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 covered
with books and scientific 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, 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 man, and he wore a high hat, and he was running
so fast that his legs verily twinkled.
“Another of those fools,” said Dr. Kemp. “Like that ass who ran into me
this morning round a corner, with the ‘’Visible Man a-coming, sir!’ I
can’t imagine what possesses people. 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, sir,” said Dr. Kemp.
In another moment the higher of the villas that had clambered up the
hill from Burdock had occulted 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, and as he ran he
chinked like a well-filled purse that is tossed to and fro. He looked
neither to the right nor the left, but his dilated eyes stared straight
downhill 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 foam
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 halfway 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!”
See you tomorrow for CHAPTER XVI: IN THE “JOLLY CRICKETERS”
