فصل 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Man in a Hurry

In the early evening time, Dr Kemp was sitting in his study on the hill above Burdock. It was a pleasant little upstairs room, with three windows - north, west, and south - with bookshelves crowded with books and with a broad writing table. Dr Kemp was a tall, thin man of about thirty-five, with fair hair. He was writing.

His eye, soon wandering from his work, caught the sunset behind the hill opposite his house. For a minute, perhaps, he sat, pen in mouth, admiring the rich golden colour, and then he saw the little figure of a man running over the hill towards him. He was a shortest little man, in a dirty old hat, and he was running fast.

Dr Kemp got up, went to the window, and stared at the hillside and the dark little figure running down it. ‘He seems to be in a hurry,’ said Dr Kemp to himself.

Then the running man was hidden behind some houses; he came into sight and disappeared again - still running.

But those who were nearer to him saw the terror in his face. He looked neither to the right nor left, but his wide eyes stared straight down the hill to where the lamps were being lit and there were people crowding together in the street. Everybody he passed stopped and began staring up and down the road, and asking one another, half afraid, why the man was running so hard.

And then, far up the hill, a dog playing in the road growled and ran under a gate, and something - a wind - a noise of feet, a sound like heavy breathing - rushed by.

People cried out. People jumped off the footpath. They shouted as the thing rushed past them down the hill, and they were still shouting in the street before Marvel was halfway there. They were running into houses with the news and shutting the doors behind them. He heard it, and ran even faster. Fear came hurrying by, rushed ahead of him, and in a moment had seized the town.

‘The Invisible Man is coming! The Invisible Man!’