Of course we can know nothing of the details of that encounter. It occurred on the edge of a gravel pit, not two hundred yards from Lord Burdock’s lodge gate.[3] Everything points to a desperate struggle—the trampled ground, the numerous wounds Mr. Wicksteed received, his splintered walking–stick—but why the attack was made, save in a murderous frenzy, it is impossible to imagine. Indeed, the theory of madness is almost unavoidable. Mr. Wicksteed was a man of forty–five or forty–six, steward to Lord Burdock, of inoffensive habits and appearance, and the very last person in the world to provoke such a terrible antagonist. Against him it would seem the Invisible Man used an iron rod, dragged from a piece of broken fence. He stopped this quiet man, going quietly home to his midday meal, attacked him, beat down his feeble defences, broke his arm, felled him, and smashed his head to a jelly.

Of course, he must have dragged this rod out of the fencing, before he met his victim—he must have been carrying it ready in his hand. Only two details beyond what has already been stated seem to bear on the matter.[4] One is the circumstance that the gravel–pit was not in Mr. Wicksteed’s direct path home, but nearly a couple of hundred yards out of his way. The other is the assertion of a little girl, to the effect that going to her afternoon school she saw the murdered man "trotting" in a peculiar manner across a field towards the gravel–pit. Her pantomime of his action suggests a man pursuing something on the ground before him and striking at it ever and again with his walking–stick. She was the last person to see him alive. He passed out of her sight to his death, the struggle being hidden from her only by a clump of beech trees and a slight depression in the ground.

Now this, to the present writer’s mind at least, certainly lifts the murder out of the realm of the absolutely wanton.[5] We may imagine that Griffin had taken the rod as a weapon indeed, but without any deliberate intention of using it to 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,[7] 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 a 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 to flood for a time whatever scheme of action he had contrived.

After the murder of Mr. Wicksteed, he would seem to have struck across the country[7] 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.

In the interim 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.

Kemp read a strange missive, written in pencil on a greasy sheet of paper.

“You have been amazingly energetic and clever,” this letter ran, “though what you stand to gain by it[1] I cannot imagine. You are against me. For a whole day you have chased me—you have tried to rob me of a night’s rest. But I have had food in spite of you, I have slept in spite of you, and the game is only beginning. The game is only beginning. There is nothing for it but[2] to start the Terror. This announces the first day of the Terror. Port Burdock is no longer under the Queen, tell your Colonel of Police, and the rest of them; it is under me—the Terror! This is day one of year one of the new epoch—the Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am Invisible Man the First. To begin with, the rule will be easy. The first day there will be one execution for the sake of example—a man named Kemp. Death starts for him today. He may lock himself away, hide himself away, get guards about him, put on armour if he likes—Death, the unseen Death, is coming. Let him take precautions—it will impress my people. Death starts from the pillar–box[3] by midday. The letter will fall in as the postman comes along, then off! The game begins. Death starts. Help him not, my people, lest Death fall upon you also. To–day Kemp is to die.”

Kemp read this letter twice. “It’s no hoax,” he said. “That’s his voice! And he means it.”

He turned the folded sheet over and saw on the addressed side of the postmark Hintondean and the prosaic detail, “2d.[4] to pay.”

He got up slowly, leaving his lunch unfinished—the letter had come by the one o’clock post—and went into his study. He rang for his housekeeper, and told her to go round the house at once, examine all the fastenings of the windows, and close all the shutters. He closed the shutters of his study himself. From a locked drawer in his bedroom he took a little revolver, examined it carefully, and put it into the pocket of his lounge jacket. He wrote a number of brief notes, one to Colonel Adye, gave them to his servant to take, with explicit instructions as to her way of leaving the house. “There is no danger,” he said, and added a mental reservation,[5] “to you.” He remained meditative for a space after doing this, and then returned to his cooling lunch.