In the early evening Doctor Kemp was sitting in his study on the hill overlooking Burdock. It was a pleasant little room, with three windows, north, west, and south, and bookshelves crowded 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. Doctor Kemp's lamp was lit, although the sky was still bright with the sunset light, and his blinds were up because there was no possibility of peering outsiders to require them pulled down. Doctor Kemp was a tall and slender young man, with flaxen hair and a moustache almost white, and the work he was doing would earn him, he hoped, the fellowship of the Royal Society, so highly did he think of it.
And his eye 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-top towards him. He was a shortish little man, and he wore a high hat, and he was running so fast that his legs seemed to twinkled.
"Another of those fools," said Doctor Kemp. "Like that ass who ran into me this morning round a corner, with his 'Invisible Man's coming, sir!' I can't imagine what possesses people. One might think we were in the thirteenth century."
He got up, went to the window, and stared at the dusky hillside and the dark little figure tearing down it. "He seems in an incredible hurry," said Doctor Kemp, "but he doesn't seem to be getting on. If his pockets were full of lead, he couldn't run heavier."
In another moment the higher of the villas that went up the hill from Burdock had hidden the running figure. He was visible again for a moment, and again, and then again, three times between the three detached houses that came next, and then the terrace hid him.
"Asses!" said Doctor Kemp, swinging round on his heel and walking back to his writing-table.
But those who saw the fugitive nearer, and perceived the abject terror on his perspiring face, being themselves in the open roadway, did not share in the doctor's contempt. By the man ran, and as he ran he chinked like a well-filled purse that is shaken about. He looked neither to the right nor the left, but his dilated eyes stared straight downhill to where the lamps were being lit, and the people were crowded in the street. And his ill-shaped mouth fell open, and a foam lay on his lips, and his breath came hoarse and noisy. Everyone he passed stopped and began staring up the road and down, and interrogating one another with an feeling of discomfort for the reason of his haste.
And then presently, far up the hill, a dog playing in the road yelped and ran under a gate, and as they still wondered, something - a wind - a pad, pad, pad, - a sound like a panting breathing, - rushed by.
People screamed. People jumped off the pavement. It passed in shouts, it passed by instinct down the hill. They were shouting in the street before Marvel was halfway there. They were rushing into houses and slamming the doors behind them, with the news. He heard it and made one last desperate sprint. Fear came striding by, rushed ahead of him, and in a moment had seized the town.
"The Invisible Man is coming! The Invisible Man."