CHAPTER XX. AT THE HOUSE IN GREAT PORTLAND STREET

by H. G. Wells

For a moment, Kemp sat in silence, staring at the headless figure at the window. Then a thought struck him. He jumped up, took the Invisible Man’s arm, and turned him away from the view.

“You look tired,” he said. “While I sit, you should take a break. Here, have my chair.”

Kemp positioned himself between Griffin and the nearest window.

Griffin sat in silence for a while before abruptly continuing, “I had already left the cottage in Chesilstowe when that happened. It was last December. I had rented a large, unfurnished room in a poorly managed boarding house in a slum near Great Portland Street. The room quickly filled with the equipment I had bought with his money; my work was progressing steadily, nearing completion. I felt like someone stumbling out of a dense thicket and suddenly encountering a meaningless tragedy. I went to bury him, but my mind was still consumed by my research, and I didn’t lift a finger to protect his reputation.

I remember the funeral—the cheap hearse, the brief ceremony, the windy, frostbitten hillside, and the old college friend who read the service over him. He was a shabby, bent old man with a sniffly cold.

I recall walking back to the empty house, through what had once been a village, now patched together by careless builders into a grim imitation of a town. Every road eventually led to desecrated fields, ending in rubble heaps and rank, wet weeds. I remember myself as a gaunt, black figure, trudging along the slick pavement, feeling a strange sense of detachment from the squalid respectability and sordid commercialism surrounding me.

I didn’t feel any sorrow for my father. To me, he was a victim of his own foolish sentimentality. The social expectations demanded my presence at his funeral, but it truly wasn’t my affair.

As I walked along the High Street, my old life briefly returned to me when I encountered a girl I had known ten years ago. Our eyes met.

Something compelled me to turn back and speak to her. She was just an ordinary person.

Visiting those old places felt like a dream. I didn’t feel lonely then, nor did I sense that I had stepped out of the world into a desolate space. I recognized my lack of sympathy but attributed it to the general emptiness of things. Returning to my room felt like regaining reality. There were the things I knew and loved. The apparatus stood there, the experiments arranged and waiting. Now, there was hardly any challenge left, aside from planning the final details.

“I’ll tell you, Kemp, sooner or later, all the complicated processes. We don’t need to get into that now. For the most part, aside from certain gaps I chose to remember, they’re written in code in those books that tramp has hidden. We need to track him down and retrieve those books. But the essential phase was to place the transparent object, whose refractive index I needed to lower, between two radiating centers of a sort of ethereal vibration. I’ll explain more about that later. No, not those Röntgen vibrations—I’m not sure if my own have even been described. Yet they’re quite obvious. I needed two small dynamos, which I powered with a cheap gas engine. My first experiment involved a piece of white wool fabric. It was the strangest sight to see it flickering softly and white, then watch it fade like a wisp of smoke and disappear.

I could hardly believe I had done it. I reached into the emptiness, and there it was, as solid as ever. I felt it awkwardly and tossed it onto the floor. I had a bit of trouble finding it again.

Then came a curious experience. I heard a meow behind me and turned to see a lean, dirty white cat on the cistern cover outside the window. A thought crossed my mind. ‘Everything’s ready for you,’ I said, and opened the window, calling softly. She came in, purring—the poor thing was starving—and I gave her some milk. All my food was in a cupboard in the corner of the room. After that, she began to explore, clearly trying to make herself at home. The invisible rag startled her a bit; you should have seen her hiss at it! But I made her comfortable on the pillow of my truckle bed and gave her some butter to encourage her to clean herself.

“And you processed her?”

“I did. But giving drugs to a cat is no easy task, Kemp! And the process failed.”

“Failed?”

“In two ways. The claws and the pigment stuff—what is it?—at the back of a cat’s eye. You know?”

“Tapetum.”

“Yes, the tapetum. That didn’t work. After I’d used the stuff to bleach the blood and done some other things to her, I gave the poor creature opium and placed her, along with the pillow she was sleeping on, on the apparatus. After everything else had faded and vanished, only two little ghosts of her eyes remained.”

“Odd!”

“I can’t really explain it. She was all bandaged and secured, so I thought she was safe. But then she woke up, still a bit dazed, and started meowing sadly. Just then, there was a knock at the door. It was an old woman from downstairs, someone who suspected I was up to no good—an alcoholic, really, with only a white cat to keep her company. I quickly grabbed some chloroform, used it, and answered the door.

‘Did I hear a cat?’ she asked. ‘My cat?’

‘Not here,’ I replied, trying to sound polite. She looked a bit unsure and tried to peek past me into the room. It must have seemed strange to her—bare walls, no curtains, a small bed, the gas engine humming away, and that faint, eerie smell of chloroform hanging in the air. Eventually, she seemed satisfied and left.”

“How long did it take?” Kemp asked.

“Three or four hours for the cat. The bones, sinews, and fat were the last to go, along with the tips of its colored fur. And, as I mentioned, the back part of the eye—it's tough, iridescent stuff—wouldn’t dissolve at all.

By the time I finished, it was night outside, and all I could see were the dim eyes and claws. I turned off the gas engine, reached out to stroke the cat, which was still unconscious, then, feeling exhausted, I left it resting on the invisible pillow and went to bed. But I found it hard to sleep. I lay awake, my mind wandering aimlessly, replaying the experiment over and over, or dreaming feverishly of things fading away around me until everything—the ground beneath me—vanished, leading me into that sickening nightmare we all dread.

Around two in the morning, the cat started meowing around the room. I tried to calm it down by talking to it, but eventually decided to let it out. I remember the shock I felt when I turned on the light—there were just those round eyes shining green, with nothing else around them. I would have given it some milk, but I didn’t have any. It wouldn’t stop making noise; it just sat there, meowing at the door. I tried to catch it, thinking I could toss it out the window, but it slipped away. Then it started meowing from different spots in the room. Finally, I opened the window and made some noise. I suppose it eventually went out. I never saw it again.

Then, for reasons I can’t explain, I started thinking about my father’s funeral again, the gloomy, windy hillside, until the day finally came. I realized that sleeping was pointless, so I locked my door and wandered out into the morning streets.”

“You can’t be serious—there’s an invisible cat roaming around?” Kemp exclaimed.

“If it hasn’t been caught or killed,” the Invisible Man replied. “Why not?”

“Why not?” Kemp echoed. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“It’s very likely it’s been killed,” the Invisible Man continued. “I know it was alive four days later, down a grate on Great Titchfield Street, because I saw a crowd gathered, trying to figure out where the meowing was coming from.”

He fell silent for a moment, then abruptly continued.

“I remember that morning before everything changed very clearly. I must have walked up Great Portland Street. I recall the barracks on Albany Street and the cavalry soldiers coming out. Eventually, I reached the top of Primrose Hill. It was a sunny day in January—one of those bright, frosty days that came before the snow this year. My tired mind tried to make sense of everything, to devise a plan.

I was surprised to find that now that my goal was within reach, it felt so inconclusive. Honestly, I was worn out; the intense pressure of nearly four years of continuous work had left me devoid of any strong feelings. I felt apathetic, struggling to regain the enthusiasm of my early inquiries, the passion for discovery that had even led to the downfall of my father's gray hairs. Nothing seemed to matter. I recognized that this was just a temporary mood, a result of overwork and lack of sleep, and that with either rest or medication, I could regain my energy.

All I could think clearly about was that I had to see this through; that fixed idea still consumed me. And soon, my money was almost gone. I looked around at the hillside, where children were playing and girls were watching them, and tried to imagine all the incredible advantages an invisible man would have in the world. Eventually, I crawled home, grabbed some food, took a strong dose of strychnine, and collapsed onto my unmade bed, still in my clothes. Strychnine is a fantastic tonic, Kemp, perfect for shaking off lethargy.”

“It’s dangerous,” Kemp replied. “It’s like drinking the essence of the Stone Age.”

“I woke up feeling incredibly energized but a bit irritable. You know how it is?”

“I know that feeling,” Kemp said.

There was a knock at the door. It was my landlord, an old Polish Jew in a long gray coat and greasy slippers, demanding answers and threatening me. He was convinced I had been tormenting a cat during the night—no doubt fueled by the gossip of the old woman downstairs. He insisted on knowing everything. The laws against vivisection in this country were strict, and he could be held responsible. I denied any wrongdoing regarding the cat.

Then he mentioned the vibrations from my little gas engine, which were indeed felt throughout the house. He edged past me into the room, peering over his German-silver spectacles, and a wave of dread washed over me. What if he discovered my secret? I positioned myself between him and the apparatus I had set up, which only made him more curious. What was I doing? Why was I always alone and so secretive? Was it legal? Was it dangerous? I paid my rent on time, but he had always prided himself on running a respectable house in a disreputable neighborhood.

Suddenly, I lost my temper. “Get out!” I shouted. He started to protest, rambling about his right to enter. In a moment of frustration, I grabbed him by the collar. Something ripped, and he stumbled backward into his own passage. I slammed the door and locked it, my hands shaking.

He made a fuss outside, but I ignored him, and eventually, he left.

But this situation pushed me to a breaking point. I had no idea what he might do next or what power he held over me. Moving to a new place would mean delays, and I barely had twenty pounds left to my name, most of it in the bank—I couldn’t afford to relocate. Disappearing was tempting, but that would only lead to inquiries and the risk of my room being searched.

The thought of my work being exposed or interrupted at such a critical moment filled me with anger and urgency. I hurried out with my three notebooks and my checkbook—the tramp has them now—and sent them from the nearest post office to a parcel collection point in Great Portland Street. I tried to leave quietly. When I returned, I found my landlord quietly heading upstairs, likely having heard the door close. You would have laughed to see him jump aside as I rushed past him. He glared at me, and I made sure to slam my door hard enough to rattle the house. I heard him shuffle up to my floor, hesitate, and then retreat downstairs. I immediately got to work on my preparations.

I finished everything that evening and into the night. As I sat there, still under the sickly, drowsy influence of the drugs that decolorized blood, there came a series of knocks at the door. They stopped, footsteps faded away, then returned, and the knocking resumed. Someone tried to slide a blue paper under the door. Frustrated, I got up and flung the door open. “What now?” I demanded.

It was my landlord, holding a notice of eviction or something similar. He extended it toward me, but when he noticed something strange about my hands, his gaze shot up to my face.

For a moment, he stared, then let out a strangled cry, dropped the candle and the notice, and stumbled down the dark hallway toward the stairs. I shut the door, locked it, and went to the mirror. That’s when I understood his fear. My face was pale—like white stone.

But the horror didn’t end there. I hadn’t anticipated the suffering that would follow. I spent the night wracked with pain, sickness, and fainting spells. I gritted my teeth, even as my skin felt like it was on fire. I lay there, still as death. I finally understood why the cat had howled before I chloroformed it. It was fortunate I lived alone, without anyone to care for me. There were moments when I sobbed, groaned, and talked to myself, but I held on.

Eventually, I lost consciousness and awoke, languid in the darkness.

The pain had subsided. I thought I was killing myself, but I didn’t care. I’ll never forget that dawn, the strange horror of seeing my hands become like clouded glass, then gradually grow clearer and thinner as the day wore on. I could see the disarray of my room through them, even with my eyelids closed. My limbs turned glassy, the bones and arteries faded away, and finally, the little white nerves vanished. I gritted my teeth and stayed there until the end. At last, only the dead tips of my fingernails remained, pale and white, with a brown stain from some acid on my fingers.

I struggled to my feet. At first, I felt as helpless as a swaddled infant, stepping gingerly with limbs I could barely see. I was weak and incredibly hungry. I stared at nothing in the mirror, only catching a glimpse of the faint pigment that lingered behind my retinas, fainter than mist. I had to cling to the table and press my forehead against the glass.

It was only through sheer willpower that I dragged myself back to the apparatus and completed the process.

I slept through the morning, pulling the sheet over my eyes to block out the light. Around midday, a series of knocks woke me up. My strength had returned. I sat up, listened carefully, and heard whispers. I jumped to my feet and, as quietly as I could, started disconnecting my equipment, scattering it around the room to hide its arrangement.

The knocking resumed, accompanied by voices—first my landlord’s, then two others. To buy myself some time, I responded. I grabbed a rag and a pillow, opened the window, and tossed them onto the cistern cover. Just as I did, a loud crash echoed through the door. Someone had charged at it, trying to break the lock. Thankfully, the sturdy bolts I had secured days earlier held firm. The noise startled me, igniting a wave of anger. I began to tremble and rushed to act.

I quickly gathered some loose papers, straw, packing material, and piled them in the middle of the room before turning on the gas. Heavy knocks pounded against the door. I fumbled around, unable to find the matches, and in my frustration, I slammed my hands against the wall. I turned the gas off again, slipped out the window onto the cistern cover, quietly lowered the sash, and sat down, hidden but shaking with anger, ready to watch what unfolded.

I saw them split a panel, and moments later, they broke the bolts and burst into the room. It was my landlord and his two sons, sturdy young men in their twenties. Behind them, the old woman from downstairs hovered, her eyes darting around.

You can imagine their shock when they found the room empty. One of the younger men rushed to the window, flung it open, and leaned out. His surprised face was just inches from mine. I almost hit him, but I stopped myself. He stared right through me, as did the others when they joined him. The old man crouched down to look under the bed, and then they all rushed to the cupboard. They debated in a mix of Yiddish and Cockney English, concluding that I hadn’t answered them and that their imaginations had played tricks on them. As I sat outside the window, a wave of exhilaration replaced my anger, watching these four people—especially the old lady, who crept in, glancing around like a suspicious cat, trying to figure out my strange behavior.

From what I gathered of the old man’s thick accent, he and the old lady believed I was a vivisectionist. The sons insisted, in broken English, that I was an electrician, pointing to the dynamos and radiators. They were all on edge about my presence, even though I later learned they had bolted the front door. The old lady peered into the cupboard and under the bed, while one of the young men pushed up the register and looked up the chimney. One of my fellow lodgers, a costermonger who shared the opposite room with a butcher, appeared on the landing. They called him in and started sharing their confused theories.

I realized that if someone clever got hold of my radiators, they could expose me. Seizing my chance, I slipped back into the room, tipped one of the small dynamos off its perch, and smashed both pieces of equipment. While they were busy trying to make sense of the wreckage, I quietly slipped out of the room and made my way downstairs.

I entered one of the sitting rooms and waited for them to come down, still speculating and arguing, a bit disappointed at not finding any “horrors,” and unsure of their legal standing regarding me. Then I crept back upstairs with a box of matches, ignited my pile of paper and debris, and used chairs and bedding to fuel the flames. I connected the gas to the fire using a rubber tube, and with a final wave to the room, I left it for the last time.

“You set the house on fire!” exclaimed Kemp.

“Set it on fire. It was the only way to cover my tracks—and it was probably insured. I quietly unlatched the front door and stepped out into the street. I was invisible, and I was just starting to grasp the incredible freedom my invisibility granted me. My mind buzzed with plans for all the wild and wonderful things I could now do without fear of being caught.”