The Invisible Man

The story of the flying money was true. And all about that neighbourhood, even from the august London and County Banking Company, from the tills of shops and inns—doors standing that sunny weather entirely open —money had been quietly and dexterously making off that day in handfuls and rouleaux, floating quietly along by walls and shady places, dodging quickly from the approaching eyes of men. And it had, though no man had traced it, invariably ended its mysterious flight in the pocket of that agitated gentleman in the obsolete silk hat, sitting outside the little inn on the outskirts of Port Stowe.

It was ten days after—and indeed only when the Burdock story was already old—that the mariner collated these facts and began to understand how near he had been to the wonderful Invisible Man.

CHAPTER XV THE MAN WHO WAS RUNNING

In the early evening time Dr. Kemp was sitting in his study in the belvedere on the hill overlooking Burdock. It was a pleasant little room, with three windows—north, west, and south—and bookshelves crowded with books and scientifiic publications, and a broad writing–table, and, under the north window, a microscope, glass slips, minute instruments, some cultures, and scattered bottles of reagents. Dr. Kemp’s solar lamp was lit, albeit the sky was still bright with the sunset light, and his blinds were up because there was no offence of peering outsiders to require them pulled down. Dr. Kemp was a tall and slender young man, with flaxen hair and a moustache almost white, and the work he was upon would earn him, he hoped, the fellowship of the Royal Society,1 so highly did he think of it.

And his eye, presently wandering from his work, caught the sunset blazing at the back of the hill that is over against his own. For a minute, perhaps, he sat, pen in mouth, admiring the rich golden colour above the crest, and then his attention was attracted by the little figure of a man, inky black, running over the hill brow towards him. He was a shortish little fellow, and he wore a high hat, and he was running so fast that his legs verily twinkled.

“Another of those asses,” said Dr. Kemp. “Like that ass who ran into me this morning round a corner, with his ‘ ’Visible Man a–coming, sir!’ I can’t imagine what possesses people.2 One might think we were in the thirteenth century.”

He got up, went to the window, and stared at the dusky hillside and the dark little figure tearing down it. “He seems in a confounded hurry,” said Dr. Kemp, “but he doesn’t seem to be getting on. If his pockets were full of lead, he couldn’t run heavier.

“Spurted,3 sir!” said Dr. Kemp.

In another moment the higher of the villas that had clambered up the hill from Burdock had occulted4 the running figure. He was visible again for a moment, and again and then again, three times between the three detached houses that came next, and then the terrace hid him.

“Asses!” said Dr. Kemp, swinging round on his heel and walking back to his writing–table.

But those who saw the fugitive nearer, and perceived the abject terror on his perspiring face, being themselves in the open roadway, did not share in the doctor’s contempt. By the man pounded,5 and as he ran he chinked like a well–filled purse that is tossed to and fro. He looked neither to the right nor left, but his dilated eyes stared straight down hill to where the lamps were being lit and the people were crowded in the street. And his ill–shaped mouth fell apart, and a glairy foam6 lay on his lips, and his breath came hoarse and noisy. All he passed stopped and began staring up the road and down, and interrogating one another with an inkling of discomfort for the reason of his haste.

And then presently, far up the hill, a dog playing in the road yelped and ran under a gate, and as they still wondered, something—a wind—a pad, pad, pad, a sound like a panting breathing, rushed by.

People screamed. People sprang off the pavement. It passed in shouts, it passed by instinct down the hill. They were shouting in the street before Marvel was half–way there. They were bolting into houses and slamming the doors behind them, with the news. He heard it, and made one last desperate spurt. Fear came striding by, rushed ahead of him, and in a moment had seized the town.

“The Invisible Man is coming! The Invisible Man!”

CHAPTER XVI IN THE "JOLLY CRICKETERS"

The “Jolly Cricketers” is just at the bottom of the hill, where the tram–lines begin. The barman leant his fat red arms on the counter and talked of horses with an anaemic cabman, while a black–bearded man in gray snapped up biscuit and cheese, drank Burton,1 and conversed in American2 with a policeman off duty.

“What’s the shouting about?” said the anaemic cabman, going off at a tangent, trying to see up the hill over the dirty yellow blind in the low window of the inn. Somebody ran by outside.

“Fire, perhaps,” said the barman.