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, he heard the side gate slam.

Emerging into the hill-road, Kemp naturally took the downward

direction, and so it was he came to run in his own person the very

race he had watched with such a critical eye from the belvedere

study only four days ago. He ran it well, for a man out of

training, and though his face was white and wet, his wits were cool

to the last. He ran with wide strides, and wherever a patch of

rough ground intervened, wherever there came a patch of raw flints,

or a bit of broken glass shone dazzling, he crossed it and left the

233

The Invisible Man