The Invisible Man / Человек-невидимка

He was working in a room with an open fireplace, he said. Saw a flicker, and there was the prescription burning and lifting chimneyward. Rushed towards it just as it whisked up the chimney. So! Just at that point, to illustrate his story, out came his arm.”

“Well?”

“No hand – just an empty sleeve. Lord! I thought, that’s a deformity! Got a cork arm, I suppose, and has taken it off. Then, I thought, there’s something odd in that. What the devil keeps that sleeve up and open, if there’s nothing in it? There was nothing in it, I tell you.

Nothing down it, right down to the joint. I could see right down it to the elbow, and there was a glimmer of light shining through a tear of the cloth. �Good God!’ I said. Then he stopped. Stared at me with those black goggles of his, and then at his sleeve.”

“Well?”

“That’s all. He never said a word; just glared, and put his sleeve back in his pocket quickly. �I was saying,’ said he, �that there was the prescription burning, wasn’t I?’ Interrogative cough.

�How the devil,’ said I, �can you move an empty sleeve like that?’ �Empty sleeve?’ �Yes,’ said I, �an empty sleeve.’

“�It’s an empty sleeve, is it? You saw it was an empty sleeve?’ He stood up right away. I stood up too. He came towards me in three very slow steps, and stood quite close. Sniffed venomously. I didn’t flinch, though I’m hanged if that bandaged knob of his, and those blinkers, aren’t enough to unnerve any one, coming quietly up to you.

“�You said it was an empty sleeve?’ he said. �Certainly,’ I said. At staring and saying nothing a barefaced man, unspectacled, starts scratch. Then very quietly he pulled his sleeve out of his pocket again, and raised his arm towards me as though he would show it to me again. He did it very, very slowly. I looked at it. Seemed an age. �Well?’ said I, clearing my throat, �there’s nothing in it.’

“Had to say something. I was beginning to feel frightened.

I could see right down it. He extended it straight towards me, slowly, slowly – just like that – until the cuff was six inches from my face. Queer thing to see an empty sleeve come at you like that! And then—”

“Well?”

“Something – exactly like a finger and thumb it felt – nipped my nose.”

Bunting began to laugh.

“There wasn’t anything there!” said Cuss, his voice running up into a shriek at the “there.