The Invisible Man H. G. Wells (ebook reader screen txt) 📖

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.

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 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