I don’t think any of us really believed in the Time Machine. The Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed. He loved jokes and surprises, and so we did not trust him.
The next Thursday I went to his house in Richmond again. I arrived late and found four or five men already there. The Medical Man was standing in front of the fire with a note in one hand and his watch in the other.
“It’s half past seven,” he said. “He asks us in this note to start dinner at seven if he isn’t back. He says he’ll explain when he comes.”
“It would be a pity to let the dinner spoil,” said the Editor of a well-known newspaper, so we sat down to eat. Apart from the Editor and the Medical Man, there were the Journalist, the Psychologist, and the Silent Man, a shy man with a beard who did not say a word all evening.
We were in the middle of dinner when the door opened slowly and quietly. “At last!” I said. The Time Traveller stood in front of us.
“Good heavens, man! What’s the matter?” cried the Medical Man.
He looked terrible. His coat was dirty, with green marks down the sleeves, and his hair seemed greyer than before. His face was very pale, and there was a half-healed cut on his chin. He was limping, like a man who has walked a very long way. He said nothing, but came slowly to the table and pointed at the wine. The Editor filled a glass for him, and he drank it all. A little of his old smile came back.
“I’m going to wash and change,” he said, “and then I’ll come down and explain everything. Save me some of that lamb. I’m starving for a bit of meat.”
As he walked out, I saw his feet. He had no shoes on, only a pair of torn socks with blood on them.
When he had gone, I told the new guests about the model. They did not believe a word, and the Editor and the Journalist laughed at the whole idea.
Then the Time Traveller came back in ordinary evening clothes. He sat down in his place without a word and smiled quietly, in his old way. “Where’s my lamb?” he said. “What a pleasure it is to put a fork into meat again!”
“Story!” cried the Editor.
“Story be damned!” said the Time Traveller. “I want something to eat. I won’t say a word until I’ve had some food.”
“Just one word,” I said. “Have you been time travelling?”
“Yes,” said the Time Traveller, with his mouth full, and he nodded.
The rest of the dinner was uncomfortable. At last he pushed his plate away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was simply starving. Come into the smoking room. It’s too long a story to tell over dirty plates.”
There he sat back in his armchair. “I will tell you what has happened to me,” he said, “but you must not interrupt. Most of it will sound like lies. But it’s true, every word of it. I was in my laboratory at half past three this afternoon, and since then I’ve lived eight days, days that no human being has ever lived before! I’m very tired, but I won’t sleep until I’ve told you. No interruptions! Agreed?”
“Agreed,” we all said.
So the Time Traveller began his story, and I have written it down as he told it. Most of us sat in shadow, and only his white, honest face was bright in the circle of light from the little lamp. At first we looked at each other now and then. After a while we stopped, and we looked only at his face.