escape to the car.