The Invisible Man

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 majority who refused to believe in “all this nonsense” about an Invisible Man. His wife, however, as he was to be reminded subsequently, 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,[1] 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 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 dining–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 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![2] It’s all right after all!”

With Mr. Heelas to think things like that was to act,[3] 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 himself ran to shut the French windows[4] that opened on the veranda, and 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, shooting 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 that 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 than 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 below were stirring. A tram was just arriving at the hill foot. Beyond that was the police station. Were those footsteps he heard behind him? Spurt.