The axe receded into the passage, and fell to a position about two feet from the ground.  They could hear the Invisible Man breathing.  “Stand away, you two,” he said.  “I want that man Kemp.”

“We want you,” said the first policeman, making a quick step forward and wiping with his poker at the Voice.  The Invisible Man must have started back, and he blundered into the umbrella stand.

Then, as the policeman staggered with the swing of the blow he had aimed, the Invisible Man countered with the axe, the helmet crumpled like paper, and the blow sent the man spinning to the floor at the head of the kitchen stairs.  But the second policeman, aiming behind the axe with his poker, hit something soft that snapped.  There was a sharp exclamation of pain and then the axe fell to the ground.  The policeman wiped again at vacancy and hit nothing; he put his foot on the axe, and struck again.  Then he stood, poker clubbed, listening intent for the slightest movement.

He heard the dining-room window open, and a quick rush of feet within.  His companion rolled over and sat up, with the blood running down between his eye and ear.  “Where is he?” asked the man on the floor.

“Don’t know.  I’ve hit him.  He’s standing somewhere in the hall.  Unless he’s slipped past you.  Doctor Kemp—­sir.”

Pause.

“Doctor Kemp,” cried the policeman again.

The second policeman began struggling to his feet.  He stood up.  Suddenly the faint pad of bare feet on the kitchen stairs could be heard.  “Yap!” cried the first policeman, and incontinently flung his poker.  It smashed a little gas bracket.

He made as if he would pursue the Invisible Man downstairs.  Then he thought better of it and stepped into the dining-room.

“Doctor Kemp—­” he began, and stopped short.

“Doctor Kemp’s a hero,” he said, as his companion looked over his shoulder.

The dining-room window was wide open, and neither housemaid nor Kemp was to be seen.

The second policeman’s opinion of Kemp was terse and vivid.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE HUNTER HUNTED

Mr. Heelas, Mr. Kemp’s nearest neighbour among the villa holders, was asleep in his summer house when the siege of Kemp’s house began.  Mr. Heelas was one of the sturdy minority who refused to believe “in all this nonsense” about an Invisible Man.  His wife, however, as he was subsequently to be reminded, did.  He insisted upon walking about his garden just as if nothing was the matter, and he went to sleep in the afternoon in accordance with the custom of years.  He slept through the smashing of the windows, and then woke up suddenly with a curious persuasion of something wrong.  He looked across at Kemp’s house, rubbed his eyes and looked again.  Then he put his feet to the ground, and sat listening.  He said he was damned, but still the strange thing was visible.  The house looked as though it had been deserted for weeks—­after a violent riot.  Every window was broken, and every window, save those of the belvedere study, was blinded by the internal shutters.