Читать книгу The Invisible Man / Человек-невидимка - Герберт Уэллс, Герберт Джордж Уэллс - Страница 16

Ten o'clock the next morning found Mr. Marvel, unshaven, and dirty sitting with the books beside him and his hands deep in his pockets, looking very weary, nervous, and uncomfortable, and inflating his cheeks at infrequent intervals, on the bench outside a little inn on the outskirts of Port Stowe. Beside him were the books, tied with string. The bundle had been abandoned in the woods beyond Bramblehurst, in accordance with a change in the plans of the Invisible Man. Mr. Marvel's hands would go ever and again to his various pockets with a curious nervous fumbling.

When he had been sitting for an hour, an elderly mariner, carrying a newspaper, came out of the inn and sat down beside him.

“Pleasant day,” said the mariner.

“Very,” said Mr. Marvel.

“Just seasonable weather for the time of year,” said the mariner.

“Quite,” said Mr. Marvel.

The mariner's eyes examined Mr. Marvel's dusty figure, and the books beside him. As he had approached Mr. Marvel he had heard a sound like the dropping of coins into a pocket.

“Books?” the mariner said suddenly.

Mr. Marvel looked at them.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, they're books.”

“There are some extraordinary things in books,” said the mariner.

“I believe you,” said Mr. Marvel.

“And some extraordinary things out of them,” said the mariner.

“That's true,” said Mr. Marvel. He eyed his interlocutor.

“There are some extraordinary things in newspapers, for example,” said the mariner.

“There are.”

“In this newspaper,” said the mariner.

“Ah!” said Mr. Marvel.

“There's a story,” said the mariner, fixing Mr. Marvel with an eye that was firm and deliberate; “there's a story about an Invisible Man, for instance.”

Mr. Marvel scratched his cheek and felt his ears glowing.

“What will they be writing next?” he asked faintly. “Australia or America?”

“Neither,” said the mariner. “Here.”

“Lord!” said Mr. Marvel, starting.

“When I say here,” said the mariner, to Mr. Marvel's intense relief, “I don't of course mean here in this place, I mean hereabouts.”

“An Invisible Man!” said Mr. Marvel. “And what does he do?”

“Everything,” said the mariner, controlling Marvel with his eye, and then amplifying, “every-thing.”

“I haven't seen papers for four days,” said Marvel.

“He was at Iping,” said the mariner.

“Indeed!” said Mr. Marvel.

“He started there. And where he came from, nobody doesn't seem to know. Here it is: 'Peculiar Story from Iping.' And it says in this paper that the evidence is extraordinary strong.”

“Lord!” said Mr. Marvel.

“Yes, it's an extraordinary story. A clergyman and a doctor saw him, or to be exact, didn't see him. He was staying, it says, at the 'Coach and Horses,' and no one was aware of his misfortune, until his bandages on his head were torn off. It was then observed that his head was invisible. They tried to catch him, but casting off his garments, he succeeded in escaping. And he had seriously wounded our constable, Mr. J. A. Jaffers. What a story, eh?”