автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson

Story of the Door

Mr. Ut­ter­son the law­yer was a man of a rugged coun­ten­ance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and em­bar­rassed in dis­course; back­ward in sen­ti­ment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet some­how lov­able. At friendly meet­ings, and when the wine was to his taste, some­thing em­in­ently hu­man beaconed from his eye; some­thing in­deed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these si­lent sym­bols of the after-din­ner face, but more of­ten and loudly in the acts of his life. He was aus­tere with him­self; drank gin when he was alone, to mor­tify a taste for vin­tages; and though he en­joyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an ap­proved tol­er­ance for oth­ers; some­times won­der­ing, al­most with envy, at the high pres­sure of spir­its in­volved in their mis­deeds; and in any ex­tremity in­clined to help rather than to re­prove. “I in­cline to Cain’s heresy,” he used to say quaintly: “I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.” In this char­ac­ter, it was fre­quently his for­tune to be the last reput­able ac­quaint­ance and the last good in­flu­ence in the lives of down­go­ing men. And to such as these, so long as they came about his cham­bers, he never marked a shade of change in his de­mean­our.

No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Ut­ter­son; for he was un­demon­strat­ive at the best, and even his friend­ship seemed to be foun­ded in a sim­ilar cath­oli­city of good-nature. It is the mark of a mod­est man to ac­cept his friendly circle ready-made from the hands of op­por­tun­ity; and that was the law­yer’s way. His friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest; his af­fec­tions, like ivy, were the growth of time, they im­plied no apt­ness in the ob­ject. Hence, no doubt the bond that united him to Mr. Richard En­field, his dis­tant kins­man, the well-known man about town. It was a nut to crack for many, what these two could see in each other, or what sub­ject they could find in com­mon. It was re­por­ted by those who en­countered them in their Sunday walks, that they said noth­ing, looked sin­gu­larly dull and would hail with ob­vi­ous re­lief the ap­pear­ance of a friend. For all that, the two men put the greatest store by these ex­cur­sions, coun­ted them the chief jewel of each week, and not only set aside oc­ca­sions of pleas­ure, but even res­isted the calls of busi­ness, that they might en­joy them un­in­ter­rup­ted.

It chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them down a bystreet in a busy quarter of Lon­don. The street was small and what is called quiet, but it drove a thriv­ing trade on the week­days. The in­hab­it­ants were all do­ing well, it seemed, and all emu­lously hop­ing to do bet­ter still, and lay­ing out the sur­plus of their grains in coquetry; so that the shop fronts stood along that thor­ough­fare with an air of in­vit­a­tion, like rows of smil­ing sales­wo­men. Even on Sunday, when it veiled its more florid charms and lay com­par­at­ively empty of pas­sage, the street shone out in con­trast to its dingy neigh­bour­hood, like a fire in a forest; and with its freshly painted shut­ters, well-pol­ished brasses, and gen­eral clean­li­ness and gaiety of note, in­stantly caught and pleased the eye of the pas­sen­ger.

Two doors from one corner, on the left hand go­ing east the line was broken by the entry of a court; and just at that point a cer­tain sin­is­ter block of build­ing thrust for­ward its gable on the street. It was two storeys high; showed no win­dow, noth­ing but a door on the lower storey and a blind fore­head of dis­col­oured wall on the up­per; and bore in every fea­ture, the marks of pro­longed and sor­did neg­li­gence. The door, which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker, was blistered and dis­tained. Tramps slouched into the re­cess and struck matches on the pan­els; chil­dren kept shop upon the steps; the school­boy had tried his knife on the mould­ings; and for close on a gen­er­a­tion, no one had ap­peared to drive away these ran­dom vis­it­ors or to re­pair their rav­ages.

Mr. En­field and the law­yer were on the other side of the bystreet; but when they came abreast of the entry, the former lif­ted up his cane and poin­ted.

“Did you ever re­mark that door?” he asked; and when his com­pan­ion had replied in the af­firm­at­ive. “It is con­nec­ted in my mind,” ad­ded he, “with a very odd story.”

“Indeed?” said Mr. Ut­ter­son, with a slight change of voice, “and what was that?”

“Well, it was this way,” re­turned Mr. En­field: “I was com­ing home from some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of a black winter morn­ing, and my way lay through a part of town where there was lit­er­ally noth­ing to be seen but lamps. Street after street and all the folks asleep—street after street, all lighted up as if for a pro­ces­sion and all as empty as a church—till at last I got into that state of mind when a man listens and listens and be­gins to long for the sight of a po­lice­man. All at once, I saw two fig­ures: one a little man who was stump­ing along east­ward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who was run­ning as hard as she was able down a cross street. Well, sir, the two ran into one an­other nat­ur­ally enough at the corner; and then came the hor­rible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her scream­ing on the ground. It sounds noth­ing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn’t like a man; it was like some damned Jug­ger­naut. I gave a few hal­loa, took to my heels, collared my gen­tle­man, and brought him back to where there was already quite a group about the scream­ing child. He was per­fectly cool and made no res­ist­ance, but gave me one look, so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me like run­ning. The people who had turned out were the girl’s own fam­ily; and pretty soon, the doc­tor, for whom she had been sent put in his ap­pear­ance. Well, the child was not much the worse, more frightened, ac­cord­ing to the sawbones; and there you might have sup­posed would be an end to it. But there was one curi­ous cir­cum­stance. I had taken a loath­ing to my gen­tle­man at first sight. So had the child’s fam­ily, which was only nat­ural. But the doc­tor’s case was what struck me. He was the usual cut and dry apo­thecary, of no par­tic­u­lar age and col­our, with a strong Ed­in­burgh ac­cent and about as emo­tional as a bag­pipe. Well, sir, he was like the rest of us; every time he looked at my pris­oner, I saw that sawbones turn sick and white with de­sire to kill him. I knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing be­ing out of the ques­tion, we did the next best. We told the man we could and would make such a scan­dal out of this as should make his name stink from one end of Lon­don to the other. If he had any friends or any credit, we un­der­took that he should lose them. And all the time, as we were pitch­ing it in red hot, we were keep­ing the wo­men off him as best we could for they were as wild as harpies. I never saw a circle of such hate­ful faces; and there was the man in the middle, with a kind of black sneer­ing cool­ness—frightened too, I could see that—but car­ry­ing it off, sir, really like Satan. ‘If you choose to make cap­ital out of this ac­ci­dent,’ said he, ‘I am nat­ur­ally help­less. No gen­tle­man but wishes to avoid a scene,’ says he. ‘Name your fig­ure.’ Well, we screwed him up to a hun­dred pounds for the child’s fam­ily; he would have clearly liked to stick out; but there was some­thing about the lot of us that meant mis­chief, and at last he struck. The next thing was to get the money; and where do you think he car­ried us but to that place with the door?—whipped out a key, went in, and presently came back with the mat­ter of ten pounds in gold and a cheque for the bal­ance on Coutts’s, drawn pay­able to bearer and signed with a name that I can’t men­tion, though it’s one of the points of my story, but it was a name at least very well known and of­ten prin­ted. The fig­ure was stiff; but the sig­na­ture was good for more than that if it was only genu­ine. I took the liberty of point­ing out to my gen­tle­man that the whole busi­ness looked apo­cryphal, and that a man does not, in real life, walk into a cel­lar door at four in the morn­ing and come out with an­other man’s cheque for close upon a hun­dred pounds. But he was quite easy and sneer­ing. ‘Set your mind at rest,’ says he, ‘I will stay with you till the banks open and cash the cheque my­self.’ So we all set off, the doc­tor, and the child’s father, and our friend and my­self, and passed the rest of the night in my cham­bers; and next day, when we had break­fas­ted, went in a body to the bank. I gave in the cheque my­self, and said I had every reason to be­lieve it was a for­gery. Not a bit of it. The cheque was genu­ine.”

“Tut-tut,” said Mr. Ut­ter­son.

“I see you feel as I do,” said Mr. En­field. “Yes, it’s a bad story. For my man was a fel­low that nobody could have to do with, a really dam­nable man; and the per­son that drew the cheque is the very pink of the pro­pri­et­ies, cel­eb­rated too, and (what makes it worse) one of your fel­lows who do what they call good. Black mail I sup­pose; an hon­est man pay­ing through the nose for some of the capers of his youth. Black Mail House is what I call the place with the door, in con­sequence. Though even that, you know, is far from ex­plain­ing all,” he ad­ded, and with the words fell into a vein of mus­ing.

From this he was re­called by Mr. Ut­ter­son ask­ing rather sud­denly: “And you don’t know if the drawer of the cheque lives there?”

“A likely place, isn’t it?” re­turned Mr. En­field. “But I hap­pen to have no­ticed his ad­dress; he lives in some square or other.”

“And you never asked about the—place with the door?” said Mr. Ut­ter­son.

“No, sir: I had a del­ic­acy,” was the reply. “I feel very strongly about put­ting ques­tions; it par­takes too much of the style of the day of judg­ment. You start a ques­tion, and it’s like start­ing a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, start­ing oth­ers; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden and the fam­ily have to change their name. No sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.”

“A very good rule, too,” said the law­yer.

“But I have stud­ied the place for my­self,” con­tin­ued Mr. En­field. “It seems scarcely a house. There is no other door, and nobody goes in or out of that one but, once in a great while, the gen­tle­man of my ad­ven­ture. There are three win­dows look­ing on the court on the first floor; none be­low; the win­dows are al­ways shut but they’re clean. And then there is a chim­ney which is gen­er­ally smoking; so some­body must live there. And yet it’s not so sure; for the build­ings are so packed to­gether about the court, that it’s hard to say where one ends and an­other be­gins.”

The pair walked on again for a while in si­lence; and then “En­field,” said Mr. Ut­ter­son, “that’s a good rule of yours.”

“Yes, I think it is,” re­turned En­field.

“But for all that,” con­tin­ued the law­yer, “there’s one point I want to ask: I want to ask the name of that man who walked over the child.”

“Well,” said Mr. En­field, “I can’t see what harm it would do. It was a man of the name of Hyde.”

“Hm,” said Mr. Ut­ter­son. “What sort of a man is he to see?”

“He is not easy to de­scribe. There is some­thing wrong with his ap­pear­ance; some­thing dis­pleas­ing, some­thing down­right de­test­able. I never saw a man I so dis­liked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be de­formed some­where; he gives a strong feel­ing of de­form­ity, al­though I couldn’t spe­cify the point. He’s an ex­traordin­ary look­ing man, and yet I really can name noth­ing out of the way. No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can’t de­scribe him. And it’s not want of memory; for I de­clare I can see him this mo­ment.”

Mr. Ut­ter­son again walked some way in si­lence and ob­vi­ously un­der a weight of con­sid­er­a­tion. “You are sure he used a key?” he in­quired at last.

“My dear sir …” began En­field, sur­prised out of him­self.

“Yes, I know,” said Ut­ter­son; “I know it must seem strange. The fact is, if I do not ask you the name of the other party, it is be­cause I know it already. You see, Richard, your tale has gone home. If you have been in­ex­act in any point you had bet­ter cor­rect it.”

“I think you might have warned me,” re­turned the other with a touch of sul­len­ness. “But I have been pedantic­ally ex­act, as you call it. The fel­low had a key; and what’s more, he has it still. I saw him use it not a week ago.”

Mr. Ut­ter­son sighed deeply but said never a word; and the young man presently re­sumed. “Here is an­other les­son to say noth­ing,” said he. “I am ashamed of my long tongue. Let us make a bar­gain never to refer to this again.”

“With all my heart,” said the law­yer. “I shake hands on that, Richard.”

Search for Mr. Hyde

That even­ing Mr. Ut­ter­son came home to his bach­elor house in sombre spir­its and sat down to din­ner without rel­ish. It was his cus­tom of a Sunday, when this meal was over, to sit close by the fire, a volume of some dry di­vin­ity on his read­ing desk, un­til the clock of the neigh­bour­ing church rang out the hour of twelve, when he would go soberly and grate­fully to bed. On this night how­ever, as soon as the cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went into his busi­ness room. There he opened his safe, took from the most private part of it a doc­u­ment en­dorsed on the en­vel­ope as “Dr. Je­kyll’s Will” and sat down with a clouded brow to study its con­tents. The will was holo­graph, for Mr. Ut­ter­son though he took charge of it now that it was made, had re­fused to lend the least as­sist­ance in the mak­ing of it; it provided not only that, in case of the de­cease of Henry Je­kyll, MD, DLC, LLD, FRS, etc., all his pos­ses­sions were to pass into the hands of his “friend and be­ne­factor Ed­ward Hyde,” but that in case of Dr. Je­kyll’s “dis­ap­pear­ance or un­ex­plained ab­sence for any period ex­ceed­ing three cal­en­dar months,” the said Ed­ward Hyde should step into the said Henry Je­kyll’s shoes without fur­ther delay and free from any bur­den or ob­lig­a­tion bey­ond the pay­ment of a few small sums to the mem­bers of the doc­tor’s house­hold. This doc­u­ment had long been the law­yer’s eye­sore. It of­fen­ded him both as a law­yer and as a lover of the sane and cus­tom­ary sides of life, to whom the fanci­ful was the im­mod­est. And hitherto it was his ig­nor­ance of Mr. Hyde that had swelled his in­dig­na­tion; now, by a sud­den turn, it was his know­ledge. It was already bad enough when the name was but a name of which he could learn no more. It was worse when it began to be clothed upon with de­test­able at­trib­utes; and out of the shift­ing, in­sub­stan­tial mists that had so long baffled his eye, there leaped up the sud­den, def­in­ite pre­sent­ment of a fiend.

“I thought it was mad­ness,” he said, as he re­placed the ob­nox­ious pa­per in the safe, “and now I be­gin to fear it is dis­grace.”

With that he blew out his candle, put on a great­coat, and set forth in the dir­ec­tion of Cav­endish Square, that cit­adel of medi­cine, where his friend, the great Dr. Lanyon, had his house and re­ceived his crowding pa­tients. “If any­one knows, it will be Lanyon,” he had thought.

The sol­emn but­ler knew and wel­comed him; he was sub­jec­ted to no stage of delay, but ushered dir­ect from the door to the din­ing room where Dr. Lanyon sat alone over his wine. This was a hearty, healthy, dap­per, red-faced gen­tle­man, with a shock of hair pre­ma­turely white, and a bois­ter­ous and de­cided man­ner. At sight of Mr. Ut­ter­son, he sprang up from his chair and wel­comed him with both hands. The gen­i­al­ity, as was the way of the man, was some­what the­at­rical to the eye; but it re­posed on genu­ine feel­ing. For these two were old friends, old mates both at school and col­lege, both thor­ough re­spect­ors of them­selves and of each other, and what does not al­ways fol­low, men who thor­oughly en­joyed each other’s com­pany.

After a little ram­bling talk, the law­yer led up to the sub­ject which so dis­agree­ably pre­oc­cu­pied his mind.

“I sup­pose, Lanyon,” said he, “you and I must be the two old­est friends that Henry Je­kyll has?”

“I wish the friends were younger,” chuckled Dr. Lanyon. “But I sup­pose we are. And what of that? I see little of him now.”

“Indeed?” said Ut­ter­son. “I thought you had a bond of com­mon in­terest.”

“We had,” was the reply. “But it is more than ten years since Henry Je­kyll be­came too fanci­ful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in mind; and though of course I con­tinue to take an in­terest in him for old sake’s sake, as they say, I see and I have seen dev­il­ish little of the man. Such un­scientific balder­dash,” ad­ded the doc­tor, flush­ing sud­denly purple, “would have es­tranged Da­mon and Pythias.”

This little spirit of tem­per was some­what of a re­lief to Mr. Ut­ter­son. “They have only differed on some point of sci­ence,” he thought; and be­ing a man of no sci­entific pas­sions (ex­cept in the mat­ter of con­vey­an­cing), he even ad­ded: “It is noth­ing worse than that!” He gave his friend a few seconds to re­cover his com­pos­ure, and then ap­proached the ques­tion he had come to put. “Did you ever come across a protégé of his—one Hyde?” he asked.

“Hyde?” re­peated Lanyon. “No. Never heard of him. Since my time.”

That was the amount of in­form­a­tion that the law­yer car­ried back with him to the great, dark bed on which he tossed to and fro, un­til the small hours of the morn­ing began to grow large. It was a night of little ease to his toil­ing mind, toil­ing in mere dark­ness and be­sei­ged by ques­tions.

Six o’clock struck on the bells of the church that was so con­veni­ently near to Mr. Ut­ter­son’s dwell­ing, and still he was dig­ging at the prob­lem. Hitherto it had touched him on the in­tel­lec­tual side alone; but now his ima­gin­a­tion also was en­gaged, or rather en­slaved; and as he lay and tossed in the gross dark­ness of the night and the cur­tained room, Mr. En­field’s tale went by be­fore his mind in a scroll of lighted pic­tures. He would be aware of the great field of lamps of a noc­turnal city; then of the fig­ure of a man walk­ing swiftly; then of a child run­ning from the doc­tor’s; and then these met, and that hu­man Jug­ger­naut trod the child down and passed on re­gard­less of her screams. Or else he would see a room in a rich house, where his friend lay asleep, dream­ing and smil­ing at his dreams; and then the door of that room would be opened, the cur­tains of the bed plucked apart, the sleeper re­called, and lo! there would stand by his side a fig­ure to whom power was given, and even at that dead hour, he must rise and do its bid­ding. The fig­ure in these two phases haunted the law­yer all night; and if at any time he dozed over, it was but to see it glide more stealth­ily through sleep­ing houses, or move the more swiftly and still the more swiftly, even to dizzi­ness, through wider labyrinths of lamp­lighted city, and at every street corner crush a child and leave her scream­ing. And still the fig­ure had no face by which he might know it; even in his dreams, it had no face, or one that baffled him and melted be­fore his eyes; and thus it was that there sprang up and grew apace in the law­yer’s mind a sin­gu­larly strong, al­most an in­or­din­ate, curi­os­ity to be­hold the fea­tures of the real Mr. Hyde. If he could but once set eyes on him, he thought the mys­tery would lighten and per­haps roll al­to­gether away, as was the habit of mys­ter­i­ous things when well ex­amined. He might see a reason for his friend’s strange pref­er­ence or bond­age (call it which you please) and even for the start­ling clause of the will. At least it would be a face worth see­ing: the face of a man who was without bowels of mercy: a face which had but to show it­self to raise up, in the mind of the un­im­pres­sion­able En­field, a spirit of en­dur­ing hatred.

From that time for­ward, Mr. Ut­ter­son began to haunt the door in the bystreet of shops. In the morn­ing be­fore of­fice hours, at noon when busi­ness was plenty, and time scarce, at night un­der the face of the fogged city moon, by all lights and at all hours of solitude or con­course, the law­yer was to be found on his chosen post.

“If he be Mr. Hyde,” he had thought, “I shall be Mr. Seek.”

And at last his pa­tience was re­war­ded. It was a fine dry night; frost in the air; the streets as clean as a ball­room floor; the lamps, un­shaken by any wind, draw­ing a reg­u­lar pat­tern of light and shadow. By ten o’clock, when the shops were closed the bystreet was very sol­it­ary and, in spite of the low growl of Lon­don from all round, very si­lent. Small sounds car­ried far; do­mestic sounds out of the houses were clearly aud­ible on either side of the road­way; and the ru­mour of the ap­proach of any pas­sen­ger pre­ceded him by a long time. Mr. Ut­ter­son had been some minutes at his post, when he was aware of an odd light foot­step draw­ing near. In the course of his nightly patrols, he had long grown ac­cus­tomed to the quaint ef­fect with which the foot­falls of a single per­son, while he is still a great way off, sud­denly spring out dis­tinct from the vast hum and clat­ter of the city. Yet his at­ten­tion had never be­fore been so sharply and de­cis­ively ar­res­ted; and it was with a strong, su­per­sti­tious pre­vi­sion of suc­cess that he with­drew into the entry of the court.

The steps drew swiftly nearer, and swelled out sud­denly louder as they turned the end of the street. The law­yer, look­ing forth from the entry, could soon see what man­ner of man he had to deal with. He was small and very plainly dressed and the look of him, even at that dis­tance, went some­how strongly against the watcher’s in­clin­a­tion. But he made straight for the door, cross­ing the road­way to save time; and as he came, he drew a key from his pocket like one ap­proach­ing home.

Mr. Ut­ter­son stepped out and touched him on the shoulder as he passed. “Mr. Hyde, I think?”

Mr. Hyde shrank back with a hiss­ing in­take of the breath. But his fear was only mo­ment­ary; and though he did not look the law­yer in the face, he answered coolly enough: “That is my name. What do you want?”

“I see you are go­ing in,” re­turned the law­yer. “I am an old friend of Dr. Je­kyll’s—Mr. Ut­ter­son of Gaunt Street—you must have heard of my name; and meet­ing you so con­veni­ently, I thought you might ad­mit me.”

“You will not find Dr. Je­kyll; he is from home,” replied Mr. Hyde, blow­ing in the key. And then sud­denly, but still without look­ing up, “How did you know me?” he asked.

“On your side,” said Mr. Ut­ter­son “will you do me a fa­vour?”

“With pleas­ure,” replied the other. “What shall it be?”

“Will you let me see your face?” asked the law­yer.

Mr. Hyde ap­peared to hes­it­ate, and then, as if upon some sud­den re­flec­tion, fron­ted about with an air of de­fi­ance; and the pair stared at each other pretty fix­edly for a few seconds. “Now I shall know you again,” said Mr. Ut­ter­son. “It may be use­ful.”

“Yes,” re­turned Mr. Hyde, “It is as well we have met; and apro­pos, you should have my ad­dress.” And he gave a num­ber of a street in Soho.

“Good God!” thought Mr. Ut­ter­son, “can he, too, have been think­ing of the will?” But he kept his feel­ings to him­self and only grunted in ac­know­ledg­ment of the ad­dress.

“And now,” said the other, “how did you know me?”

“By de­scrip­tion,” was the reply.

“Whose de­scrip­tion?”

“We have com­mon friends,” said Mr. Ut­ter­son.

“Com­mon friends,” echoed Mr. Hyde, a little hoarsely. “Who are they?”

“Je­kyll, for in­stance,” said the law­yer.

“He never told you,” cried Mr. Hyde, with a flush of an­ger. “I did not think you would have lied.”

“Come,” said Mr. Ut­ter­son, “that is not fit­ting lan­guage.”

The other snarled aloud into a sav­age laugh; and the next mo­ment, with ex­traordin­ary quick­ness, he had un­locked the door and dis­ap­peared into the house.

The law­yer stood awhile when Mr. Hyde had left him, the pic­ture of dis­quiet­ude. Then he began slowly to mount the street, paus­ing every step or two and put­ting his hand to his brow like a man in men­tal per­plex­ity. The prob­lem he was thus de­bat­ing as he walked, was one of a class that is rarely solved. Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an im­pres­sion of de­form­ity without any name­able mal­form­a­tion, he had a dis­pleas­ing smile, he had borne him­self to the law­yer with a sort of mur­der­ous mix­ture of timid­ity and bold­ness, and he spoke with a husky, whis­per­ing and some­what broken voice; all these were points against him, but not all of these to­gether could ex­plain the hitherto un­known dis­gust, loath­ing and fear with which Mr. Ut­ter­son re­garded him. “There must be some­thing else,” said the per­plexed gen­tle­man. “There is some­thing more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man seems hardly hu­man! So­mething trog­lo­dytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere ra­di­ance of a foul soul that thus tran­spires through, and trans­fig­ures, its clay con­tin­ent? The last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry Je­kyll, if ever I read Satan’s sig­na­ture upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.”

Round the corner from the bystreet, there was a square of an­cient, hand­some houses, now for the most part de­cayed from their high es­tate and let in flats and cham­bers to all sorts and con­di­tions of men; map-en­gravers, ar­chi­tects, shady law­yers and the agents of ob­scure en­ter­prises. One house, how­ever, second from the corner, was still oc­cu­pied en­tire; and at the door of this, which wore a great air of wealth and com­fort, though it was now plunged in dark­ness ex­cept for the fan­light, Mr. Ut­ter­son stopped and knocked. A well-dressed, eld­erly ser­vant opened the door.

“Is Dr. Je­kyll at home, Poole?” asked the law­yer.

“I will see, Mr. Ut­ter­son,” said Poole, ad­mit­ting the vis­itor, as he spoke, into a large, low-roofed, com­fort­able hall paved with flags, warmed (after the fash­ion of a coun­try house) by a bright, open fire, and fur­nished with costly cab­in­ets of oak. “Will you wait here by the fire, sir? or shall I give you a light in the din­ing room?”

“Here, thank you,” said the law­yer, and he drew near and leaned on the tall fender. This hall, in which he was now left alone, was a pet fancy of his friend the doc­tor’s; and Ut­ter­son him­self was wont to speak of it as the pleas­antest room in Lon­don. But to­night there was a shud­der in his blood; the face of Hyde sat heavy on his memory; he felt (what was rare with him) a nausea and dis­taste of life; and in the gloom of his spir­its, he seemed to read a men­ace in the flick­er­ing of the fire­light on the pol­ished cab­in­ets and the un­easy start­ing of the shadow on the roof. He was ashamed of his re­lief, when Poole presently re­turned to an­nounce that Dr. Je­kyll was gone out.

“I saw Mr. Hyde go in by the old dis­sect­ing room, Poole,” he said. “Is that right, when Dr. Je­kyll is from home?”

“Quite right, Mr. Ut­ter­son, sir,” replied the ser­vant. “Mr. Hyde has a key.”

“Your mas­ter seems to re­pose a great deal of trust in that young man, Poole,” re­sumed the other mus­ingly.

“Yes, sir, he does in­deed,” said Poole. “We have all or­ders to obey him.”

“I do not think I ever met Mr. Hyde?” asked Ut­ter­son.

“O, dear no, sir. He never dines here,” replied the but­ler. “Indeed we see very little of him on this side of the house; he mostly comes and goes by the labor­at­ory.”

“Well, good­night, Poole.”

“Good­night, Mr. Ut­ter­son.”

And the law­yer set out home­ward with a very heavy heart. “Poor Harry Je­kyll,” he thought, “my mind mis­gives me he is in deep wa­ters! He was wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of God, there is no stat­ute of lim­it­a­tions. Aye, it must be that; the ghost of some old sin, the can­cer of some con­cealed dis­grace: pun­ish­ment com­ing, pede claudo, years after memory has for­got­ten and self-love con­doned the fault.” And the law­yer, scared by the thought, brooded awhile on his own past, grop­ing in all the corners of memory, least by chance some Jack-in-the-Box of an old iniquity should leap to light there. His past was fairly blame­less; few men could read the rolls of their life with less ap­pre­hen­sion; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into a sober and fear­ful grat­it­ude by the many he had come so near to do­ing yet avoided. And then by a re­turn on his former sub­ject, he con­ceived a spark of hope. “This Master Hyde, if he were stud­ied,” thought he, “must have secrets of his own; black secrets, by the look of him; secrets com­pared to which poor Je­kyll’s worst would be like sun­shine. Th­ings can­not con­tinue as they are. It turns me cold to think of this creature steal­ing like a thief to Harry’s bed­side; poor Harry, what a waken­ing! And the danger of it; for if this Hyde sus­pects the ex­ist­ence of the will, he may grow im­pa­tient to in­herit. Aye, I must put my shoulders to the wheel—if Je­kyll will but let me,” he ad­ded, “if Je­kyll will only let me.” For once more he saw be­fore his mind’s eye, as clear as trans­par­ency, the strange clauses of the will.

Dr. Jekyll Was Quite at Ease

A fort­night later, by ex­cel­lent good for­tune, the doc­tor gave one of his pleas­ant din­ners to some five or six old cronies, all in­tel­li­gent, reput­able men and all judges of good wine; and Mr. Ut­ter­son so con­trived that he re­mained be­hind after the oth­ers had de­par­ted. This was no new ar­range­ment, but a thing that had be­fallen many scores of times. Where Ut­ter­son was liked, he was liked well. Hosts loved to de­tain the dry law­yer, when the light­hearted and loose-tongued had already their foot on the threshold; they liked to sit a while in his un­ob­trus­ive com­pany, prac­tising for solitude, sober­ing their minds in the man’s rich si­lence after the ex­pense and strain of gaiety. To this rule, Dr. Je­kyll was no ex­cep­tion; and as he now sat on the op­pos­ite side of the fire—a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with some­thing of a styl­ish cast per­haps, but every mark of ca­pa­city and kind­ness—you could see by his looks that he cher­ished for Mr. Ut­ter­son a sin­cere and warm af­fec­tion.

“I have been want­ing to speak to you, Je­kyll,” began the lat­ter. “You know that will of yours?”

A close ob­server might have gathered that the topic was dis­taste­ful; but the doc­tor car­ried it off gaily. “My poor Ut­ter­son,” said he, “you are un­for­tu­nate in such a cli­ent. I never saw a man so dis­tressed as you were by my will; un­less it were that hide­bound ped­ant, Lanyon, at what he called my sci­entific her­es­ies. O, I know he’s a good fel­low—you needn’t frown—an ex­cel­lent fel­low, and I al­ways mean to see more of him; but a hide­bound ped­ant for all that; an ig­nor­ant, blatant ped­ant. I was never more dis­ap­poin­ted in any man than Lanyon.”

“You know I never ap­proved of it,” pur­sued Ut­ter­son, ruth­lessly dis­reg­ard­ing the fresh topic.

“My will? Yes, cer­tainly, I know that,” said the doc­tor, a trifle sharply. “You have told me so.”

“Well, I tell you so again,” con­tin­ued the law­yer. “I have been learn­ing some­thing of young Hyde.”

The large hand­some face of Dr. Je­kyll grew pale to the very lips, and there came a black­ness about his eyes. “I do not care to hear more,” said he. “This is a mat­ter I thought we had agreed to drop.”

“What I heard was ab­om­in­able,” said Ut­ter­son.

“It can make no change. You do not un­der­stand my po­s­i­tion,” re­turned the doc­tor, with a cer­tain in­co­her­ency of man­ner. “I am pain­fully situ­ated, Ut­ter­son; my po­s­i­tion is a very strange—a very strange one. It is one of those af­fairs that can­not be men­ded by talk­ing.”

“Je­kyll,” said Ut­ter­son, “you know me: I am a man to be trus­ted. Make a clean breast of this in con­fid­ence; and I make no doubt I can get you out of it.”

“My good Ut­ter­son,” said the doc­tor, “this is very good of you, this is down­right good of you, and I can­not find words to thank you in. I be­lieve you fully; I would trust you be­fore any man alive, aye, be­fore my­self, if I could make the choice; but in­deed it isn’t what you fancy; it is not as bad as that; and just to put your good heart at rest, I will tell you one thing: the mo­ment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde. I give you my hand upon that; and I thank you again and again; and I will just add one little word, Ut­ter­son, that I’m sure you’ll take in good part: this is a private mat­ter, and I beg of you to let it sleep.”

Ut­ter­son re­flec­ted a little, look­ing in the fire.

“I have no doubt you are per­fectly right,” he said at last, get­ting to his feet.

“Well, but since we have touched upon this busi­ness, and for the last time I hope,” con­tin­ued the doc­tor, “there is one point I should like you to un­der­stand. I have really a very great in­terest in poor Hyde. I know you have seen him; he told me so; and I fear he was rude. But I do sin­cerely take a great, a very great in­terest in that young man; and if I am taken away, Ut­ter­son, I wish you to prom­ise me that you will bear with him and get his rights for him. I think you would, if you knew all; and it would be a weight off my mind if you would prom­ise.”

“I can’t pre­tend that I shall ever like him,” said the law­yer.

“I don’t ask that,” pleaded Je­kyll, lay­ing his hand upon the other’s arm; “I only ask for justice; I only ask you to help him for my sake, when I am no longer here.”

Ut­ter­son heaved an ir­re­press­ible sigh. “Well,” said he, “I prom­ise.”

The Carew Murder Case

Nearly a year later, in the month of Octo­ber, 18—, Lon­don was startled by a crime of sin­gu­lar fe­ro­city and rendered all the more not­able by the high po­s­i­tion of the vic­tim. The de­tails were few and start­ling. A maid ser­vant liv­ing alone in a house not far from the river, had gone up­stairs to bed about el­even. Al­though a fog rolled over the city in the small hours, the early part of the night was cloud­less, and the lane, which the maid’s win­dow over­looked, was bril­liantly lit by the full moon. It seems she was ro­mantic­ally given, for she sat down upon her box, which stood im­me­di­ately un­der the win­dow, and fell into a dream of mus­ing. Never (she used to say, with stream­ing tears, when she nar­rated that ex­per­i­ence), never had she felt more at peace with all men or thought more kindly of the world. And as she so sat she be­came aware of an aged beau­ti­ful gen­tle­man with white hair, draw­ing near along the lane; and ad­van­cing to meet him, an­other and very small gen­tle­man, to whom at first she paid less at­ten­tion. When they had come within speech (which was just un­der the maid’s eyes) the older man bowed and ac­cos­ted the other with a very pretty man­ner of po­lite­ness. It did not seem as if the sub­ject of his ad­dress were of great im­port­ance; in­deed, from his point­ing, it some times ap­peared as if he were only in­quir­ing his way; but the moon shone on his face as he spoke, and the girl was pleased to watch it, it seemed to breathe such an in­no­cent and old-world kind­ness of dis­pos­i­tion, yet with some­thing high too, as of a well-foun­ded self-con­tent. Presently her eye wandered to the other, and she was sur­prised to re­cog­nise in him a cer­tain Mr. Hyde, who had once vis­ited her mas­ter and for whom she had con­ceived a dis­like. He had in his hand a heavy cane, with which he was tri­fling; but he answered never a word, and seemed to listen with an ill-con­tained im­pa­tience. And then all of a sud­den he broke out in a great flame of an­ger, stamp­ing with his foot, bran­dish­ing the cane, and car­ry­ing on (as the maid de­scribed it) like a mad­man. The old gen­tle­man took a step back, with the air of one very much sur­prised and a trifle hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth. And next mo­ment, with ape­like fury, he was tramp­ling his vic­tim un­der foot and hail­ing down a storm of blows, un­der which the bones were aud­ibly shattered and the body jumped upon the road­way. At the hor­ror of these sights and sounds, the maid fain­ted.

It was two o’clock when she came to her­self and called for the po­lice. The mur­derer was gone long ago; but there lay his vic­tim in the middle of the lane, in­cred­ibly mangled. The stick with which the deed had been done, al­though it was of some rare and very tough and heavy wood, had broken in the middle un­der the stress of this in­sensate cruelty; and one splintered half had rolled in the neigh­bour­ing gut­ter—the other, without doubt, had been car­ried away by the mur­derer. A purse and gold watch were found upon the vic­tim: but no cards or pa­pers, ex­cept a sealed and stamped en­vel­ope, which he had been prob­ably car­ry­ing to the post, and which bore the name and ad­dress of Mr. Ut­ter­son.

This was brought to the law­yer the next morn­ing, be­fore he was out of bed; and he had no sooner seen it and been told the cir­cum­stances, than he shot out a sol­emn lip. “I shall say noth­ing till I have seen the body,” said he; “this may be very ser­i­ous. Have the kind­ness to wait while I dress.” And with the same grave coun­ten­ance he hur­ried through his break­fast and drove to the po­lice sta­tion, whither the body had been car­ried. As soon as he came into the cell, he nod­ded.

“Yes,” said he, “I re­cog­nise him. I am sorry to say that this is Sir Dan­vers Carew.”

“Good God, sir,” ex­claimed the of­ficer, “is it pos­sible?” And the next mo­ment his eye lighted up with pro­fes­sional am­bi­tion. “This will make a deal of noise,” he said. “And per­haps you can help us to the man.” And he briefly nar­rated what the maid had seen, and showed the broken stick.

Mr. Ut­ter­son had already quailed at the name of Hyde; but when the stick was laid be­fore him, he could doubt no longer; broken and battered as it was, he re­cog­nized it for one that he had him­self presen­ted many years be­fore to Henry Je­kyll.

“Is this Mr. Hyde a per­son of small stature?” he in­quired.

“Par­tic­u­larly small and par­tic­u­larly wicked-look­ing, is what the maid calls him,” said the of­ficer.

Mr. Ut­ter­son re­flec­ted; and then, rais­ing his head, “If you will come with me in my cab,” he said, “I think I can take you to his house.”

It was by this time about nine in the morn­ing, and the first fog of the sea­son. A great chocol­ate-col­oured pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was con­tinu­ally char­ging and rout­ing these em­battled va­pours; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Ut­ter­son be­held a mar­velous num­ber of de­grees and hues of twi­light; for here it would be dark like the back-end of even­ing; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange con­flag­ra­tion; and here, for a mo­ment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a hag­gard shaft of day­light would glance in between the swirl­ing wreaths. The dis­mal quarter of Soho seen un­der these chan­ging glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slat­ternly pas­sen­gers, and its lamps, which had never been ex­tin­guished or had been kindled afresh to com­bat this mourn­ful re­in­va­sion of dark­ness, seemed, in the law­yer’s eyes, like a dis­trict of some city in a night­mare. The thoughts of his mind, be­sides, were of the gloom­i­est dye; and when he glanced at the com­pan­ion of his drive, he was con­scious of some touch of that ter­ror of the law and the law’s of­ficers, which may at times as­sail the most hon­est.

As the cab drew up be­fore the ad­dress in­dic­ated, the fog lif­ted a little and showed him a dingy street, a gin palace, a low French eat­ing house, a shop for the re­tail of penny num­bers and two­penny salads, many ragged chil­dren huddled in the door­ways, and many wo­men of many dif­fer­ent na­tion­al­it­ies passing out, key in hand, to have a morn­ing glass; and the next mo­ment the fog settled down again upon that part, as brown as um­ber, and cut him off from his black­guardly sur­round­ings. This was the home of Henry Je­kyll’s fa­vour­ite; of a man who was heir to a quarter of a mil­lion ster­ling.

An ivory-faced and sil­very-haired old wo­man opened the door. She had an evil face, smoothed by hy­po­crisy: but her man­ners were ex­cel­lent. Yes, she said, this was Mr. Hyde’s, but he was not at home; he had been in that night very late, but he had gone away again in less than an hour; there was noth­ing strange in that; his habits were very ir­reg­u­lar, and he was of­ten ab­sent; for in­stance, it was nearly two months since she had seen him till yes­ter­day.

“Very well, then, we wish to see his rooms,” said the law­yer; and when the wo­man began to de­clare it was im­possible, “I had bet­ter tell you who this per­son is,” he ad­ded. “This is In­spector New­comen of Scot­land Yard.”

A flash of odi­ous joy ap­peared upon the wo­man’s face. “Ah!” said she, “he is in trouble! What has he done?”

Mr. Ut­ter­son and the in­spector ex­changed glances. “He don’t seem a very pop­u­lar char­ac­ter,” ob­served the lat­ter. “And now, my good wo­man, just let me and this gen­tle­man have a look about us.”

In the whole ex­tent of the house, which but for the old wo­man re­mained oth­er­wise empty, Mr. Hyde had only used a couple of rooms; but these were fur­nished with lux­ury and good taste. A closet was filled with wine; the plate was of sil­ver, the napery el­eg­ant; a good pic­ture hung upon the walls, a gift (as Ut­ter­son sup­posed) from Henry Je­kyll, who was much of a con­nois­seur; and the car­pets were of many plies and agree­able in col­our. At this mo­ment, how­ever, the rooms bore every mark of hav­ing been re­cently and hur­riedly ran­sacked; clothes lay about the floor, with their pock­ets in­side out; lock-fast draw­ers stood open; and on the hearth there lay a pile of grey ashes, as though many pa­pers had been burned. From these em­bers the in­spector dis­in­terred the butt end of a green cheque book, which had res­isted the ac­tion of the fire; the other half of the stick was found be­hind the door; and as this clinched his sus­pi­cions, the of­ficer de­clared him­self de­lighted. A visit to the bank, where sev­eral thou­sand pounds were found to be ly­ing to the mur­derer’s credit, com­pleted his grat­i­fic­a­tion.

“You may de­pend upon it, sir,” he told Mr. Ut­ter­son: “I have him in my hand. He must have lost his head, or he never would have left the stick or, above all, burned the cheque book. Why, money’s life to the man. We have noth­ing to do but wait for him at the bank, and get out the hand­bills.”

This last, how­ever, was not so easy of ac­com­plish­ment; for Mr. Hyde had numbered few fa­mil­i­ars—even the mas­ter of the ser­vant maid had only seen him twice; his fam­ily could nowhere be traced; he had never been pho­to­graphed; and the few who could de­scribe him differed widely, as com­mon ob­serv­ers will. Only on one point were they agreed; and that was the haunt­ing sense of un­ex­pressed de­form­ity with which the fu­git­ive im­pressed his be­hold­ers.

Incident of the Letter

It was late in the af­ter­noon, when Mr. Ut­ter­son found his way to Dr. Je­kyll’s door, where he was at once ad­mit­ted by Poole, and car­ried down by the kit­chen of­fices and across a yard which had once been a garden, to the build­ing which was in­dif­fer­ently known as the labor­at­ory or dis­sect­ing rooms. The doc­tor had bought the house from the heirs of a cel­eb­rated sur­geon; and his own tastes be­ing rather chem­ical than ana­tom­ical, had changed the des­tin­a­tion of the block at the bot­tom of the garden. It was the first time that the law­yer had been re­ceived in that part of his friend’s quar­ters; and he eyed the dingy, win­dow­less struc­ture with curi­os­ity, and gazed round with a dis­taste­ful sense of strange­ness as he crossed the theatre, once crowded with eager stu­dents and now ly­ing gaunt and si­lent, the tables laden with chem­ical ap­par­atus, the floor strewn with crates and littered with pack­ing straw, and the light fall­ing dimly through the foggy cu­pola. At the fur­ther end, a flight of stairs moun­ted to a door covered with red baize; and through this, Mr. Ut­ter­son was at last re­ceived into the doc­tor’s cab­inet. It was a large room fit­ted round with glass presses, fur­nished, among other things, with a che­val-glass and a busi­ness table, and look­ing out upon the court by three dusty win­dows barred with iron. The fire burned in the grate; a lamp was set lighted on the chim­ney shelf, for even in the houses the fog began to lie thickly; and there, close up to the warmth, sat Dr. Je­kyll, look­ing deathly sick. He did not rise to meet his vis­itor, but held out a cold hand and bade him wel­come in a changed voice.

“And now,” said Mr. Ut­ter­son, as soon as Poole had left them, “you have heard the news?”

The doc­tor shuddered. “They were cry­ing it in the square,” he said. “I heard them in my din­ing room.”

“One word,” said the law­yer. “Carew was my cli­ent, but so are you, and I want to know what I am do­ing. You have not been mad enough to hide this fel­low?”

“Ut­ter­son, I swear to God,” cried the doc­tor, “I swear to God I will never set eyes on him again. I bind my hon­our to you that I am done with him in this world. It is all at an end. And in­deed he does not want my help; you do not know him as I do; he is safe, he is quite safe; mark my words, he will never more be heard of.”

The law­yer listened gloomily; he did not like his friend’s fe­ver­ish man­ner. “You seem pretty sure of him,” said he; “and for your sake, I hope you may be right. If it came to a trial, your name might ap­pear.”

“I am quite sure of him,” replied Je­kyll; “I have grounds for cer­tainty that I can­not share with any­one. But there is one thing on which you may ad­vise me. I have—I have re­ceived a let­ter; and I am at a loss whether I should show it to the po­lice. I should like to leave it in your hands, Ut­ter­son; you would judge wisely, I am sure; I have so great a trust in you.”

“You fear, I sup­pose, that it might lead to his de­tec­tion?” asked the law­yer.

“No,” said the other. “I can­not say that I care what be­comes of Hyde; I am quite done with him. I was think­ing of my own char­ac­ter, which this hate­ful busi­ness has rather ex­posed.”

Ut­ter­son ru­min­ated awhile; he was sur­prised at his friend’s selfish­ness, and yet re­lieved by it. “Well,” said he, at last, “let me see the let­ter.”

The let­ter was writ­ten in an odd, up­right hand and signed “Ed­ward Hyde”: and it sig­ni­fied, briefly enough, that the writer’s be­ne­factor, Dr. Je­kyll, whom he had long so un­wor­thily re­paid for a thou­sand gen­er­os­it­ies, need la­bour un­der no alarm for his safety, as he had means of es­cape on which he placed a sure de­pend­ence. The law­yer liked this let­ter well enough; it put a bet­ter col­our on the in­tim­acy than he had looked for; and he blamed him­self for some of his past sus­pi­cions.

“Have you the en­vel­ope?” he asked.

“I burned it,” replied Je­kyll, “be­fore I thought what I was about. But it bore no post­mark. The note was handed in.”

“Shall I keep this and sleep upon it?” asked Ut­ter­son.

“I wish you to judge for me en­tirely,” was the reply. “I have lost con­fid­ence in my­self.”

“Well, I shall con­sider,” re­turned the law­yer. “And now one word more: it was Hyde who dic­tated the terms in your will about that dis­ap­pear­ance?”

The doc­tor seemed seized with a qualm of faint­ness; he shut his mouth tight and nod­ded.

“I knew it,” said Ut­ter­son. “He meant to murder you. You had a fine es­cape.”

“I have had what is far more to the pur­pose,” re­turned the doc­tor sol­emnly: “I have had a les­son—O God, Ut­ter­son, what a les­son I have had!” And he covered his face for a mo­ment with his hands.

On his way out, the law­yer stopped and had a word or two with Poole. “By the bye,” said he, “there was a let­ter handed in today: what was the mes­sen­ger like?” But Poole was pos­it­ive noth­ing had come ex­cept by post; “and only cir­cu­lars by that,” he ad­ded.

This news sent off the vis­itor with his fears re­newed. Plainly the let­ter had come by the labor­at­ory door; pos­sibly, in­deed, it had been writ­ten in the cab­inet; and if that were so, it must be dif­fer­ently judged, and handled with the more cau­tion. The news­boys, as he went, were cry­ing them­selves hoarse along the foot­ways: “Spe­cial edi­tion. Shock­ing murder of an MP.” That was the fu­neral ora­tion of one friend and cli­ent; and he could not help a cer­tain ap­pre­hen­sion lest the good name of an­other should be sucked down in the eddy of the scan­dal. It was, at least, a tick­lish de­cision that he had to make; and self-re­li­ant as he was by habit, he began to cher­ish a long­ing for ad­vice. It was not to be had dir­ectly; but per­haps, he thought, it might be fished for.

Presently after, he sat on one side of his own hearth, with Mr. Guest, his head clerk, upon the other, and mid­way between, at a nicely cal­cu­lated dis­tance from the fire, a bottle of a par­tic­u­lar old wine that had long dwelt un­sunned in the found­a­tions of his house. The fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like car­buncles; and through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds, the pro­ces­sion of the town’s life was still rolling in through the great ar­ter­ies with a sound as of a mighty wind. But the room was gay with fire­light. In the bottle the acids were long ago re­solved; the im­per­ial dye had softened with time, as the col­our grows richer in stained win­dows; and the glow of hot au­tumn af­ter­noons on hill­side vine­yards, was ready to be set free and to dis­perse the fogs of Lon­don. In­sens­ibly the law­yer melted. There was no man from whom he kept fewer secrets than Mr. Guest; and he was not al­ways sure that he kept as many as he meant. Guest had of­ten been on busi­ness to the doc­tor’s; he knew Poole; he could scarce have failed to hear of Mr. Hyde’s fa­mili­ar­ity about the house; he might draw con­clu­sions: was it not as well, then, that he should see a let­ter which put that mys­tery to right? and above all since Guest, be­ing a great stu­dent and critic of hand­writ­ing, would con­sider the step nat­ural and ob­li­ging? The clerk, be­sides, was a man of coun­sel; he could scarce read so strange a doc­u­ment without drop­ping a re­mark; and by that re­mark Mr. Ut­ter­son might shape his fu­ture course.

“This is a sad busi­ness about Sir Dan­vers,” he said.

“Yes, sir, in­deed. It has eli­cited a great deal of pub­lic feel­ing,” re­turned Guest. “The man, of course, was mad.”

“I should like to hear your views on that,” replied Ut­ter­son. “I have a doc­u­ment here in his hand­writ­ing; it is between ourselves, for I scarce know what to do about it; it is an ugly busi­ness at the best. But there it is; quite in your way: a mur­derer’s auto­graph.”

Guest’s eyes brightened, and he sat down at once and stud­ied it with pas­sion. “No sir,” he said: “not mad; but it is an odd hand.”

“And by all ac­counts a very odd writer,” ad­ded the law­yer.

Just then the ser­vant entered with a note.

“Is that from Dr. Je­kyll, sir?” in­quired the clerk. “I thought I knew the writ­ing. Anything private, Mr. Ut­ter­son?”

“Only an in­vit­a­tion to din­ner. Why? Do you want to see it?”

“One mo­ment. I thank you, sir;” and the clerk laid the two sheets of pa­per along­side and sed­u­lously com­pared their con­tents. “Thank you, sir,” he said at last, re­turn­ing both; “it’s a very in­ter­est­ing auto­graph.”

There was a pause, dur­ing which Mr. Ut­ter­son struggled with him­self. “Why did you com­pare them, Guest?” he in­quired sud­denly.

“Well, sir,” re­turned the clerk, “there’s a rather sin­gu­lar re­semb­lance; the two hands are in many points identical: only dif­fer­ently sloped.”

“Rather quaint,” said Ut­ter­son.

“It is, as you say, rather quaint,” re­turned Guest.

“I wouldn’t speak of this note, you know,” said the mas­ter.

“No, sir,” said the clerk. “I un­der­stand.”

But no sooner was Mr. Ut­ter­son alone that night, than he locked the note into his safe, where it re­posed from that time for­ward. “What!” he thought. “Henry Je­kyll forge for a mur­derer!” And his blood ran cold in his veins.

Incident of Dr. Lanyon

Time ran on; thou­sands of pounds were offered in re­ward, for the death of Sir Dan­vers was re­sen­ted as a pub­lic in­jury; but Mr. Hyde had dis­ap­peared out of the ken of the po­lice as though he had never ex­is­ted. Much of his past was un­earthed, in­deed, and all dis­rep­ut­able: tales came out of the man’s cruelty, at once so cal­lous and vi­ol­ent; of his vile life, of his strange as­so­ci­ates, of the hatred that seemed to have sur­roun­ded his ca­reer; but of his present where­abouts, not a whis­per. From the time he had left the house in Soho on the morn­ing of the murder, he was simply blot­ted out; and gradu­ally, as time drew on, Mr. Ut­ter­son began to re­cover from the hot­ness of his alarm, and to grow more at quiet with him­self. The death of Sir Dan­vers was, to his way of think­ing, more than paid for by the dis­ap­pear­ance of Mr. Hyde. Now that that evil in­flu­ence had been with­drawn, a new life began for Dr. Je­kyll. He came out of his se­clu­sion, re­newed re­la­tions with his friends, be­came once more their fa­mil­iar guest and en­ter­tainer; and whilst he had al­ways been known for char­it­ies, he was now no less dis­tin­guished for re­li­gion. He was busy, he was much in the open air, he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as if with an in­ward con­scious­ness of ser­vice; and for more than two months, the doc­tor was at peace.

On the 8th of Janu­ary Ut­ter­son had dined at the doc­tor’s with a small party; Lanyon had been there; and the face of the host had looked from one to the other as in the old days when the trio were in­sep­ar­able friends. On the 12th, and again on the 14th, the door was shut against the law­yer. “The doc­tor was con­fined to the house,” Poole said, “and saw no one.” On the 15th, he tried again, and was again re­fused; and hav­ing now been used for the last two months to see his friend al­most daily, he found this re­turn of solitude to weigh upon his spir­its. The fifth night he had in Guest to dine with him; and the sixth he betook him­self to Dr. Lanyon’s.

There at least he was not denied ad­mit­tance; but when he came in, he was shocked at the change which had taken place in the doc­tor’s ap­pear­ance. He had his death-war­rant writ­ten legibly upon his face. The rosy man had grown pale; his flesh had fallen away; he was vis­ibly balder and older; and yet it was not so much these tokens of a swift phys­ical de­cay that ar­res­ted the law­yer’s no­tice, as a look in the eye and qual­ity of man­ner that seemed to testify to some deep-seated ter­ror of the mind. It was un­likely that the doc­tor should fear death; and yet that was what Ut­ter­son was temp­ted to sus­pect. “Yes,” he thought; “he is a doc­tor, he must know his own state and that his days are coun­ted; and the know­ledge is more than he can bear.” And yet when Ut­ter­son re­marked on his ill-looks, it was with an air of great firm­ness that Lanyon de­clared him­self a doomed man.

“I have had a shock,” he said, “and I shall never re­cover. It is a ques­tion of weeks. Well, life has been pleas­ant; I liked it; yes, sir, I used to like it. I some­times think if we knew all, we should be more glad to get away.”

“Je­kyll is ill, too,” ob­served Ut­ter­son. “Have you seen him?”

But Lanyon’s face changed, and he held up a trem­bling hand. “I wish to see or hear no more of Dr. Je­kyll,” he said in a loud, un­steady voice. “I am quite done with that per­son; and I beg that you will spare me any al­lu­sion to one whom I re­gard as dead.”

“Tut-tut,” said Mr. Ut­ter­son; and then after a con­sid­er­able pause, “Can’t I do any­thing?” he in­quired. “We are three very old friends, Lanyon; we shall not live to make oth­ers.”

“Noth­ing can be done,” re­turned Lanyon; “ask him­self.”

“He will not see me,” said the law­yer.

“I am not sur­prised at that,” was the reply. “Some day, Ut­ter­son, after I am dead, you may per­haps come to learn the right and wrong of this. I can­not tell you. And in the mean­time, if you can sit and talk with me of other things, for God’s sake, stay and do so; but if you can­not keep clear of this ac­cursed topic, then in God’s name, go, for I can­not bear it.”

As soon as he got home, Ut­ter­son sat down and wrote to Je­kyll, com­plain­ing of his ex­clu­sion from the house, and ask­ing the cause of this un­happy break with Lanyon; and the next day brought him a long an­swer, of­ten very pathet­ic­ally worded, and some­times darkly mys­ter­i­ous in drift. The quar­rel with Lanyon was in­cur­able. “I do not blame our old friend,” Je­kyll wrote, “but I share his view that we must never meet. I mean from hence­forth to lead a life of ex­treme se­clu­sion; you must not be sur­prised, nor must you doubt my friend­ship, if my door is of­ten shut even to you. You must suf­fer me to go my own dark way. I have brought on my­self a pun­ish­ment and a danger that I can­not name. If I am the chief of sin­ners, I am the chief of suf­fer­ers also. I could not think that this earth con­tained a place for suf­fer­ings and ter­rors so un­man­ning; and you can do but one thing, Ut­ter­son, to lighten this des­tiny, and that is to re­spect my si­lence.” Ut­ter­son was amazed; the dark in­flu­ence of Hyde had been with­drawn, the doc­tor had re­turned to his old tasks and amit­ies; a week ago, the pro­spect had smiled with every prom­ise of a cheer­ful and an hon­oured age; and now in a mo­ment, friend­ship, and peace of mind, and the whole tenor of his life were wrecked. So great and un­pre­pared a change poin­ted to mad­ness; but in view of Lanyon’s man­ner and words, there must lie for it some deeper ground.

A week af­ter­wards Dr. Lanyon took to his bed, and in some­thing less than a fort­night he was dead. The night after the fu­neral, at which he had been sadly af­fected, Ut­ter­son locked the door of his busi­ness room, and sit­ting there by the light of a mel­an­choly candle, drew out and set be­fore him an en­vel­ope ad­dressed by the hand and sealed with the seal of his dead friend. “Priv­ate: for the hands of G. J. Ut­ter­son alone, and in case of his pre­de­cease to be des­troyed un­read,” so it was em­phat­ic­ally su­per­scribed; and the law­yer dreaded to be­hold the con­tents. “I have bur­ied one friend today,” he thought: “what if this should cost me an­other?” And then he con­demned the fear as a dis­loy­alty, and broke the seal. Within there was an­other en­clos­ure, like­wise sealed, and marked upon the cover as “not to be opened till the death or dis­ap­pear­ance of Dr. Henry Je­kyll.” Ut­ter­son could not trust his eyes. Yes, it was dis­ap­pear­ance; here again, as in the mad will which he had long ago re­stored to its au­thor, here again were the idea of a dis­ap­pear­ance and the name of Henry Je­kyll brack­et­ted. But in the will, that idea had sprung from the sin­is­ter sug­ges­tion of the man Hyde; it was set there with a pur­pose all too plain and hor­rible. Writ­ten by the hand of Lanyon, what should it mean? A great curi­os­ity came on the trustee, to dis­reg­ard the pro­hib­i­tion and dive at once to the bot­tom of these mys­ter­ies; but pro­fes­sional hon­our and faith to his dead friend were strin­gent ob­lig­a­tions; and the packet slept in the in­most corner of his private safe.

It is one thing to mor­tify curi­os­ity, an­other to con­quer it; and it may be doubted if, from that day forth, Ut­ter­son de­sired the so­ci­ety of his sur­viv­ing friend with the same eager­ness. He thought of him kindly; but his thoughts were dis­quieted and fear­ful. He went to call in­deed; but he was per­haps re­lieved to be denied ad­mit­tance; per­haps, in his heart, he pre­ferred to speak with Poole upon the door­step and sur­roun­ded by the air and sounds of the open city, rather than to be ad­mit­ted into that house of vol­un­tary bond­age, and to sit and speak with its in­scrut­able re­cluse. Poole had, in­deed, no very pleas­ant news to com­mu­nic­ate. The doc­tor, it ap­peared, now more than ever con­fined him­self to the cab­inet over the labor­at­ory, where he would some­times even sleep; he was out of spir­its, he had grown very si­lent, he did not read; it seemed as if he had some­thing on his mind. Ut­ter­son be­came so used to the un­vary­ing char­ac­ter of these re­ports, that he fell off little by little in the fre­quency of his vis­its.

Incident at the Window

It chanced on Sunday, when Mr. Ut­ter­son was on his usual walk with Mr. En­field, that their way lay once again through the bystreet; and that when they came in front of the door, both stopped to gaze on it.

“Well,” said En­field, “that story’s at an end at least. We shall never see more of Mr. Hyde.”

“I hope not,” said Ut­ter­son. “Did I ever tell you that I once saw him, and shared your feel­ing of re­pul­sion?”

“It was im­possible to do the one without the other,” re­turned En­field. “And by the way, what an ass you must have thought me, not to know that this was a back way to Dr. Je­kyll’s! It was partly your own fault that I found it out, even when I did.”

“So you found it out, did you?” said Ut­ter­son. “But if that be so, we may step into the court and take a look at the win­dows. To tell you the truth, I am un­easy about poor Je­kyll; and even out­side, I feel as if the pres­ence of a friend might do him good.”

The court was very cool and a little damp, and full of pre­ma­ture twi­light, al­though the sky, high up over­head, was still bright with sun­set. The middle one of the three win­dows was halfway open; and sit­ting close be­side it, tak­ing the air with an in­fin­ite sad­ness of mien, like some dis­con­sol­ate pris­oner, Ut­ter­son saw Dr. Je­kyll.

“What! Je­kyll!” he cried. “I trust you are bet­ter.”

“I am very low, Ut­ter­son,” replied the doc­tor drear­ily, “very low. It will not last long, thank God.”

“You stay too much in­doors,” said the law­yer. “You should be out, whip­ping up the cir­cu­la­tion like Mr. En­field and me. (This is my cousin—Mr. En­field—Dr. Je­kyll.) Come now; get your hat and take a quick turn with us.”

“You are very good,” sighed the other. “I should like to very much; but no, no, no, it is quite im­possible; I dare not. But in­deed, Ut­ter­son, I am very glad to see you; this is really a great pleas­ure; I would ask you and Mr. En­field up, but the place is really not fit.”

“Why, then,” said the law­yer, good-naturedly, “the best thing we can do is to stay down here and speak with you from where we are.”

“That is just what I was about to ven­ture to pro­pose,” re­turned the doc­tor with a smile. But the words were hardly uttered, be­fore the smile was struck out of his face and suc­ceeded by an ex­pres­sion of such ab­ject ter­ror and des­pair, as froze the very blood of the two gen­tle­men be­low. They saw it but for a glimpse for the win­dow was in­stantly thrust down; but that glimpse had been suf­fi­cient, and they turned and left the court without a word. In si­lence, too, they tra­versed the bystreet; and it was not un­til they had come into a neigh­bour­ing thor­ough­fare, where even upon a Sunday there were still some stir­rings of life, that Mr. Ut­ter­son at last turned and looked at his com­pan­ion. They were both pale; and there was an an­swer­ing hor­ror in their eyes.

“God for­give us, God for­give us,” said Mr. Ut­ter­son.

But Mr. En­field only nod­ded his head very ser­i­ously, and walked on once more in si­lence.

The Last Night

Mr. Ut­ter­son was sit­ting by his fireside one even­ing after din­ner, when he was sur­prised to re­ceive a visit from Poole.

“Bless me, Poole, what brings you here?” he cried; and then tak­ing a second look at him, “What ails you?” he ad­ded; “is the doc­tor ill?”

“Mr. Ut­ter­son,” said the man, “there is some­thing wrong.”

“Take a seat, and here is a glass of wine for you,” said the law­yer. “Now, take your time, and tell me plainly what you want.”

“You know the doc­tor’s ways, sir,” replied Poole, “and how he shuts him­self up. Well, he’s shut up again in the cab­inet; and I don’t like it, sir—I wish I may die if I like it. Mr. Ut­ter­son, sir, I’m afraid.”

“Now, my good man,” said the law­yer, “be ex­pli­cit. What are you afraid of?”

“I’ve been afraid for about a week,” re­turned Poole, dog­gedly dis­reg­ard­ing the ques­tion, “and I can bear it no more.”

The man’s ap­pear­ance amply bore out his words; his man­ner was altered for the worse; and ex­cept for the mo­ment when he had first an­nounced his ter­ror, he had not once looked the law­yer in the face. Even now, he sat with the glass of wine un­tasted on his knee, and his eyes dir­ec­ted to a corner of the floor. “I can bear it no more,” he re­peated.

“Come,” said the law­yer, “I see you have some good reason, Poole; I see there is some­thing ser­i­ously amiss. Try to tell me what it is.”

“I think there’s been foul play,” said Poole, hoarsely.

“Foul play!” cried the law­yer, a good deal frightened and rather in­clined to be ir­rit­ated in con­sequence. “What foul play! What does the man mean?”

“I daren’t say, sir,” was the an­swer; “but will you come along with me and see for your­self?”

Mr. Ut­ter­son’s only an­swer was to rise and get his hat and great­coat; but he ob­served with won­der the great­ness of the re­lief that ap­peared upon the but­ler’s face, and per­haps with no less, that the wine was still un­tasted when he set it down to fol­low.

It was a wild, cold, sea­son­able night of March, with a pale moon, ly­ing on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and fly­ing wrack of the most dia­phan­ous and lawny tex­ture. The wind made talk­ing dif­fi­cult, and flecked the blood into the face. It seemed to have swept the streets un­usu­ally bare of pas­sen­gers, be­sides; for Mr. Ut­ter­son thought he had never seen that part of Lon­don so deser­ted. He could have wished it oth­er­wise; never in his life had he been con­scious of so sharp a wish to see and touch his fel­low-creatures; for struggle as he might, there was borne in upon his mind a crush­ing an­ti­cip­a­tion of calam­ity. The square, when they got there, was full of wind and dust, and the thin trees in the garden were lash­ing them­selves along the rail­ing. Poole, who had kept all the way a pace or two ahead, now pulled up in the middle of the pave­ment, and in spite of the bit­ing weather, took off his hat and mopped his brow with a red pocket-handker­chief. But for all the hurry of his com­ing, these were not the dews of ex­er­tion that he wiped away, but the mois­ture of some strangling an­guish; for his face was white and his voice, when he spoke, harsh and broken.

“Well, sir,” he said, “here we are, and God grant there be noth­ing wrong.”

“Amen, Poole,” said the law­yer.

Thereupon the ser­vant knocked in a very guarded man­ner; the door was opened on the chain; and a voice asked from within, “Is that you, Poole?”

“It’s all right,” said Poole. “Open the door.”

The hall, when they entered it, was brightly lighted up; the fire was built high; and about the hearth the whole of the ser­vants, men and wo­men, stood huddled to­gether like a flock of sheep. At the sight of Mr. Ut­ter­son, the house­maid broke into hys­ter­ical whim­per­ing; and the cook, cry­ing out “Bless God! it’s Mr. Ut­ter­son,” ran for­ward as if to take him in her arms.

“What, what? Are you all here?” said the law­yer peev­ishly. “Very ir­reg­u­lar, very un­seemly; your mas­ter would be far from pleased.”

“They’re all afraid,” said Poole.

Blank si­lence fol­lowed, no one protest­ing; only the maid lif­ted her voice and now wept loudly.

“Hold your tongue!” Poole said to her, with a fe­ro­city of ac­cent that test­i­fied to his own jangled nerves; and in­deed, when the girl had so sud­denly raised the note of her lam­ent­a­tion, they had all star­ted and turned to­wards the in­ner door with faces of dread­ful ex­pect­a­tion. “And now,” con­tin­ued the but­ler, ad­dress­ing the knife-boy, “reach me a candle, and we’ll get this through hands at once.” And then he begged Mr. Ut­ter­son to fol­low him, and led the way to the back garden.

“Now, sir,” said he, “you come as gently as you can. I want you to hear, and I don’t want you to be heard. And see here, sir, if by any chance he was to ask you in, don’t go.”

Mr. Ut­ter­son’s nerves, at this un­looked-for ter­min­a­tion, gave a jerk that nearly threw him from his bal­ance; but he re­col­lec­ted his cour­age and fol­lowed the but­ler into the labor­at­ory build­ing through the sur­gical theatre, with its lum­ber of crates and bottles, to the foot of the stair. Here Poole mo­tioned him to stand on one side and listen; while he him­self, set­ting down the candle and mak­ing a great and ob­vi­ous call on his res­ol­u­tion, moun­ted the steps and knocked with a some­what un­cer­tain hand on the red baize of the cab­inet door.

“Mr. Ut­ter­son, sir, ask­ing to see you,” he called; and even as he did so, once more vi­ol­ently signed to the law­yer to give ear.

A voice answered from within: “Tell him I can­not see any­one,” it said com­plain­ingly.

“Thank you, sir,” said Poole, with a note of some­thing like tri­umph in his voice; and tak­ing up his candle, he led Mr. Ut­ter­son back across the yard and into the great kit­chen, where the fire was out and the beetles were leap­ing on the floor.

“Sir,” he said, look­ing Mr. Ut­ter­son in the eyes, “Was that my mas­ter’s voice?”

“It seems much changed,” replied the law­yer, very pale, but giv­ing look for look.

“Changed? Well, yes, I think so,” said the but­ler. “Have I been twenty years in this man’s house, to be de­ceived about his voice? No, sir; mas­ter’s made away with; he was made away with eight days ago, when we heard him cry out upon the name of God; and who’s in there in­stead of him, and why it stays there, is a thing that cries to Heaven, Mr. Ut­ter­son!”

“This is a very strange tale, Poole; this is rather a wild tale my man,” said Mr. Ut­ter­son, bit­ing his fin­ger. “Sup­pose it were as you sup­pose, sup­pos­ing Dr. Je­kyll to have been—well, murdered what could in­duce the mur­derer to stay? That won’t hold wa­ter; it doesn’t com­mend it­self to reason.”

“Well, Mr. Ut­ter­son, you are a hard man to sat­isfy, but I’ll do it yet,” said Poole. “All this last week (you must know) him, or it, whatever it is that lives in that cab­inet, has been cry­ing night and day for some sort of medi­cine and can­not get it to his mind. It was some­times his way—the mas­ter’s, that is—to write his or­ders on a sheet of pa­per and throw it on the stair. We’ve had noth­ing else this week back; noth­ing but pa­pers, and a closed door, and the very meals left there to be smuggled in when nobody was look­ing. Well, sir, every day, aye, and twice and thrice in the same day, there have been or­ders and com­plaints, and I have been sent fly­ing to all the whole­sale chem­ists in town. Every time I brought the stuff back, there would be an­other pa­per telling me to re­turn it, be­cause it was not pure, and an­other or­der to a dif­fer­ent firm. This drug is wanted bit­ter bad, sir, whatever for.”

“Have you any of these pa­pers?” asked Mr. Ut­ter­son.

Poole felt in his pocket and handed out a crumpled note, which the law­yer, bend­ing nearer to the candle, care­fully ex­amined. Its con­tents ran thus: “Dr. Je­kyll presents his com­pli­ments to Messrs. Maw. He as­sures them that their last sample is im­pure and quite use­less for his present pur­pose. In the year 18—, Dr. J. pur­chased a some­what large quant­ity from Messrs. M. He now begs them to search with most sed­u­lous care, and should any of the same qual­ity be left, for­ward it to him at once. Ex­pense is no con­sid­er­a­tion. The im­port­ance of this to Dr. J. can hardly be ex­ag­ger­ated.” So far the let­ter had run com­posedly enough, but here with a sud­den splut­ter of the pen, the writer’s emo­tion had broken loose. “For God’s sake,” he ad­ded, “find me some of the old.”

“This is a strange note,” said Mr. Ut­ter­son; and then sharply, “How do you come to have it open?”

“The man at Maw’s was main angry, sir, and he threw it back to me like so much dirt,” re­turned Poole.

“This is un­ques­tion­ably the doc­tor’s hand, do you know?” re­sumed the law­yer.

“I thought it looked like it,” said the ser­vant rather sulkily; and then, with an­other voice, “But what mat­ters hand of write?” he said. “I’ve seen him!”

“Seen him?” re­peated Mr. Ut­ter­son. “Well?”

“That’s it!” said Poole. “It was this way. I came sud­denly into the theatre from the garden. It seems he had slipped out to look for this drug or whatever it is; for the cab­inet door was open, and there he was at the far end of the room dig­ging among the crates. He looked up when I came in, gave a kind of cry, and whipped up­stairs into the cab­inet. It was but for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if that was my mas­ter, why had he a mask upon his face? If it was my mas­ter, why did he cry out like a rat, and run from me? I have served him long enough. And then …” The man paused and passed his hand over his face.

“These are all very strange cir­cum­stances,” said Mr. Ut­ter­son, “but I think I be­gin to see day­light. Your mas­ter, Poole, is plainly seized with one of those mal­ad­ies that both tor­ture and de­form the suf­ferer; hence, for aught I know, the al­ter­a­tion of his voice; hence the mask and the avoid­ance of his friends; hence his eager­ness to find this drug, by means of which the poor soul re­tains some hope of ul­ti­mate re­cov­ery—God grant that he be not de­ceived! There is my ex­plan­a­tion; it is sad enough, Poole, aye, and ap­palling to con­sider; but it is plain and nat­ural, hangs well to­gether, and de­liv­ers us from all ex­or­bit­ant alarms.”

“Sir,” said the but­ler, turn­ing to a sort of mottled pal­lor, “that thing was not my mas­ter, and there’s the truth. My mas­ter”—here he looked round him and began to whis­per—“is a tall, fine build of a man, and this was more of a dwarf.” Ut­ter­son at­temp­ted to protest. “O, sir,” cried Poole, “do you think I do not know my mas­ter after twenty years? Do you think I do not know where his head comes to in the cab­inet door, where I saw him every morn­ing of my life? No, sir, that thing in the mask was never Dr. Je­kyll—God knows what it was, but it was never Dr. Je­kyll; and it is the be­lief of my heart that there was murder done.”

“Poole,” replied the law­yer, “if you say that, it will be­come my duty to make cer­tain. Much as I de­sire to spare your mas­ter’s feel­ings, much as I am puzzled by this note which seems to prove him to be still alive, I shall con­sider it my duty to break in that door.”

“Ah, Mr. Ut­ter­son, that’s talk­ing!” cried the but­ler.

“And now comes the second ques­tion,” re­sumed Ut­ter­son: “Who is go­ing to do it?”

“Why, you and me, sir,” was the un­daun­ted reply.

“That’s very well said,” re­turned the law­yer; “and whatever comes of it, I shall make it my busi­ness to see you are no loser.”

“There is an axe in the theatre,” con­tin­ued Poole; “and you might take the kit­chen poker for your­self.”

The law­yer took that rude but weighty in­stru­ment into his hand, and bal­anced it. “Do you know, Poole,” he said, look­ing up, “that you and I are about to place ourselves in a po­s­i­tion of some peril?”

“You may say so, sir, in­deed,” re­turned the but­ler.

“It is well, then that we should be frank,” said the other. “We both think more than we have said; let us make a clean breast. This masked fig­ure that you saw, did you re­cog­nise it?”

“Well, sir, it went so quick, and the creature was so doubled up, that I could hardly swear to that,” was the an­swer. “But if you mean, was it Mr. Hyde?—why, yes, I think it was! You see, it was much of the same big­ness; and it had the same quick, light way with it; and then who else could have got in by the labor­at­ory door? You have not for­got, sir, that at the time of the murder he had still the key with him? But that’s not all. I don’t know, Mr. Ut­ter­son, if you ever met this Mr. Hyde?”

“Yes,” said the law­yer, “I once spoke with him.”

“Then you must know as well as the rest of us that there was some­thing queer about that gen­tle­man—some­thing that gave a man a turn—I don’t know rightly how to say it, sir, bey­ond this: that you felt in your mar­row kind of cold and thin.”

“I own I felt some­thing of what you de­scribe,” said Mr. Ut­ter­son.

“Quite so, sir,” re­turned Poole. “Well, when that masked thing like a mon­key jumped from among the chem­ic­als and whipped into the cab­inet, it went down my spine like ice. O, I know it’s not evid­ence, Mr. Ut­ter­son; I’m book-learned enough for that; but a man has his feel­ings, and I give you my bible-word it was Mr. Hyde!”

“Aye, aye,” said the law­yer. “My fears in­cline to the same point. Evil, I fear, foun­ded—evil was sure to come—of that con­nec­tion. Aye truly, I be­lieve you; I be­lieve poor Harry is killed; and I be­lieve his mur­derer (for what pur­pose, God alone can tell) is still lurk­ing in his vic­tim’s room. Well, let our name be ven­geance. Call Brad­shaw.”

The foot­man came at the sum­mons, very white and nervous.

“Put your­self to­gether, Brad­shaw,” said the law­yer. “This sus­pense, I know, is telling upon all of you; but it is now our in­ten­tion to make an end of it. Poole, here, and I are go­ing to force our way into the cab­inet. If all is well, my shoulders are broad enough to bear the blame. Mean­while, lest any­thing should really be amiss, or any mal­efactor seek to es­cape by the back, you and the boy must go round the corner with a pair of good sticks and take your post at the labor­at­ory door. We give you ten minutes, to get to your sta­tions.”

As Brad­shaw left, the law­yer looked at his watch. “And now, Poole, let us get to ours,” he said; and tak­ing the poker un­der his arm, led the way into the yard. The scud had banked over the moon, and it was now quite dark. The wind, which only broke in puffs and draughts into that deep well of build­ing, tossed the light of the candle to and fro about their steps, un­til they came into the shel­ter of the theatre, where they sat down si­lently to wait. Lon­don hummed sol­emnly all around; but nearer at hand, the still­ness was only broken by the sounds of a foot­fall mov­ing to and fro along the cab­inet floor.

“So it will walk all day, sir,” whispered Poole; “aye, and the bet­ter part of the night. Only when a new sample comes from the chem­ist, there’s a bit of a break. Ah, it’s an ill con­science that’s such an en­emy to rest! Ah, sir, there’s blood foully shed in every step of it! But hark again, a little closer—put your heart in your ears, Mr. Ut­ter­son, and tell me, is that the doc­tor’s foot?”

The steps fell lightly and oddly, with a cer­tain swing, for all they went so slowly; it was dif­fer­ent in­deed from the heavy creak­ing tread of Henry Je­kyll. Ut­ter­son sighed. “Is there never any­thing else?” he asked.

Poole nod­ded. “Once,” he said. “Once I heard it weep­ing!”

“Weep­ing? how that?” said the law­yer, con­scious of a sud­den chill of hor­ror.

“Weep­ing like a wo­man or a lost soul,” said the but­ler. “I came away with that upon my heart, that I could have wept too.”

But now the ten minutes drew to an end. Poole dis­in­terred the axe from un­der a stack of pack­ing straw; the candle was set upon the nearest table to light them to the at­tack; and they drew near with bated breath to where that pa­tient foot was still go­ing up and down, up and down, in the quiet of the night. “Je­kyll,” cried Ut­ter­son, with a loud voice, “I de­mand to see you.” He paused a mo­ment, but there came no reply. “I give you fair warn­ing, our sus­pi­cions are aroused, and I must and shall see you,” he re­sumed; “if not by fair means, then by foul—if not of your con­sent, then by brute force!”

“Ut­ter­son,” said the voice, “for God’s sake, have mercy!”

“Ah, that’s not Je­kyll’s voice—it’s Hyde’s!” cried Ut­ter­son. “Down with the door, Poole!”

Poole swung the axe over his shoulder; the blow shook the build­ing, and the red baize door leaped against the lock and hinges. A dis­mal screech, as of mere an­imal ter­ror, rang from the cab­inet. Up went the axe again, and again the pan­els crashed and the frame bounded; four times the blow fell; but the wood was tough and the fit­tings were of ex­cel­lent work­man­ship; and it was not un­til the fifth, that the lock burst and the wreck of the door fell in­wards on the car­pet.

The be­siegers, ap­palled by their own riot and the still­ness that had suc­ceeded, stood back a little and peered in. There lay the cab­inet be­fore their eyes in the quiet lamp­light, a good fire glow­ing and chat­ter­ing on the hearth, the kettle singing its thin strain, a drawer or two open, pa­pers neatly set forth on the busi­ness table, and nearer the fire, the things laid out for tea; the quietest room, you would have said, and, but for the glazed presses full of chem­ic­als, the most com­mon­place that night in Lon­don.

Right in the middle there lay the body of a man sorely con­tor­ted and still twitch­ing. They drew near on tip­toe, turned it on its back and be­held the face of Ed­ward Hyde. He was dressed in clothes far too large for him, clothes of the doc­tor’s big­ness; the cords of his face still moved with a semb­lance of life, but life was quite gone: and by the crushed phial in the hand and the strong smell of ker­nels that hung upon the air, Ut­ter­son knew that he was look­ing on the body of a self-des­troyer.

“We have come too late,” he said sternly, “whether to save or pun­ish. Hyde is gone to his ac­count; and it only re­mains for us to find the body of your mas­ter.”

The far greater pro­por­tion of the build­ing was oc­cu­pied by the theatre, which filled al­most the whole ground storey and was lighted from above, and by the cab­inet, which formed an up­per story at one end and looked upon the court. A cor­ridor joined the theatre to the door on the bystreet; and with this the cab­inet com­mu­nic­ated sep­ar­ately by a second flight of stairs. There were be­sides a few dark closets and a spa­cious cel­lar. All these they now thor­oughly ex­amined. Each closet needed but a glance, for all were empty, and all, by the dust that fell from their doors, had stood long un­opened. The cel­lar, in­deed, was filled with crazy lum­ber, mostly dat­ing from the times of the sur­geon who was Je­kyll’s pre­de­cessor; but even as they opened the door they were ad­vert­ised of the use­less­ness of fur­ther search, by the fall of a per­fect mat of cob­web which had for years sealed up the en­trance. No where was there any trace of Henry Je­kyll dead or alive.

Poole stamped on the flags of the cor­ridor. “He must be bur­ied here,” he said, heark­en­ing to the sound.

“Or he may have fled,” said Ut­ter­son, and he turned to ex­am­ine the door in the bystreet. It was locked; and ly­ing near by on the flags, they found the key, already stained with rust.

“This does not look like use,” ob­served the law­yer.

“Use!” echoed Poole. “Do you not see, sir, it is broken? much as if a man had stamped on it.”

“Aye,” con­tin­ued Ut­ter­son, “and the frac­tures, too, are rusty.” The two men looked at each other with a scare. “This is bey­ond me, Poole,” said the law­yer. “Let us go back to the cab­inet.”

They moun­ted the stair in si­lence, and still with an oc­ca­sional awe­struck glance at the dead body, pro­ceeded more thor­oughly to ex­am­ine the con­tents of the cab­inet. At one table, there were traces of chem­ical work, vari­ous meas­ured heaps of some white salt be­ing laid on glass sau­cers, as though for an ex­per­i­ment in which the un­happy man had been pre­ven­ted.

“That is the same drug that I was al­ways bring­ing him,” said Poole; and even as he spoke, the kettle with a start­ling noise boiled over.

This brought them to the fireside, where the easy-chair was drawn co­sily up, and the tea things stood ready to the sit­ter’s el­bow, the very sugar in the cup. There were sev­eral books on a shelf; one lay be­side the tea things open, and Ut­ter­son was amazed to find it a copy of a pi­ous work, for which Je­kyll had sev­eral times ex­pressed a great es­teem, an­not­ated, in his own hand with start­ling blas­phemies.

Next, in the course of their re­view of the cham­ber, the search­ers came to the che­val-glass, into whose depths they looked with an in­vol­un­tary hor­ror. But it was so turned as to show them noth­ing but the rosy glow play­ing on the roof, the fire spark­ling in a hun­dred re­pe­ti­tions along the glazed front of the presses, and their own pale and fear­ful coun­ten­ances stoop­ing to look in.

“This glass has seen some strange things, sir,” whispered Poole.

“And surely none stranger than it­self,” echoed the law­yer in the same tones. “For what did Je­kyll”—he caught him­self up at the word with a start, and then con­quer­ing the weak­ness—“what could Je­kyll want with it?” he said.

“You may say that!” said Poole.

Next they turned to the busi­ness table. On the desk, among the neat ar­ray of pa­pers, a large en­vel­ope was up­per­most, and bore, in the doc­tor’s hand, the name of Mr. Ut­ter­son. The law­yer un­sealed it, and sev­eral en­clos­ures fell to the floor. The first was a will, drawn in the same ec­cent­ric terms as the one which he had re­turned six months be­fore, to serve as a test­a­ment in case of death and as a deed of gift in case of dis­ap­pear­ance; but in place of the name of Ed­ward Hyde, the law­yer, with in­des­crib­able amazement read the name of Gab­riel John Ut­ter­son. He looked at Poole, and then back at the pa­per, and last of all at the dead mal­efactor stretched upon the car­pet.

“My head goes round,” he said. “He has been all these days in pos­ses­sion; he had no cause to like me; he must have raged to see him­self dis­placed; and he has not des­troyed this doc­u­ment.”

He caught up the next pa­per; it was a brief note in the doc­tor’s hand and dated at the top. “O Poole!” the law­yer cried, “he was alive and here this day. He can­not have been dis­posed of in so short a space; he must be still alive, he must have fled! And then, why fled? and how? and in that case, can we ven­ture to de­clare this sui­cide? O, we must be care­ful. I fore­see that we may yet in­volve your mas­ter in some dire cata­strophe.”

“Why don’t you read it, sir?” asked Poole.

“Be­cause I fear,” replied the law­yer sol­emnly. “God grant I have no cause for it!” And with that he brought the pa­per to his eyes and read as fol­lows:

“My dear Ut­ter­son—When this shall fall into your hands, I shall have dis­ap­peared, un­der what cir­cum­stances I have not the pen­et­ra­tion to fore­see, but my in­stinct and all the cir­cum­stances of my name­less situ­ation tell me that the end is sure and must be early. Go then, and first read the nar­rat­ive which Lanyon warned me he was to place in your hands; and if you care to hear more, turn to the con­fes­sion of

“Your un­worthy and un­happy friend,

“Henry Je­kyll.”

“There was a third en­clos­ure?” asked Ut­ter­son.

“Here, sir,” said Poole, and gave into his hands a con­sid­er­able packet sealed in sev­eral places.

The law­yer put it in his pocket. “I would say noth­ing of this pa­per. If your mas­ter has fled or is dead, we may at least save his credit. It is now ten; I must go home and read these doc­u­ments in quiet; but I shall be back be­fore mid­night, when we shall send for the po­lice.”

They went out, lock­ing the door of the theatre be­hind them; and Ut­ter­son, once more leav­ing the ser­vants gathered about the fire in the hall, trudged back to his of­fice to read the two nar­rat­ives in which this mys­tery was now to be ex­plained.

Dr. Lanyon’s Narrative

On the ninth of Janu­ary, now four days ago, I re­ceived by the even­ing de­liv­ery a re­gistered en­vel­ope, ad­dressed in the hand of my col­league and old school com­pan­ion, Henry Je­kyll. I was a good deal sur­prised by this; for we were by no means in the habit of cor­res­pond­ence; I had seen the man, dined with him, in­deed, the night be­fore; and I could ima­gine noth­ing in our in­ter­course that should jus­tify form­al­ity of re­gis­tra­tion. The con­tents in­creased my won­der; for this is how the let­ter ran:

“10th Decem­ber, 18—.

“Dear Lanyon—You are one of my old­est friends; and al­though we may have differed at times on sci­entific ques­tions, I can­not re­mem­ber, at least on my side, any break in our af­fec­tion. There was never a day when, if you had said to me, ‘Je­kyll, my life, my hon­our, my reason, de­pend upon you,’ I would not have sac­ri­ficed my left hand to help you. Lanyon my life, my hon­our, my reason, are all at your mercy; if you fail me to­night, I am lost. You might sup­pose, after this pre­face, that I am go­ing to ask you for some­thing dis­hon­our­able to grant. Judge for your­self.

“I want you to post­pone all other en­gage­ments for to­night—aye, even if you were summoned to the bed­side of an em­peror; to take a cab, un­less your car­riage should be ac­tu­ally at the door; and with this let­ter in your hand for con­sulta­tion, to drive straight to my house. Poole, my but­ler, has his or­ders; you will find him wait­ing your ar­rival with a lock­smith. The door of my cab­inet is then to be forced: and you are to go in alone; to open the glazed press (let­ter E) on the left hand, break­ing the lock if it be shut; and to draw out, with all its con­tents as they stand, the fourth drawer from the top or (which is the same thing) the third from the bot­tom. In my ex­treme dis­tress of mind, I have a mor­bid fear of mis­dir­ect­ing you; but even if I am in er­ror, you may know the right drawer by its con­tents: some powders, a phial and a pa­per book. This drawer I beg of you to carry back with you to Cav­endish Square ex­actly as it stands.

“That is the first part of the ser­vice: now for the second. You should be back, if you set out at once on the re­ceipt of this, long be­fore mid­night; but I will leave you that amount of mar­gin, not only in the fear of one of those obstacles that can neither be pre­ven­ted nor fore­seen, but be­cause an hour when your ser­vants are in bed is to be pre­ferred for what will then re­main to do. At mid­night, then, I have to ask you to be alone in your con­sult­ing room, to ad­mit with your own hand into the house a man who will present him­self in my name, and to place in his hands the drawer that you will have brought with you from my cab­inet. Then you will have played your part and earned my grat­it­ude com­pletely. Five minutes af­ter­wards, if you in­sist upon an ex­plan­a­tion, you will have un­der­stood that these ar­range­ments are of cap­ital im­port­ance; and that by the neg­lect of one of them, fant­astic as they must ap­pear, you might have charged your con­science with my death or the ship­wreck of my reason.

“Con­fid­ent as I am that you will not trifle with this ap­peal, my heart sinks and my hand trembles at the bare thought of such a pos­sib­il­ity. Think of me at this hour, in a strange place, la­bour­ing un­der a black­ness of dis­tress that no fancy can ex­ag­ger­ate, and yet well aware that, if you will but punc­tu­ally serve me, my troubles will roll away like a story that is told. Serve me, my dear Lanyon and save

“Your friend,

“H. J.

“P.S.—I had already sealed this up when a fresh ter­ror struck upon my soul. It is pos­sible that the post-of­fice may fail me, and this let­ter not come into your hands un­til to­mor­row morn­ing. In that case, dear Lanyon, do my er­rand when it shall be most con­veni­ent for you in the course of the day; and once more ex­pect my mes­sen­ger at mid­night. It may then already be too late; and if that night passes without event, you will know that you have seen the last of Henry Je­kyll.”

Upon the read­ing of this let­ter, I made sure my col­league was in­sane; but till that was proved bey­ond the pos­sib­il­ity of doubt, I felt bound to do as he re­ques­ted. The less I un­der­stood of this far­rago, the less I was in a po­s­i­tion to judge of its im­port­ance; and an ap­peal so worded could not be set aside without a grave re­spons­ib­il­ity. I rose ac­cord­ingly from table, got into a hansom, and drove straight to Je­kyll’s house. The but­ler was await­ing my ar­rival; he had re­ceived by the same post as mine a re­gistered let­ter of in­struc­tion, and had sent at once for a lock­smith and a car­penter. The trades­men came while we were yet speak­ing; and we moved in a body to old Dr. Den­man’s sur­gical theatre, from which (as you are doubt­less aware) Je­kyll’s private cab­inet is most con­veni­ently entered. The door was very strong, the lock ex­cel­lent; the car­penter avowed he would have great trouble and have to do much dam­age, if force were to be used; and the lock­smith was near des­pair. But this last was a handy fel­low, and after two hour’s work, the door stood open. The press marked E was un­locked; and I took out the drawer, had it filled up with straw and tied in a sheet, and re­turned with it to Cav­endish Square.

Here I pro­ceeded to ex­am­ine its con­tents. The powders were neatly enough made up, but not with the nicety of the dis­pens­ing chem­ist; so that it was plain they were of Je­kyll’s private man­u­fac­ture: and when I opened one of the wrap­pers I found what seemed to me a simple crys­tal­line salt of a white col­our. The phial, to which I next turned my at­ten­tion, might have been about half full of a blood-red li­quor, which was highly pun­gent to the sense of smell and seemed to me to con­tain phos­phorus and some volat­ile ether. At the other in­gredi­ents I could make no guess. The book was an or­din­ary ver­sion book and con­tained little but a series of dates. These covered a period of many years, but I ob­served that the entries ceased nearly a year ago and quite ab­ruptly. Here and there a brief re­mark was ap­pen­ded to a date, usu­ally no more than a single word: “double” oc­cur­ring per­haps six times in a total of sev­eral hun­dred entries; and once very early in the list and fol­lowed by sev­eral marks of ex­clam­a­tion, “total fail­ure!!!” All this, though it whetted my curi­os­ity, told me little that was def­in­ite. Here were a phial of some salt, and the re­cord of a series of ex­per­i­ments that had led (like too many of Je­kyll’s in­vest­ig­a­tions) to no end of prac­tical use­ful­ness. How could the pres­ence of these art­icles in my house af­fect either the hon­our, the san­ity, or the life of my flighty col­league? If his mes­sen­ger could go to one place, why could he not go to an­other? And even grant­ing some im­ped­i­ment, why was this gen­tle­man to be re­ceived by me in secret? The more I re­flec­ted the more con­vinced I grew that I was deal­ing with a case of cereb­ral dis­ease; and though I dis­missed my ser­vants to bed, I loaded an old re­volver, that I might be found in some pos­ture of self-de­fence.

Twelve o’clock had scarce rung out over Lon­don, ere the knocker soun­ded very gently on the door. I went my­self at the sum­mons, and found a small man crouch­ing against the pil­lars of the por­tico.

“Are you come from Dr. Je­kyll?” I asked.

He told me “yes” by a con­strained ges­ture; and when I had bid­den him enter, he did not obey me without a search­ing back­ward glance into the dark­ness of the square. There was a po­lice­man not far off, ad­van­cing with his bull’s eye open; and at the sight, I thought my vis­itor star­ted and made greater haste.

These par­tic­u­lars struck me, I con­fess, dis­agree­ably; and as I fol­lowed him into the bright light of the con­sult­ing room, I kept my hand ready on my weapon. Here, at last, I had a chance of clearly see­ing him. I had never set eyes on him be­fore, so much was cer­tain. He was small, as I have said; I was struck be­sides with the shock­ing ex­pres­sion of his face, with his re­mark­able com­bin­a­tion of great mus­cu­lar activ­ity and great ap­par­ent de­bil­ity of con­sti­tu­tion, and—last but not least—with the odd, sub­ject­ive dis­turb­ance caused by his neigh­bour­hood. This bore some re­semb­lance to in­cip­i­ent rigour, and was ac­com­pan­ied by a marked sink­ing of the pulse. At the time, I set it down to some idio­syn­cratic, per­sonal dis­taste, and merely wondered at the acute­ness of the symp­toms; but I have since had reason to be­lieve the cause to lie much deeper in the nature of man, and to turn on some no­bler hinge than the prin­ciple of hatred.

This per­son (who had thus, from the first mo­ment of his en­trance, struck in me what I can only de­scribe as a dis­gust­ful curi­os­ity) was dressed in a fash­ion that would have made an or­din­ary per­son laugh­able; his clothes, that is to say, al­though they were of rich and sober fab­ric, were enorm­ously too large for him in every meas­ure­ment—the trousers hanging on his legs and rolled up to keep them from the ground, the waist of the coat be­low his haunches, and the col­lar sprawl­ing wide upon his shoulders. Strange to re­late, this ludicrous ac­coutre­ment was far from mov­ing me to laughter. Rather, as there was some­thing ab­nor­mal and mis­be­got­ten in the very es­sence of the creature that now faced me—some­thing seiz­ing, sur­pris­ing and re­volt­ing—this fresh dis­par­ity seemed but to fit in with and to re­in­force it; so that to my in­terest in the man’s nature and char­ac­ter, there was ad­ded a curi­os­ity as to his ori­gin, his life, his for­tune and status in the world.

These ob­ser­va­tions, though they have taken so great a space to be set down in, were yet the work of a few seconds. My vis­itor was, in­deed, on fire with sombre ex­cite­ment.

“Have you got it?” he cried. “Have you got it?” And so lively was his im­pa­tience that he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shake me.

I put him back, con­scious at his touch of a cer­tain icy pang along my blood. “Come, sir,” said I. “You for­get that I have not yet the pleas­ure of your ac­quaint­ance. Be seated, if you please.” And I showed him an ex­ample, and sat down my­self in my cus­tom­ary seat and with as fair an im­it­a­tion of my or­din­ary man­ner to a pa­tient, as the late­ness of the hour, the nature of my pre­oc­cu­pa­tions, and the hor­ror I had of my vis­itor, would suf­fer me to muster.

“I beg your par­don, Dr. Lanyon,” he replied civilly enough. “What you say is very well foun­ded; and my im­pa­tience has shown its heels to my po­lite­ness. I come here at the in­stance of your col­league, Dr. Henry Je­kyll, on a piece of busi­ness of some mo­ment; and I un­der­stood …” He paused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite of his col­lec­ted man­ner, that he was wrest­ling against the ap­proaches of the hys­teria—“I un­der­stood, a drawer …”

But here I took pity on my vis­itor’s sus­pense, and some per­haps on my own grow­ing curi­os­ity.

“There it is, sir,” said I, point­ing to the drawer, where it lay on the floor be­hind a table and still covered with the sheet.

He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon his heart: I could hear his teeth grate with the con­vuls­ive ac­tion of his jaws; and his face was so ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for his life and reason.

“Com­pose your­self,” said I.

He turned a dread­ful smile to me, and as if with the de­cision of des­pair, plucked away the sheet. At sight of the con­tents, he uttered one loud sob of such im­mense re­lief that I sat pet­ri­fied. And the next mo­ment, in a voice that was already fairly well un­der con­trol, “Have you a gradu­ated glass?” he asked.

I rose from my place with some­thing of an ef­fort and gave him what he asked.

He thanked me with a smil­ing nod, meas­ured out a few min­ims of the red tinc­ture and ad­ded one of the powders. The mix­ture, which was at first of a red­dish hue, began, in pro­por­tion as the crys­tals melted, to brighten in col­our, to ef­fer­vesce aud­ibly, and to throw off small fumes of va­pour. Sud­denly and at the same mo­ment, the ebulli­tion ceased and the com­pound changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly to a wa­tery green. My vis­itor, who had watched these meta­morph­oses with a keen eye, smiled, set down the glass upon the table, and then turned and looked upon me with an air of scru­tiny.

“And now,” said he, “to settle what re­mains. Will you be wise? will you be guided? will you suf­fer me to take this glass in my hand and to go forth from your house without fur­ther par­ley? or has the greed of curi­os­ity too much com­mand of you? Think be­fore you an­swer, for it shall be done as you de­cide. As you de­cide, you shall be left as you were be­fore, and neither richer nor wiser, un­less the sense of ser­vice rendered to a man in mor­tal dis­tress may be coun­ted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of know­ledge and new av­en­ues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the in­stant; and your sight shall be blas­ted by a prodigy to stag­ger the un­be­lief of Satan.”

“Sir,” said I, af­fect­ing a cool­ness that I was far from truly pos­sess­ing, “you speak en­ig­mas, and you will per­haps not won­der that I hear you with no very strong im­pres­sion of be­lief. But I have gone too far in the way of in­ex­plic­able ser­vices to pause be­fore I see the end.”

“It is well,” replied my vis­itor. “Lanyon, you re­mem­ber your vows: what fol­lows is un­der the seal of our pro­fes­sion. And now, you who have so long been bound to the most nar­row and ma­ter­ial views, you who have denied the vir­tue of tran­scend­ental medi­cine, you who have de­rided your su­per­i­ors—be­hold!”

He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A cry fol­lowed; he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table and held on, star­ing with in­jec­ted eyes, gasp­ing with open mouth; and as I looked there came, I thought, a change—he seemed to swell—his face be­came sud­denly black and the fea­tures seemed to melt and al­ter—and the next mo­ment, I had sprung to my feet and leaped back against the wall, my arms raised to shield me from that prodigy, my mind sub­merged in ter­ror.

“O God!” I screamed, and “O God!” again and again; for there be­fore my eyes—pale and shaken, and half faint­ing, and grop­ing be­fore him with his hands, like a man re­stored from death—there stood Henry Je­kyll!

What he told me in the next hour, I can­not bring my mind to set on pa­per. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at it; and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask my­self if I be­lieve it, and I can­not an­swer. My life is shaken to its roots; sleep has left me; the dead­li­est ter­ror sits by me at all hours of the day and night; and I feel that my days are numbered, and that I must die; and yet I shall die in­cred­u­lous. As for the moral turpitude that man un­veiled to me, even with tears of pen­it­ence, I can not, even in memory, dwell on it without a start of hor­ror. I will say but one thing, Ut­ter­son, and that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be more than enough. The creature who crept into my house that night was, on Je­kyll’s own con­fes­sion, known by the name of Hyde and hunted for in every corner of the land as the mur­derer of Carew.

Hastie Lanyon