The Invisible Man: Chapter 23–Epilogue

"But you begin now to realise," said the Invisible Man, "the full disadvantage of my condition. I had no shelter—no covering—to get clothing was to forego all my advantage, to make myself a strange and terrible thing. I was fasting; for to eat, to fill myself with unassimilated matter, would be to become grotesquely visible again."

I turned about, no longer aimless, and went—circuitously in order to avoid the busy ways, towards the back streets north of the Strand; for I remembered, though not very distinctly where, that some theatrical costumiers had shops in that district.

I proposed to make my way into the house, secrete myself upstairs, watch my opportunity, and when everything was quiet, rummage out a wig, mask, spectacles, and costume, and go into the world, perhaps a grotesque but still a credible figure.

And incidentally of course I could rob the house of any available money.

I could not get out of the room while he was there; I could scarcely move because of his alertness, and there was a draught down my back.

He put his hand in his pocket, failed to find what he wanted, and rushing past me went blundering noisily and pugnaciously downstairs.

By this time I knew he was alone in the house, and so I made no more ado, but knocked him on the head.

I had thought of painting and powdering my face and all that there was to show of me, in order to render myself visible, but the disadvantage of this lay in the fact that I should require turpentine and other appliances and a considerable amount of time before I could vanish...

I could find no underclothing, but that I could buy subsequently, and for the time I swathed myself in calico dominoes and some white cashmere scarfs.

I was grotesque to the theatrical pitch, a stage miser, but I was certainly not a physical impossibility.

Oh!—disillusionment again. I thought my troubles were over.

I decided to treat myself to a sumptuous feast, and then put up at a good hotel, and accumulate a new outfit of property.

"That's his luck, then. I clean lost my temper, the fools! Why couldn't they leave me alone? And that grocer lout?"

Not wanton killing, but a judicious slaying.

And you must prevent him from eating or sleeping; day and night the country must be astir for him.

At any rate he vanished from human ken about midday, and no living witness can tell what he did until about half-past two.

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.

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.

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.

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

This is day one of year one of the new epoch—the Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am Invisible Man the First.

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 drew clumsily and fired absurdly, and in another moment he was struck in the mouth and the revolver wrested from his grip.

"What am I to do?" he said sullenly.

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.

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.

The pistol snapped its penultimate shot and ripped a valuable Sidney Cooper.

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

He vanished behind a laburnum, and appeared again clambering over a fence that abutted on the open down.

At that Mr. Heelas fled precipitately upstairs, and the rest of the chase is beyond his purview.

At that Mr. Heelas fled precipitately upstairs, and the rest of the chase is beyond his purview.

"Get back, you fools!" cried the muffled voice of Kemp, and there was a vigorous shoving back of stalwart forms.

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 landlord is a short and corpulent little man with a nose of cylindrical proportions, wiry hair, and a sporadic rosiness of visage.

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

He conducts his house without enterprise, but with eminent decorum.

He conducts his house without enterprise, but with eminent decorum.

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.

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.