The Invisible Man: Chapters 11–18

He coughed, put on his glasses, arranged them fastidiously, coughed again, and wished something would happen to avert the seemingly inevitable exposure.

The Vicar's voice answered with a curious jerking intonation: "Quite ri-right. Please don't—interrupt."

Hall tried to convey everything by grimaces and dumb show, but Mrs. Hall was obdurate.

Mrs. Hall's eyes, directed straight before her, saw without seeing the brilliant oblong of the inn door, the road white and vivid, and Huxter's shop-front blistering in the June sun.

"Stop thief!" and he ran obliquely across the oblong towards the yard gates, and vanished.

Hall, Henfrey, and the human contents of the tap rushed out at once pell-mell into the street.

"'Tend to him in a minute!" he cried to Henfrey as he passed the prostrate Huxter, and, coming round the corner to join the tumult, was promptly knocked off his feet into an indecorous sprawl.

You must figure the tumult suddenly striking on the unstable equilibrium of old Fletcher's planks and two chairs—with cataclysmic results.

You must figure an appalled couple caught dismally in a swing.

He carried three books bound together by some sort of ornamental elastic ligature, and a bundle wrapped in a blue table-cloth.

His rubicund face expressed consternation and fatigue; he appeared to be in a spasmodic sort of hurry.

His rubicund face expressed consternation and fatigue; he appeared to be in a spasmodic sort of hurry.

"It's bad enough to let these floundering yokels explode my little secret, without your cutting off with my books. It's lucky for some of them they cut and ran when they did! Here am I...No one knew I was invisible! And now what am I to do?"

"It's bad enough to let these floundering yokels explode my little secret, without your cutting off with my books. It's lucky for some of them they cut and ran when they did! Here am I...No one knew I was invisible! And now what am I to do?"

"I wish you wouldn't. I wouldn't like to mess up your plans, you know. But I might—out of sheer funk and misery."

Presently two oblongs of yellow light appeared through the trees, and the square tower of a church loomed through the gloaming.

He was struck by the contrast of Mr. Marvel's appearance with this suggestion of opulence.

He can trespass, he can burgle, he could walk through a cordon of policemen as easy as me or you could give the slip to a blind man! Easier!

"Not a word of it," said Marvel, stoutly.

"Don't you come bandying words with me," said Mr. Marvel.

Some way along the road he began a muttered monologue, protests and recriminations.

And all about that neighbourhood, even from the august London and Country Banking Company, from the tills of shops and inns—doors standing that sunny weather entirely open—money had been quietly and dexterously making off that day in handfuls and rouleaux, floating quietly along by walls and shady places, dodging quickly from the approaching eyes of men.

And all about that neighbourhood, even from the august London and Country Banking Company, from the tills of shops and inns—doors standing that sunny weather entirely open—money had been quietly and dexterously making off that day in handfuls and rouleaux, floating quietly along by walls and shady places, dodging quickly from the approaching eyes of men.

It was ten days after—and indeed only when the Burdock story was already old—that the mariner collated these facts and began to understand how near he had been to the wonderful Invisible Man.

He was a shortish little man, and he wore a high hat, and he was running so fast that his legs verily twinkled.

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.

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.

A piece of tile whizzed by his head and smashed among the crockery on the kitchen table.

He went to the south window, threw it up, and leaning out stared down on the network of windows, beaded gas-lamps and shops, with its black interstices of roof and yard that made up the town at night.

After five minutes, during which his mind had travelled into a remote speculation of social conditions of the future, and lost itself at last over the time dimension, Dr. Kemp roused himself with a sigh, pulled down the window again, and returned to his writing desk.

He had been writing slackly, and with intervals of abstraction, since the shots.

He walked to a wardrobe and produced a robe of dingy scarlet.

He turned out his drawers for the articles, and then went downstairs to ransack his larder.

"There was a real fool of a man—a sort of confederate of mine—curse him!—who tried to steal my money. Has done so."

"He meant to give me the slip—he was always casting about! What a fool I was!
"The cur!
"I should have killed him!"

"Barred out of my own bedroom, by a flagrant absurdity!" he said.

The bulk of three cigars had passed into the invisible or diffused as a white ash over the carpet before he spoke again.

"Good Heavens!" said Kemp, reading eagerly an incredulous account of the events in Iping, of the previous afternoon, that have already been described.

When dawn came to mingle its pallor with the lamp-light and cigar smoke of the dining-room, Kemp was still pacing up and down, trying to grasp the incredible.

"And it reads like rage growing to mania! The things he may do! The things he may do! And he's upstairs free as the air. What on earth ought I to do?"