“Then came men and boys running, first one and then others, and shouting as they ran. It was a fire. They ran in the direction of my lodging, and looking back down a street I saw a mass of black smoke streaming up above the roofs and telephone wires. It was my lodging burning; my clothes, my apparatus, all my resources indeed, except my chequebook and the three volumes of memoranda that awaited me in Great Portland Street, were there. Burning! I had burnt my boats⁠—if ever a man did! The place was blazing.”

The invisible man paused and thought. Kemp glanced nervously out of the window. “Yes?” he said. “Go on.”