So it was that on the ninth day of February this singular person fell out of infinity into Iping Village. Next day his luggage arrived through the melting snow. And very extraordinary luggage it was. There were a couple of large bags, such as a rational man might need, but in addition there were a box of books, - big, fat books, of which some were in an incomprehensible handwriting, - and a dozen or more boxes, and cases, containing objects packed in straw, - glass bottles, it seemed to Hall, pulling with a casual curiosity at the straw . The stranger, covered in hat, coat, gloves, and scarf, came out impatiently to meet Fearenside's cart, while Hall was having a word or two of gossip before helping bring them in. Out he came, not noticing Fearenside's dog, who was sniffing at Hall's legs. "Come along with those boxes," he said. "I've been waiting long enough."
And he came down the steps towards the tail of the cart as if to pick up the smaller box.
No sooner had Fearenside's dog caught sight of him, however, than it began to growl savagely, and when he came down the steps it jumped straight at his hand. "Whup!" cried Hall, jumping back, for he was no hero with dogs, and Fearenside shouted, "Lie down!" and picked up his whip.
They saw the dog's teeth had missed the hand, heard a kick, saw the dog jump to one side and bite the stranger's leg, and heard the sound of his trousers tearing. Then Fearenside's whip reached the dog, and yelping, it ran and hid under the wheels of the waggon. It was all over in a half-minute. No one spoke, everyone shouted. The stranger looked quickly at his torn glove and at his leg, then turned and rushed up the steps into the inn. They heard him run across the passage and up the stairs to his bedroom.
"You brute, you!" said Fearenside, climbing off the waggon with his whip in his hand, while the dog watched him through the wheel. "Come here!" said Fearenside - "You'd better."
Hall had stood with his mouth open. "He was bitten," said Hall. "I'd better go and see to him," and he went quickly after the stranger. He met Mrs. Hall in the passage. "Carrier's dog," he said, "bit him."
He went straight upstairs, and the stranger's door not being closed, he pushed it open and was entering without any ceremony, being of a naturally sympathetic nature.
The blind was down and the room dark. He briefly saw a most strange thing, what seemed a handless arm moving towards him, and a face of three enourmous indeterminate spots on white, like the face of a pale flower. Then he was hit violently in the chest, thrown back, and the door slammed shut in his face and locked, all so rapidly that he had no time to observe. A movement of indecipherable shapes, a blow, and a concussion. There he stood in the dark little hall, wondering what he had seen.
After a couple of minutes he rejoined the little group that had formed outside the Coach and Horses. There was Fearenside telling about it all over again for the second time; there was Mrs. Hall saying his dog shouldn't bite her guests; there was Huxter, the shopkeeper from over the road, interrogative; and Sandy Wadgers from the forge, judicial; as well as women and children, - all of them saying things like: "I wouldn't let it bite me, I know"; "'It isn't right to have dogs like that"; "Why did it bite him then?" and so on.
Mr. Hall, looking at them from the steps and listening, found it incredible that he had seen anything very strange happen upstairs. Any way, his vocabulary was too limited to express his impressions.
"He doesn't want any help, he says," he said in answer to his wife's question. "We'd better take the luggage in."
"He ought to have it cauterised immediately," said Mr. Huxter; "especially if it's at all inflamed."
"I'd shoot it, that's what I'd do," said a lady in the group.
Suddenly the dog began growling again.
"Come along," shouted an angry voice in the doorway, and there stood the stranger with his collar turned up, and his hat turned down. "The sooner you get those things in the happier I'll be." Some people later said that his trousers and gloves had been changed.
"Were you hurt, sir?" said Fearenside. "I'm really sorry about the dog - "
"Not a bit," said the stranger. "Never broke the skin. Hurry up with those things."
A soon as the first box was carried into the lounge, following his directions, the stranger jumped upon it with extraordinary enthusiasm, and began to unpack it, throwing out the straw without worrying about Mrs. Hall's carpet. And from it he began to produce bottles - little fat bottles containing powders, small and thin bottles containing coloured and white fluids, blue bottles labelled Poison, bottles with round bodies and thin necks, large green-glass bottles, large white-glass bottles, bottles with glass tops and pale labels, bottles with fine corks, bottles with rubber tops, bottles with wooden caps, wine bottles, salad-oil bottles - putting them in rows on the cupboard, over the fire-place, on the table under the window, round the floor, on the book-shelf - everywhere. The chemist's shop in Bramblehurst hadn't half so many. Quite a sight it was. Box after box produced bottles, until all six were empty and the table high with straw; the only things that came out of these boxes apart from the bottles were a number of test-tubes and a carefully packed balance.
And as soon as the boxes were unpacked, the stranger went to the window and started to work, not worrying in the least about the straw all over the floor, the fire which had gone out, the box of books outside, nor for the bags and other luggage that had gone upstairs.
When Mrs. Hall took his dinner in to him, he was already so absorbed in his work, pouring little drops out of the bottles into test-tubes, that he did not hear her until she had cleaned away most of the straw and put the tray on the table, with little emphasis perhaps, considering the state that the floor was in. Then he half turned his head and immediately turned it away again. But she saw he had taken off his glasses; they were beside him on the table, and it seemed to her that his eye sockets were extraordinarily empty. He put on his glasses again, and then turned and faced her. She was about to complain of the straw on the floor when he anticipated her.
"I wish you wouldn't come in without knocking," he said in the tone of abnormal exasperation that seemed so characteristic of him.
"I knocked, but apparently - "
"Perhaps you did. But in my investigations - my really very urgent and necessary investigations - the smallest disturbance, the opening of a door - I must ask you - "
"Certainly, sir. You can turn the lock if you're like that, you know - any time."
"A very good idea," said the stranger.
"This straw, sir, if I might say - "
"Don't. If the straw causes problems put it on the bill." And he spoke indistinctly at her - words suspiciously like curses.
He was so strange, standing there, so aggressive and explosive, bottle in one hand and test-tube in the other, that Mrs. Hall was quite alarmed. But she was a resolute woman. "In which case, I should like to know, sir, what you consider - "
"A shilling. Put down a shilling. Surely a shilling's enough?"
"So be it," said Mrs. Hall, picking up the tablecloth and beginning to put it over the table. "If you're satisfied, of course - "
He turned and sat down, with his coat-collar towards her.
All the afternoon he worked with the door locked and, as Mrs. Hall testifies, for the most part in silence. But once there was a concussion and a sound of bottles ringing together as if the table had been hit, and the smash of a bottle thrown violently down, and then a rapid pacing around the room. Fearing "something was the matter," she went to the door and listened, not wanting to knock.
"I can't go on," he was shouting. "I can't go on. Three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand! The huge multitude! Cheated! All my life it may take me! Patience! Patience indeed! Fool and liar!"
There was a noise of boots on the bricks in the bar, and Mrs. Hall very reluctantly had to leave the rest of his soliloquy. When she returned the room was silent again, except for the creaking of his chair and the occasional sound of a bottle. It was all over. The stranger had resumed work.
When she took in his tea she saw broken glass in the corner of the room under the mirror, and a golden stain that had been carelessly cleaned. She called attention to it.
"Put it on the bill," said her visitor. "For God's sake don't worry me. If there's damage done, put it down on the bill"; and he went on ticking a list in the exercise book in front of him.
"I'll tell you something," said Fearenside mysteriously. It was late in the afternoon, and they were in the little beer-shop of Iping Hanger.
"Well?" said Teddy Henfrey.
"This man you're speaking of, who my dog bit. Well - he's black. At least, his legs are. I saw through the hole in his glove. You'd have expected to see a sort of pink colour, wouldn't you? Well - there wasn't anything. Just blackness. I tell you, he's as black as my hat."
"My sakes!" said Henfrey. "It's a strange case altogether. Why, his nose is as pink as paint!"
"That's true," said Fearenside. "I know that. And I'll tell you what I'm thinking. That man's a piebald, Teddy. Black here and white there - in patches. And he's ashamed of it. He's a kind of half-breed, and the colour's come out patchy instead of mixing. I've heard of such things before. And it's the common way with horses, as anyone can see."