NOVEL- The Invisible Man CH26 The Wicksteed Murder (Summary)

CH26 THE WICKSTEED MURDER

SUMMARY

The police swung into action. By two o’clock every passenger train travelled with locked doors, and goods traffic was suspended. Twenty miles around Port Burdock, men in groups of three or four armed with guns and accompanied by dogs were beating the roads and fields. Mounted policemen rode along the country lanes, stopping at every cottage and warning the people to lock up their houses and keep indoors. A proclamation signed by Adye was posted over the whole district by four or five o’clock in the afternoon. Before nightfall an area of several hundred square miles was in a state of siege. There were still people who had not heard of the invisible man. Mr. Wicksteed was brutally murdered within two hundred yards from Lord Burdock’s Lodge gate. Mr. Wicksteed was an amiable man of fortyfive or forty-six and steward to Lord Burdock. He lay crushed on the edge of a gravel pit. The weapon used was an iron rod pulled up from a broken fence. Mr. Wicksteed was on his way home for his mid-day meal. A schoolgirl reported seeing him walking towards the gravel pit, away from his direct path home, bent forward and striking repeatedly at something in front of him with his walking stick. An iron rod moving around by itself seems to have aroused his curiosity and led to the tragedy. In spite of all the vigil, the invisible man seems to have eaten and rested that night. He was

back in action with renewed vigour the next day.