APTER XXIII

IN DRURY LANE

"But you begin now to realise," said the Invisible Man, "the full
disadvantage of my condition. I had no shelter--no covering--to
get clothing was to forego all my advantage, to make myself a
strange and terrible thing. I was fasting; for to eat, to fill
myself with unassimilated matter, would be to become grotesquely
visible again."

"I never thought of that," said Kemp.

"Nor had I. And the snow had warned me of other dangers. I could not
go abroad in snow--it would settle on me and expose me. Rain, too,
would make me a watery outline, a glistening surface of a man--a
bubble. And fog--I should be like a fainter bubble in a fog,
a surface, a greasy glimmer of humanity. Moreover, as I went
abroad--in the London air--I gathered dirt about my ankles, floating
smuts and dust upon my skin. I did not know how long it would be
before I should become visible from that cause also. But I saw
clearly it could not be for long.

"Not in London at any rate.

"I went into the slums towards Great Portland Street, and found
myself at the end of the street in which I had lodged. I did not
go that way, because of the crowd halfway down it opposite to the
still smoking ruins of the house I had fired. My most immediate
problem was to get clothing. What to do with my face puzzled me.
Then I saw in one of those little miscellaneous shops--news,
sweets, toys, stationery, belated Christmas tomfoolery, and so
forth--an array of masks and noses. I realised that problem was
solved. In a flash I saw my course. I turned about, no longer
aimless, and went--circuitously in order to avoid the busy ways,
towards the back streets north of the Strand; for I remembered,
though not very distinctly where, that some theatrical costumiers
had shops in that district.

"The day was cold, with a nipping wind down the northward running
streets. I walked fast to avoid being overtaken. Every crossing was
a danger, every passenger a thing to watch alertly. One man as I
was about to pass him at the top of Bedford Street, turned upon
me abruptly and came into me, sending me into the road and almost
under the wheel of a passing hansom. The verdict of the cab-rank
was that he had had some sort of stroke. I was so unnerved by this
encounter that I went into Covent Garden Market and sat down for
some time in a quiet corner by a stall of violets, panting and
trembling. I found I had caught a fresh cold, and had to turn out
after a