to
obtain a lodgment behind it. Then the cabman collared something.
"I got him," said the cabman. The barman's red hands came clawing
at the unseen. "Here he is!" said the barman.

Mr. Marvel, released, suddenly dropped to the ground and made an
attempt to crawl behind the legs of the fighting men. The struggle
blundered round the edge of the door. The voice of the Invisible
Man was heard for the first time, yelling out sharply, as the
policeman trod on his foot. Then he cried out passionately and
his fists flew round like flails. The cabman suddenly whooped
and doubled up, kicked under the diaphragm. The door into the
bar-parlour from the kitchen slammed and covered Mr. Marvel's
retreat. The men in the kitchen found themselves clutching at and
struggling with empty air.

"Where's he gone?" cried the man with the beard. "Out?"

"This way," said the policeman, stepping into the yard and
stopping.

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

"I'll show him," shouted the man with the black beard, and suddenly
a steel barrel shone over the policeman's shoulder, and five
bullets had followed one another into the twilight whence the
missile had come. As he fired, the man with the beard moved his
hand in a horizontal curve, so that his shots radiated out into the
narrow yard like spokes from a wheel.

A silence followed. "Five cartridges," said the man with the black
beard. "That's the best of all. Four aces and a joker. Get a
lantern, someone, and come and feel about for his body."

CHAPTER XVII

DR. KEMP'S VISITOR

Dr. Kemp had continued writing in his study until the shots
aroused him. Crack, crack, crack, they came one after the other.

"Hullo!" said Dr. Kemp, putting his pen into his mouth again and
listening. "Who's letting off revolvers in Burdock? What are the
asses at now?"

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.
"Looks like a crowd down the hill," he said, "by 'The Cricketers,'"
and remained watching. Thence his eyes wandered over the town to far
away where the ships' lights shone, and the pier glowed--a little
illuminated, facetted pavilion like a gem of yellow light. The moon
in its first quarter hung over the westward hill, and the stars were
clear and almost tropically bright.

After