[adapted]

by
H. G. Wells

I write this story, not thinking it will be believed, but, if possible, to help the next victim escape. He, perhaps, may be helped by my bad luck. My own case, I know, is without hope, and I am now in some way ready to face what will happen to me.

My name is Edward George Eden. I was born at Trentham, in Staffordshire, my father working in the gardens there. I lost my mother when I was three years old, and my father when I was five, my uncle, George Eden, then adopted me as his own son. He was a single man, self-taught, and well-known in Birmingham as a hard-working reporter; he educated me well, made my wish to do well in life strong, and when he died, which happened four years ago, left me all his money, about five hundred pounds after all costs were paid. I was then eighteen. He advised me in his will to spend the money on finishing my education. I had already chosen to be a doctor, and because of his generosity after his death and my good luck in a scholarship competition, I became a medical student at University College, London. At the beginning of my story I lived at 11A University Street in a small upstairs room, very poorly furnished and cold and windy, overlooking the back of Shoolbred’s buildings. I used this little room both to live in and sleep in, because I was very careful to make my money last to the very last shilling.

I was taking a pair of shoes to be fixed at a shop in the Tottenham Court Road when I first met the little old man with the yellow face, and my life has now become so mixed up with him. He was standing on the edge of the pavement, and staring at the number on the door as if not sure, as I opened it. His eyes — they were dull grey eyes, and red under the eyelids — looked at my face, and his face immediately took on a look of wrinkled friendliness.

“You come,” he said, “just at the right time. I had forgotten the number of your house. How are you, Mr. Eden?”

I was a little surprised at his too friendly way of speaking to me, because I had never seen the man before. I was a little angry, too, at his seeing me with my boots under my arm. He noticed that I was not friendly.

“Wonder who I am, eh? A friend, I promise you. I have seen you before, but you haven’t seen me. Is there a place where I can talk to you?”

I paused. The poor look of my room upstairs was not something to tell every stranger. “Perhaps,” I said, “we might walk down the street. I, sadly, cannot — ” My hand movement showed the sentence before I said it.

“The very thing,” he said, and turned this way, and then that. “The street? Which way shall we go?” I slipped on my boots in the hallway. “Look here!” he said suddenly; “this business of mine is a long, mixed-up thing. Come and have lunch with me, Mr. Eden. I’m an old man, a very old man, and not good at explaining things, and with my thin voice and the noise of the traffic — ”

He put a skinny hand that tried to make me agree and that shook a little on my arm.

I was not too old for an old man to buy me lunch. Yet at the same time I was not very pleased by this sudden invitation. “I would rather—” I began. “But I would rather,” he said, stopping me, “and a little politeness should be given to my grey hair.”

And so I agreed, and went with him.

He took me to Blavitiski’s; I had to walk slowly to match his steps; and over a lunch I had never had before, he avoided my main question, and I looked more closely at his appearance. His clean-shaven face was thin and wrinkled, his thin, dry lips hung over a set of false teeth, and his white hair was thin and rather long; he seemed small to me, — though indeed, most people seemed small to me, — and his shoulders were rounded and bent. And while watching him, I could not help noticing that he was also looking at me, moving his eyes, with a strange look of greed in them, over me, from my broad shoulders to my suntanned hands, and up to my freckled face again. “And now,” he said, as we lit our cigarettes, “I must tell you about the business we have to do.”

“I must tell you, then, that I am an old man, a very old man.” He paused for a moment. “And it happens that I have money that I must soon be leaving, and I have no child to leave it to.” I thought of the trick, and decided I would watch out for any sign of my five hundred pounds. He went on to talk more about his loneliness, and the trouble he had to find a good way to give his money. “I have thought about this plan and that plan, charities, institutions, scholarships, and libraries, and I have come to this conclusion at last,” — he looked hard at my face, — “that I will find some young man, ambitious, good, and poor, healthy in body and healthy in mind, and, in short, make him my heir, give him all that I have.” He repeated, “Give him all that I have. So that he will suddenly be lifted out of all the trouble and struggle in which he has been raised, to freedom and influence.”

I tried to seem not interested. Clearly pretending, I said, “And you want my help, maybe help from my work, to find that person.”

He smiled, and looked at me over his cigarette, and I laughed at his quiet showing of my pretending to be modest.

“What a career such a man might have!” he said. “It makes me feel jealous to think how I have saved up what another man may spend — ”

“But there are conditions, of course, things he must do. He must, for instance, take my name. You cannot expect everything without giving something back. And I must look into all the details of his life before I can accept him. He must be healthy. I must know his family history, how his parents and grandparents died, and have the most careful checks made into his private behavior.”

This changed my secret congratulations a little.

“And do I understand,” I said, “that I — ”

“Yes,” he said, almost angrily. “You. You.”

I did not say a word. My imagination was running wild, my natural doubt could not change its excitement. There was not a bit of thanks in my mind — I did not know what to say or how to say it. “But why me especially?” I said at last.

He had happened to hear about me from Professor Haslar; he said I was a typical, good and sensible young man, and he wanted, as much as possible, to leave his money where health and honesty were sure.

That was my first meeting with the little old man. He was secret about himself; he would not give his name yet, he said, and after I had answered his questions, he left me at the Blavitiski gate. I noticed that he took out a handful of gold coins from his pocket when he had to pay for the lunch. His insisting on good health was strange. As we had agreed I applied that day for a life insurance policy in the Loyal Insurance Company for a large amount, and I was fully examined by the doctors of that company in the next week. Even that did not satisfy him, and he said I must be examined again by the great Doctor Henderson.

It was Friday in the week of Whitsun before he made a decision. He called me down, quite late in the evening, — it was nearly nine, — from studying hard chemistry equations for my preliminary science exam. He was standing in the hall under the weak gas lamp, and his face was a strange mix of shadows. He seemed more bent than when I first saw him, and his cheeks had sunk in a little.

His voice shook with feeling. “Everything is all right, Mr. Eden,” he said. “Everything is very, very good. And this night, more than any other, you must eat dinner with me and celebrate your — new position.” He was stopped by a cough. “You won’t have long to wait, too,” he said, wiping his lips with his cloth, and holding my hand with his long thin claw that was free. “Surely not very long to wait.”

We went into the street and called a cab. I remember every detail of that drive clearly, the fast, easy motion, the clear difference between gas and oil and electric light, the crowds of people in the streets, the place in Regent Street where we went, and the very fine dinner we were served there. I was uneasy at first because of the well-dressed waiter’s looks at my rough clothes, bothered by the stones in the olives, but as the champagne warmed me, my confidence came back. At first the old man talked of himself. He had already told me his name in the cab; he was Egbert Elvesham, the great thinker, whose name I had known since I was a boy at school.

It seemed unbelievable to me that this man, whose clever mind had so early ruled mine, this great idea, should suddenly appear as this weak, familiar old figure. I suppose every young fellow who has suddenly found himself among famous people has felt something of my disappointment. He told me now of the future that the weak streams of his life would soon run dry and leave me houses, book rights, investments; I had never guessed that philosophers were so rich. He watched me drink and eat with a little envy. “What energy for living you have!” he said; and then with a sigh, a sigh of relief I thought it might be, “it will not be long.”

“Yes,” I said, my head was swimming now with champagne; “I have a future perhaps — of a rather pleasant kind, thanks to you. I will now have the honour of your name. But you have a past. Such a past that is worth all my future.”

He shook his head and smiled, as I thought, with a little sad thanks for my too kind praise. “That future,” he said, “would you really change it?” The waiter came with drinks. “You will perhaps not mind taking my name, taking my position, but would you really — gladly — take my years?”

“With what you have done,” said I politely.

He smiled again. “Kummel — both,” he said to the waiter, and looked at a small paper packet he had taken from his pocket. “This hour,” he said, “this after-dinner hour is the time of small things. Here is a small piece of my not published wisdom.” He opened the packet with his shaking yellow fingers, and showed a little pink powder on the paper. “This,” he said — “well, you must guess what it is. But Kummel — just put a little of this powder in it — is Himmel.”

His large grey eyes watched my eyes with a look I could not understand.

It was a bit of a shock to me to find this great teacher paid attention to the taste of sweet strong drinks. However, I pretended to be interested in his weakness, for I was drunk enough for such small flattery.

He divided the powder between the little glasses, and, rising suddenly, with a strange, unexpected, serious look, held out his hand towards me. I copied what he did, and the glasses made a ringing sound. “To a quick succession,” he said, and raised his glass towards his lips.

“Not that,” I said quickly. “Not that.”

He stopped with the drink at the level of his chin, and his eyes staring into mine.

“To a long life,” I said. He hesitated. “To a long life,” he said, with a sudden short laugh, and with our eyes fixed on each other we tipped the little glasses. His eyes looked straight into mine, and as I drank it all, I felt a strangely strong feeling. The first taste of it made my brain feel very wild and mixed up; I seemed to feel a real moving inside my head, and a loud buzzing filled my ears. I did not notice the taste in my mouth, the smell that filled my throat; I saw only the grey strength of his stare that burned into mine. The drink, the confusion in my mind, the noise and moving in my head, seemed to last an endless time. Strange, unclear ideas of half-forgotten things danced and disappeared at the edge of my mind. At last he broke the spell. With a sudden loud sigh he put down his glass.

“Well?” he said.

“It’s great,” I said, but I had not tasted the drink.

My head was spinning. I sat down. My mind was a mess. Then my sight became clear and very sharp as though I saw things in a curved mirror. His manner seemed to have changed into something nervous and quick. He pulled out his watch and made a face at it. “Eleven-seven! And to-night I must — Seven-twenty-five. Waterloo! I must go at once.” He called for the bill, and struggled with his coat. Busy waiters came to help us. In another moment I was wishing him good-bye, over the cover of a cab, and still with a strange feeling of very small, clear detail, as though — how can I say it? — I not only saw but felt through an upside-down opera-glass.

“That stuff,” he said. He put his hand to his forehead. “I should not have given it to you. It will give you a bad headache tomorrow. Wait a minute. Here.” He handed me a little flat thing like a fizzy powder. “Take that in water as you are going to bed. The other thing was a drug. Not until you’re ready to go to bed, remember. It will clear your head. That’s all. One more shake — Futurus!”

I held his dried-up hand. “Good-bye,” he said, and from the way his eyelids hung down I thought he also was a little affected by that head-spinning drink.

He suddenly remembered something else, put his hand in the inside pocket of his coat, and took out another package, this time a tube the size and shape of a shaving stick. “Here,” he said. “I’d almost forgotten. Don’t open this until I come tomorrow — but take it now.”

It was so heavy that I almost dropped it. “All right!” I said, and he smiled at me through the cab window as the driver tapped his horse to wake it up. It was a white package he had given me, with red seals at each end and along its edge. “If this isn’t money,” I said, “it’s platinum or lead.”

I stuck it with great care into my pocket, and with a spinning head walked home through the people standing around on Regent Street and the dark side streets past Portland Road. I remember the feelings of that walk very clearly, even though they were strange. I was still myself enough that I could notice my strange state of mind, and wonder whether this stuff I had taken was opium — a drug I had never used before. It is hard now to describe how strange my mind was — “double mind” says it only a little. As I was walking up Regent Street I found in my mind a strange idea that it was Waterloo Station, and had a sudden wish to go into the Polytechnic as a man might get into a train. I rubbed my eye with a knuckle, and it was Regent Street.

How can I say it? You see a skilled actor looking quietly at you, he pulls a funny face, and then — another person. Is it too strange if I tell you that it seemed to me that Regent Street had, for a moment, done that? Then, being sure it was Regent Street again, I was strangely confused about some strange memories that came up. “Thirty years ago,” thought I, “it was here that I argued with my brother.” Then I burst out laughing, to the surprise and encouragement of a group of people out at night. Thirty years ago I did not exist, and never in my life had I had a brother. The stuff was surely liquid foolishness, for the deep regret for that lost brother still stayed with me. Along Portland Road the crazy feeling changed again.

I began to remember shops that were gone, and to compare the street with how it used to be. Confused, troubled thinking is easy to understand after the drink I had taken, but what confused me were these strangely clear dream-like memories that had come into my mind, and not only the memories that had come in, but also the memories that had gone away. I stopped across from Stevens’, the natural history shop, and tried hard to think what he had to do with me. A bus went by, and sounded exactly like the noise of a train. It seemed I was reaching into some dark, far pit for the memory. “Of course,” said I, at last, “he has promised me three frogs to-morrow. Strange that I should have forgotten.”

Do they still show children pictures that fade into each other? In those I remember one picture would begin like a faint ghost, and grow and push out another. In just that way it seemed to me that a ghostly set of new feelings was fighting with those of my ordinary self.

I went on through Euston Road to Tottenham Court Road, confused, and a little frightened, and hardly noticed the strange route I was taking, for usually I used to go through the maze of back streets between them. I turned into University Street, and found that I had forgotten my number. Only with a strong effort did I remember 11A, and even then it seemed to me that it was something some forgotten person had told me. I tried to calm my mind by remembering the events of the dinner, and no matter how hard I tried I could not remember my host’s face; I saw him only as a dark outline, like one might see oneself reflected in a window one was looking through. In his place, however, I had a strange outside view of myself, sitting at a table, red in the face, bright-eyed, and talkative.

“I must take this other powder,” I said. “This is getting impossible.”

I looked on the wrong side of the hall for my candle and the matches, and was not sure which floor my room might be on. “I’m drunk,” I said, “that’s certain,” and stumbled for no reason on the stairs to prove it.

At first look my room seemed strange. “What nonsense!” I said, and looked around me. I seemed to bring myself back by trying, and the strange dream-like feeling changed into the real and familiar. There was the old mirror still, with my notes on the egg whites stuck in the corner of the frame, my old everyday suit of clothes thrown about the floor. And yet it was not so real after all. I felt a silly feeling trying to come into my mind, in a way, that I was in a train carriage just stopping, that I was looking out of the window at some station I did not know. I held the bed-rail tightly to make myself feel sure. “It’s seeing things not in front of me, perhaps,” I said. “I must write to the Psychical Research Society.”

I put the roll of coins on my dressing table, sat on my bed, and began to take off my boots. It felt as if a picture of how I felt now was painted over another picture that was trying to show through. “Curse it!” said I; “I am losing my mind, or am I in two places at once?” Half undressed, I put the powder into a glass and drank it all. It bubbled, and became a bright yellow-brown colour. Before I was in bed my mind was already calm. I felt the pillow on my cheek, and then I must have fallen asleep.

I woke up suddenly out of a dream of strange animals, and found myself lying on my back. Probably everyone knows that sad, upsetting dream from which one gets away, awake indeed, but strangely afraid. There was a strange taste in my mouth, a tired feeling in my arms and legs, a feeling that my skin was uncomfortable. I lay with my head still on my pillow, expecting that my feeling of strangeness and fear would go away, and that I would then doze off again to sleep. But instead of that, my strange feelings increased. At first I could see nothing wrong about me. There was a faint light in the room, so faint that it was almost darkness, and the furniture stood out in it as unclear patches of complete darkness. I stared with my eyes just over the bedclothes.