The Best Science Fiction Stories of H G Wells

by H. G. Wells

  “You’ll get knocked about a great deal more if you don’t mind,” said the Voice, and Mr. Marvel abruptly became silent. He blew out his cheeks, and his eyes were eloquent of despair.

  “It’s bad enough to let these floundering yokels explode my little secret, without your cutting off with my books. It’s lucky for some of them they cut and ran when they did! Here am I—No one knew I was invisible! And now what am I to do?”

  “What am I to do?” asked Marvel, sotto voce.

  “It’s all about. It will be in the papers! Everybody will be looking for me; every one on their guard—” The Voice broke off into vivid curses and ceased.

  The despair of Mr. Marvel’s face deepened, and his pace slacked.

  “Go on!” said the Voice.

  Mr. Marvel’s face assumed a greyish tint between the ruddier patches.

  “Don’t drop those books, stupid,” said the Voice, sharply—overtaking him.

  “The fact is,” said the Voice, “I shall have but to make use of you. You’re a poor tool, but I must.”

  “I’m a miserable tool,” said Marvel.

  “You are,” said the Voice.

  “I’m the worst possible tool you could have,” said Marvel.

  “I’m not strong,” he said after a discouraging silence.

  “I’m not over strong,” he repeated.

  “No?”

  “And my heart’s weak. That little business—I pulled it through, of course—but bless you! I could have dropped.”

  “Well?”

  “I haven’t the nerve and strength for the sort of thing you want.”

  “I’ll stimulate you.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t like to mess up your plans, you know. But I might,—out of sheer funk and misery.”

  “You’d better not,” said the Voice, with quiet emphasis.

  “I wish I was dead,” said Marvel.

  “It ain’t justice,” he said; “you must admit—It seems to me I’ve a perfect right—”

  “Get on!” said the Voice.

  Mr. Marvel mended his pace, and for a time they went in silence again.

  “It’s devilish hard,” said Mr. Marvel.

  This was quite ineffectual. He tried another tack.

  “What do I make by it?” he began again in a tone of unendurable wrong.

  “Oh! shut up!” said the Voice, with sudden amazing vigour. “I’ll see to you all right. You do what you’re told. You’ll do it all right. You’re a fool and all that, but you’ll do—”

  “I tell you, sir, I’m not the man for it. Respectfully—but it is so—”

  “If you don’t shut up I shall twist your wrist again,” said the Invisible Man. “I want to think.”

  Presently two oblongs of yellow light appeared through the trees, and the square tower of a church loomed through the gloaming. “I shall keep my hand on your shoulder,” said the Voice, “all through the village. Go straight through and try no foolery. It will be the worse for you if you do.”

  “I know that,” sighed Mr. Marvel, “I know all that.”

  The unhappy-looking figure in the obsolete silk hat passed up the street of the little village with his burdens, and vanished into the gathering darkness beyond the lights of the windows.

  XIV. AT PORT STOWE

  Ten o’clock the next morning found Mr. Marvel, unshaven, dirty, and travel-stained, sitting with the books beside him and his hands deep in his pockets, looking very weary, nervous, and uncomfortable, and inflating his cheeks at frequent intervals, on the bench outside a little inn on the outskirts of Port Stowe. Beside him were the books, but now they were tied with string. The bundle had been abandoned in the pinewoods beyond Bramblehurst, in accordance with a change in the plans of the Invisible Man. Mr. Marvel sat on the bench, and although no one took the slightest notice of him, his agitation remained at fever heat. His hands would go ever and again to his various pockets with a curious nervous fumbling.

  When he had been sitting for the best part of an hour, however, an elderly mariner, carrying a newspaper, came out of the inn and sat down beside him. “Pleasant day,” said the mariner.

  Mr. Marvel glanced about him with something very like terror. “Very,” he said.

  “Just seasonable weather for the time of year,” said the Mariner, taking no denial.

  “Quite,” said Mr. Marvel.

  The mariner produced a toothpick, and (saving his regard) was engrossed thereby for some minutes. His eyes meanwhile were at liberty to examine Mr. Marvel’s dusty figure, and the books beside him. As he had approached Mr. Marvel he had heard a sound like the dropping of coins into a pocket. He was struck by the contrast of Mr. Marvel’s appearance with this suggestion of opulence. Thence his mind wandered back again to a topic that had taken a curiously firm hold of his imagination.

  “Books?” he said suddenly, noisily finishing with the toothpick.

  Mr. Marvel started and looked at them. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, they’re books.”

  “There’s some extra-ordinary things in books,” said the mariner.

  “I believe you,” said Mr. Marvel.

  “And some extra-ordinary things out of ’em,” said the mariner.

  “True likewise,” said Mr. Marvel. He eyed his interlocutor, and then glanced about him.

  “There’s some extra-ordinary things in newspapers, for example,” said the mariner.

  “There are.”

  “In this newspaper,” said the mariner.

  “Ah!” said Mr. Marvel.

  “There’s a story,” said the mariner, fixing Mr. Marvel with an eye that was firm and deliberate; “there’s a story about an Invisible Man, for instance.”

  Mr. Marvel pulled his mouth askew and scratched his cheek and felt his ears glowing. “What will they be writing next?” he asked faintly. “Ostria, or America?”

  “Neither,” said the mariner. “Here!”

  “Lord!” said Mr. Marvel, starting.

  “When I say here,” said the mariner, to Mr. Marvel’s intense relief, “I don’t of course mean here in this place, I mean hereabouts.”

  “An Invisible Man!” said Mr. Marvel. “And what’s he been up to?”

  “Everything,” said the mariner, controlling Marvel with his eye, and then amplifying: “Every Blessed Thing.”

  “I ain’t seen a paper these four days,” said Marvel.

  “Iping’s the place he started at,” said the mariner.

  “In-deed!” said Mr. Marvel.

  “He started there. And where he came from, nobody don’t seem to know. Here it is: Pe Culiar Story from Iping. And it says in this paper that the evidence is extra-ordinary strong—extra-ordinary.”

  “Lord!” said Mr. Marvel.

  “But then, it’s a extra-ordinary story. There is a clergyman and a medical gent witnesses,—saw ’im all right and proper—or least-ways didn’t see ’im. He was staying, it says, at the Coach an’ Horses, and no one don’t seem to have been aware of his misfortune, it says, aware of his misfortune, until in an Altercation in the inn, it says, his bandages on his head was torn off. It was then ob-served that his head was invisible. Attempts were At Once made to secure him, but casting off his garments it says, he succeeded in escaping, but not until after a desperate struggle, In Which he had inflicted serious injuries, it says, on our worthy and able constable, Mr. J. A. Jaffers. Pretty straight story, eigh? Names and everything.”

  “Lord!” said Mr. Marvel, looking nervously about him, trying to count the money in his pockets by his unaided sense of touch, and full of a strange and novel idea. “It sounds most astonishing.”

  “Don’t it? Extra-ordinary, I call it. Never heard tell of Invisible Men before, I haven’t, but nowadays one hears such a lot of extra-ordinary things—that—”

  “That all he did?” asked Marvel, trying to seem at his ease.

  “It’s enough, ain’t it?” said the Mariner.

  “Didn’t go Back by any chance?” asked Mar
vel. “Just escaped and that’s all, eh?”

  “All!” said the Mariner. “Why!—ain’t it enough?”

  “Quite enough,” said Marvel.

  “I should think it was enough,” said the Mariner. “I should think it was enough.”

  “He didn’t have any pals—it don’t say he had any pals, does it?” asked Mr. Marvel, anxious.

  “Ain’t one of a sort enough for you?” asked the Mariner. “No, thank Heaven, as one might say, he didn’t.”

  He nodded his head slowly. “It makes me regular uncomfortable, the bare thought of that chap running about the country! He is at present At Large, and from certain evidence it is supposed that he has—taken—took, I suppose they mean—the road to Port Stowe. You see we’re right in it! None of your American wonders, this time. And just think of the things he might do! Where’d you be, if he took a drop over and above, and had a fancy to go for you? Suppose he wants to rob—who can prevent him? He can trespass, he can burgle, he could walk through a cordon of policemen as easy as me or you could give the slip to a blind man! Easier! For these here blind chaps hear uncommon sharp, I’m told. And where-ever there was liquor he fancied—”

  “He’s got a tremenjous advantage, certainly,” said Mr. Marvel. “And—well.”

  “You’re right,” said the Mariner. “He has.”

  All this time Mr. Marvel had been glancing about him intently, listening for faint footfalls, trying to detect imperceptible movements. He seemed on the point of some great resolution. He coughed behind his hand.

  He looked about him again, listened, bent towards the Mariner, and lowered his voice: “The fact of it is—I happen—to know just a thing or two about this Invisible Man. From private sources.”

  “Oh!” said the Mariner, interested. “You?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Marvel. “Me.”

  “Indeed!” said the Mariner. “And may I ask—”

  “You’ll be astonished,” said Mr. Marvel behind his hand. “It’s tremenjous.”

  “Indeed!” said the Mariner.

  “The fact is,” began Mr. Marvel eagerly in a confidential undertone. Suddenly his expression changed marvellously. “Ow!” he said. He rose stiffly in his seat. His face was eloquent of physical suffering. “Wow!” he said.

  “What’s up?” said the Mariner, concerned.

  “Toothache,” said Mr. Marvel, and put his hand to his ear. He caught hold of his books. “I must be getting on, I think,” he said. He edged in a curious way along the seat away from his interlocutor. “But you was just agoing to tell me about this here Invisible Man!” protested the Mariner. Mr. Marvel seemed to consult with himself. “Hoax,” said a voice. “It’s a hoax,” said Mr. Marvel.

  “But it’s in the paper,” said the Mariner.

  “Hoax all the same,” said Marvel. “I know the chap that started the lie. There ain’t no Invisible Man whatsoever—Blimey.”

  “But how ’bout this paper? D’you mean to say—?”

  “Not a word of it,” said Marvel, stoutly.

  The Mariner stared, paper in hand. Mr. Marvel jerkily faced about. “Wait a bit,” said the Mariner, rising and speaking slowly. “D’you mean to say—?”

  “I do,” said Mr. Marvel.

  “Then why did you let me go on and tell you all this blarsted stuff, then? What d’yer mean by letting a man make a fool of himself like that for? Eigh?”

  Mr. Marvel blew out his cheeks. The Mariner was suddenly very red indeed; he clenched his hands. “I been talking here this ten minutes,” he said; “and you, you little pot-bellied, leathery-faced son of an old boot, couldn’t have the elementary manners—”

  “Don’t you come bandying words with me,” said Mr. Marvel.

  “Bandying words! I’m a jolly good mind—”

  “Come up,” said a voice, and Mr. Marvel was suddenly whirled about and started marching off in a curious spasmodic manner. “You’d better move on,” said the Mariner. “Who’s moving on?” said Mr. Marvel. He was receding obliquely with a curious hurrying gait, with occasional violent jerks forward. Some way along the road he began a muttered monologue, protests and recriminations.

  “Silly devil!” said the Mariner, legs wide apart, elbows akimbo, watching the receding figure. “I’ll show you, you silly ass,—hoaxing me! It’s here—on the paper!”

  Mr. Marvel retorted incoherently and, receding, was hidden by a bend in the road, but the Mariner still stood magnificent in the midst of the way, until the approach of a butcher’s cart dislodged him. Then he turned himself towards Port Stowe. “Full of extra-ordinary asses,” he said softly to himself. “Just to take me down a bit—that was his silly game—It’s on the paper!”

  And there was another extra-ordinary thing he was presently to hear, that had happened quite close to him. And that was a vision of a “fist full of money” (no less) travelling without visible agency, along by the wall at the corner of St. Michael’s Lane. A brother mariner had seen this wonderful sight that very morning. He had snatched at the money forthwith and had been knocked headlong, and when he had got to his feet the butterfly money had vanished. Our mariner was in a mood to believe anything, he declared, but that was a bit too stiff. Afterwards, however, he began to think things over.

  The story of the flying money was true. And all about that neighbourhood, even from the august London and Country Banking Company, from the tills of shops and inns—doors standing that sunny weather entirely open—money had been quietly and dexterously making off that day in handfuls and rouleaux, floating quietly along by walls and shady places, dodging quickly from the approaching eyes of men. And it had, though no man had traced it, invariably ended its mysterious flight in the pocket of that agitated gentleman in the obsolete silk hat, sitting outside the little inn on the outskirts of Port Stowe.

  XV. THE MAN WHO WAS RUNNING

  In the early evening time Doctor Kemp was sitting in his study in the belvedere on the hill overlooking Burdock. It was a pleasant little room, with three windows, north, west, and south, and bookshelves covered with books and scientific publications, and a broad writing-table, and, under the north window, a microscope, glass slips, minute instruments, some cultures, and scattered bottles of reagents. Doctor Kemp’s solar lamp was lit, albeit the sky was still bright with the sunset light, and his blinds were up because there was no offence of peering outsiders to require them pulled down. Doctor Kemp was a tall and slender young man, with flaxen hair and a moustache almost white, and the work he was upon would earn him, he hoped, the fellowship of the Royal Society, so highly did he think of it.

  And his eye presently wandering from his work caught the sunset blazing at the back of the hill that is over against his own. For a minute perhaps he sat, pen in mouth, admiring the rich golden colour above the crest, and then his attention was attracted by the little figure of a man, inky black, running over the hill-brow towards him. He was a shortish little man, and he wore a high hat, and he was running so fast that his legs verily twinkled.

  “Another of those fools,” said Doctor Kemp. “Like that ass who ran into me this morning round a corner, with his ‘ ’Visible Man a-coming, sir!’ I can’t imagine what possesses people. One might think we were in the thirteenth century.”

  He got up, went to the window, and stared at the dusky hillside, and the dark little figure tearing down it. “He seems in a confounded hurry,” said Doctor Kemp, “but he doesn’t seem to be getting on. If his pockets were full of lead, he couldn’t run heavier.

  “Spurted, sir,” said Doctor Kemp.

  In another moment the higher of the villas that had clambered up the hill from Burdock had occulted the running figure. He was visible again for a moment, and again, and then again, three times between the three detached houses that came next, and the terrace hid him.

  “Asses!” said Doctor Kemp, swinging round on his heel and walking back to his writing-table.

  But those who saw the fugitive nearer, and perceived the abject terror on his pe
rspiring face, being themselves in the open roadway, did not share in the doctor’s contempt. By the man pounded, and as he ran he chinked like a well-filled purse that is tossed to and fro. He looked neither to the right nor the left, but his dilated eyes stared straight downhill to where the lamps were being lit, and the people were crowded in the street. And his ill-shaped mouth fell apart, and a glairy foam lay on his lips, and his breath came hoarse and noisy. All he passed stopped and began staring up the road and down, and interrogating one another with an inkling of discomfort for the reason of his haste.

  And then presently, far up the hill, a dog playing in the road yelped and ran under a gate, and as they still wondered something,—a wind—a pad, pad, pad,—a sound like a panting breathing,—rushed by.

  People screamed. People sprang off the pavement: It passed in shouts, it passed by instinct down the hill. They were shouting in the street before Marvel was halfway there. They were bolting into houses and slamming the doors behind them, with the news. He heard it and made one last desperate spurt. Fear came striding by, rushed ahead of him, and in a moment had seized the town.

  “The Invisible Man is coming! The Invisible Man!”

  XVI. THE JOLLY CRICKETERS

  The Jolly Cricketers is just at the bottom of the hill, where the tram-lines begin. The barman leant his fat red arms on the counter and talked of horses with an anæmic cabman, while a black-bearded man in grey snapped up biscuit and cheese, drank Burton, and conversed in American with a policeman off duty.

  “What’s the shouting about!” said the anæmic cabman, going off at a tangent, trying to see up the hill over the dirty yellow blind in the low window of the inn. Somebody ran by outside. “Fire, perhaps,” said the barman.

  Footsteps approached, running heavily, the door was pushed open violently, and Marvel, weeping and dishevelled, his hat gone, the neck of his coat torn open, rushed in, made a convulsive turn, and attempted to shut the door. It was held half open by a strap.

  “Coming!” he bawled, his voice shrieking with terror. “He’s coming. The ’Visible Man! After me! For Gawd’s sake! Elp! Elp! Elp!”