He paused, and his attitude suggested a roving glance at the window.
“But how did you get to Iping?” said Kemp, anxious to keep his guest busy talking.
“I went there to work. I had one hope. It was a half idea! I have it still. It is a full blown idea now. A way of getting back! Of restoring what I have done. When I choose. When I have done all I mean to do invisibly. And that is what I chiefly want to talk to you about now.”
“You went straight to Iping?”
“Yes. I had simply to get my three volumes of memoranda and my chequebook, my luggage and underclothing, order a quantity of chemicals to work out this idea of mine—I will show you the calculations as soon as I get my books—and then I started. Jove! I remember the snowstorm now, and the accursed bother it was to keep the snow from damping my pasteboard nose.”
“At the end,” said Kemp, “the day before yesterday, when they found you out, you rather—to judge by the papers—”
“I did. Rather. Did I kill that fool of a constable?”
“No,” said Kemp. “He’s expected to recover.”
“That’s his luck, then. I clean lost my temper, the fools! Why couldn’t they leave me alone? And that grocer lout?”
“There are no deaths expected,” said Kemp.
“I don’t know about that tramp of mine,” said the invisible man, with an unpleasant laugh.
“By heaven, Kemp, you don’t know what rage is! … To have worked for years, to have planned and plotted, and then to get some fumbling purblind idiot messing across your course! … Every conceivable sort of silly creature that has ever been created has been sent to cross me.
“If I have much more of it, I shall go wild—I shall start mowing ’em.
“As it is, they’ve made things a thousand times more difficult.”
“No doubt it’s exasperating,” said Kemp, drily.
XXIV
The Plan That Failed
“But now,” said Kemp, with a side glance out of the window, “what are we to do?”
He moved nearer his guest as he spoke in such a manner as to prevent the possibility of a sudden glimpse of the three men who were advancing up the hill road—with an intolerable slowness, as it seemed to Kemp.
“What were you planning to do when you were heading for Port Burdock? Had you any plan?”
“I was going to clear out of the country. But I have altered that plan rather since seeing you. I thought it would be wise, now the weather is hot and invisibility possible, to make for the South. Especially as my secret was known, and everyone would be on the lookout for a masked and muffled man. You have a line of steamers from here to France. My idea was to get aboard one and run the risks of the passage. Thence I could go by train into Spain, or else get to Algiers. It would not be difficult. There a man might always be invisible—and yet live. And do things. I was using that tramp as a money box and luggage carrier, until I decided how to get my books and things sent over to meet me.”
“That’s clear.”
“And then the filthy brute must needs try and rob me! He has hidden my books, Kemp. Hidden my books! If I can lay my hands on him!”
“Best plan to get the books out of him first.”
“But where is he? Do you know?”
“He’s in the town police station, locked up, by his own request, in the strongest cell in the place.”
“Cur!” said the invisible man.
“But that hangs up your plans a little.”
“We must get those books; those books are vital.”
“Certainly,” said Kemp, a little nervously, wondering if he heard footsteps outside. “Certainly we must get those books. But that won’t be difficult, if he doesn’t know they’re for you.”
“No,” said the invisible man, and thought.
Kemp tried to think of something to keep the talk going, but the invisible man resumed of his own accord.
“Blundering into your house, Kemp,” he said, “changes all my plans. For you are a man that can understand. In spite of all that has happened, in spite of this publicity, of the loss of my books, of what I have suffered, there still remain great possibilities, huge possibilities—”
“You have told no one I am here?” he asked abruptly.
Kemp hesitated. “That was implied,” he said.
“No one?” insisted Griffin.
“Not a soul.”
“Ah! Now—” The invisible man stood up, and sticking his arms akimbo began to pace the study.
“I made a mistake, Kemp, a huge mistake, in carrying this thing through alone. I have wasted strength, time, opportunities. Alone—it is wonderful how little a man can do alone! To rob a little, to hurt a little, and there is the end.
“What I want, Kemp, is a goalkeeper, a helper, and a hiding place, an arrangement whereby I can sleep and eat and rest in peace, and unsuspected. I must have a confederate. With a confederate, with food and rest—a thousand things are possible.
“Hitherto I have gone on vague lines. We have to consider all that invisibility means, all that it does not mean. It means little advantage for eavesdropping and so forth—one makes sounds. It’s of little help—a little help perhaps—in housebreaking and so forth. Once you’ve caught me you could easily imprison me. But on the other hand I am hard to catch. This invisibility, in fact, is only good in two cases: It’s useful in getting away, it’s useful in approaching. It’s particularly useful, therefore, in killing. I can walk round a man, whatever weapon he has, choose my point, strike as I like. Dodge as I like. Escape as I like.”
Kemp’s hand went to his moustache. Was that a movement downstairs?
“And it is killing we must
