The Invisible Man (19 page)

Another window went the way of its fellows.

"You haven't a revolver?" asked Adye.

Kemp's hand went to his pocket. Then he hesitated. "I haven't
one—at least to spare."

"I'll bring it back," said Adye, "you'll be safe here."

Kemp, ashamed of his momentary lapse from truthfulness, handed him
the weapon.

"Now for the door," said Adye.

As they stood hesitating in the hall, they heard one of the
first-floor bedroom windows crack and clash. Kemp went to the door
and began to slip the bolts as silently as possible. His face was a
little paler than usual. "You must step straight out," said Kemp. In
another moment Adye was on the doorstep and the bolts were dropping
back into the staples. He hesitated for a moment, feeling more
comfortable with his back against the door. Then he marched, upright
and square, down the steps. He crossed the lawn and approached the
gate. A little breeze seemed to ripple over the grass. Something
moved near him. "Stop a bit," said a Voice, and Adye stopped dead
and his hand tightened on the revolver.

"Well?" said Adye, white and grim, and every nerve tense.

"Oblige me by going back to the house," said the Voice, as tense
and grim as Adye's.

"Sorry," said Adye a little hoarsely, and moistened his lips with
his tongue. The Voice was on his left front, he thought. Suppose he
were to take his luck with a shot?

"What are you going for?" said the Voice, and there was a quick
movement of the two, and a flash of sunlight from the open lip of
Adye's pocket.

Adye desisted and thought. "Where I go," he said slowly, "is my own
business." The words were still on his lips, when an arm came round
his neck, his back felt a knee, and he was sprawling backward. He
drew clumsily and fired absurdly, and in another moment he was
struck in the mouth and the revolver wrested from his grip. He made
a vain clutch at a slippery limb, tried to struggle up and fell
back. "Damn!" said Adye. The Voice laughed. "I'd kill you now if it
wasn't the waste of a bullet," it said. He saw the revolver in
mid-air, six feet off, covering him.

"Well?" said Adye, sitting up.

"Get up," said the Voice.

Adye stood up.

"Attention," said the Voice, and then fiercely, "Don't try any
games. Remember I can see your face if you can't see mine. You've
got to go back to the house."

"He won't let me in," said Adye.

"That's a pity," said the Invisible Man. "I've got no quarrel with
you."

Adye moistened his lips again. He glanced away from the barrel of
the revolver and saw the sea far off very blue and dark under the
midday sun, the smooth green down, the white cliff of the Head, and
the multitudinous town, and suddenly he knew that life was very
sweet. His eyes came back to this little metal thing hanging
between heaven and earth, six yards away. "What am I to do?" he
said sullenly.

"What am
I
to do?" asked the Invisible Man. "You will get help. The
only thing is for you to go back."

"I will try. If he lets me in will you promise not to rush the
door?"

"I've got no quarrel with you," said the Voice.

Kemp had hurried upstairs after letting Adye out, and now crouching
among the broken glass and peering cautiously over the edge of the
study window sill, he saw Adye stand parleying with the Unseen.
"Why doesn't he fire?" whispered Kemp to himself. Then the revolver
moved a little and the glint of the sunlight flashed in Kemp's
eyes. He shaded his eyes and tried to see the source of the
blinding beam.

"Surely!" he said, "Adye has given up the revolver."

"Promise not to rush the door," Adye was saying. "Don't push a
winning game too far. Give a man a chance."

"You go back to the house. I tell you flatly I will not promise
anything."

Adye's decision seemed suddenly made. He turned towards the house,
walking slowly with his hands behind him. Kemp watched him—puzzled.
The revolver vanished, flashed again into sight, vanished again,
and became evident on a closer scrutiny as a little dark object
following Adye. Then things happened very quickly. Adye leapt
backwards, swung around, clutched at this little object, missed it,
threw up his hands and fell forward on his face, leaving a little
puff of blue in the air. Kemp did not hear the sound of the shot.
Adye writhed, raised himself on one arm, fell forward, and lay
still.

For a space Kemp remained staring at the quiet carelessness of
Adye's attitude. The afternoon was very hot and still, nothing
seemed stirring in all the world save a couple of yellow butterflies
chasing each other through the shrubbery between the house and the
road gate. Adye lay on the lawn near the gate. The blinds of all
the villas down the hill-road were drawn, but in one little green
summer-house was a white figure, apparently an old man asleep. Kemp
scrutinised the surroundings of the house for a glimpse of the
revolver, but it had vanished. His eyes came back to Adye. The game
was opening well.

Then came a ringing and knocking at the front door, that grew at
last tumultuous, but pursuant to Kemp's instructions the servants
had locked themselves into their rooms. This was followed by a
silence. Kemp sat listening and then began peering cautiously out
of the three windows, one after another. He went to the staircase
head and stood listening uneasily. He armed himself with his
bedroom poker, and went to examine the interior fastenings of the
ground-floor windows again. Everything was safe and quiet. He
returned to the belvedere. Adye lay motionless over the edge of the
gravel just as he had fallen. Coming along the road by the villas
were the housemaid and two policemen.

Everything was deadly still. The three people seemed very slow in
approaching. He wondered what his antagonist was doing.

He started. There was a smash from below. He hesitated and went
downstairs again. Suddenly the house resounded with heavy blows and
the splintering of wood. He heard a smash and the destructive clang
of the iron fastenings of the shutters. He turned the key and
opened the kitchen door. As he did so, the shutters, split and
splintering, came flying inward. He stood aghast. The window frame,
save for one crossbar, was still intact, but only little teeth of
glass remained in the frame. The shutters had been driven in with
an axe, and now the axe was descending in sweeping blows upon the
window frame and the iron bars defending it. Then suddenly it leapt
aside and vanished. He saw the revolver lying on the path outside,
and then the little weapon sprang into the air. He dodged back. The
revolver cracked just too late, and a splinter from the edge of the
closing door flashed over his head. He slammed and locked the door,
and as he stood outside he heard Griffin shouting and laughing.
Then the blows of the axe with its splitting and smashing
consequences, were resumed.

Kemp stood in the passage trying to think. In a moment the
Invisible Man would be in the kitchen. This door would not keep him
a moment, and then—

A ringing came at the front door again. It would be the policemen.
He ran into the hall, put up the chain, and drew the bolts. He made
the girl speak before he dropped the chain, and the three people
blundered into the house in a heap, and Kemp slammed the door
again.

"The Invisible Man!" said Kemp. "He has a revolver, with two
shots—left. He's killed Adye. Shot him anyhow. Didn't you see him on
the lawn? He's lying there."

"Who?" said one of the policemen.

"Adye," said Kemp.

"We came in the back way," said the girl.

"What's that smashing?" asked one of the policemen.

"He's in the kitchen—or will be. He has found an axe—"

Suddenly the house was full of the Invisible Man's resounding
blows on the kitchen door. The girl stared towards the kitchen,
shuddered, and retreated into the dining-room. Kemp tried to
explain in broken sentences. They heard the kitchen door give.

"This way," said Kemp, starting into activity, and bundled the
policemen into the dining-room doorway.

"Poker," said Kemp, and rushed to the fender. He handed the poker
he had carried to the policeman and the dining-room one to the
other. He suddenly flung himself backward.

"Whup!" said one policeman, ducked, and caught the axe on his poker.
The pistol snapped its penultimate shot and ripped a valuable Sidney
Cooper. The second policeman brought his poker down on the little
weapon, as one might knock down a wasp, and sent it rattling to the
floor.

At the first clash the girl screamed, stood screaming for a moment
by the fireplace, and then ran to open the shutters—possibly
with an idea of escaping by the shattered window.

The axe receded into the passage, and fell to a position about two
feet from the ground. They could hear the Invisible Man breathing.
"Stand away, you two," he said. "I want that man Kemp."

"We want you," said the first policeman, making a quick step
forward and wiping with his poker at the Voice. The Invisible Man
must have started back, and he blundered into the umbrella stand.

Then, as the policeman staggered with the swing of the blow he had
aimed, the Invisible Man countered with the axe, the helmet crumpled
like paper, and the blow sent the man spinning to the floor at the
head of the kitchen stairs. But the second policeman, aiming behind
the axe with his poker, hit something soft that snapped. There was a
sharp exclamation of pain and then the axe fell to the ground. The
policeman wiped again at vacancy and hit nothing; he put his foot on
the axe, and struck again. Then he stood, poker clubbed, listening
intent for the slightest movement.

He heard the dining-room window open, and a quick rush of feet
within. His companion rolled over and sat up, with the blood
running down between his eye and ear. "Where is he?" asked the man
on the floor.

"Don't know. I've hit him. He's standing somewhere in the hall.
Unless he's slipped past you. Doctor Kemp—sir."

Pause.

"Doctor Kemp," cried the policeman again.

The second policeman began struggling to his feet. He stood up.
Suddenly the faint pad of bare feet on the kitchen stairs could be
heard. "Yap!" cried the first policeman, and incontinently flung
his poker. It smashed a little gas bracket.

He made as if he would pursue the Invisible Man downstairs. Then he
thought better of it and stepped into the dining-room.

"Doctor Kemp—" he began, and stopped short.

"Doctor Kemp's a hero," he said, as his companion looked over his
shoulder.

The dining-room window was wide open, and neither housemaid nor
Kemp was to be seen.

The second policeman's opinion of Kemp was terse and vivid.

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.