The stranger went into the little lounge of the Coach and Horses at about half-past five in the morning, and there he stayed until near midday, the blinds down, the door shut, and no-one, after Hall's repulse, venturing near him.
All that time he couldn't have eaten. Three times he rang his bell, the third time furiously and continuously, but no one answered him. "Him and his 'go to the devil'!" said Mrs. Hall. Soon came an rumour of the burglary at the vicarage, and two and two were put together. Hall, accompanied by Wadgers, went off to find Mr. Shuckleforth, the magistrate, and ask for his advice. No one ventured upstairs. How the stranger occupied himself is unknown. Now and then he would walk violently up and down, and twice came swearing, a tearing of paper, and a violent smashing of bottles.
The little group of scared but curious people increased. Mrs. Huxter came over; some young men wearing their best Sunday clothes, as it was Whit-Monday, joined the group with confused interrogations. Young Archie Harker distinguished himself by going and trying to look under the window-blinds. He could see nothing, but let people believe he had, and other young Iping people soon joined him.
It was the finest of all possible Whit-Monday fairs, and down the village street was a row of nearly a dozen stands and a shooting gallery, and on the grass by the forge were three yellow and chocolate waggons and some picturesque strangers of both sexes putting up a coconut shy. The gentlemen wore blue jerseys, the ladies white aprons and quite fashionable hats with heavy feathers. Wodger of the Purple Fawn pub and Mr. Jaggers the shoe-maker, who also sold second-hand bicycles, were hanging a string of union-jack flags and royal ensigns (which had originally celebrated the Jubilee) across the road...
And inside, in the artificial darkness of the lounge, into which only one thin line of sunlight penetrated, the stranger, hungry we must suppose, and fearful, hidden in his uncomfortable hot wrappings, read his papers through his dark glasses or chinked his dirty little bottles, and occasionally swore savagely at the boys, audible but invisible, outside the windows. In the corner by the fireplace lay the fragments of half a dozen smashed bottles, and a strong smell of chlorine filled the air. This much we know from what was heard at the time and from what was subsequently seen in the room.
At about midday he suddenly opened his lounge door and stood angrily staring at the three or four people in the bar. "Mrs. Hall," he said. Somebody went timidly and called for Mrs. Hall.
Mrs. Hall appeared after an interval, a little short of breath, but all the fiercer for that. Hall was still out. She had deliberated over the scene, and she came holding a little tray with an unpaid bill upon it. "Is it your bill you wanted, sir?" she said.
"Why wasn't my breakfast brought? Why haven't you prepared my meals and answered my bell? Do you think I live without eating?"
"Why isn't my bill paid?" said Mrs. Hall. "That's what I want to know."
"I told you three days ago I was waiting for a bank giro - "
"I told you two days ago I wasn't going to await for a bank giro. You can't complain if your breakfast waits a bit, if my bill's been waiting these five days, can you?"
The stranger swore briefly but vividly.
"Now, now!" from the bar.
"And I'd thank you, sir, if you'd keep your swearing to yourself, sir," said Mrs. Hall.
The stranger stood looking more like an angry diving-helmet than ever. It was generally felt in the bar that Mrs. Hall was winning. His next words showed as much.
"Look here, my good woman - " he began.
"Don't good woman me," said Mrs. Hall.
"I've told you my giro hasn't come - "
"Giro indeed!" said Mrs. Hall.
"Still, maybe in my pocket - "
"You told me two days ago that you hadn't anything but a sovereign's worth of silver upon you - "
"Well, I've found some more - "
"'Ul-lo!" from the bar.
"I wonder where you found it!" said Mrs. Hall.
That seemed to annoy the stranger very much. He stamped his foot. "What do you mean?" he said.
"That I wonder where you found it," said Mrs. Hall. "And before I take any bills or get any breakfasts, or do any such things at all, you've got to tell me one or two things I don't understand, and that nobody understands, and what everybody is very anxious to understand. I want to know what you've been doing to my chair upstairs, and I want know how it is your room was empty, and how you got in again. People who stay in this house come in by the doors - that's the rule of the house, and that you didn't do, and what I want know is how you did come in. And I want know - "
Suddenly the stranger raised his gloved hands, stamped his foot, and said, "Stop!" with such extraordinary violence that he silenced her instantly.
"You don't understand," he said, "who I am or what I am. I'll show you. By Heaven! I'll show you." Then he put his open hand over his face and took it away it. The centre of his face became a black hole. "Here," he said. He stepped forward and gave Mrs. Hall something which she, staring at his metamorphosed face, accepted automatically. Then, when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it, and stepped back. The nose - it was the stranger's nose! pink and shining - rolled on the floor.
Then he took off his glasses, and every one in the bar gasped. He took off his hat, and with a violent gesture pulled at his hair and bandages. For a moment they resisted him. A flash of horrible anticipation passed through the bar. "Oh, my God!" said some one. Then off they came.
It was worse than anything. Mrs. Hall, standing open-mouthed and horror-struck, screamed at what she saw, and ran for the door of the house. Every one began to move. They were prepared for scars, disfigurements, tangible horrors, but nothing! The bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a jump to avoid them. Every one fell on every one else down the steps. For the man who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar, and then - nothingness, no visible thing at all!
People down the village heard shouts and screams, and looking up the street saw the Coach and Horses violently throwing out its humanity. They saw Mrs. Hall fall down and Mr. Teddy Henfrey jump to avoid falling over her, and then they heard the terrible screams of Millie, who, appearing suddenly from the kitchen at the noise of the tumult, had come upon the headless stranger from behind.
Immediatley every one all down the street, the sweet seller, coconut stand proprietor and his assistant, the swing man, little boys and girls, rustic dandies, smart wenches, smocked elders and aproned gipsies, began running towards the inn; and in a miraculously short space of time a crowd of perhaps forty people, and rapidly increasing, moved and shouted and asked and exclaimed and suggested, in front of Mrs. Hall's inn. Every one seemed to want to talk at once, and the result was babel. A small group supported Mrs. Hall, who was picked up in a state of collapse. There was a conference, and the incredible evidence of a vociferous eyewitness. "What's he been doing, then?" "Hasn't hurt the girl, has he?" "Run at them with a knife, I believe." "No head, I tell you. It's not a manner speaking, I mean a man without a head!" "Nonsense! it was some magic trick." "Took off his wrappings, he did - "
In its struggles to see in through the open door, the crowd formed itself into a disordered triangle, with the more adventurous apex nearest the inn. "He stood for a moment, I heard the girl scream, and he turned. I saw her skirts fly, and he went after her. Didn't take ten seconds. Back he came with a knife in his hand and a loaf of bread; stood just as if he was staring. Not a moment ago. Went in that door there. I tell you, he hasn't gor a head at all. You just missed him - "
There was a disturbance behind, and the speaker stopped to step to one side for a little procession that was marching very resolutely towards the house - first Mr. Hall, very red and determined, then Mr. Bobby Jaffers, the village police constable, and then the cautious Mr. Wadgers. They had come now armed with a warrant.
People shouted conflicting information of the recent circumstances. "Head or no head," said Jaffers, "I've got to arrest him, and arrest him I will."
Mr. Hall marched up the steps, marched straight to the door of the lounge and threw it open. "Constable," he said, "do your duty."
Jaffers marched in, Hall next, Wadgers last. They saw in the dim light the headless figure facing them, with a half-eaten piece of bread in one gloved hand and a piece of cheese in the other.
"That's him!" said Hall.
"What the devil's this?" came in an angry tone from above the collar of the figure.
"You're a damned strange customer, mister," said Mr. Jaffers. "But head or no head, the warrant says 'body,' and duty's duty - "
"Keep away!" said the figure, stepping back.
Abruptly he put down the bread and cheese, and Mr. Hall just picked up the knife on the table in time to save it. Off came the stranger's left glove and was thrown in Jaffers' face. In another moment Jaffers had taken him by the handless wrist and put his arm round his invisible throat. He got a kick on the leg that made him shout, but he kept his hold. Hall pushed the knife along the table to Wadgers and then stepped forward as Jaffers and the stranger staggered towards him. A chair was in the way, and fell over with a crash as they came down together.
"Get the feet," said Jaffers between his teeth.
Mr. Hall, trying to follow instructions, receiving a hard kick in the chest that put him out of action for a moment, and Mr. Wadgers, seeing the decapitated stranger had rolled over and got on top of Jaffers, retreated towards the door, knife in hand, and so collided with Mr. Huxter and the Siddermorton carter coming to the rescue of law and order. At the same moment down came three or four bottles from the cupboard and acrid smell filled the air of the room.
"I'll surrender," cried the stranger, though he had Jaffers down, and in another moment he stood up breathing heavily, a strange figure, headless and handless - for he had pulled off his right glove now as well as his left. "It's no good," he said, trying to catch his breath.
It was the strangest thing in the world to hear that voice coming out of empty space, but the Sussex peasants are perhaps the most matter-of-fact people under the sun. Jaffers got up also and produced a pair of handcuffs.
"I say!" said Jaffers, suddenly stopped by a vague realisation of the incongruity of the whole thing. "Damn it! Can't use them as I can see."
The stranger moved his arm down his jacket, and as if by a miracle the buttons to which his empty sleeve pointed became undone. Then he said something about his leg, and bent down. He seemed to be doing something with his shoes and socks.
"Why!" said Huxter, suddenly, "that's not a man at all. It's just empty clothes. Look! You can see down his collar and the inside of his clothes. I could put my arm - "
He extended his hand; it seemed to meet something in mid-air, and he drew it back with a sharp exclamation. "I wish you'd keep your fingers out of my eye," said the aerial voice, in a furious tone. "The fact is, I'm all here: head, hands, legs, and all the rest of it, but it happens I'm invisible. It's a real nuisance, but I am. That's no reason why I should be poked by every stupid peasant in Iping, is it?"
The suit of clothes, now all unbuttoned and hanging loosely upon its unseen supports, stood up.
Several other of the men had now entered the room, so that it was quite crowded. "Invisible, eh?" said Huxter, ignoring the stranger's abuse. "Who ever heard the likes of that?"
"It's strange, perhaps, but it's not a crime. Why am I assaulted by a policeman in this way?"
"Ah! that's a different matter," said Jaffers. "No doubt you are a bit difficult to see in this light, but I've got a warrant, and it's all correct. What I'm after isn't invisibility - it's burglary. A house has been broken into and money taken."
"Well?"
"And circumstances certainly point - "
"Nonsense!" said the Invisible Man.
"I hope so, sir; but I've got my instructions."
"Well," said the stranger, "I'll come. I'll come. But no handcuffs."
"It's the normal thing," said Jaffers.
"No handcuffs," insisted the stranger.
"Pardon me," said Jaffers.
Abruptly the figure sat down, and before any one realised what was being done, the slippers, socks, and trousers had been thrown off under the table. Then he jumped up again and threw off his coat.
"Here, stop that," said Jaffers, suddenly realising what was happening. He held the waist-coat; it struggled, and the shirt slipped out of it and left it empty in his hand. "Hold him!" said Jaffers loudly. "Once he gets his things off - !"
"Hold him!" shouted every one, and there was a rush at the white shirt which was now all that was visible of the stranger.
The shirt-sleeve hit Hall's face and sent him backward into old Toothsome the sexton, and in another moment it was lifted up about the arms, like a shirt that is being pulled over a man's head. Jaffers tried to hold it, and only helped to pull it off; he was hit in the mouth out of the air, and pulled out his truncheon and hit Teddy Henfrey savagely upon the top of his head.
"Look out!" said everybody, fighting at random and hitting at nothing. "Hold him! Shut the door! Don't let him get away! I`ve got something! Here he is!" A perfect babel of noises they made. Everybody, it seemed, was being hit at once, and Sandy Wadgers, as intelligent as ever and his wits sharpened by a terrible blow in the nose, reopened the door and led the retreat. The others, following, were stuck for a moment in the corner by the doorway. The hitting continued. Phipps, the Unitarian, had a front tooth broken, and Henfrey was injured in the cartilage of his ear. Jaffers was struck under the jaw, and, turning, caught at something that intervened between him and Huxter, and prevented their coming together. He felt a muscular chest, and in another moment the whole mass of struggling, excited men shot out into the crowded hall.
"I've got him!" shouted Jaffers, moving through them all, and wrestling with purple face and swelling veins against his unseen enemy.
Men fell right and left as the extraordinary conflict moved quickly towards the house door, and went down the half-dozen steps of the inn. Jaffers shouted in a strangled voice - holding tight, nevertheless - turned round, and fell heavily with his head on the ground. Only then did his fingers relax.
There were excited cries of "Hold him!" "Invisible!" and so on, and a young man rushed in at once, caught something, missed his hold, and fell over the constable's prostrate body. Halfway across the road, a woman screamed as something pushed by her; a dog, kicked apparently, yelped and ran howling into Huxter's yard, and with that the transit of the Invisible Man was accomplished. For a while people stood amazed and gesticulating, and then came Panic, and scattered them through the village as the wind scatters dead leaves.
But Jaffers lay quite still, face upward and knees bent.