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 at some chance blow, and forthwith he set to smiting 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 figure the tumult suddenly striking on the unstable equilibrium of old Fletcher’s planks and two chairs—­with cataclysmic results.  You must figure an appalled couple caught dismally in a swing.  And then the whole tumultuous rush has passed and the Iping street with its gauds and flags is deserted save for the still raging unseen, and littered with cocoanuts, overthrown canvas screens, and the scattered stock in trade of a sweetstuff stall.  Everywhere there is a sound of closing shutters and shoving bolts, and the only visible humanity is an occasional flitting eye under a raised eyebrow in the corner of a window pane.

The Invisible Man amused himself for a little while by breaking all the windows in the “Coach and Horses,” and then he thrust a street lamp through the parlour window of Mrs. Gribble.  He it must have been 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.

CHAPTER XIII

MR. MARVEL DISCUSSES HIS RESIGNATION

When the dusk was gathering and Iping was just beginning to peep timorously forth again upon the shattered wreckage of its Bank Holiday, a short, thick-set man in a shabby silk hat was marching painfully through the twilight behind the beechwoods on the road to Bramblehurst.  He carried three books bound together by some sort of ornamental elastic ligature, and a bundle wrapped in a blue table-cloth.  His rubicund face expressed consternation and fatigue; he appeared to be in a spasmodic sort of hurry.  He was accompanied by a voice other than his own, and ever and again he winced under the touch of unseen hands.

“If you give me the slip again,” said the Voice, “if you attempt to give me the slip again—­”

“Lord!” said Mr. Marvel.  “That shoulder’s a mass of bruises as it is.”

“On my honour,” said the Voice, “I will kill you.”

“I didn’t try to give you the slip,” said Marvel, in a voice that was not far remote from tears.  “I swear I didn’t.  I didn’t know the blessed turning, that was all!  How the devil was I to know the blessed turning?  As it is, I’ve been knocked about—­”