CHAPTER XXVIII
THE HUNTER HUNTED
Mr. Heelas, Mr. Kemp's nearest neighbour among the villa holders,was asleep in his summer house when the siege of Kemp's housebegan. Mr. Heelas was one of the sturdy minority who refused tobelieve "in all this nonsense" about an Invisible Man. His wife,however, as he was subsequently to be reminded, did. He insistedupon walking about his garden just as if nothing was the matter,and he went to sleep in the afternoon in accordance with the customof years. He slept through the smashing of the windows, and thenwoke up suddenly with a curious persuasion of something wrong. Helooked across at Kemp's house, rubbed his eyes and looked again.Then he put his feet to the ground, and sat listening. He said hewas damned, but still the strange thing was visible. The houselooked as though it had been deserted for weeks--after a violentriot. Every window was broken, and every window, save those of thebelvedere study, was blinded by the internal shutters.
"I could have sworn it was all right"--he looked at his watch--"twentyminutes 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 astill more wonderful thing. The shutters of the drawing-room windowwere flung open violently, and the housemaid in her outdoor hat andgarments, appeared struggling in a frantic manner to throw up thesash. Suddenly a man appeared beside her, helping her--Dr. Kemp!In another moment the window was open, and the housemaid wasstruggling out; she pitched forward and vanished among the shrubs.Mr. Heelas stood up, exclaiming vaguely and vehemently at all thesewonderful things. He saw Kemp stand on the sill, spring from thewindow, and reappear almost instantaneously running along a path inthe shrubbery and stooping as he ran, like a man who evadesobservation. He vanished behind a laburnum, and appeared againclambering over a fence that abutted on the open down. In a secondhe had tumbled over and was running at a tremendous pace down theslope towards Mr. Heelas.
"Lord!" cried Mr. Heelas, struck with an idea; "it's that InvisibleMan brute! It's right, after all!"
With Mr. Heelas to think things like that was to act, and his cookwatching him from the top window was amazed to see him come peltingtowards the house at a good nine miles an hour. There was aslamming of doors, a ringing of bells, and the voice of Mr. Heelasbellowing like a bull. "Shut the doors, shut the windows, shuteverything!--the Invisible Man is coming!" Instantly the house wasfull of screams and directions, and scurrying feet. He ran himselfto shut the French windows that opened on the veranda; as he did soKemp's head and shoulders and knee appeared over the edge of thegarden fence. In another moment Kemp had ploughed through theasparagus, and was running across the tennis lawn to the house.
"You can't come in," said Mr. Heelas, shutting the bolts. "I'm verysorry if he's after you, but you can't come in!"
Kemp appeared with a face of terror close to the glass, rapping andthen shaking frantically at the French window. Then, seeing hisefforts were useless, he ran along the veranda, vaulted the end,and went to hammer at the side door. Then he ran round by the sidegate to the front of the house, and so into the hill-road. And Mr.Heelas staring from his window--a face of horror--had scarcelywitnessed Kemp vanish, ere the asparagus was being trampled thisway and that by feet unseen. At that Mr. Heelas fled precipitatelyupstairs, and the rest of the chase is beyond his purview. But ashe passed the staircase window, he heard the side gate slam.
Emerging into the hill-road, Kemp naturally took the downwarddirection, and so it was he came to run in his own person the veryrace he had watched with such a critical eye from the belvederestudy only four days ago. He ran it well, for a man out oftraining, and though his face was white and wet, his wits were coolto the last. He ran with wide strides, and wherever a patch ofrough ground intervened, wherever there came a patch of raw flints,or a bit of broken glass shone dazzling, he crossed it and left thebare invisible feet that followed to take what line they would.
For the first time in his life Kemp discovered that the hill-roadwas indescribably vast and desolate, and that the beginnings of thetown far below at the hill foot were strangely remote. Never hadthere been a slower or more painful method of progression thanrunning. All the gaunt villas, sleeping in the afternoon sun,looked locked and barred; no doubt they were locked and barred--byhis own orders. But at any rate they might have kept a lookoutfor an eventuality like this! The town was rising up now, the seahad dropped out of sight behind it, and people down below werestirring. A tram was just arriving at the hill foot. Beyond thatwas the police station. Was that footsteps he heard behind him?Spurt.
The people below were staring at him, one or two were running, andhis breath was beginning to saw in his throat. The tram was quitenear now, and the "Jolly Cricketers" was noisily barring its doors.Beyond the tram were posts and heaps of gravel--the drainageworks. He had a transitory idea of jumping into the tram andslamming the doors, and then he resolved to go for the policestation. In another moment he had passed the door of the "JollyCricketers," and was in the blistering fag end of the street, withhuman beings about him. The tram driver and his helper--arrestedby the sight of his furious haste--stood staring with the tramhorses unhitched. Further on the astonished features of navviesappeared above the mounds of gravel.
His pace broke a little, and then he heard the swift pad of hispursuer, and leapt forward again. "The Invisible Man!" he cried tothe navvies, with a vague indicative gesture, and by an inspirationleapt the excavation and placed a burly group between him and thechase. Then abandoning the idea of the police station he turnedinto a little side street, rushed by a greengrocer's cart,hesitated for the tenth of a second at the door of a sweetstuffshop, and then made for the mouth of an alley that ran back intothe main Hill Street again. Two or three little children wereplaying here, and shrieked and scattered at his apparition, andforthwith doors and windows opened and excited mothers revealedtheir hearts. Out he shot into Hill Street again, three hundredyards from the tram-line end, and immediately he became aware of atumultuous vociferation and running people.
He glanced up the street towards the hill. Hardly a dozen yards offran a huge navvy, cursing in fragments and slashing viciously witha spade, and hard behind him came the tram conductor with his fistsclenched. Up the street others followed these two, striking andshouting. Down towards the town, men and women were running, and henoticed clearly one man coming out of a shop-door with a stick inhis hand. "Spread out! Spread out!" cried some one. Kemp suddenlygrasped the altered condition of the chase. He stopped, and lookedround, panting. "He's close here!" he cried. "Form a line across--"
He was hit hard under the ear, and went reeling, trying to faceround towards his unseen antagonist. He just managed to keep hisfeet, and he struck a vain counter in the air. Then he was hitagain under the jaw, and sprawled headlong on the ground. Inanother moment a knee compressed his diaphragm, and a couple ofeager hands gripped his throat, but the grip of one was weaker thanthe other; he grasped the wrists, heard a cry of pain from hisassailant, and then the spade of the navvy came whirling throughthe air above him, and struck something with a dull thud. He felta drop of moisture on his face. The grip at his throat suddenlyrelaxed, and with a convulsive effort, Kemp loosed himself, graspeda limp shoulder, and rolled uppermost. He gripped the unseen elbowsnear 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 anexceptionally savage game of Rugby football was in progress. Andthere was no shouting after Kemp's cry--only a sound of blowsand feet and heavy breathing.
Then came a mighty effort, and the Invisible Man threw off a coupleof his antagonists and rose to his knees. Kemp clung to him infront like a hound to a stag, and a dozen hands gripped, clutched,and tore at the Unseen. The tram conductor suddenly got the neckand shoulders and lugged him back.
Down went the heap of struggling men again and rolled over. Therewas, I am afraid, some savage kickin
g. Then suddenly a wild screamof "Mercy! Mercy!" that died down swiftly to a sound like choking.
"Get back, you fools!" cried the muffled voice of Kemp, and therewas a vigorous shoving back of stalwart forms. "He's hurt, I tellyou. Stand back!"
There was a brief struggle to clear a space, and then the circle ofeager faces saw the doctor kneeling, as it seemed, fifteen inchesin the air, and holding invisible arms to the ground. Behind him aconstable gripped invisible ankles.
"Don't you leave go of en," cried the big navvy, holding ablood-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; hespoke thickly because of a bleeding lip. He released one hand andseemed 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 sideof the thing unseen. There was a pushing and shuffling, a sound ofheavy feet as fresh people turned up to increase the pressure ofthe crowd. People now were coming out of the houses. The doors ofthe "Jolly Cricketers" stood suddenly wide open. Very little was said.
Kemp felt about, his hand seeming to pass through empty air. "He'snot breathing," he said, and then, "I can't feel his heart. Hisside--ugh!"
Suddenly an old woman, peering under the arm of the big navvy,screamed sharply. "Looky there!" she said, and thrust out awrinkled finger.
And looking where she pointed, everyone saw, faint and transparentas though it was made of glass, so that veins and arteries andbones and nerves could be distinguished, the outline of a hand, ahand 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 alonghis limbs to the vital centres of his body, that strange changecontinued. It was like the slow spreading of a poison. First camethe little white nerves, a hazy grey sketch of a limb, then theglassy bones and intricate arteries, then the flesh and skin, firsta faint fogginess, and then growing rapidly dense and opaque.Presently they could see his crushed chest and his shoulders, andthe 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 ayoung man about thirty. His hair and brow were white--not greywith age, but white with the whiteness of albinism--and his eyeswere like garnets. His hands were clenched, his eyes wide open, andhis 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, weresuddenly twisted round and sent packing off again.
Someone brought a sheet from the "Jolly Cricketers," and havingcovered him, they carried him into that house. And there it was, ona shabby bed in a tawdry, ill-lighted bedroom, surrounded by a crowdof ignorant and excited people, broken and wounded, betrayed andunpitied, that Griffin, the first of all men to make himselfinvisible, Griffin, the most gifted physicist the world has everseen, ended in infinite disaster his strange and terrible career.