uthed, came a
still more wonderful thing. The shutters of the drawing-room window
were flung open violently, and the housemaid in her outdoor hat and
garments, appeared struggling in a frantic manner to throw up the
sash. Suddenly a man appeared beside her, helping her--Dr. Kemp!
In another moment the window was open, and the housemaid was
struggling out; she pitched forward and vanished among the shrubs.
Mr. Heelas stood up, exclaiming vaguely and vehemently at all these
wonderful things. He saw Kemp stand on the sill, spring from the
window, and reappear almost instantaneously running along a path in
the shrubbery and stooping as he ran, like a man who evades
observation. He vanished behind a laburnum, and appeared again
clambering over a fence that abutted on the open down. In a second
he had tumbled over and was running at a tremendous pace down the
slope towards Mr. Heelas.

"Lord!" cried Mr. Heelas, struck with an idea; "it's that Invisible
Man brute! It's right, after all!"

With Mr. Heelas to think things like that was to act, and his cook
watching him from the top window was amazed to see him come pelting
towards the house at a good nine miles an hour. There was a
slamming of doors, a ringing of bells, and the voice of Mr. Heelas
bellowing like a bull. "Shut the doors, shut the windows, shut
everything!--the Invisible Man is coming!" Instantly the house was
full of screams and directions, and scurrying feet. He ran himself
to shut the French windows that opened on the veranda; as he did so
Kemp's head and shoulders and knee appeared over the edge of the
garden fence. In another moment Kemp had ploughed through the
asparagus, and was running across the tennis lawn to the house.

"You can't come in," said Mr. Heelas, shutting the bolts. "I'm very
sorry if he's after you, but you can't come in!"

Kemp appeared with a face of terror close to the glass, rapping and
then shaking frantically at the French window. Then, seeing his
efforts were useless, he ran along the veranda, vaulted the end,
and went to hammer at the side door. Then he ran round by the side
gate to the front of the house, and so into the hill-road. And Mr.
Heelas staring from his window--a face of horror--had scarcely
witnessed Kemp vanish, ere the asparagus was being trampled this
way and that by feet unseen. At that Mr. Heelas fled precipitately
upstairs, and the rest of the chase is beyond his purview. But as
he passed the staircase window,