The Invisible Man

The policeman, who had been trying to pass the barman, rushed in, followed by one of the cabmen, gripped the wrist of the invisible hand that collared Marvel, was hit in the face and went reeling back. The door opened, and Marvel made a frantic effort to obtain a lodgment behind it. Then the cabman clutched something. “I got him,” said the cabman. The barman’s red hands came clawing at the unseen. “Here he is!” said the barman. Mr. Marvel, released, suddenly dropped to the ground, and made an attempt to crawl behind the legs of the fighting men. The struggle blundered round the edge of the door. The voice of the Invisible Man was heard for the first time, yelling out sharply as the policeman trod on his foot. Then he cried out passionately, and his fists flew round like flails. The cabman suddenly whooped and doubled up, kicked under the diaphragm. The doors into the bar–parlour from the kitchen slammed and covered Mr. Marvel’s retreat. The men in the kitchen found themselves clutching at and struggling with empty air.

“Where’s he gone?” cried the man with the beard. “Out?”

“This way,” said the policeman, stepping into the yard and stopping.

A piece of tile whizzed by his head, and smashed among the crockery on the kitchen table.

“I’ll show him,” shouted the man with the black beard, and suddenly a steel barrel shone over the policeman’s shoulder, and five bullets had followed one another into the twilight whence the missile had come. As he fired, the man with the beard moved his hand in a horizontal curve, so that his shots radiated out into the narrow yard like spokes from a wheel.

A silence followed. “Five cartridges,” said the man with the black beard. “That’s best of all. Four aces and the joker.6 Get a lantern, some one, and come and feel about for his body.”

CHAPTER XVII DR. KEMP’S VISITOR

Dr. Kemp had continued writing in his study until the shots aroused him. Crack, crack, crack, they came one after the other.

“Hullo!” said Dr. Kemp, putting his pen into his mouth again and listening. “Who’s letting off revolvers in Burdock? What are the asses at now?”[1]

He went to the south window, threw it up,[2] and leaning out stared down on the network of windows, beaded gas–lamps and shops with black interstices of roof and yard that made up the town at night. “Looks like a crowd down the hill,” he said, “by ’The Cricketers,’ ” and remained watching. Thence his eyes wandered over the town to far away where the ships’ lights shone and the pier glowed—a little illuminated, faceted pavilion like a gem of yellow light. The moon in its first quarter hung over the westward hill, and the stars were clear and almost tropically bright.

After five minutes, during which his mind had travelled into a remote speculation of social conditions of the future, and lost itself at last over the time dimension, Dr. Kemp roused himself with a sigh, pulled down the window again, and returned to his writing–desk.

It must have been about an hour after this that the front door–bell rang. He had been writing slackly, and with intervals of abstraction, since the shots. He sat listening. He heard the servant answer the door, and waited for her feet on the staircase, but she did not come. “Wonder what that was?” said Dr. Kemp.

He tried to resume his work, failed, got up, went downstairs from his study to the landing, rang, and called over the balustrade to the housemaid, as she appeared in the hall below. “Was that a letter?” he asked.

“Only a runaway ring,[3] sir,” she answered.

“I’m restless to–night,” he said to himself. He went back to his study, and this time attacked his work resolutely.

In a little while he was hard at work again, and the only sounds in the room were the ticking of the clock and the subdued shrillness of his quill, hurrying in the very centre of the circle of light his lampshade threw on his table.

It was two o’clock before Dr. Kemp had finished his work for the night. He rose, yawned, and went upstairs to bed. He had already removed his coat and vest, when he noticed that he was thirsty. He took a candle and went down to the dining–room in search of a siphon and whisky.

Dr. Kemp’s scientific pursuits had made him a very observant man, and as he re–crossed the hall he noticed a dark spot on the linoleum near the mat at the foot of the stairs. He went on upstairs, and then it suddenly occurred to him to ask himself what the spot on the linoleum might be. Apparently some subconscious element was at work. At any rate, he turned with his burden, went back to the hall, put down the siphon and whisky, and, bending down, touched the spot. Without any great surprise, he found it had the stickiness and colour of drying blood.

He took up his burden again, and returned upstairs looking about him and trying to account for the blood spot. On the landing he saw something, and stopped astonished. The door–handle of his room was blood–stained.