"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that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for Dr.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 to-day," 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 by-street; 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 half-way 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 by-street; 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, ay, 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
theater 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, ay, 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!"

"Ay, ay," said the lawyer. "My fears incline to the same point. Evil,
I fear, founded--evil was sure to come--of that connection. Ay 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; "ay, 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
by-street; 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 by-street. 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."

"Ay," 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 to-night, 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 to-night--ay, 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 to-morrow 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.