CHAPTER XV

THE MAN WHO WAS RUNNING

In the early evening time Dr. Kemp was sitting in his study in the

belvedere on the hill overlooking Burdock. It was a pleasant little

room, with three windows--north, west, and south--and bookshelves

covered with books and scientific publications, and a broad

writing-table, and, under the north window, a microscope, glass

slips, minute instruments, some cultures, and scattered bottles of

reagents. Dr. Kemp's solar lamp was lit, albeit the sky was still

bright with the sunset light, and his blinds were up because there

was no offence of peering outsiders to require them pulled down.

Dr. Kemp was a tall and slender young man, with flaxen hair and a

moustache almost white, and the work he was upon would earn him, he

hoped, the fellowship of the Royal Society, so highly did he think

of it.

And his eye, presently wandering from his work, caught the sunset

blazing at the back of the hill that is over against his own. For a

minute perhaps he sat, pen in mouth, admiring the rich golden

colour above the crest, and then his attention was attracted by the

little figure of a man, inky black, running over the hill-brow

towards him. He was a shortish little man, and he wore a high hat,

and he was running so fast that his legs verily twinkled.

111

The Invisible Man