The little group of scared but curious people increased. Mrs. Huxter came over; some gay young fellows resplendent in black ready-made jackets and piqué paper ties—for it was Whit Monday—joined the group with confused interrogations. Young Archie Harker distinguished himself by going up the yard and trying to peep under the window blinds. He could see nothing, but gave reason for supposing that he did, and others of the Iping youth presently joined him.
It was the finest of all possible Whit Mondays, and down the village street stood a row of nearly a dozen booths, a shooting gallery, and on the grass by the forge were three yellow and chocolate wagons 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 plumes. Wodger, of the Purple Fawn, and Mr. Jaggers, the cobbler, who also sold old secondhand ordinary bicycles, were stretching a string of union jacks and royal ensigns (which had originally celebrated the first Victorian Jubilee) across the road.
And inside, in the artificial darkness of the parlour, into which only one thin jet of sunlight penetrated, the stranger, hungry we must suppose, and fearful, hidden in his uncomfortable hot wrappings, pored through his dark glasses upon his paper or chinked his dirty little bottles, and occasionally swore savagely at the boys, audible if invisible, outside the windows. In the corner by the fireplace lay the fragments of half a dozen smashed bottles, and a pungent twang of chlorine tainted the air. So much we know from what was heard at the time and from what was subsequently seen in the room.
About noon he suddenly opened his parlour door and stood glaring fixedly at the three or four people in the bar. “Mrs. Hall,” he said. Somebody went sheepishly 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 this scene, and she came holding a little tray with an unsettled bill upon it. “Is it your bill you’re wanting, sir?” she said.
“Why wasn’t my breakfast laid? 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 awaiting a remittance—”
“I told you two days ago I wasn’t going to await no remittances. You can’t grumble if your breakfast waits a bit, if my bill’s been waiting these five days, can you?”
The stranger swore briefly but vividly.
“Nar, nar!” from the bar.
“And I’d thank you kindly, 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 universally felt in the bar that Mrs. Hall had the better of him. 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 remittance hasn’t come.”
“Remittance indeed!” said Mrs. Hall.
“Still, I daresay in my pocket—”
“You told me three 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 whatsoever, you got to tell me one or two things I don’t understand, and what nobody don’t understand, and what everybody is very anxious to understand. I want to know what you been doing t’my chair upstairs, and I want to know how ’tis your room was empty, and how you got in again. Them as stops in this house comes in by the doors—that’s the rule of the house, and that you didn’t do, and what I want to know is how you did come in. And I want to know—”
Suddenly the stranger raised his gloved hands clenched, 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 palm over his face and withdrew it. The centre of his face became a black cavity. “Here,” he said. He stepped forward and handed 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 staggered back. The nose—it was the stranger’s nose! pink and shining—rolled on the floor.
Then he removed his spectacles, and everyone in the bar gasped. He took off his hat, and with a violent gesture tore at his whiskers and bandages. For a moment they resisted him. A flash of horrible anticipation passed through the bar. “Oh, my Gard!” said someone. Then off they came.
It was worse than anything. Mrs. Hall, standing open-mouthed and horror-struck, shrieked at what she saw, and made for the door of the house. Everyone 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 hobbledehoy jump to avoid them. Everyone tumbled on everyone else down the steps. For the man who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat collar of him, and then—nothingness, no visible thing at all!
People down the
