The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance
broken up by three o’clock, and the children, scared and keeping
together in groups, were hurrying home. Kemp’s proclamation—signed
indeed by Adye—was posted over almost the whole district by four or
five o’clock in the afternoon. It gave briefly but clearly all the
conditions of the struggle, the necessity of keeping the Invisible Man
from food and sleep, the necessity for incessant watchfulness and for a
prompt attention to any evidence of his movements. And so swift and
decided was the action of the authorities, so prompt and universal was
the belief in this strange being, that before nightfall an area of
several hundred square miles was in a stringent state of siege. And
before nightfall, too, a thrill of horror went through the whole
watching nervous countryside. Going from whispering mouth to mouth,
swift and certain over the length and breadth of the country, passed
the story of the murder of Mr. Wicksteed.
If our supposition that the Invisible Man’s refuge was the Hintondean
thickets, then we must suppose that in the early afternoon he sallied
out again bent upon some project that involved the use of a weapon. We
cannot know what the project was, but the evidence that he had the iron
rod in hand before he met Wicksteed is to me at least overwhelming.
Of course we can know nothing of the details of that encounter. It
occurred on the edge of a gravel pit, not two hundred yards from Lord
Burdock’s lodge gate. Everything points to a desperate struggle—the
trampled ground, the numerous wounds Mr. Wicksteed received, his
splintered walking-stick; but why the attack was made, save in a
murderous frenzy, it is impossible to imagine. Indeed the theory of
madness is almost unavoidable. Mr. Wicksteed was a man of forty-five or
forty-six, steward to Lord Burdock, of inoffensive habits and
appearance, the very last person in the world to provoke such a
terrible antagonist. Against him it would seem the Invisible Man used
an iron rod dragged from a broken piece of fence. He stopped this quiet
man, going quietly home to his midday meal, attacked him, beat down his
feeble defences, broke his arm, felled him, and smashed his head to a
jelly.
Of course, he must have dragged this rod out of the fencing before he
met his victim—he must have been carrying it ready in his hand. Only
two details beyond what has already been stated seem to bear on the
matter. One is the circumstance that the gravel pit was not in Mr.
Wicksteed’s direct path home, but nearly a couple of hundred yards out
of his way. The other is the assertion of a little girl to the effect
that, going to her afternoon school, she saw the murdered man
“trotting” in a peculiar manner across a field towards the gravel pit.
Her pantomime of his action suggests a man pursuing something on the
ground before him and striking at it ever and again with his
walking-stick. She was the last person to see him alive. He passed out
of her sight to his death, the struggle being hidden from her only by a
clump of beech trees and a slight depression in the ground.
Now this, to the present writer’s mind at least, lifts the murder out
of the realm of the absolutely wanton. We may imagine that Griffin had
taken the rod as a weapon indeed, but without any deliberate intention
of using it in murder. Wicksteed may then have come by and noticed this
rod inexplicably moving through the air. Without any thought of the
Invisible Man—for Port Burdock is ten miles away—he may have pursued
it. It is quite conceivable that he may not even have heard of the
Invisible Man. One can then imagine the Invisible Man making
off—quietly in order to avoid discovering his presence in the
neighbourhood, and Wicksteed, excited and curious, pursuing this
unaccountably locomotive object—finally striking at it.
No doubt the Invisible Man could easily have distanced his middle-aged
pursuer under ordinary circumstances, but the position in which
Wicksteed’s body was found suggests that he had the ill luck to drive
his quarry into a corner between a drift of stinging nettles and the
gravel pit. To those who appreciate the extraordinary irascibility of
the Invisible Man, the rest of the encounter will be easy to imagine.
But this is pure hypothesis. The only undeniable facts—for stories of
children are often unreliable—are the discovery of Wicksteed’s body,
done to death, and of the blood-stained iron rod flung among the
nettles. The abandonment of the rod by Griffin, suggests that in the
emotional excitement of the affair, the purpose for which he took it—if
he had a purpose—was abandoned. He was certainly an intensely
egotistical and unfeeling man, but the sight of his victim, his first
victim, bloody and pitiful at his feet, may have released some long
pent fountain of remorse which for a time may have flooded whatever
scheme of action he had contrived.
After the murder of Mr. Wicksteed, he would seem to have struck across
the country towards the downland. There is a story of a voice heard
about sunset by a couple of men in a field near Fern Bottom. It was
wailing and laughing, sobbing and groaning, and ever and again it
shouted. It must have been queer hearing. It drove up across the middle
of a clover field and died away towards the hills.
That afternoon the Invisible Man must have learnt something of the
rapid use Kemp had made of his confidences. He must have found houses
locked and secured; he may have loitered about railway stations and
prowled about inns, and no doubt he read the proclamations and realised
something of the nature of the campaign against him. And as the evening
advanced, the fields became dotted here and there with groups of three
or four men, and noisy with the yelping of dogs. These men-hunters had
particular instructions in the case of an encounter as to the way they
should support one another. But he avoided them all. We may understand
something of his exasperation, and it could have been none the less
because he himself had supplied the information that was being used so
remorselessly against him. For that day at least he lost heart; for
nearly twenty-four hours, save when he turned on Wicksteed, he was a
hunted man. In the night, he must have eaten and slept; for in the
morning he was himself again, active, powerful, angry, and malignant,
prepared for his last great struggle against the world.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE SIEGE OF KEMP’S HOUSE
Kemp read a strange missive, written in pencil on a greasy sheet of
paper.
“You have been amazingly energetic and clever,” this letter ran,
“though what you stand to gain by it I cannot imagine. You are against
me. For a whole day you have chased me; you have tried to rob me of a
night’s rest. But I have had food in spite of you, I have slept in
spite of you, and the game is only beginning. The game is only
beginning. There is nothing for it, but to start the Terror. This
announces the first day of the Terror. Port Burdock is no longer under
the Queen, tell your Colonel of Police, and the rest of them; it is
under me—the Terror! This is day one of year one of the new epoch—the
Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am Invisible Man the First. To begin with
the rule will be easy. The first day there will be one execution for
the sake of example—a man named Kemp. Death starts for him to-day. He
may lock himself away, hide himself away, get guards about him, put on
armour if he likes—Death, the unseen Death, is coming. Let him take
precautions; it will impress my people. Death starts from the pillar
box by midday. The letter will fall in as the postman comes along, then
off! The game begins. Death starts. Help him not, my people, lest Death
fall upon you also. To-day Kemp is to die.”
Kemp read this letter twice, “It’s no hoax,” he said. “That’s his
voice! And he means it.”
He turned the folded sheet over and saw on the addressed side of it the
postmark Hintondean, and the prosaic detail “2d. to pay.”
He got up slowly, leaving his lunch unfinished—the letter had come by
the one o’clock post—and went into his study. He rang for his
housekeeper, and told her to go round the house at once, examine all
the fastenings of the windows, and close all the shutters. He closed
the shutters of his study himself. From a locked drawer in his bedroom
he took a little revolver, examined it carefully, and put it into the
pocket of his lounge jacket. He wrote a number of brief notes, one to
Colonel Adye, gave them to his servant to take, with explicit
instructions as to her way of leaving the house. “There is no danger,”
he said, and added a mental reservation, “to you.” He remained
meditative for a space after doing this, and then returned to his
cooling lunch.
He ate with gaps of thought. Finally he struck the table sharply. “We
will have him!” he said; “and I am the bait. He will come too far.”
He went up to the belvedere, carefully shutting every door after him.
“It’s a game,” he said, “an odd game—but the chances are all for me,
Mr. Griffin, in spite of your invisibility. Griffin _contra mundum_ ...
with a vengeance.”
He stood at the window staring at the hot hillside. “He must get food
every day—and I don’t envy him. Did he really sleep last night? Out in
the open somewhere—secure from collisions. I wish we could get some
good cold wet weather instead of the heat.
“He may be watching me now.”
He went close to the window. Something rapped smartly against the
brickwork over the frame, and made him start violently back.
“I’m getting nervous,” said Kemp. But it was five minutes before he
went to the window again. “It must have been a sparrow,” he said.
Presently he heard the front-door bell ringing, and hurried downstairs.
He unbolted and unlocked the door, examined the chain, put it up, and
opened cautiously without showing himself. A familiar voice hailed him.
It was Adye.
“Your servant’s been assaulted, Kemp,” he said round the door.
“What!” exclaimed Kemp.
“Had that note of yours taken away from her. He’s close about here. Let
me in.”
Kemp released the chain, and Adye entered through as narrow an opening
as possible. He stood in the hall, looking with infinite relief at Kemp
refastening the door. “Note was snatched out of her hand. Scared her
horribly. She’s down at the station. Hysterics. He’s close here. What
was it about?”
Kemp swore.
“What a fool I was,” said Kemp. “I might have known. It’s not an hour’s
walk from Hintondean. Already?”
“What’s up?” said Adye.
“Look here!” said Kemp, and led the way into his study. He handed Adye
the Invisible Man’s letter. Adye read it and whistled softly. “And
you—?” said Adye.
“Proposed a trap—like a fool,” said Kemp, “and sent my proposal out by
a maid servant. To him.”
Adye followed Kemp’s profanity.
“He’ll clear out,” said Adye.
“Not he,” said Kemp.
A resounding smash of glass came from upstairs. Adye had a silvery
glimpse of a little revolver half out of Kemp’s pocket. “It’s a window,
upstairs!” said Kemp, and led the way up. There came a second smash
while they were still on the staircase. When they reached the study
they found two of the three windows smashed, half the room littered
with splintered glass, and one big flint lying on the writing table.
The two men stopped in the doorway, contemplating the wreckage. Kemp
swore again, and as he did so the third window went with a snap like a
pistol, hung starred for a moment, and collapsed in jagged, shivering
triangles into the room.
“What’s this for?” said Adye.
“It’s a beginning,” said Kemp.
“There’s no way of climbing up here?”
“Not for a cat,” said Kemp.
“No shutters?”
“Not here. All the downstairs rooms—Hullo!”
Smash, and then whack of boards hit hard came from downstairs.
“Confound him!” said Kemp. “That must be—yes—it’s one of the bedrooms.