Student Question
What suspicions did Henfrey instill in Mr. Hall about the guest?
Quick answer:
Teddy Henfrey instills suspicion in Mr. Hall about the guest by mentioning the guest's strange demeanor and the large amount of luggage arriving the next day. Henfrey suggests the guest might be a potential thief, drawing a parallel to a robbery involving empty suitcases. This conversation leads Mr. Hall to scrutinize the inn's furnishings and warn his wife to be vigilant about the guest's belongings, despite her telling him to mind his own business.
In The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance, the guest is a stranger in town. He rents a room at The Coach And Horses inn in Iping. The owners of the inn are Mr. and Mrs. Hall. They both think their guest is a strange man. One day, Mrs. Hall asks the local clock-jobber, Teddy Henfrey, to fix a clock in the stranger's room. This puts the stranger into an irritated mood. Although he assures Henfrey and Mrs. Hall that they are not troubling him, he informs them that he is an experimental investigator (a scientist) and that he really needs his space and his privacy.
He further tells Mrs. Hall that he has been in an accident and that sometimes, his eyes hurt so badly that he has to shut himself up in the dark for hours. Meanwhile, Henfrey takes his own sweet time to fix the clock so...
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that he can engage the guest in some conversation. However, the guest isn't too talkative. What's more, he's on to Henfrey and tells him to hurry up with the job.
After fixing the clock, Henfrey comes across Mr. Hall on his way out. He tells Mr. Hall that there's a strange man renting his inn, and what's more, he's staying by the week. He warns Mr. Hall that this stranger has a lot of luggage coming the next day and further regales him about how his aunt in Hastings was robbed by someone with empty 'portmanteaux' (suitcases). This puts a suspicion in Mr. Hall's mind that their strange guest might just be out to rob them blind. So, when he gets to the inn, he scrutinizes the furniture just to make sure that nothing is missing. He even looks over some mathematical computations the stranger had left behind. Mr. Hall then warns his wife to make sure to pay extra attention to their guest's luggage when it arrives the next day. She tells him to mind his own business, but quite honestly, she's just as suspicious of their guest as her husband is.
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