But it was the best part of two hours10 before any human being ventured out again into the desolation of Iping Street.

When the dusk was gathering, and Iping was just beginning to peep timorously forth again upon the shattered wreckage of its Bank Holiday,1 a short, thickset man in a shabby silk hat was marching painfully through the twilight behind the beechwoods on the road to Bramblehurst. He carried three books, bound together by some sort of ornamental elastic ligature, and a bundle wrapped in a blue tablecloth. His rubicund face expressed consternation and fatigue, he appeared to be in a spasmodic sort of hurry. He was accompanied by a Voice other than his own, and ever and again he winced under the touch of unseen hands.

“Jf you give me the slip2 again,” said the Voice; “if you attempt to give me the slip again—”

“Lord!” said Mr. Marvel. “That shoulder’s a mass of bruises as it is.”

“On my honour,” said the Voice, “I will kill you.”

“I didn’t try to give you the slip,” said Marvel, in a voice that was not far remote from tears. “I swear I didn’t. I didn’t know the blessed turning, that was all! How the devil was I to know the blessed turning? As it is, I’ve been knocked about—”

“You’ll get knocked about a great deal more if you don’t mind,”3 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.4 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 slackened.

“Go on,” said the Voice.

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

“Don’t drop those books, stupid!” said the Voice sharply.

“The fact is,” said the Voice, “I shall have 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,”5 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?”6 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 this 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.

Ten o’clock the next morning found Mr. Marvel, unshaven, dirty and travel–stained, sitting with 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)1 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 ex–traordinary 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. “Ostria2 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?”3

“Everything,” said the mariner controlling Marvel with his eye, and then amplifying, “every—blessed— thing.”