"So last January, with the beginning of a snowstorm in the air about me - and if it settled on me it would betray me! - tired, cold, painful, inexpressibly wretched, and still only half convinced of my invisible quality, I began this new life to which I am committed. I had no refuge, no equipment, no human being in the world in whom I could confide. To have told my secret would have given me away - made a mere show and rarity of me. Nevertheless, I was half tempted to go up to some passer-by and throw myself at his mercy. But I knew too clearly the terror and brutal cruelty my advances would evoke. I made no plans in the street. My sole object was to get shelter from the snow, to get myself covered and warm; then I might hope to plan. But even to me, an Invisible Man, the rows of London houses stood locked, barred, and bolted impregnably.
"Only one thing could I see clearly before me, the cold exposure and misery of the snowstorm and the night.
"And then I had a brilliant idea. I turned down one of the roads leading from Gower Street to Tottenham Court Road, and found myself outside Omniums, the big establishment where everything is to be bought - you know the place - meat, grocery, linen, furniture, clothing, oil paintings even - a huge collection of shops rather than a shop. I had thought I would find the doors open, but they were closed, and as I stood in the wide entrance a carriage stopped outside, and a man in uniform - you know the kind of person with 'Omnium' on his cap - threw open the door. I managed to enter, and walking down the shop - it was a department where they were selling ribbons and gloves and stockings and that kind of thing - came to a more spacious region devoted to picnic baskets and wicker furniture.
"I did not feel safe there, however; people were going upa and down, and I walked restlessly about until I came upon a huge section in an upper floor containing hundreds and hundreds of beds, and past these I found a resting-place at last among a huge pile of folded mattresses. The place was already lit up and aggreeably warm, and I decided to remain where I was, keeping a cautious eye on the two or three sets of shop assistants and customers who were strolling through the place until closing time came. Then I would be able, I thought, to rob the place for food and clothing, and disguised, examine its resources, perhaps sleep on some of the bedding. That seemed an acceptable plan. My idea was to procure clothing to make myself a muffled but acceptable figure, to get money, and then to recover my books and parcels where they awaited me, take a lodging somewhere and elaborate plans for the complete realisation of the advantages my invisibility gave me (as I still imagined) over my fellow-men.
"Closing time arrived quickly enough; it could not have been more than an hour after I took up my position on the mattresses before I noticed the blinds of the windows being drawn, and customers being marched doorward. And then a number of young men began with remarkable speed to tidy up the goods that remained disturbed. I left my hiding place as the crowds diminished, and moved cautiously out into the less desolate parts of the shop. I was really surprised to observe how rapidly the young men and women tidied away the goods displayed for sale during the day. All the boxes of goods, the hanging fabrics, the festoons of lace, the boxes of sweets in the grocery section, the displays of this and that, were being taken down, folded up, put into tidy receptacles, and everything that could not be taken down and put away had sheets thrown over it. Finally all the chairs were turned up on to the counters, leaving the floor clear. As soon as each of these young people had finished, he or she made directly for the door with such an expression of animation as I have rarely observed in a shop assistant before. Then came a lot of youngsters throwing sawdust and carrying buckets and brooms. I had to dodge to get out of the way, and as it was, my ankle got stung with the sawdust. For some time, wandering through the darkened departments, I could hear the brooms at work. And at last a good hour or more after the shop had been closed, came a noise of locking doors. Silence came upon the place, and I found myself wandering through the vast and intricate shops, galleries and showrooms of the place, alone. It was very still; in one place I remember passing near one of the Tottenham Court Road entrances and listening to the tapping of bootheels of the passers-by.
"My first visit was to the place where I had seen stockings and gloves for sale. It was dark, and I had the devil of a hunt after matches, which I found at last in the drawer of the little cash desk. Then I had to get a candle. I had to tear down wrappings and go through a number of boxes and drawers, but at last I managed to find what I was looking for; the box label called them lambswool pants, and lambswool vests. Then socks, a thick scarf, and then I went to the clothing place and got trousers, a jacket, an overcoat and a hat - a clerical sort of hat with the brim turned down. I began to feel a human being again, and my next thought was food.
"Upstairs was a refreshment department, and there I got cold meat. There was coffee still in the urn, and I lit the gas and warmed it up again, and altogether I did not do badly. Afterwards, going through the place in search of blankets - I had to put up at last with a heap of eiderdowns - I came upon a grocery section with a lot of chocolate and candied fruits, more than was good for me indeed - and some white burgundy. And near that was a toy department, and I had a brilliant idea. I found some artificial noses - toy noses, you know, and I thought of dark glasses. But Omniums had no optical department. My nose had been a difficulty indeed - I had thought of paint. But the discovery started me hinking about wigs and masks and the like. Finally I went to sleep on a heap of eiderdowns, very warm and comfortable.
"My last thoughts before sleeping were the most agreeable I had had since the change. I was in a state of physical serenity, and that was reflected in my mind. I thought that I would be able to get out unobserved in the morning with my clothes upon me, covering my face with a white scarf I had taken, buy, with the money I had taken, glasses and so on, and so complete my disguise. I fell into disorderly dreams of all the fantastic things that had happened during the last few days. I saw the ugly little landlord vociferating in his rooms; I saw his two sons marvelling, and the wrinkled old woman's face as she asked for her cat. I experienced again the strange sensation of seeing the cloth disappear, and so I came round to the windy hillside and the sniffing old clergyman mumbling 'Dust to dust, earth to earth,' and my father's open grave.
"'You too,' said a voice, and suddenly I was being forced towards the grave. I struggled, shouted, appealed to the mourners, but they continued following the service; the old clergyman, too, never stopped droning and sniffing through the ritual. I realised I was invisible and inaudible, that overpowering forces had their grip on me. I struggled in vain, I was forced over the edge, the coffin rang hollow as I fell upon it, and the earth came flying after me in spadefuls. Nobody paid attention to me, nobody was aware of me. I made convulsive struggles and awoke.
"The pale London dawn had come, the place was full of a chilly grey light that filtered round the edges of the window blinds. I sat up, and for a time I could not think where this ample apartment, with its counters, its piles of rolled stuff, its heaps of quilts and cushions, its iron pillars, might be. Then, as recollection came back to me, I heard voices in conversation.
"Then far down the place, in the brighter light of some department which had already raised its blinds, I saw two men approaching. I got quickly to my feet, looking about me for some way of escape, and even as I did so the sound of my movement made them aware of me. I suppose they saw merely a figure moving quietly and quickly away. 'Who's that?' cried one, and 'Stop there,' shouted the other. I rushed round a corner and ran straight into - a faceless figure, mind you! - a lad of fifteen. He shouted and I knocked him over, rushed past him, turned another corner, and by a happy inspiration threw myself on the floor behind a counter. In another moment feet went running past and I heard voices shouting, 'All hands to the doors!' asking what was 'up,' and giving one another advice how to catch me.
"Lying on the ground, I felt scared out of my wits. But - odd as it may seem - it did not occur to me at the moment to take off my clothes as I should have done. I had made up my mind, I suppose, to get away in them, and that ruled me. And then down the vista of the counters came a shout of 'Here he is!'
"I jumped to my feet, took a chair off the counter, and sent it flying at the fool who had shouted, turned, came into another round a corner, sent him spinning, and rushed up the stairs. He kept his footing, and came up the staircase hot after me. Up the staircase were piled a multitude of those bright-coloured pot things - what are they?"
"Art pots," suggested Kemp.
"That's it! Art pots. Well, I turned at the top step and turned round, picked one out of a pile and smashed it on his silly head as he came at me. The whole pile of pots went headlong, and I heard shouting and footsteps running from all parts. I made a mad rush for the refreshment place, and there was a man in white like a cook, who took up the chase. I made one last desperate turn and found myself among lamps and ironmongery. I went behind the counter of this, and waited for my cook, and as he ran in at the head of the chase, I hit him with a lamp. Down he went, and I crouched behind the counter and began takig off my clothes as fast as I could. Coat, jacket, trousers, shoes were all right, but a lambswool vest fits a man like a skin. I heard more men coming, my cook was lying quiet on the other side of the counter, stunned or scared speechless, and I had to make another run for it, like a rabbit hunted out of a wood-pile.
"'This way, policeman!' I heard some one shouting. I found myself in my bed store-room again, and at the end a wilderness of wardrobes. I rushed among them, went flat, got rid of my vest after infinite wriggling, and stood a free man again, panting and scared, as the policeman and three of the shopmen came round the corner. They made a rush for the vest and pants, and grabbed the trousers. 'He's dropping his plunder,' said one of the young men. 'He must be somewhere here.'
"But they did not find me all the same.
"I stood watching them hunt for me for a time, and cursing my ill-luck in losing the clothes. Then I went into the refreshment-room, drank a little milk I found there, and sat down by the fire to consider my position.
"In a little while two assistants came and began to talk over the business very excitedly and like the fools they were. I heard a magnified account of my attack, and other speculations as to my whereabouts. Then I started to plan again. The insurmountable difficulty of the place, especially now it was alarmed, was to get any plunder out of it. I went down into the warehouse to see if there was any chance of packing and addressing a parcel, but I could not understand the system of checking. About eleven o'clock, the snow having melted as it fell, and the day being finer and a little warmer than the previous one, I decided that the Emporium was hopeless, and went out again, exasperated at my lack of success, with only the vaguest plans of action in my mind."