The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance Read online

  THE EPILOGUE

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

  "When they found they couldn't prove whose money was which, I'mblessed," he says, "if they didn't try to make me out a bloomingtreasure trove! Do I _look_ like a Treasure Trove? And then agentleman gave me a guinea a night to tell the story at the EmpireMusic '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 manuscriptbooks 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 whenI cut and ran for Port Stowe. It's that Mr. Kemp put people on withthe 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 thereare no women folk in the house. Outwardly he buttons--it isexpected of him--but in his more vital privacies, in the matterof braces for example, he still turns to string. He conducts hishouse without enterprise, but with eminent decorum. His movementsare slow, and he is a great thinker. But he has a reputation forwisdom and for a respectable parsimony in the village, and hisknowledge 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 tingedwith water, and having placed this down, he locks the door andexamines the blinds, and even looks under the table. And then,being satisfied of his solitude, he unlocks the cupboard and a boxin the cupboard and a drawer in that box, and produces threevolumes bound in brown leather, and places them solemnly in themiddle of the table. The covers are weather-worn and tinged with analgal green--for once they sojourned in a ditch and some of thepages have been washed blank by dirty water. The landlord sits downin an armchair, fills a long clay pipe slowly--gloating over thebooks the while. Then he pulls one towards him and opens it, andbegins to study it--turning over the leaves backwards and forwards.

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

  Presently he relaxes and leans back, and blinks through his smokeacross the room at things invisible to other eyes. "Full ofsecrets," 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 hispipe.

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