LITMIR.BIZ

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crouching among the broken glass and peering cautiously over the edge of the study window sill, he saw Adye stand parleying with the Unseen. “Why doesn’t he fire?” whispered Kemp to himself. Then the revolver moved a little and the 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, “Adye has given up the revolver.”

      “Promise not to rush the door,” Adye 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 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 Adye. Then things happened very quickly. Adye leapt backwards, swung around, clutched at this little object, missed it, threw up 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.

      For a space Kemp remained staring at the quiet carelessness of Adye’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. Adye lay on the lawn near the gate. The blinds of all the villas down the hill-road were drawn, but in one little green summerhouse was a white figure, apparently an old man asleep. Kemp scrutinised 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.

      Then came a ringing and knocking at the front door, that grew at 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 belvedere. Adye lay motionless over the edge of the gravel just as he had fallen. Coming along the road by the villas were the housemaid and 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, split 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 sprang into the air. He dodged back. The revolver cracked just too late, and a splinter from the edge of the closing door flashed over his head. He slammed and locked the door, and as he stood outside he heard Griffin shouting and laughing. Then the blows of the axe with its splitting and smashing consequences, were resumed.

      Kemp stood in the passage trying to think. In a moment the Invisible Man would be in the kitchen. This door would not keep him a moment, and then —

      A ringing came at the front door again. It would be the policemen. He ran into the hall, put up the chain, and drew the bolts. He made the girl speak before he dropped the chain, and the three people blundered into the house in a heap, and Kemp slammed the door again.

      “The Invisible Man!” said Kemp. “He has a revolver, with two shots — left. He’s killed Adye. Shot him anyhow. Didn’t you see him on the lawn? He’s lying there.”

      “Who?” said one of the policemen.

      “Adye,” said Kemp.

      “We came in the back way,” said the girl.

      “What’s that smashing?” asked one of the policemen.

      “He’s in the kitchen — or will be. He has found an axe — “

      Suddenly the house was full of the Invisible Man’s resounding blows on the kitchen door. The girl stared towards the kitchen, shuddered, and retreated into the diningroom. Kemp tried to explain in broken sentences. They heard the kitchen door give.

      “This way,” said Kemp, starting into activity, and bundled the policemen into the diningroom doorway.

      “Poker,” said Kemp, and rushed to the fender. He handed the poker he had carried to the policeman and the diningroom one to the other. He suddenly flung himself backward.

      “Whup!” said one policeman, ducked, and caught the axe on his poker. The pistol snapped its penultimate shot and ripped a valuable Sidney Cooper. The second policeman brought his poker down on the little weapon, as one might knock down a wasp, and sent it rattling to the floor.

      At the first clash the girl screamed, stood screaming for a moment by the fireplace, and then ran to open the shutters — possibly with an idea of escaping by the shattered window.

      The axe receded into the passage, and fell to a position about two feet from the ground. They could hear the Invisible Man breathing. “Stand away, you two,” he said. “I want that man Kemp.”

      “We want you,” said the first policeman, making a quick step forward and wiping with his poker at the Voice. The Invisible Man must have started back, and he blundered into the umbrella stand.

      Then, as the policeman staggered with the swing of the blow he had aimed, the Invisible Man countered with the axe, the helmet crumpled like paper, and the blow sent the man spinning to the floor at the head of the kitchen stairs. But the second policeman, aiming behind the axe with his poker, hit something soft that snapped. There was a sharp exclamation of pain and then the axe fell to the ground. The policeman wiped again at vacancy and hit nothing; he put his foot on the axe, and struck again. Then he stood, poker clubbed, listening intent for the slightest movement.

      He heard the diningroom window open, and a quick rush of feet within. His companion rolled over and sat up, with the blood running down between his eye and ear. “Where is he?” asked the man on the floor.

      “Don’t know. I’ve hit him. He’s standing somewhere in the hall. Unless he’s slipped past you. Doctor Kemp — sir.”

      Pause.

      “Doctor Kemp,” cried the policeman again.

      The second policeman began struggling to his feet. He stood up. Suddenly the faint pad of bare feet on the kitchen stairs could be heard. “Yap!” cried the first policeman, and incontinently flung his poker. It smashed a little gas bracket.

      He made as if he would pursue the Invisible Man downstairs. Then he thought better of it and stepped into the diningroom.

      “Doctor Kemp — ” he began, and stopped short.

      “Doctor Kemp’s a hero,” he said, as his companion looked over his shoulder.

      The diningroom window was wide open, and neither housemaid nor Kemp was to be seen.

      The second policeman’s opinion of Kemp was terse and vivid.

      CHAPTER XXVIII

       THE HUNTER HUNTED

       Table of Contents

      Mr. Heelas, Mr. Kemp’s nearest neighbour among the villa holders, was asleep in his summer house when the siege of Kemp’s house began. Mr. Heelas was one of the sturdy minority who refused to believe “in all this nonsense”

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