________________________________________________
_ Mr. Heelas, Mr. Kemp's nearest neighbour among the villa holders,
was asleep in his summer house when the siege of Kemp's house
began. Mr. Heelas was one of the sturdy minority who refused to
believe "in all this nonsense" about an Invisible Man. His wife,
however, as he was subsequently to be reminded, did. He insisted
upon walking about his garden just as if nothing was the matter,
and he went to sleep in the afternoon in accordance with the custom
of years. He slept through the smashing of the windows, and then
woke up suddenly with a curious persuasion of something wrong. He
looked across at Kemp's house, rubbed his eyes and looked again.
Then he put his feet to the ground, and sat listening. He said he
was damned, but still the strange thing was visible. The house
looked as though it had been deserted for weeks--after a violent
riot. Every window was broken, and every window, save those of the
belvedere study, was blinded by the internal shutters.
"I could have sworn it was all right"--he looked at his watch--"twenty
minutes ago."
He became aware of a measured concussion and the clash of glass,
far away in the distance. And then, as he sat open-mouthed, came a
still more wonderful thing. The shutters of the drawing-room window
were flung open violently, and the housemaid in her outdoor hat and
garments, appeared struggling in a frantic manner to throw up the
sash. Suddenly a man appeared beside her, helping her--Dr. Kemp!
In another moment the window was open, and the housemaid was
struggling out; she pitched forward and vanished among the shrubs.
Mr. Heelas stood up, exclaiming vaguely and vehemently at all these
wonderful things. He saw Kemp stand on the sill, spring from the
window, and reappear almost instantaneously running along a path in
the shrubbery and stooping as he ran, like a man who evades
observation. He vanished behind a laburnum, and appeared again
clambering over a fence that abutted on the open down. In a second
he had tumbled over and was running at a tremendous pace down the
slope towards Mr. Heelas.
"Lord!" cried Mr. Heelas, struck with an idea; "it's that Invisible
Man brute! It's right, after all!"
With Mr. Heelas to think things like that was to act, and his cook
watching him from the top window was amazed to see him come pelting
towards the house at a good nine miles an hour. There was a
slamming of doors, a ringing of bells, and the voice of Mr. Heelas
bellowing like a bull. "Shut the doors, shut the windows, shut
everything!--the Invisible Man is coming!" Instantly the house was
full of screams and directions, and scurrying feet. He ran himself
to shut the French windows that opened on the veranda; as he did so
Kemp's head and shoulders and knee appeared over the edge of the
garden fence. In another moment Kemp had ploughed through the
asparagus, and was running across the tennis lawn to the house.
"You can't come in," said Mr. Heelas, shutting the bolts. "I'm very
sorry if he's after you, but you can't come in!"
Kemp appeared with a face of terror close to the glass, rapping and
then shaking frantically at the French window. Then, seeing his
efforts were useless, he ran along the veranda, vaulted the end,
and went to hammer at the side door. Then he ran round by the side
gate to the front of the house, and so into the hill-road. And Mr.
Heelas staring from his window--a face of horror--had scarcely
witnessed Kemp vanish, ere the asparagus was being trampled this
way and that by feet unseen. At that Mr. Heelas fled precipitately
upstairs, and the rest of the chase is beyond his purview. But as
he passed the staircase window, he heard the side gate slam.
Emerging into the hill-road, Kemp naturally took the downward
direction, and so it was he came to run in his own person the very
race he had watched with such a critical eye from the belvedere
study only four days ago. He ran it well, for a man out of
training, and though his face was white and wet, his wits were cool
to the last. He ran with wide strides, and wherever a patch of
rough ground intervened, wherever there came a patch of raw flints,
or a bit of broken glass shone dazzling, he crossed it and left the
bare invisible feet that followed to take what line they would.
For the first time in his life Kemp discovered that the hill-road
was indescribably vast and desolate, and that the beginnings of the
town far below at the hill foot were strangely remote. Never had
there been a slower or more painful method of progression that
running. All the gaunt villas, sleeping in the afternoon sun,
looked locked and barred; no doubt they were locked and barred--by
his own orders. But at any rate they might have kept a lookout
for an eventuality like this! The town was rising up now, the sea
had dropped out of sight behind it, and people down below were
stirring. A tram was just arriving at the hill foot. Beyond that
was the police station. Was that footsteps he heard behind him?
Spurt.
The people below were staring at him, one or two were running, and
his breath was beginning to saw in his throat. The tram was quite
near now, and the "Jolly Cricketers" was noisily barring its doors.
Beyond the tram were posts and heaps of gravel--the drainage
works. He had a transitory idea of jumping into the tram and
slamming the doors, and then he resolved to go for the police
station. In another moment he had passed the door of the "Jolly
Cricketers," and was in the blistering fag end of the street, with
human beings about him. The tram driver and his helper--arrested
by the sight of his furious haste--stood staring with the tram
horses unhitched. Further on the astonished features of navvies
appeared above the mounds of gravel.
His pace broke a little, and then he heard the swift pad of his
pursuer, and leapt forward again. "The Invisible Man!" he cried to
the navvies, with a vague indicative gesture, and by an inspiration
leapt the excavation and placed a burly group between him and the
chase. Then abandoning the idea of the police station he turned
into a little side street, rushed by a greengrocer's cart,
hesitated for the tenth of a second at the door of a sweetstuff
shop, and then made for the mouth of an alley that ran back into
the main Hill Street again. Two or three little children were
playing here, and shrieked and scattered at his apparition, and
forthwith doors and windows opened and excited mothers revealed
their hearts. Out he shot into Hill Street again, three hundred
yards from the tram-line end, and immediately he became aware of a
tumultuous vociferation and running people.
He glanced up the street towards the hill. Hardly a dozen yards off
ran a huge navvy, cursing in fragments and slashing viciously with
a spade, and hard behind him came the tram conductor with his fists
clenched. Up the street others followed these two, striking and
shouting. Down towards the town, men and women were running, and he
noticed clearly one man coming out of a shop-door with a stick in
his hand. "Spread out! Spread out!" cried some one. Kemp suddenly
grasped the altered condition of the chase. He stopped, and looked
round, panting. "He's close here!" he cried. "Form a line across--"
He was hit hard under the ear, and went reeling, trying to face
round towards his unseen antagonist. He just managed to keep his
feet, and he struck a vain counter in the air. Then he was hit
again under the jaw, and sprawled headlong on the ground. In
another moment a knee compressed his diaphragm, and a couple of
eager hands gripped his throat, but the grip of one was weaker than
the other; he grasped the wrists, heard a cry of pain from his
assailant, and then the spade of the navvy came whirling through
the air above him, and struck something with a dull thud. He felt
a drop of moisture on his face. The grip at his throat suddenly
relaxed, and with a convulsive effort, Kemp loosed himself, grasped
a limp shoulder, and rolled uppermost. He gripped the unseen elbows
near the ground. "I've got him!" screamed Kemp. "Help! Help--hold!
He's down! Hold his feet!"
In another second there was a simultaneous rush upon the struggle,
and a stranger coming into the road suddenly might have thought an
exceptionally savage game of Rugby football was in progress. And
there was no shouting after Kemp's cry--only a sound of blows
and feet and heavy breathing.
Then came a mighty effort, and the Invisible Man threw off a couple
of his antagonists and rose to his knees. Kemp clung to him in
front like a hound to a stag, and a dozen hands gripped, clutched,
and tore at the Unseen. The tram conductor suddenly got the neck
and shoulders and lugged him back.
Down went the heap of struggling men again and rolled over. There
was, I am afraid, some savage kicking. Then suddenly a wild scream
of "Mercy! Mercy!" that died down swiftly to a sound like choking.
"Get back, you fools!" cried the muffled voice of Kemp, and there
was a vigorous shoving back of stalwart forms. "He's hurt, I tell
you. Stand back!"
There was a brief struggle to clear a space, and then the circle of
eager faces saw the doctor kneeling, as it seemed, fifteen inches
in the air, and holding invisible arms to the ground. Behind him a
constable gripped invisible ankles.
"Don't you leave go of en," cried the big navvy, holding a
blood-stained spade; "he's shamming."
"He's not shamming," said the doctor, cautiously raising his knee;
"and I'll hold him." His face was bruised and already going red; he
spoke thickly because of a bleeding lip. He released one hand and
seemed to be feeling at the face. "The mouth's all wet," he said.
And then, "Good God!"
He stood up abruptly and then knelt down on the ground by the side
of the thing unseen. There was a pushing and shuffling, a sound of
heavy feet as fresh people turned up to increase the pressure of
the crowd. People now were coming out of the houses. The doors of
the "Jolly Cricketers" stood suddenly wide open. Very little was said.
Kemp felt about, his hand seeming to pass through empty air. "He's
not breathing," he said, and then, "I can't feel his heart. His
side--ugh!"
Suddenly an old woman, peering under the arm of the big navvy,
screamed sharply. "Looky there!" she said, and thrust out a
wrinkled finger.
And looking where she pointed, everyone saw, faint and transparent
as though it was made of glass, so that veins and arteries and
bones and nerves could be distinguished, the outline of a hand, a
hand limp and prone. It grew clouded and opaque even as they stared.
"Hullo!" cried the constable. "Here's his feet a-showing!"
And so, slowly, beginning at his hands and feet and creeping along
his limbs to the vital centres of his body, that strange change
continued. It was like the slow spreading of a poison. First came
the little white nerves, a hazy grey sketch of a limb, then the
glassy bones and intricate arteries, then the flesh and skin, first
a faint fogginess, and then growing rapidly dense and opaque.
Presently they could see his crushed chest and his shoulders, and
the dim outline of his drawn and battered features.
When at last the crowd made way for Kemp to stand erect, there lay,
naked and pitiful on the ground, the bruised and broken body of a
young man about thirty. His hair and brow were white--not grey
with age, but white with the whiteness of albinism--and his eyes
were like garnets. His hands were clenched, his eyes wide open, and
his expression was one of anger and dismay.
"Cover his face!" said a man. "For Gawd's sake, cover that face!"
and three little children, pushing forward through the crowd, were
suddenly twisted round and sent packing off again.
Someone brought a sheet from the "Jolly Cricketers," and having
covered him, they carried him into that house. And there it was, on
a shabby bed in a tawdry, ill-lighted bedroom, surrounded by a crowd
of ignorant and excited people, broken and wounded, betrayed and
unpitied, that Griffin, the first of all men to make himself
invisible, Griffin, the most gifted physicist the world has ever
seen, ended in infinite disaster his strange and terrible career. _
Read next: Epilogue
Read previous: Chapter XXVII - The Siege of Kemp's House
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