Footprints without feet

Footprints from nowhere. In London, two boys see fresh muddy footprints of bare feet appearing on the steps of a house, one after another, with no one there. They follow them until the prints fade away.

Griffin. The boys were following Griffin, a scientist who had found how to make the human body transparent. After 'experiment after experiment' to prove it could be done, he 'swallowed certain rare drugs', and his body became 'as transparent as a sheet of glass', though still solid.

A lawless man. 'Brilliant scientist though he was, Griffin was rather a lawless person.' His landlord disliked him and tried to throw him out, so Griffin set fire to the house. To escape unseen he had to take off all his clothes. Now he is homeless, with no clothes and no money, and invisible.

A night in a store. It is mid-winter and bitterly cold. He slips into a big London store. After closing time he dresses himself (shoes, overcoat, wide hat), eats cold meat and coffee in the restaurant, and takes sweets and wine. He sleeps on a pile of quilts, but oversleeps. The assistants see him, he panics and runs, and he escapes only by throwing off his new clothes.

Drury Lane. Naked again in the January air, he goes to a theatrical shop in Drury Lane. He comes out wearing bandages round his forehead, dark glasses, a false nose, bushy side-whiskers and a large hat, so he looks like a person again. To get away, he 'callously attacked the shopkeeper from behind' and robbed him.