It is unavoidable that at this point the narrative should be interrupted again, for a certain very painful reason that will soon be apparent. While these things were going on in the parlour, and while Mr. Huxter was watching Mr. Marvel smoking his pipe against the gate, not a dozen yards away were Mr. Hall and Teddy Henfrey discussing in a state of cloudy puzzlement the one Iping topic.
Suddenly there came a violent thud against the door of the parlour, a sharp cry, and then - silence.
"Hul - lo!" said Teddy Henfrey.
"Hul - lo!" from the bar.
Mr. Hall took things in slowly but surely. "That isn't right," he said, and came round from behind the bar towards the parlour door.
He and Teddy approached the door together, with intent faces. Their eyes considered. "Something's wrong," said Hall, and Henfrey nodded agreement. The smell of an unpleasant chemical odour met them, and there was a sound of conversation, very rapid and subdued.
"Are you all right there?" asked Hall, knocking.
The muttered conversation stopped abruptly, for a moment silence, then the conversation was resumed in hissing whispers, then a sharp cry of "No! no, you don't!" There came a sudden motion and the overturning of a chair, a brief struggle. Silence again.
"What on earth?" exclaimed Henfrey to himself.
"Are you all right there?" asked Mr. Hall sharply, again.
The Vicar's voice answered with a curious jerking intonation: "Quite ri - ight. Please don't - interrupt."
"Odd!" said Mr. Henfrey.
"Odd!" said Mr. Hall.
"Says, 'Don't interrupt,'" said Henfrey.
"I heard him," said Hall.
"And a sniff," said Henfrey.
They remained listening. The conversation was rapid and subdued. "I can't," said Mr. Bunting, his voice rising; "I tell you, sir, I will not."
"What was that?" asked Henfrey.
"Says he won't," said Hall. "Wasn't speaking to us, was he?"
"Disgraceful!" said Mr. Bunting, within.
"'Disgraceful,'" said Mr. Henfrey. "I heard it - distinctly."
"Who's that speaking now?" asked Henfrey.
"Mr. Cuss, I suppose," said Hall. "Can you hear - anything?"
Silence. The sounds within indistinct and perplexing.
"Sounds like throwing the table-cloth about," said Hall.
Mrs. Hall appeared behind the bar. Hall made gestures of silence and invitation. This roused Mrs. Hall's wifely opposition. "What are you listening there for, Hall?" she asked. "Haven't you got anything better to do - busy day like this?"
Hall tried to convey everything by grimaces and mime, but Mrs. Hall was not to be convinced. She raised her voice. So Hall and Henfrey, rather humiliated, tip-toed back to the bar, gesticulating to explain to her.
At first she refused to see anything in what they had heard at all. Then she insisted on Hall keeping silence, while Henfrey told her his story. She was inclined to think the whole business nonsense - perhaps they were just moving the furniture about. "I heard them say 'disgraceful', I did," said Hall.
"I heard that, Mrs Hall," said Henfrey.
"Probably - " began Mrs. Hall.
"Hsh!" said Mr. Teddy Henfrey. "Didn't I hear the window?"
"What window?" asked Mrs. Hall.
"Parlour window," said Henfrey.
Every one stood listening intently. Mrs. Hall's eyes, directed straight before her, saw without seeing the brilliant rectangle of the inn door, the road white and vivid, and Huxter's shop-front blistering in the June sun. Abruptly Huxter's door opened and Huxter appeared, eyes staring with excitement, arms gesticulating. "Yap!" cried Huxter. "Stop thief!" and he ran obliquely across the rectangle towards the yard gates, and vanished.
Simultaneously came a tumult from the parlour, and a sound of windows being closed.
Hall, Henfrey, and the human contents of the bar rushed out at once into the street. They saw some one rush round the corner towards the down road, and Mr. Huxter executing a complicated jump in the air that ended on his face and shoulder. Down the street people were standing astonished or running towards them.
Mr. Huxter was stunned. Henfrey stopped to discover this, but Hall and the two labourers from the bar rushed at once to the corner, shouting incoherent things, and saw Mr. Marvel vanishing round the corner of the church wall. They appear to have come to the impossible conclusion that this was the Invisible Man suddenly become visible, and set off at once along the lane in pursuit. But Hall had hardly run a dozen yards before he gave a loud shout of astonishment and went flying headlong sideways, clutching one of the labourers and bringing him to the ground. He had been charged just as one charges a man at football. The second labourer came round in a circle, stared, and believing that Hall had fallen over by himself, turned to resume the pursuit, only to be tripped by the ankle just as Huxter had been. Then, as the first labourer struggled to his feet, he was kicked sideways by a blow that might have felled an ox.
As he went down, the rush from the direction of the village green came round the corner. The first to appear was the proprietor of the cocoanut shy, a strong man in a blue jersey. He was astonished to see the lane empty save for three men lying absurdly on the ground. And then something happened to his back foot, and he went headlong and rolled sideways just in time to hit the feet of his brother and partner, following headlong. The two were then kicked, knelt on, fallen over, and cursed by quite a number of over-hasty people.
Now when Hall and Henfrey and the labourers ran out of the house, Mrs. Hall, who had been disciplined by years of experience, remained in the bar next the till. And suddenly the parlour door was opened, and Mr. Cuss appeared, and without glancing at her rushed at once down the steps towards the corner. "Hold him!" he cried. "Don't let him drop that packet! You can see him so long as he holds the packet." He knew nothing of the existence of Marvel. For the Invisible Man had handed over the books and packet in the yard. The face of Mr. Cuss was angry and resolute, but his clothes were strange, a sort of white skirt that could only have gone unnoticed in Greece. "Hold him!" he shouted. "He's got my trousers! And all of the Vicar's clothes!"
"Look after him in a minute!" he cried to Henfrey as he passed the prostrate Huxter, and coming round the corner to join the tumult, was promptly knocked off his feet into an indecorous sprawl. Somebody in full flight trod heavily on his finger. He shouted, struggled to regain his feet, was knocked against and thrown on all fours again, and became aware that he was involved not in a capture, but a retreat. Every one was running back to the village. He got up again and was hit severely behind the ear. He staggered and set off back to the Coach and Horses immediately, jumping over the abandoned Huxter, who was now sitting up, on his way.
Behind him as he was halfway up the inn steps he heard a sudden shout of rage, rising sharply out of the confusion of cries, and a sounding smack in some one's face. He recognised the voice as that of the Invisible Man, and the note was that of a man suddenly infuriated by a painful blow.
In another moment Mr. Cuss was back in the parlour. "He's coming back, Bunting!" he said, rushing in. "Save yourself! He's gone mad!"
Mr. Bunting was standing in the window trying to dress himself in the rug and a West Surrey Gazette. "Who's coming?" he said, so surprised that his costume just escaped disintegration.
"Invisible Man," said Cuss, and rushed to the window. "We'd better get out of here! He's fighting mad! Mad!"
In another moment he was out in the yard.
"Good heavens!" said Mr. Bunting, hesitating between two horrible alternatives. He heard a frightful struggle in the passage of the inn, and his decision was made. He climbed out of the window, adjusted his costume hastily, and ran away up the village as fast as his fat little legs would carry him.
From the moment when the Invisible Man screamed with rage and Mr. Bunting made his memorable flight up the village, it became impossible to give a consecutive account of affairs in Iping. Possibly the Invisible Man's original intention was simply to cover Marvel's retreat with the clothes and books. But his temper, at no time very good, seems to have gone completely out of control, and from then on he set to hitting and overthrowing, for the mere satisfaction of hurting.
You must figure the street full of running figures, of doors slamming and fights for hiding-places. You must picture the tumult suddenly running into the unstable equilibrium of old Fletcher's planks and two chairs, - with cataclysmal results. You must picture an appalled couple caught unhappily in a swing. And then the whole tumultuous rush has passed and the Iping streets with its decorations and flags is deserted except for the still raging Unseen, and littered with cocoanuts, overthrown canvas screens, and the scattered stock of a sweet stall. Everywhere there is a sound of closing shutters and bolts, and the only visible humanity is an occasional eye under a raised eyebrow in the corner of a window.
The Invisible Man amused himself for a little while by breaking all the windows in the Coach and Horses, and then he threw a street lamp through the parlour window of Mrs. Gribble. It must have been he who cut the telegraph wire to Adderdean just beyond Higgins' cottage on the Adderdean road. And after that, as his peculiar qualities allowed, he passed out of human perceptions altogether, and he was neither heard, seen, nor felt in Iping any more. He vanished absolutely.
But it was the best part of two hours before any human being ventured out again into the desolation of Iping Street.