Level B2 Upper Intermediate British English
The stranger at the inn | The clock mender calls | The stranger’s luggage | The doctor calls | Burglary at the vicarage | The furniture goes mad | No head! | On the run | Mr Thomas Marvel | Stop thief! | The man who was running | The Invisible Man loses his temper | Dr Kemp’s visitor | The Invisible Man’s story | Griffin’s experiments | The plan that failed | The plan is revealed | The Reign of Terror | The chase
Life in the sleepy village of Iping changes dramatically when a mysterious stranger arrives at the Coach and Horses inn. No one could have imagined the Reign of Terror and strange happenings that were to follow...
The science fiction stories that H.G. Wells wrote nearly a hundred years ago are still popular today. Here is one of those stories.
The stranger came to the inn on a wintry day in February, through biting wind and snow. He struggled across the downs from Bramblehurst Railway Station, carrying a travelling bag in thickly gloved hands. He was wrapped up from head to foot. Only the tip of a shiny pink nose showed under the wide brim of his hat.
At last he reached the door of the Coach and Horses inn, in the village of Iping, and threw down his bag on the bar floor. “A fire! For pity’s sake, a fire!” he cried, and tossed a handful of coins on the bar counter.
The kindly landlady, Mrs Hall, bustled into the guest parlour. She lit the fire and hurried to prepare a hot meal. A guest in winter was always welcome, especially if he paid in advance.
Soon the bacon was sizzling, and she went back into the parlour. The fire was burning brightly but the stranger was still wearing his dripping coat and hat. He stood with his back to her, gazing out of the window at the falling snow.
“Shall I take your coat and hat, sir, and dry them in the kitchen?”
“No,” snapped the stranger. “I prefer to keep them on.”
Mrs Hall could see that he wore huge blue spectacles with side pieces. Bushy side-whiskers completely hid his face. The landlady laid the table quickly and fetched the stranger his bacon and eggs.
Mrs Hall found she had forgotten the mustard. She returned to the parlour.
The stranger was holding a white table napkin over his mouth. His forehead was covered with bandages, so that only his pink nose showed. Black spiky hair stuck out like horns between the criss-crossed bandages round his head.
He looked so odd that Mrs Hall thought the poor soul must have been in a nasty accident. He even kept his gloves on to eat! His outdoor clothes were now steaming on a chair by the fire. She backed out of the room quickly, taking the coat and boots with her.
“What a turn them bandages did give me!” Mrs Hall told the kitchen maid. “And the goggles! He looked more like a deep-sea diver than a human being.”
Later that afternoon the clock mender called at the inn. Mrs Hall led him into the parlour.
The mysterious guest was sitting in an armchair in the firelight. The room was in shadow. For a moment it seemed to her, in the red glow of the fire, as if the man in the chair had an enormous open mouth that swallowed up part of his jaw.
The next moment he sat up and pulled his muffler over his face. “It must have been the shadow,” she thought.
“Do you mind if this man comes in to see to the clock?” she asked timidly.
“I understood this room was to be private,” said the guest, sharply. “I have important work to do. Besides, my eyes are weak. I have to shut myself up in the dark sometimes.”
Mrs Hall apologised and promised to give him a key to his room.
“Could you have my luggage fetched from the station tomorrow?” he asked.
Mrs Hall agreed. But her kind offer to help with his bandages was refused.
The clock mender went off down the village street, grumbling. At the corner, he met Mr Hall, the innkeeper.
“You’ve got a rum-looking customer up at the inn,” he said. “Looks as if he’s in disguise!”
Mrs Hall was cross because her husband was home late. “Mind your own business, and I’ll mind mine!” she said, when he asked about the new guest.
All the same, that night, she woke with a start, dreaming that a head like a turnip was floating after her, with black, hollow eyes. But, like a sensible woman, she turned over and went back to sleep.
The stranger’s baggage was delivered next day, by cart. There was a box full of fat books and crates of glass bottles packed in straw. Mr Hall poked at the contents curiously.
Then the stranger, wrapped up to the eyebrows, stalked out impatiently. “Come along with those boxes!” he cried, and laid a hand on one of the crates.
The carrier’s dog had been sniffing around. When it saw the stranger, it began to bristle and howl savagely. Then it sprang straight at his hand, but missed its grip and attacked the stranger’s trouser leg instead!
The carrier cracked his whip at the dog. The stranger bent down to examine his torn trousers. Then he turned quickly and rushed indoors, upstairs to his bedroom.
Mr Hall followed him, wanting to help, and went straight into the room without knocking. The blind was down. All Mr Hall could see was what looked like an arm without a hand, waving at him. Then something grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pitched him out of the room.
Downstairs, the dog was yelping, the carrier was cursing, and the excited bystanders were asking what had happened.
A puzzled Mr Hall came slowly down the stairs. But all he would say was, “He don’t want no help. Best bring his luggage in.”
The stranger spent all afternoon unpacking bottles of all shapes and sizes, some filled with liquid, others with crystals. The only other things, apart from books, were a number of test tubes and a carefully packed balance.
There was straw everywhere, but when Mrs Hall complained, the stranger barked angrily, “Put it on the bill! Put it on the bill!”
Then he shut himself up in the parlour, and all that could be heard was the occasional crash of broken glass and groans of “I’ll never do it! It may take me all my life! I can’t go on ... “
The stranger continued to be a mystery. He only went out at night. Farm labourers going home late were startled as his goggly spectacles and ghastly face loomed suddenly out of the darkness of the trees.
No one knew what he did for a living. Mrs Hall said he “discovered things”. Some people thought he was hiding from the police, some that he was an anarchist, making bombs. Most people thought him a harmless lunatic, and the children sang a song behind his back, Here Comes the Bogey Man!
Only Cuss, the village doctor, who was curious about the stranger’s bandages and experiments, was bold enough to call on him in the parlour. And he came out quicker than he went in, white-faced and staring. Then he made off for the vicarage, up the village street. Mrs Hall could hear the stranger laughing behind the parlour door.
Up at the vicarage, the doctor demanded a drink. Shaking with fright, he tried to explain to the Reverend Bunting what had happened down at the inn. It was the tale of an invisible finger and thumb, coming out of an empty sleeve and nipping his nose!
“A remarkable story!” said the vicar, trying to look very wise.
In the small hours of Whit Monday morning, the vicar’s wife woke up with a start. She thought she had heard a door open and close. As she listened, she heard the pad of bare feet along the passage. So she woke her husband, who went to listen at the top of the stairs.
He could hear a fumbling going on at his study desk, and then a violent sneeze. He armed himself with a poker and tiptoed downstairs.
There was a faint light in the hall. The vicar could see the desk, the open drawer and a lighted candle. But there was no robber to be seen.
He could hear the chink of money. Grasping the poker, he rushed into the room. “Surrender!” he cried. But the room was empty.
The Buntings searched the room - under the desk, up the chimney, in the wastepaper basket, even in the coal scuttle! Nobody was there.
Then there was a violent sneeze in the passage. They saw the back door open. But nobody went out.
“Of all the extraordinary affairs!” said the vicar, for the twentieth time.
On that same Whit Monday morning at the inn, Mr and Mrs Hall were up early. They had to see to the beer in the cellar.
Mr Hall noticed that the stranger’s bedroom door was half open, and that bandages and clothes were scattered around the room. The front door was unfastened, and he knew that Mrs Hall had bolted it securely the night before. “He ain’t in his room!” said Mr Hall. “What’s he doing without his clothes?” As the pair went up to investigate, the front door opened and shut behind them, and there was a loud sneeze!
Mrs Hall went straight to the stranger’s bedroom.
Suddenly everything went mad. The bedclothes jumped over the rail at her! The stranger’s hat spun off the bedpost into her face! And a chair reared up on its hind legs and pushed her out of the room!
Then the door slammed and the key turned in the lock. “’Tis spirits!” she cried. “I’ve read about it in the newspapers! Tables and chairs dancing!”
The bedroom door opened. There stood the muffled figure of the stranger in his slouch hat and goggles.
“Go to the devil!” he cried, and shut the door in their faces.
Outside, it was a fine morning. The Whit Monday fair had attracted a crowd.
There were books, a shooting gallery, a coconut shy, a sweet stall, and wagons. A string of flags stretched across the street.
Inside the parlour was the mysterious stranger, clinking his bottles in the dark.
At noon, the parlour door was suddenly flung open and the stranger called for Mrs Hall. Her stout little figure appeared, carrying a tray.
“Where’s my breakfast?” demanded the stranger.
“You can’t expect breakfast on time when your bill’s five days late!”
“I can’t help it if my funds haven’t arrived. Perhaps I can find something in my pocket ...”
“You told me you hadn’t but a few shillings, yesterday!” said Mrs Hall firmly.
“I found some more,” said the stranger.
“And where did you find it?” asked Mrs Hall. “And before I do any more for you, I want an explanation! What have you been doing to my chairs upstairs? And how was it your room was empty? And how did you get in again? And I want to know ...”
“STOP!” cried the stranger, so violently that he silenced her there and then. “I’ll show you! I’m all here - but I’m invisible!”
And he put his hand over his face and took it away again. The centre of his face was a black hole. “Here!” he said and put something into Mrs Hall’s hands.
She screamed and dropped it. A false nose, pink and shiny, rolled across the floor. Then he took off his spectacles. Then his hat! Then his whiskers and bandages! Mrs Hall shrieked and made for the door.
The man who stood in the passage, shouting some explanation, was a solid figure up to his collar. But he had no head!
Outside in the street all the fairground people and the villagers ran to see what was the matter. Then up came Mr Hall, red-faced and determined, with PC Jaffers, the village policeman, armed with a warrant and a pair of handcuffs.
Inside the parlour they saw the headless figure sitting with a gnawed crust of bread in one gloved hand, and a chunk of cheese in the other.
“Keep off!” said the figure, starting back.
Then began a terrific struggle, as they tried to get hold of the stranger. They rolled over, kicking and struggling, till the stranger cried, “I’ll surrender!” His voice came out of the empty air!
The constable produced his warrant - “A house broken into and money taken!”
“No handcuffs!” said the stranger.
“It’s regulations ...” began the constable.
Suddenly the stranger sat down and kicked off his slippers, socks and trousers. Then he stood up and flung off his coat.
“Hey, stop that!” cried PC Jaffers. “Once he gets these things off ...” But it was too late. Only a fluttering white shirt was to be seen of the stranger.
“Look out! Hold him! Shut the door!” But the stranger had escaped.
High up on the downs, about a mile and a half away, a tramp sat by the highway, with his feet in a ditch. Mr Thomas Marvel was short and fat, with a rosy face and a bristly beard. He wore a battered top hat and no boots. His big toes stuck out of the holes in his socks.
Two pairs of shabby boots stood in front of him, as he tried to decide which to put on.
A voice behind him suddenly said, “At least they’re boots.”
“Charity boots,” said Thomas disgustedly, “and which pair is the uglier, I’m darned if I know!” He looked round as if to compare his companion’s boots with them. But where boots should have been, there were neither legs nor boots!
“Where are yer?” asked Thomas. He couldn’t see anything but the empty down and furze bushes swaying in the wind.
“Am I talking to myself?” he wondered.
“Don’t be alarmed!” said the Voice.
“Are you buried?” asked Thomas nervously.
“Do you think I’m just imagination?” asked the Voice. And with that, flints came whizzing out of the air, narrowly missing Thomas’s head.
“Now will you listen?” said the Voice.
The terrified tramp agreed.
“I’m just a human being like you, solid, needing food, drink and clothes. But I’m invisible. That’s the difference,” the Voice continued.
An invisible hand clutched Thomas’s wrist.
Thomas gazed in amazement.
“Sort of ghostly, ain’t it?” said the tramp, shivering.
“Pull yourself together!” said the Voice. “You have to be my helper - getting clothes, food and other things. But if you betray me ...” and an invisible hand tapped the tramp’s shoulder smartly.
“I won’t betray you!” he yelped, terrified. “I’ll do whatever you want me to!”
Back at the Coach and Horses Dr Cuss and the vicar sat in the bar parlour, puzzling over the three blue diaries the stranger had left behind. A man with a rosy face, topped by a battered silk hat, entered the parlour and walked across to the bar.
“Would you mind closing the door?” said the vicar. “There’s a terrible draught.”
The two continued to try to make out the writing, which was in code. Suddenly the vicar felt a grip on his collar. The stranger’s voice, from the air, asked where his clothes had been put, and demanded the diaries.
Mr and Mrs Hall were serving in the bar when they heard noises in the parlour.
“Stop thief!” cried a voice outside. They rushed out and saw Mr Thomas Marvel running away, clutching a bundle and three blue books.
Going back into the parlour, they found the doctor and the vicar wearing only their underpants! The Invisible Man had taken their clothes!
Then pandemonium broke out in the street.
Stalls were overturned and sweets and coconuts littered the road. The Invisible Man was in a raging temper. He broke all the inn windows and cut the telephone wires. Then silence returned.
The Invisible Man and Mr Marvel had gone!
In the next few days extraordinary stories began to appear in the newspapers. Money was seen floating in the air in the streets of a nearby village. And the miserable Mr Marvel was pursued by his relentless invisible employer. Every time he tried to run away, or to tell someone his story, invisible fingers gripped his collar and punished him.
But finally the wretched tramp escaped, his pockets full of money.
In the early morning, young Dr Kemp was sitting in his study on the hill overlooking the seaside town of Burdock. His room was crammed with scientific publications and equipment, for he was doing research in the hope of becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society.
As he looked out at the red sunset, he saw the inky black figure of a man in a high hat, running down the hill, as fast as his legs could carry him.
“Another of those asses who run about crying, ‘Invisible Man coming!’” he thought, scornfully.
But those who were near enough to see the terror on the running man’s face did not share the doctor’s contempt. As he ran, the fugitive chinked like a well-filled purse. And behind him, something - a pad, pad, pad - and a sound like panting, followed.
Fear gripped the town.
“The Invisible Man is coming!”
The Jolly Cricketers was at the bottom of the hill. A red-faced barman was serving a customer, while a black-bearded American was chatting to a policeman off duty. They heard noises outside and heavy footsteps approached, running.
The door was pushed open violently, and Thomas Marvel rushed in. He had lost his top hat and his coat, but he was still carrying the diaries.
“He’s coming,” he cried in terror. “Help! He’s after me.”
“Shut the door,” said the policeman. “Who’s coming? What’s up?”
“Lock me in somewhere!” begged the tramp. “It’s the Invisible Man. He said he’d kill me!”
Then, a sudden blow made the door shiver and there was a rapping and shouting outside. A window shattered into fragments.
Marvel got behind the bar for shelter. “Don’t open the door!” he screamed.
“I wish I had my truncheon,” said the policeman.
The black-bearded American pulled out a revolver. “Stand out of my way!” he cried. “If he comes ...”
“We’ve forgotten the back door,” said the barman, now even redder in the face. And, with that, the bar parlour door burst open with a thud.
Thomas Marvel was forced to his knees and dragged into the kitchen by the scruff of his neck.
The policeman gripped the wrist of the invisible hand that had collared Thomas Marvel, but he was hit in the face and he reeled back. The barman and other customers tried to hold the Invisible Man, who yelped suddenly as the policeman stood on his foot. Then, silence ... The Invisible Man had escaped into the yard.
“I’ll settle him!” cried the American, and fired five shots from side to side, across the yard.
“Get a lantern, someone, and feel about for the body,” he said.
Dr Kemp, writing in his study, heard the crack of the revolver shots.
“What idiot is letting off a revolver in Burdock?” he wondered, and went to the window. All he could see was the moonlight on the roofs, and what looked like a crowd down by the inn. So he went back to his work.
About an hour later, the front doorbell rang.
A maid answered it, but no one was there.
It was about two o’clock in the morning before Dr Kemp finished his work. He went downstairs to pour himself a nightcap. As he crossed the hall, he noticed a dark spot on the carpet. Touching it, he found it was red and sticky. When he went upstairs, he saw that his bedroom doorhandle was blood-stained.
Dr Kemp remained cool. He went calmly into his room. The counterpane was messy with blood, and a sheet was torn. The bedclothes were dented, as if someone were lying on them. He had the odd impression he heard a low voice exclaim, “Good heavens! Kemp!”
Then he heard something move between him and the washstand, and saw a bloodstained bandage hanging in the air.
“Kemp,” said the Voice again.
Kemp’s mouth fell open.
“Keep your nerve, man!” said the Voice. “I’m an invisible man!”
“This is nonsense! It’s some trick!” said Kemp, grabbing at the bandage. But his hand met invisible fingers.
“Keep steady, Kemp! I need help desperately!” said the Voice. “Do you remember me - Griffin of University College? A medical student you used to know! I’ve made myself invisible!”
Kemp did remember Griffin, a tall young man, with hair so fair it was almost white, and pale eyes. The most brilliant student of his year.
“Tell me about it!” Kemp gasped. “How on earth ...”
“First of all get me something to eat,” interrupted the Voice. “I’m wounded and in pain, and I’m tired!”
The bewildered Dr Kemp fetched some cold meat from the kitchen, and watched while the Invisible Man devoured it ravenously.
“No need for a knife and fork!” said the Voice. “But lend me your dressing gown. I like to be covered up when I eat.”
Kemp provided it, also some underpants, socks and slippers, and watched the odd figure, sitting in his basket chair, with amazement. Then the visitor demanded a drink and a cigar. It was strange to watch him smoking.
“How odd that I should blunder into your house in search of bandages! My first stroke of luck! It’s a filthy nuisance that my blood shows up as it thickens. It’s only the living tissue I’ve changed, and only as long as I’m alive!”
“But how’s it done ...?” began Kemp in a tone of exasperation. “And what were those shots?”
But the Invisible Man’s wounded wrist was hurting, and he was exhausted. “I’ve had no sleep for nearly three nights!” he complained.
So the story did not get told that night.
Before he went to bed, the Invisible Man made Dr Kemp promise not to hand him over to the men who were hunting him. But Kemp was uneasy.
In the morning he went down to his surgery and looked up the back numbers of the local newspapers. These gave accounts of the destruction and violence the Invisible Man had caused.
“He’s not only invisible,” thought Kemp, “he’s insane!” He wrote a letter, and addressed it to Colonel Adye, the Chief Constable.
As he did so, he heard smashing going on upstairs. The Invisible Man had woken up in one of his rages.
Dr Kemp asked the puzzled servants to lay breakfast for two, upstairs in the study, and to keep away till further notice. Then he called to the Invisible Man, “Breakfast is ready!”
The strange guest, a headless, handless dressing gown, sat at the table. “Before we go any further,” said Dr Kemp, “I must understand more about this invisibility of yours!”
“It’s quite simple,” said the headless figure, dabbing invisible lips with a table napkin. “You and I could do great things. I need a partner.”
After he had left college, Griffin had dropped medicine to study physics. Light had fascinated him. He lectured Kemp on the properties of light, as if he were a student. How objects absorbed it, reflected it, and even bent it back. If they did not, they would be invisible.
“You see a red box because the colour absorbs some of the light and reflects the rest, the red part, to you. If the box reflected all the light, you would see a white box. And if you put a sheet of glass into water, it almost disappears. That is because light passing from glass to water is hardly reflected at all,” Griffin explained.
“Any schoolboy knows that,” said Kemp impatiently. “But a man isn’t made of glass!”
“No! He is more transparent!” Griffin went on, excitedly. “Man is made up of transparent tissue - bone, flesh, hair, nails and nerves. All except the red of his blood and the dark pigment of his hair. I found a way to make the red colouring matter of blood colourless, without destroying its other functions.”
Kemp gave a cry of disbelief.
“It took me three years. I was shabby, poor, and unknown, working in a college lab under the eagle eye of an inquisitive professor. But I knew I could be invisible, with all the power and freedom that it would give me.
But after three years of secrecy and doubt I found it was impossible to complete it ...”
“Why?” asked Kemp.
“Money,” said the Invisible Man, turning to look out of the window. Then he turned sharply back. “I robbed the old man! Robbed my father! The money was not his, and he shot himself.”
“I will tell you later, Kemp, of the complicated processes involved. They are all written in code in the books the tramp stole. We must get them back again.
“l bought two little dynamos, worked by a gas engine. The thing to be made invisible was placed between them. My first experiment was with a bit of white wool fabric. It was the strangest thing to see it, soft and white in the flicker of the flashes, and then to watch it fade like a wreath of smoke, and vanish.”
As Griffin went on with his story, Kemp became more and more alarmed. Griffin showed no remorse for his father’s death - he had thought only of his experiments. He had moved to an empty room in a cheap London lodging house, and collected the equipment he needed.
“But when I put my hand into the space, I could feel it as solid as ever!”
Kemp moved uneasily to place himself between Griffin and the window.
“The next step was very curious. The old woman in the basement had a white cat. One day I lured it in through my window with food.”
“And you processed it?” asked Kemp.
“Yes, and the process failed. The claws did not disappear, nor did the pigment at the back of the eyes. After all the rest had faded, there remained two little green ghosts of eyes. It miaowed a lot, so I put it out of the window.”
“You mean to say there’s an invisible cat at large in the world?” asked Kemp.
Griffin went on with his gruesome tale.
“The old woman complained to the landlord that I had killed her cat in an experiment. He threatened to turn me out. So I had to make a quick decision ...”
“You processed yourself?” guessed Kemp.
“That very night. I drank the mixture that decoloured the blood. It all became a horrible nightmare. I understood why the cat had howled so. I had not expected the pain, the sickness, and fainting. It felt as if my skin were on fire.
“Dawn came. I shall never forget the first shafts of light into my room and the strange horror of seeing that my hands were now like clouded glass ...
“Gradually all the colour faded, even from my nails and eyes. I was an ideal subject. My hair was almost white to begin with.
“Then there was a battering at the door. It was the landlord, his two stepsons and the old woman. They burst in, amazed to see nobody. Then I, the invisible Griffin, began to smash my apparatus before their eyes. They fled to the basement. But, left alone, I made a heap of my papers, found matches, and set fire to the house.”
“You burnt the house down?” Kemp was aghast.
“It was the only way to cover my tracks! I went down quietly into the street, my head full of the wild and wonderful things I could do!”
Griffin had soon discovered that being invisible had its disadvantages. It was a cold day in January. People jostled him and stepped on his feet. Mud and particles of soot collected on his skin. Some boys noticed his footprints forming as he walked through the mud and his feet began to show up in outline.
“See that?” said a boy. “It’s the ghost of a foot!” Snow began to fall. Griffin was miserably cold and began to sneeze. Dogs could scent him and barked and chased him. He took shelter in a department store for the night, where he found food, warmth and clothing. But in the morning, when the staff came to work, he had to take off his garments.
He had passed his old lodgings. They were still smouldering. All his possessions and apparatus had been destroyed - all except his cheque book, and some books he had deposited in a left luggage office, the day before.
“Go on!” said Kemp, glancing nervously at the window.
Griffin continued his miserable tale. He had found a shabby little theatrical costumiers in a back street. There he was able to steal the items of disguise he wore at Iping: side-whiskers, a false nose, spectacles, and some old-fashioned clothes.
But the old hunchback who kept the shop had heard him and had begun to search for the thief.
“I knocked him over the head with a stool, tied him up and left him. Then I went in my disguise to collect my belongings and draw out some money. I ordered new equipment, and bought a railway ticket to Bramblehurst Station,” Griffin ended triumphantly.
“Didn’t you think any more about the old hunchback?” Kemp asked.
“How could I consider him? I was in a fix.” Kemp’s face looked grim.
“But now I have you, Kemp, everything is different!” Griffin exclaimed. “It solves all my problems. You can help me, especially with breaking into houses, and with the killings!”
“Killings?” gasped Kemp.
“I mean to establish a Reign of Terror,” cried the madman. “To take over a town and terrorise it! Issue orders! Kill>/i> those who disobey ... Hush! What’s that noise downstairs?”
Then things happened very quickly. The Invisible Man threw off his dressing gown. Kemp rushed for the door, thrust the Invisible Man aside, and slammed it. But he fumbled with the key and dropped it. The Invisible Man burst out, attacking Kemp violently. Colonel Adye, who was coming up the stairs with two police officers, gazed aghast at the sight of clothing tossing in the air, and Kemp reeling and falling, felled like an ox, by - nobody!
Then the Colonel himself was struck by a vast weight - of nothing! The two police officers turned and ran down the hall. The front door slammed.
“My God!” cried Kemp, his face bleeding. “He’s gone!”
The Invisible Man rushed out of Kemp’s house in a blind fury. A little child playing by the gate was thrown aside.
Now he was a hunted man. All doors were locked against him. Warning posters were everywhere. Groups of men with yelping dogs were dotted about the fields.
Next morning Kemp found a letter on his doorstep.
This is to announce the first day of the Reign of Terror! There will be one execution - a man named Kemp! The game has begun! Kemp is to die!
“It’s no hoax,” said Kemp, to himself. “He means it!” He opened a drawer, and took out a revolver.
He went round the house, locking all the windows and closing the shutters. He wrote a note to Colonel Adye and gave it to a maidservant to deliver.
We will have him! I will be the bait that will draw him! he had written.
Shortly afterwards the doorbell rang. Kemp opened the door cautiously. It was Colonel Adye. “Your servant has been attacked and your note taken away!”
Kemp showed Griffin’s letter to the Colonel. “My note was about the bait for a trap. Now he’s got it.”
As Kemp spoke, there came a noise from upstairs. Windows were smashed and a big flint lay on the carpet. The house was under attack.
“I’ll go down to the station and get the bloodhounds on his trail! That’ll settle him! Lend me your revolver!” said Adye.
Kemp drew the bolts of the front door and Colonel Adye went down the steps to face the unknown.
Kemp looked out of the window. He could see two policemen and the maidservant coming along the road. There was a smash from below. The Invisible Man had got hold of an axe and was hacking his way through the back door.
It was no good. Something had to be done. Kemp made a sudden decision. He burst out of the front door and ran away across the lawn, to draw the Invisible Man after him.
As the policemen arrived at the front door, they were in time to see a mysterious floating axe hurtle towards the doctor, narrowly missing his head.
“That Dr Kemp’s a hero!” cried one of the policemen.
Then followed an insane chase over the downs. Kemp led the way. Though his face was wet with sweat, his wits were cool. He always tracked over rough, stony ground where the Invisible Man would cut his feet. He ran the same race he had watched the tramp run only a day or so ago.
All the houses on the way down were locked and barred. Kemp saw the town below, the police station, and a tram arriving. Beyond the tram were gangs of navvies and heaps of gravel - the drainage works. The tram driver and his mate had unhitched the horses. The navvies were staring.
“The Invisible Man!” Kemp called to them. “Spread out! Make a line! Stop him!”
People were running down the street. A huge navvy was armed with a spade.
Then Kemp felt a blow to his ear. As he turned to face his enemy, he was knocked down and hands gripped his throat. He grasped the wrists, and the navvy’s spade came whirling through the air and hit something with a dull thud. The grip on the throat relaxed, and Kemp grasped a limp shoulder. “I’ve got him!” screamed Kemp. “Help! Hold him down! Get his feet!”
A stranger might have thought it was a specially rough game of rugby football. As the crowd fell upon the Invisible Man there was a savage kicking, cries of “mercy” and choking.
“Get back, you fools!” cried Kemp. “He’s hurt!”
“Don’t you leave go of him! He’s shamming!” shouted the navvy, holding a blood-stained spade.
“He’s not!” said the doctor. “He’s not breathing. I can’t feel his heart.” An old woman screamed sharply. “Looky here!” she said, pointing. Everyone saw, faint and transparent, the outline of a hand.
“And look!” said the constable. “His feet are showing!”
And slowly the strange change to visible flesh continued. First came the faint veins, then the glassy bones and arteries, then flesh and skin, till they could all see his crushed shoulder and chest, and the dim outline of his battered face.
And there lay, naked and pitiful on the ground, the bruised and broken body of a young man about thirty.
His hair and brow were white, though not with age, and the eyes were red. His hands were clenched, and his expression was one of anger and dismay.
“Cover his face!” cried a man. So they brought a sheet and covered him, and carried him into a house.
And there it was, on a shabby bed, broken and wounded, betrayed and unpitied, that Griffin, the first of all men to make himself invisible, ended his strange and terrible life.