The Invisible Man Part 9

The Invisible Man becomes visible again, but at what cost?

Included in this episode:

Chapter 26 The Wicksteed Murder

Chapter 27 The Seige of Kemp's House

Chapter 28 The Hunter Hunted

The Epilogue

Author: HG Wells

Contact the pod on: thesolobc@gmail.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Solo Book Club. We are currently reading The Invisible Man. This is part nine and our last part of the book before we uh have our discussion episode. If this is your first time coming in to listen to The Invisible Man, you are picking a good spot to come in. I do suggest though, however, that you head back, start with part one, and work your way through. Because you're coming in basically right at the end. But what happened last time? Well, quick refresher. Gosh, it was a good episode last time, wasn't it? So the invisible man has found his friend, he's telling his friend all that's happened in between. Then he's all of a sudden kind of drifted into this kind of homicidal thought process, which is a bit concerning. Kemp, the brilliant man that he is, had sent a letter during the night while the invisible man was asleep to the police. The police come. Kemp has this brilliant idea to lock him in a room, but he stumbles with the key. The key falls, the invisible man escapes. Kemp's trying to advise the police. This is what we need to do to catch him. Dogs hate him. Let's put powder glass on the gr on the roads so that he walks over and he cuts his feet and we can find him and he's he's maimed, basically, and he can't go on his killing spree. So that's where we're up to. Let's dive in. Chapter 26: The Wicksteed Murder. The invisible man seems to have rushed out of Kemp's house in a state of blind fury. A little child playing near Kemp's gateway was violently caught up and thrown aside so that his ankle was broken. Good lord. And thereafter, for some hours, the invisible man passed out of human perceptions. No one knows where he went nor what he did. But one can imagine him hurrying through the hot June forenoon, up the hill and onto the open downland behind Port Burdock, raging and despairing at his intolerable fate, and sheltering at last, heated and weary, amid the thickets of Hintendeen, to piece together again his shattered schemes against his species. That seems the most improbable refuge for him, for there it was he reasserted himself in a grimly tragical manner about two in the afternoon. One wonders what his state of mind may have been during that time and what plans he devised. No doubt he was almost ecstatically exasperated by Kemp's treachery, and though we may be able to understand the motives that led to that deceit, we may still imagine and even sympathise a little with the fury the attempted surprise may have occasioned. Perhaps something of the stunned astonishment of his Oxford Street experiences may have returned him, for evidently he had counted on Kemp's cooperation in his brutal dream of a terrorised world. At any rate, he vanished from human ken about midday, and no living witness can tell what he did until about half past two. It was a fortunate thing perhaps for humanity, but for him it was a fatal inaction. During that time, a growing multitude of men scattered over the countryside were busy. In the morning he had still been simply a legend, a terror, in the afternoon. By virtue chiefly of Kemp's dryly worded proclamation, he was presented as a tangible antagonist, to be wounded, captured, or overcome, and the countryside began organizing itself with inconceivable rapidity. By two o'clock even he might still have removed himself out of the district by getting aboard a train, but after two that became impossible. Every passenger train along the lines on a great parallelogram between Southampton, Winchester, Brighton, and Horsham travelled with locked doors, and the goods traffic was almost entirely suspended. And in a great circle of twenty miles round Port Burdock, men armed with guns and bludgeons were presently setting out in groups of three and four with dogs to beat the roads and fields. My God, they really have like gotten quick into action. Mounted policemen rode along the country lanes, stopping at every cottage and warning the people to lock up their houses and keep indoors unless they were armed, and all the elementary schools had broken up by three o'clock, and the children, scared and keeping together in groups, were hurrying home. Kemp's proclamation, signed indeed by Addy, 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, past the story of the murder of Mr. Wicksteed. Who is Mr. Wicksteed? Maybe he is the guy in that costume shop. If our supposition that the invisible man's refuge was the Hinton Dean Thickets is correct, 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. So this is a completely different map. This is like Wicksteed is someone he's come across on the country and he's like what bludgeoned him to de Good grief. We know nothing of the details of the encounter. It occurred on the edge of a gravel pit not 200 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. Isn't that lovely imagery? I mean I I I understand how everyone can jump to the conclusion the invisible man murdered this man because the invisible man did just go on a murderous tirade of how he wanted to kill everyone he came across. But I don't know, like there isn't a whole lot of evidence that it was the invisible man who committed this crime. Let us read on. 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 actions 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. Well, thank God for that. 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 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 irras irrascibility, let me look that one up. Okay, so irrascibility basically means quick to temper, which we know the invisible man to be. 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 bloodstained 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 to flood for a time 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 realized something of the nature of their 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 as to the way they should support one another in the case of an encounter. 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. What a chapter! Good grief. Chapter 27. 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. Okay, now he's giving himself titles. 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 today. He may lock himself away, hide himself away, get guards about him, put on armor 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 a postman comes along. Then off. The game begins. Death starts. Help him not, my people, lest death fall upon you also. Today Kemp is to die. My lord. That is I mean that that's that I would take that as a death threat. 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 address side of it the postmark Hinton Dean and the prosaic detail Tuppence to pay. He got up, 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 Adiei, 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 calling lunch. Now I have a question. In the note, the invisible man says that the first day of the terror starts with Kemp. Right? He will be the first murder. But then what's Wicksteed? A practice run? I don't know, it feels a bit weird. 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, contramundum with a vent okay. What does contramundum mean? A bit of Latin we got going on here? Okay, so it is Latin, translates to against the world. So Griffin, contramundum with a vengeance. Griffin against the world 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. 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 doorbell 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 Ad Ye. 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 Ad Ye 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 Hinton Dean. Already. What's up? said Adie. Look here, said Kemp, and led the way into his study. He handed Adie the invisible man's letter. Adie read it and whistled softly. And you, said Adie. Proposed a trap like a fool, said Kemp. Sent my proposal out by a maidservant. To him. Adie followed Kemp's profanity. He'll clear out, said Adie. Not he, said Kemp. A resounding smash of glass came from upstairs. Adie 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 or 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 stared for a moment and collapsed in jagged, shivering triangles into the room. What's this for? said Addy. 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. Hello. 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. He's going to do all the house, but he's a fool. The shutters are up and the glass will fall outside. He'll cut his feet. I do just have to pause here and say I love their exclamations. Confound him I might start using them. Another window proclaimed its destruction. The two men stood on the landing perplexed. I have it, said Ady. Let me have a stick or something, and I'll go down to the station and get the bloodhounds put on. That ought to settle him. They'll hard by, not ten minutes. Another window went the way of its fellows. You haven't a revolver? asked Ady. Kemp's hand went to his pocket, then he hesitated. I haven't one, at least to spare. I'll bring it back, said Ady. You'll be safe here. Kemp handed him the weapon. Oh no. Now for the door, said Ady. 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 Ady was on the doorstep and the bolts would drop 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 Ady stopped dead and his hand tightened on the revolver. Well, said Ady, white and grim, and every nerve tense. Oblig me by going back to the house, said the voice as tense and grim as Ady's. Sorry, said Ady 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. There was a quick movement of the two and a flash of sunlight from the open lip of Adye's pocket. Ady 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 backwards. He drew clumsily and fired absurdly, and in another moment he was struck in the mouth and the revolver wrested from his grip. Oh no! He made a vain clutch at a slippery limb, tried to struggle up and fell back. Damn, said Adye. The voice laughed. I'll kill you now if it wasn't the waste of a bullet. It said he saw the revolver in midair six feet off covering him. Well, said Adie, sitting up. Get up, said the voice. Addy 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 Addy. That's a pity, said the invisible man. I've got no quarrel with you. Addy 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 his little metal thing hanging between heaven and earth, six yards away. What am I to do? he asked 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 ye promise not to rush the door? I've got no quarrel with you, said the voice. Kemp had hurried upstairs after letting Ad Yi out, and now crouching among the broken glass and peering cautiously over the edge of the study window sill, he saw Adji stand, parlaying with the unseen. Why doesn't he fire? whispered Kemp to himself. Then the revolver moved a little and a 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, Adi has given up the revolver. Promise not to rush the door, Adie 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 you 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 Ady. Then things happened very quickly. Adye leapt backwards, swung round, clutched at this little object, missed it, threw 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 Oh no for a space Kemp remained staring at the quiet carelessness of Ady'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. Ady 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. He scrutinized 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 the game was opening well. Maybe this was the plan all along no it can't be Then came a ringing and knocking at the front door that grew in 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 Belvide. Adie lay motionless over the edge of the gravel just as he had fallen, coming along the road by the villas were the housemaid and the 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 splintered 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 sprung 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 their splitting and smashing accompaniments 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 policeman he ran into the hall put up the chain drew the bolts he made the girl squeak 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 Ad ye shot him anyhow didn't you see him on the lawn? He's lying there Who? said one of the policemen. Ad ye said Kemp We came round 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 cried Kemp, starting into activity and bundled the policeman into the dining room doorway. Poker said Kemp and rushed to the fender. He handed a poker to each policeman. He suddenly flung himself backwards Whoop said one policeman, ducked and caught the axe on his poker. The pistol snapped its penultimate shot and ripped a valuable Sydney Cooper. The second policeman brought his poker down on the little weapon as one might knock a wasp and send it rattling to the floor. 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. 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 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 slipped past you doctor Kemp, sir Pause. Dr Kemp cried the policeman again. The second policeman struggled 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. Dr. Kemp, he began and stopped short. Dr Kemp's in here, 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. I mean that was kind of a hard chapter to follow. Adie's been shot presumably dead invisible man has axed his way into the house he's tried to take a shot at one of the policemen may have just grazed him a policeman has whacked the invisible man with a poker. Supposedly he's hurt and bleeding the housemaid in Kemp have disappeared to where we don't know. Invisible man, well he's invisible we don't know where he is Chapter 28 The Hunter Hunted Mr Helas, Mr Kemp's nearest neighbour among the village holders, was asleep in his summer house when the siege of Kemp's house began. Mr Helas was one of the sturdy minority who refused to believe in all this nonsense about an invisible man. His wife however as he was to be reminded subsequently 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 and 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 dining room window were flung open violently and the housemaid in her outdoor hat and garments suddenly 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, the housemaid was struggling out. She pitched forward and vanished among the shrubs. Mr Heela 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 a laburn what on earth is a laburnum? Okay, a laburnum not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly but it it's a species of tree. He vanished behind a laburnum and appeared again clambering 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 Helas. Lord cried Mr Heelass, struck with an idea it's that invisible man brute. It's right after all with Mr Helas 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. Thought he wasn't afraid said the cook Mary just come here There was a slamming of doors, a ringing of bells and the voice of Mr Helas 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 to shut the French windows himself that opened on the verandah. As he did so Kemp's head and shoulders and knee appeared above 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 Helas, 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 verandah 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 Heeless staring from his window a face of horror he scarcely witnessed Kemp vanish ear the asparagus was being trampled this way and that by feet unseen. At that Mr Heeless 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. Merging into the hill road Kemp naturally took the downward direction, so it was that he ran in his own person, the very race he had watched with such a critical eye from the Belvedere study only four days ago. He ran it well for a man out of training, and though his face was white and wet, his wits were cool to the last. He ran with wide strides and wherever a patch of rough ground intervened, wherever there came a patch of raw flint or a bit of broken glass shone dazzling, he crossed it and left the bare invisible feet that followed to take what line they would. For the first time in his life Kemp discovered that the hill road was indescribably vast and desolate and that beginnings of the town far below at the hill foot were strangely remote. Never had there been a slower or more painful method of progression than running. All the gaunt fillers sleeping in the afternoon sun looked locked and barred no doubt they were locked and barred by his own orders, but at any rate they might have kept a lookout for an eventuality like this. The town was rising up now and the sea had dropped out of sight behind it, and the people down below were stirring. A tram was just arriving at the hill foot. Beyond that was the police station. Was that footsteps he heard behind him? Spurt. The people below were staring at him. One or two were running and his breath was beginning to soar in his throat. The tram was quite near now and the Jolly cricketers was noisily barring its doors. Beyond the tram were posts and heaps of gravel the drainage works he had a transitionary idea of jumping into the tram and slamming the doors and then he resolved to go for the police station. In another moment he had passed the door of the Jolly cricketers and was in the blistering fag end of the street with human beings about him. The tram driver and his helper, arrested by the sight of his furious haste, stood staring with the tram horses unhitched. Further on the astonished features of navvies appeared above the mounds of gravel. I mean Kemp is doing a good job at running a decent distance. He tried to get into Mr Heelus's house. Heelus understandably was like you're not coming in here take you and your invisible man and go someplace else. Now Kemp's trying to make his way to the police station but he's seen the tram so what will he do? His pace broke a little and then he heard the swift pad of his pursuer and leapt forward again. The invisible man he cried to the Navies with a vague indicative gesture and by an inspiration leapt the excavation and placed a burly group between him and the chase then abandoning the idea of the police station he turned into a little side street, rushed by a green grocer's cart, hesitated for the tenth of a second at the door of a sweet stuff shop and then made for the mouth of an alley that ran back into the main hill street again. Two or three little children were playing here and shrieked and scattered running at his apparition and forthwith doors and windows opened and excited mothers revealed their hearts out he shot into the hill street again three hundred yards from the trampoline end and immediately he became aware of the tumultuous vociferation and running people. He glanced up the street towards the hill hardly a dozen yards off ran a huge navy. Now what is a navvy? What are these navvies? Okay, so it's an unskilled or semi skilled manual labourer. Okay so I imagine a burly human hardly a dozen yards off ran a huge navvy cursing in fragments and slashing viciously with a spade and hard behind him came the tram conductor with his fists clenched. Up the street others followed these two striking a shouting down towards the town men and women were running and he noticed clearly one man coming out of shop door with a stick in his hand spread out spread out cried someone. Kemp suddenly grasped the altered condition of the chase. He stopped and looked round panting he's close here he cried form a line across aha shouted a voice. Okay so the the village people are banding together and they're going we're not just gonna run and hide let's spread ourselves out and just punch the air and the chances are one of us will get him. Aha shouted a voice he was hit hard on the ear and went reeling, trying to face round towards an unseen antagonist. He just managed to keep his feet and he struck a vein counter in the air. Then he was hit again under the jaw and sprawled headlong on the ground. In another moment a knee compressed his diaphragm and a couple of eager hands gripped his throat but the grip of one was weaker than the other. He grasped the wrists heard a cry of pain from his assailant and then the spade of the Navi came whirling through the air above him and struck something with a dull thud. He felt a drop of moisture on his face the grip at his throat suddenly relaxed and with a convulsive effort Kemp loosed himself grasped the limp shoulder and rolled uppermost he gripped the unseen elbow near the ground I've got him cried 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 an exceptionally savage game of rugby football was in progress. And there was no shouting after Kemp's cry, only a sound of blows and feet and a heavy breathing. Then came a mighty effort and the invisible man threw off a couple of his antagonists and rose to his knees. Kemp clung to him in front like a hound to a stag and a dozen hands gripped, clutched and tore at the unseen. The tram conductor suddenly got the neck and shoulders and lugged him back. Down went the heap of struggling men again and rolled over there was, I am afraid, some savage kicking then suddenly a wild scream of mercy, mercy that died down swiftly to a sound of choking. Get back you fools cried the muffled voice of Kemp, and there was a vigorous shoving back of stalwart forms. He's hurt, I tell you stand back I mean this is brave of Kemp. This guy just tried to kill him and Kemp's still looking after him as a pa I mean I guess Kemp is a doctor and he takes an oath and all that. There was a brief struggle to clear a space and then the circle of eager eyes saw the doctor kneeling as it seemed fifteen inches in the air and holding invisible arms to the ground. Behind him a constable gripped invisible ankles. Don't you leave go of then cried the big navy holding a bloodstained 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. He spoke thickly because of a bleeding lip. He released one hand and seemed 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 side of the thing unseen. There was a pushing and shuffling a sound of heavy feet as fresh people turned up to increase the pressure of the crowd. People now were coming out of the houses. The doors of the jolly cricketers were suddenly wide open. Very little was said. Kemp felt about his hands seeming to pass through empty air. He's not breathing he said and then I can't feel his heart his side oh suddenly an old woman peering under the arm of the big navy screamed sharply Look there she said and thrust out a wrinkled finger. And looking where she pointed everyone saw faint and transparent as though it was made of glass so that veins and arteries and bones and nerves could be distinguished the outline of a hand a hand limp and prone. It grew clouded and opaque even as they stared. Hullo cried the constable here's his feet are showing and so slowly beginning at his hands and feet and creeping along his limbs to the vital centres of his body that strange change continued. It was like the slow spreading of a poison. First came the little white nerves a hazy grey sketch of a limb then the glassy bones and intricate arteries then the flesh and skin first a faint fogginess and then growing rapidly dense and opaque. Presently they could see his crushed chest and his shoulders and the 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 a young man about thirty. His hair and beard were white not grey with age but white with the whiteness of albinism and his eyes were like garnets his hands were clenched his eyes wide open and his expression was one of anger and dismay. Cover his face said a man for God's sake cover that face and three little children pushing forward through the crowd were suddenly twisted round and sent packing off again. Someone brought a sheet from the Jolly cricketers and having covered him they carried him into that house and there on a shabby bed in a tawdry ill-lighted bedroom ended the strange experiment of the invisible man. So they killed the invisible man and oddly enough when he died he became visible again? Wonder how that works. Maybe whatever was coursing through his body to keep him invisible like when his heart stopped pumping it stopped keeping him invisible. The very last chapter the epilogue so the story ends of the strange and evil experiment of the invisible man. And if you would learn more of him you must go to a little inn near Port Stowe and talk to the landlord. The sign of the inn is an empty board save for a hat and boots and the name is the title of this story. The landlord is a short and corpulent little man with a nose of cylindrical protrusion, wiry hair and a sporadic rosiness of visage. Drink generously and he will tell you generously of all the things that happened to him after that time and of how the lawyers tried to do him out of the treasure found upon him. When they found they couldn't prove whose money was which I'm blessed, he said they didn't try to make me out a bloomin' treasure trove. Do I look like a treasure trove? And then a gentleman gave me A guinea a night to tell the story at the Empire Music Hall. Just tell 'em in my own words, barring one. And if you want to cut off the flow of his reminiscences abruptly, you can always do so by asking if there weren't three manuscript books in the story. He admits there were and proceeds to explain with asservations that everybody thinks easm, but bless you he hasn't. The invisible man was took him off to hide him when I cut and ran for Port Stowe. It's that Mr Kemp put people on with the idea of my having them. And then he subsides into a pensive state, watches you furtively, bustles nervously with glasses, and presently leaves the bar. Bet you that's Marvel. He is a bachelor man, his tastes were ever bachelor, and there are no women folk in the house. Outwardly he buttons, it is expected of him, but in his more vital privacies, in the matter of braces, for example, he still turns to string. He conducts his house without enterprise, but with eminent decorum. His movements are slow, and he is a great thinker, but he has a reputation for wisdom and for a respectable parsimony in the village. And his knowledge of the roads of the south of England would be cobbit. And on Sunday mornings, every Sunday morning all the year round, while he is closed to the outer world and every night after ten, he goes into his bar parlour bearing a glass of gin faintly tinged with water. And having placed this down he locks the door and examines the blinds, and even looks under the table. And then, being satisfied of his solitude, he unlocks the cupboard and a box in the cupboard, and a drawer in that box, and produces three volumes bound in brown leather, and places them solemnly in the middle of the table. The covers are weather-worn and tinged with an algal green. For once they sojourned in a ditch, and some of the pages have been washed blank by dirty water. The landlord sits down in an armchair, fills a long clay pipe slowly, gloating over the books the while, then he pulls one towards him and opens it, and begins to study it, turning over the leaves backwards and forwards. His brows are knit and his lips move painfully. Hex, little two up in the air, cross with fiddle D D. Lord, what a one he was for intellect. Presently he relaxes and leans back and blinks through his smoke across the room at things invisible to other eyes. Full of secrets, he says. Wonderful secrets. Once I get the haul of them, Lord I wouldn't do what he did. I just well, he pulls at his pipe, as he lapses into a dream, the undying wonderful dream of his life, and though Kemp has fished unceasingly, and Ad ye has questioned closely, no human being save the landlord knows those books are there, and the subtle secret of invisibility, and a dozen other strange secrets written therein, and none other will know of them until he dies. Well, that is the end of the invisible man, and what an ending that was. I have to say I'm quite pleasantly surprised by how that story resolved itself. I mean, it was pretty good. The invisible man ends up dying in the last struggle in his attempt to kill Kemp. He becomes visible again in death. Marvel, the guy the invisible man acquired to be his servant, manages to keep the money, set up his own bar that he conveniently calls the invisible man, and then keeps the books and kind of looks over them. And of course he can't understand them because he's not a scientist, but he looks over them and and he can he's trying to figure out how did he become invisible, and then at the end we he we find out that there are other secrets in there, other things that could happen, other experiments perhaps. Leaves the door open to what else did the invisible man have in mind? Well, I mean he certainly had murder in his heart, if ever we knew. Anyway, but what a crazy story. Next week we will go through all the themes and all that good stuff. We'll discuss it, we'll discuss what we think of all the characters in our discussion episode. So remember to come back because I mean, well, we've got a lot to talk about. And we spoke we've probably touched on a lot of the things, quite a number of the themes, but it will be interesting to really kind of dig deep into those and and see what other people think of the invisible man and how we can relate to the story of the invisible man. Thanks so much for coming with me along this incredible story, and we'll chat next week.