Now this, to the present writer’s mind at least, lifts the murder out of the realm of the absolutely wanton.  We may imagine that Griffin had taken the rod as a weapon indeed, but without any deliberate intention of using it in murder.  Wicksteed may then have come by and noticed this rod inexplicably moving through the air.  Without any thought of the Invisible Man—­for Port Burdock is ten miles away—­he may have pursued it.  It is quite conceivable that he may not even have heard of the Invisible Man.  One can then imagine the Invisible Man making off—­quietly in order to avoid discovering his presence in the neighbourhood, and Wicksteed, excited and curious, pursuing this unaccountably locomotive object—­finally striking at it.

No doubt the Invisible Man could easily have distanced his middle-aged pursuer under ordinary circumstances, but the position in which Wicksteed’s body was found suggests that he had the ill luck to drive his quarry into a corner between a drift of stinging nettles and the gravel pit.  To those who appreciate the extraordinary irascibility of the Invisible Man, the rest of the encounter will be easy to imagine.

But this is pure hypothesis.  The only undeniable facts—­for stories of children are often unreliable—­are the discovery of Wicksteed’s body, done to death, and of the blood-stained iron rod flung among the nettles.  The abandonment of the rod by Griffin, suggests that in the emotional excitement of the affair, the purpose for which he took it—­if he had a purpose—­was abandoned.  He was certainly an intensely egotistical and unfeeling man, but the sight of his victim, his first victim, bloody and pitiful at his feet, may have released some long pent fountain of remorse which for a time may have flooded whatever scheme of action he had contrived.

After the murder of Mr. Wicksteed, he would seem to have struck across the country towards the downland.  There is a story of a voice heard about sunset by a couple of men in a field near Fern Bottom.  It was wailing and laughing, sobbing and groaning, and ever and again it shouted.  It must have been queer hearing.  It drove up across the middle of a clover field and died away towards the hills.

That afternoon the Invisible Man must have learnt something of the rapid use Kemp had made of his confidences.  He must have found houses locked and secured; he may have loitered about railway stations and prowled about inns, and no doubt he read the proclamations and realised something of the nature of the campaign against him.  And as the evening advanced, the fields became dotted here and there with groups of three or four men, and noisy with the yelping of dogs.  These men-hunters had particular instructions in the case of an encounter as to the way they should support one another.  But he avoided them all.  We may understand something of his exasperation, and it could have been none the less because he himself had supplied the information that was being used so remorselessly against him.  For that day at least he lost heart; for nearly twenty-four hours, save when he turned on Wicksteed, he was a hunted man.  In the night, he must have eaten and slept; for in the morning he was himself again, active, powerful, angry, and malignant, prepared for his last great struggle against the world.