STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE

by

Robert Louis Stevenson

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TO

KATHARINE DE MATTOS


It's ill to loose the bands that God decreed to bind;
Still will we be the children of the heather and the wind.
Far away from home, O it's still for you and me
That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.

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CONTENTS

                                                   page
STORY OF THE DOOR...................................

SEARCH FOR MR HYDE..................................

DR JEKYLL WAS QUITE AT EASE.........................

THE CAREW MURDER CASE...............................

INCIDENT OF THE LETTER..............................

REMARKABLE INCIDENT OF DR LANYON....................

INCIDENT AT THE WINDOW..............................

THE LAST NIGHT......................................

DR LANYON'S NARRATIVE...............................

HENRY JEKYLL'S FULL STATEMENT OF THE CASE...........

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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 down-going 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 friendships 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  by-street in  a busy quarter of London. The street was
small and  what is called quiet, but it drove a thriving trade
on the  week-days. The  inhabitants were  all doing  well,  it
seemed, and  all emulously  hoping to  do  better  still,  and
laying out the surplus of their gains 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 by-
street; 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  other 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 view
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 the 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  of it  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  that 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 that 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.'

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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, M.D.,  D.C.L.,  LL.D.,
F.R.S., &c.,  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 burthen  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 great coat 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 respecters
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  spirt 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 prot‚g‚ 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 besieged 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 clauses
of the will. And 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 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 $…
propos$, 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
fan-light, 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 to-night 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 door, 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 do  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, good night, Poole.'
'Good night, 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. Ay,  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, lest 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 that  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
yhe, '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. Ay, I must put my shoulder 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 a 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  light-hearted  and  the  loose-tongued  had
already their  foot on the threshold; they liked to sit awhile
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
slyish 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 hide-bound  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  hide-bound  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, ay, before myself, if I could make the choice;
but indeed  it isn't what you fancy; it is not so 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 and
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 sometimes  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
ape-like 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  a 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 recognised 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 marvellous 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 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;  lockfast
drawers stood open; and on the hearth there lay a pile of gray
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 the 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 deadly  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 have
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 by,' said he, 'there was a letter handed in to-
day: 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 M.P.'
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 rights? 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  would 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.

***********************************************************

REMARKABLE INCIDENT OF DOCTOR 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 Doctor 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  the 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 J.G. 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 disappearance  and the  name of Henry Jekyll bracketed. 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 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  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
great coat;  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
a 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
all 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 up 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 and 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,  or 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  the most  sedulous  care,  and
should any  of the  same quality be left, to 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
had 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  ought  I  know,  the
alteration of  his voice;  hence the mask and his 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 is  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 ever you 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 it 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.
'Pull 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, he  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 sound 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 in  sunder 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 midst  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 story 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. Nowhere 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.'
'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  have 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.

***********************************************************

DOCTOR 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 the formality of registration.
The contents  increased my  wonder; for this is how the letter
ran:

                                         '9th January, 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 fortune or 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 hours'  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 phosphorous  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 tincture,
a  paper  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 rigor,
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 r‰inforce 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  pr‰occupations, 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 arm 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;
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 cannot, 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.

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HENRY JEKYLL'S FULL STATEMENT OF THE CASE


I was  born in  the year  18-- to  a  large  fortune,  endowed
besides with  excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry,
fond of  the respect of the wise and good among my fellow-men,
and thus, as might have been supposed, with every guarantee of
an honourable  and distinguished  future. And indeed the worst
of my  faults was  a certain  impatient gaiety of disposition,
such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it
hard to  reconcile with  my imperious  desire to carry my head
high, and  wear a  more than commonly grave countenance before
the public. Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures;
and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look
round me  and take  stock of  my progress  and position in the
world, I  stood already  committed to  a profound duplicity of
life. Many  a man would have even blazoned such irregularities
as I  was guilty  of; but  from the  high views that I had set
before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense
of shame.  It was  thus  rather  the  exacting  nature  of  my
aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that
made me  what I was and, with even a deeper trench than in the
majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill
which divide  and compound  man's dual nature. In this case, I
was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law
of life,  which lies at the root of religion and is one of the
most plentiful  springs of  distress.  Though  so  profound  a
double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me
were in  dead earnest;  I was no more myself when I laid aside
restraint and  plunged in  shame, than when I laboured, in the
eye of  day, at  the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of
sorrow and  suffering. And it chanced that the direction of my
scientific studies,  which led  wholly towards  the mystic and
the transcendental,  r‰acted and  shed a  strong light on this
consciousness of  the perennial  war among  my  members.  With
every day,  and from  both sides of my intelligence, the moral
and the  intellectual, I  thus drew  steadily nearer  to  that
truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a
dreadful shipwreck:  that man is not truly one, but truly two.
I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass
beyond that point. Others will follow, others will outstrip me
on the  same lines;  and I  hazard the  guess that man will be
ultimately  known   for  a   mere  polity   of   multifarious,
incongruous and  independent denizens. I for my part, from the
nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one direction and in
one direction  only. It  was on  the moral side, and in my own
person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive
duality of  man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended
in the  field of  my consciousness, even if I could rightly be
said to  be either,  it was only because I was radically both;
and  from  an  early  date,  even  before  the  course  of  my
scientific discoveries  had begun  to suggest  the most  naked
possibility of  such a  miracle, I  had learned  to dwell with
pleasure, as  a  beloved  daydream,  on  the  thought  of  the
separation of  these elements.  If each,  I told myself, could
but be  housed in  separate identities, life would be relieved
of all  that was  unbearable; the  unjust might  go  his  way,
delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright
twin; and  the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his
upward path,  doing the  good things  in which  he  found  his
pleasure, and  no longer  exposed to disgrace and penitence by
the hands of this extraneous evil. It was the curse of mankind
that these incongruous faggots were thus bound together - that
in the  agonised womb  of  consciousness,  these  polar  twins
should  be  continuously  struggling.  How,  then,  were  they
dissociated?
I was  so far  in my  reflections when, as I have said, a side
light began  to shine  upon the  subject from  the  laboratory
table. I  began to  perceive more  deeply than it has ever yet
been  stated,   the  trembling  immateriality,  the  mist-like
transience, of  this seemingly  so solid body in which we walk
attired. Certain agents I found to have the power to shake and
to pluck back that fleshly vestment, even as a wind might toss
the curtains  of a  pavilion. For two good reasons, I will not
enter deeply  into this  scientific branch  of my  confession.
First, because  I have  been made  to learn  that the doom and
burthen of  our life  is bound forever on man's shoulders, and
when the  attempt is  made to cast it off, it but returns upon
us with  more unfamiliar  and  more  awful  pressure.  Second,
because as  my narrative  will  make  alas!  too  evident,  my
discoveries were  incomplete. Enough,  then, that  I not  only
recognised my natural body for the mere aura and effulgence of
certain of  the powers  that made up my spirit, but managed to
compound a drug by which these powers should be dethroned from
their  supremacy,   and  a   second   form   and   countenance
substituted, none the less natural to me because they were the
expression, and bore the stamp, of lower elements in my soul.
I hesitated  long before  I put  this theory  to the  test  of
practice. I  knew well  that I risked death; for any drug that
so  potently   controlled  and  shook  the  very  fortress  of
identity, might  by the least scruple of an overdose or at the
least inopportunity  in the moment of exhibition, utterly blot
out that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to change.
But the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound, at
last overcame  the suggestions  of alarm.  I  had  long  since
prepared my  tincture; I  purchased at  once, from  a firm  of
wholesale chemists,  a large  quantity of  a  particular  salt
which I  knew, from  my experiments, to be the last ingredient
required; and  late  one  accursed  night,  I  compounded  the
elements, watched  them boil  and smoke together in the glass,
and when  the ebullition  had subsided,  with a strong glow of
courage, drank off the potion.
The most  racking pangs  succeeded: a  grinding in  the bones,
deadly nausea,  and a  horror of  the spirit  that  cannot  be
exceeded at  the hour  of birth  or death.  Then these agonies
began swiftly  to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a
great sickness.  There was something strange in my sensations,
something  indescribably  new  and,  from  its  very  novelty,
incredibly sweet.  I felt  younger, lighter,  happier in body;
within I  was conscious  of a heady recklessness, a current of
disordered sensual  images running  like a  mill  race  in  my
fancy, a  solution of  the bonds of obligation, an unknown but
not an  innocent freedom  of the  soul. I  knew myself, at the
first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more
wicked, sold  a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in
that moment,  braced and  delighted me  like wine. I stretched
out my  hands, exulting  in the freshness of these sensations;
and in  the act,  I was  suddenly aware  that I  had  lost  in
stature.
There was  no mirror,  at that  date, in  my room;  that which
stands beside  me as  I write,  was brought there later on and
for the  very purpose  of these  transformations.  The  night,
however, was far gone into the morning - the morning, black as
it was,  was nearly  ripe for  the conception of the day - the
inmates of  my house were locked in the most rigorous hours of
slumber; and  I determined,  flushed as  I was  with hope  and
triumph, to venture in my new shape as far as to my bedroom. I
crossed the  yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon
me, I  could have  thought, with wonder, the first creature of
that sort that their unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to
them; I  stole through  the corridors,  a stranger  in my  own
house; and  coming to  my room,  I saw  for the first time the
appearance of Edward Hyde.
I must  here speak  by theory  alone, saying  not that which I
know, but  that which  I suppose to be most probable. The evil
side of my nature, to which I had now transferred the stamping
efficacy, was  less robust  and less  developed than  the good
which I  had just  deposed. Again,  in the  course of my life,
which had  been, after  all, nine  tenths a  life  of  effort,
virtue and  control, it  had been much less exercised and much
less exhausted.  And hence,  as I  think, it  came about  that
Edward Hyde  was so  much smaller,  slighter and  younger than
Henry Jekyll.  Even as  good shone upon the countenance of the
one, evil  was written  broadly and plainly on the face of the
other. Evil  besides (which  I must  still believe  to be  the
lethal side  of man)  had left  on that  body  an  imprint  of
deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol
in the  glass, I  was conscious  of no repugnance, rather of a
leap of  welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and
human. In  my eyes  it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it
seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and divided
countenance, I  had been hitherto accustomed to call mine. And
in so  far I  was doubtless right. I have observed that when I
wore the  semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me
at first  without a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as I
take it,  was because  all human  beings, as we meet them, are
commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the
ranks of mankind, was pure evil.
I lingered  but  a  moment  at  the  mirror:  the  second  and
conclusive experiment had yet to be attempted; it yet remained
to be  seen if  I had  lost my  identity beyond redemption and
must flee  before daylight  from a  house that  was no  longer
mine; and  hurrying back  to my  cabinet, I once more prepared
and  drank   the  cup,   once  more   suffered  the  pangs  of
dissolution, and  came to myself once more with the character,
the stature and the face of Henry Jekyll.
That night  I had  come  to  the  fatal  cross  roads.  Had  I
approached my  discovery in  a more noble spirit, had I risked
the experiment  while under  the empire  of generous  or pious
aspirations, all  must have  been otherwise,  and  from  these
agonies of  death and birth, I had come forth an angel instead
of a  fiend. The  drug had  no discriminating  action; it  was
neither diabolical  nor divine;  it but shook the doors of the
prisonhouse of  my  disposition;  and  like  the  captives  of
Philippi, that  which stood  within ran forth. At that time my
virtue slumbered;  my evil,  kept awake by ambition, was alert
and swift  to seize  the occasion;  and  the  thing  that  was
projected was  Edward Hyde.  Hence, although  I  had  now  two
characters as  well as  two appearances,  one was wholly evil,
and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous
compound of  whose reformation  and improvement  I had already
learned to  despair. The  movement was  thus wholly toward the
worse.
Even at  that time, I had not yet conquered my aversion to the
dryness of  a life of study. I would still be merrily disposed
at times;  and  as  my  pleasures  were  (to  say  the  least)
undignified,  and  I  was  not  only  well  known  and  highly
considered,  but   growing  towards   the  elderly  man,  this
incoherency of  my life  was daily  growing more unwelcome. It
was on  this side that my new power tempted me until I fell in
slavery. I  had but to drink the cup, to doff at once the body
of the  noted professor,  and to  assume, like  a thick cloak,
that of  Edward Hyde.  I smiled at the notion; it seemed to me
at the  time to  be humorous;  and I made my preparations with
the most  studious care.  I took  and furnished  that house in
Soho, to  which Hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as
housekeeper a  creature whom  I well  knew to  be  silent  and
unscrupulous. On  the other  side, I  announced to my servants
that a Mr Hyde (whom I described) was to have full liberty and
power about  my house  in the  square; and to parry mishaps, I
even called  and made  myself a  familiar object, in my second
character. I  next drew  up that  will to  which you  so  much
objected; so  that if  anything befell  me in  the  person  of
Doctor Jekyll,  I could  enter on  that of Edward Hyde without
pecuniary loss.  And thus  fortified, as  I supposed, on every
side, I  began to  profit by  the  strange  immunities  of  my
position.
Men have  before hired  bravos to transact their crimes, while
their own  person and  reputation sat under shelter. I was the
first that ever did so for his pleasures. I was the first that
could thus  plod in  the public  eye with  a  load  of  genial
respectability, and  in a  moment, like a schoolboy, strip off
these lendings  and spring  headlong into  the sea of liberty.
But  for  me,  in  my  impenetrable  mantle,  the  safety  was
complete. Think  of it  - I  did not  even exist!  Let me  but
escape into my laboratory door, give me but a second or two to
mix and  swallow the draught that I had always standing ready;
and whatever he had done, Edward Hyde would pass away like the
stain of breath upon a mirror; and there in his stead, quietly
at home,  trimming the  midnight lamp  in his study, a man who
could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be Henry Jekyll.
The pleasures  which I made haste to seek in my disguise were,
as I have said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term.
But in  the hands  of Edward  Hyde, they  soon began  to  turn
towards the  monstrous. When  I would  come  back  from  these
excursions, I  was often  plunged into  a kind of wonder at my
vicarious depravity. This familiar that I called out of my own
soul, and  sent forth  alone to  do his  good pleasure,  was a
being inherently  malign and  villainous; his  every  act  and
thought  centred  on  self;  drinking  pleasure  with  bestial
avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like
a man  of stone. Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the
acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was apart from ordinary
laws, and  insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was
Hyde, after  all, and  Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was
no worse;  he woke  again  to  his  good  qualities  seemingly
unimpaired; he  would even  make haste, where it was possible,
to undo  the evil  done  by  Hyde.  And  thus  his  conscience
slumbered.
Into the  details of  the infamy at which I thus connived (for
even now  I can  scarce grant  that I  committed it) I have no
design of  entering; I  mean but to point out the warnings and
the successive  steps with which my chastisement approached. I
met with  one accident which, as it brought on no consequence,
I shall  no more  than mention.  An act  of cruelty to a child
aroused against me the anger of a passer by, whom I recognised
the other  day in  the person  of your kinsman; the doctor and
the child's  family joined  him; there  were  moments  when  I
feared for  my life; and at last, in order to pacify their too
just resentment,  Edward Hyde  had to  bring them to the door,
and pay  them in  a cheque drawn in the name, of Henry Jekyll.
But this  danger was  easily eliminated  from the  future,  by
opening an  account at another bank in the name of Edward Hyde
himself; and  when, by  sloping my  own hand  backward, I  had
supplied my  double with  a signature,  I thought I sat beyond
the reach of fate.
Some two  months before  the murder of Sir Danvers, I had been
out for one of my adventures, had returned at a late hour, and
woke the  next day in bed with somewhat odd sensations. It was
in vain  I looked about me; in vain I saw the decent furniture
and tall  proportions of my room in the square; in vain that I
recognised the  pattern of  the bed curtains and the design of
the mahogany  frame; something still kept insisting that I was
not where  I was, that I had not wakened where I seemed to be,
but in the little room in Soho where I was accustomed to sleep
in the  body of  Edward Hyde.  I smiled  to myself, and, in my
psychological way,  began lazily  to inquire into the elements
of this  illusion, occasionally,  even as  I did  so, dropping
back into  a comfortable  morning doze. I was still so engaged
when, in  one of  my more wakeful moments, my eye fell upon my
hand. Now  the  hand  of  Henry  Jekyll  (as  you  have  often
remarked) was  professional in  shape and  size: it was large,
firm, white  and comely. But the hand which I now saw, clearly
enough, in  the yellow  light of  a mid-London  morning, lying
half shut  on the bed clothes, was lean, corded, knuckly, of a
dusky pallor  and thickly  shaded with a swart growth of hair.
It was the hand of Edward Hyde.
I must  have stared  upon it for near half a minute, sunk as I
was in  the mere stupidity of wonder, before terror woke up in
my breast as sudden and startling as the crash of cymbals; and
bounding from  my bed,  I rushed  to the  mirror. At the sight
that  met  my  eyes,  my  blood  was  changed  into  something
exquisitely thin and icy. Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll,
I had  awakened Edward  Hyde. How  was this to be explained? I
asked myself; and then, with another bound of terror - how was
it to be remedied? It was well on in the morning; the servants
were up;  all my  drugs were  in the cabinet - a long journey,
down two  pair of stairs, through the back passage, across the
open court  and through  the anatomical  theatre, from where I
was then  standing horror-struck.  It might indeed be possible
to cover  my face; but of what use was that, when I was unable
to conceal  the alteration  in my  stature? And  then with  an
overpowering sweetness  of relief,  it came  back upon my mind
that the servants were already used to the coming and going of
my second  self. I had soon dressed, as well as I was able, in
clothes of  my own  size: had  soon passed  through the house,
where Bradshaw  stared and drew back at seeing Mr Hyde at such
an hour and in such a strange array; and ten minutes later, Dr
Jekyll had  returned to  his own  shape and  was sitting down,
with a darkened brow, to make a feint of breakfasting.
Small indeed was my appetite. This inexplicable incident, this
reversal  of   my  previous   experience,  seemed,   like  the
Babylonian finger  on the wall, to be spelling out the letters
of my  judgment; and  I began  to reflect  more seriously than
ever before  on the  issues and  possibilities  of  my  double
existence.  That   part  of  me  which  I  had  the  power  of
projecting, had  lately been  much exercised and nourished; it
had seemed to me of late as though the body of Edward Hyde had
grown in  stature, as  though (when  I wore  that form) I were
conscious of a more generous tide of blood; and I began to spy
a danger  that, if this were much prolonged, the balance of my
nature might be permanently overthrown, the power of voluntary
change be  forfeited, and  the character of Edward Hyde become
irrevocably mine.  The power  of the  drug had not been always
equally displayed.  Once, very  early in  my  career,  it  had
totally failed  me; since then I had been obliged on more than
one occasion to double, and once, with infinite risk of death,
to treble  the amount;  and these  rare uncertainties had cast
hitherto the  sole shadow on my contentment. Now, however, and
in the  light of  that morning's accident, I was led to remark
that whereas,  in the  beginning, the  difficulty had  been to
throw off  the body  of Jekyll,  it had of late, gradually but
decidedly transferred  itself to  the other  side. All  things
therefore seemed  to point  to this:  that I was slowly losing
hold of  my original  and better  self,  and  becoming  slowly
incorporated with my second and worse.
Between these  two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures
had memory  in common,  but  all  other  faculties  were  most
unequally shared  between them. Jekyll (who was composite) now
with the  most sensitive  apprehensions,  now  with  a  greedy
gusto, projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of
Hyde; but  Hyde was  indifferent to  Jekyll, or but remembered
him as  the mountain  bandit remembers  the cavern in which he
conceals himself from pursuit. Jekyll had more than a father's
interest; Hyde  had more than a son's indifference. To cast in
my lot  with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had
long secretly  indulged and  had of  late begun  to pamper. To
cast it  in with  Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and
aspirations, and  to become,  at a  blow and forever, despised
and friendless.  The bargain  might appear  unequal; but there
was still  another consideration  in  the  scales;  for  while
Jekyll would  suffer smartingly  in the  fires of  abstinence,
Hyde would  be not  even conscious  of all  that he  had lost.
Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are
as old  and commonplace  as man; much the same inducements and
alarms cast  the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and
it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my
fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in
the strength to keep to it.
Yes,  I   preferred  the   elderly  and  discontented  doctor,
surrounded by  friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a
resolute farewell  to the  liberty, the comparative youth, the
light step,  leaping pulses  and secret  pleasures, that I had
enjoyed in  the disguise  of Hyde.  I made this choice perhaps
with some  unconscious reservation,  for I neither gave up the
house in Soho, nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde, which
still lay  ready in my cabinet. For two months, however, I was
true to my determination; for two months, I led a life of such
severity as  I had  never before  attained to, and enjoyed the
compensations of  an approving  conscience. But  time began at
last to  obliterate the  freshness of my alarm; the praises of
conscience began to grow into a thing of course; I began to be
tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after
freedom; and  at last,  in an  hour of  moral weakness, I once
again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.
I do  not suppose  that, when  a drunkard reasons with himself
upon his  vice, he  is once out of five hundred times affected
by the  dangers that  he runs  through his  brutish,  physical
insensibility; neither  had I,  long as  I had  considered  my
position,  made   enough  allowance  for  the  complete  moral
insensibility and  insensate readiness to evil, which were the
leading characters  of Edward Hyde. Yet it was by these that I
was punished.  My devil  had been long been caged, he came out
roaring. I  was conscious,  even when I took the draught, of a
more unbridled, a more furious propensity to ill. It must have
been this,  I suppose, that stirred in my soul that tempest of
impatience with  which I  listened to  the  civilities  of  my
unhappy victim; I declare at least, before God, no man morally
sane could  have been  guilty of  that crime upon so pitiful a
provocation; and  that I  struck in  no more reasonable spirit
than that  in which  a sick child may break a plaything. But I
had  voluntarily   stripped  myself  of  all  those  balancing
instincts, by  which even  the worst  of us  continues to walk
with some  degree of  steadiness among  temptations; and in my
case, to be tempted, however slightly, was to fall.
Instantly the  spirit of  hell awoke  in me  and raged. With a
transport of  glee, I  mauled the  unresisting  body,  tasting
delight from  every blow;  and it  was not  till weariness had
begun to  succeed, that  I was  suddenly, in the top fit of my
delirium, struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror.
A mist  dispersed; I  saw my life to be forfeit; and fled from
the scene  of these  excesses, at once glorying and trembling,
my lust  of evil  gratified and  stimulated, my  love of  life
screwed to  the topmost  peg. I  ran to the house in Soho, and
(to make  assurance doubly sure) destroyed my papers; thence I
set out  through the  lamplit streets,  in  the  same  divided
ecstasy of mind, gloating on my crime, light-headedly devising
others in  the future,  and  yet  still  hastening  and  still
hearkening in my wake for the steps of the avenger. Hyde had a
song upon  his lips  as he  compounded the  draught, and as he
drank it,  pledged the  dead man.  The pangs of transformation
had not  done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll, with streaming
tears of  gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and
lifted his  clasped hands  to God. The veil of self-indulgence
was rent  from head  to foot,  I saw  my life  as a  whole:  I
followed it  up from  the days of childhood, when I had walked
with my  father's hand,  and through the self-denying toils of
my professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same
sense of  unreality, at  the damned  horrors of the evening. I
could have  screamed aloud; I sought with tears and prayers to
smother down the crowd of hideous images and sounds with which
my  memory   swarmed  against   me;  and  still,  between  the
petitions, the  ugly face  of my iniquity stared into my soul.
As the  acuteness of  this remorse  began to  die away, it was
succeeded by  a sense  of joy.  The problem  of my conduct was
solved. Hyde  was thenceforth  impossible; whether  I would or
not, I  was now  confined to  the better part of my existence;
and O, how I rejoiced to think it! with what willing humility,
I embraced  anew the  restrictions of  natural life! with what
sincere renunciation,  I locked  the door  by which  I had  so
often gone and come, and ground the key under my heel!
The  next  day,  came  the  news  that  the  murder  had  been
overlooked, that  the guilt  of Hyde  was patent to the world,
and that  the victim  was a  man high in public estimation. It
was not  only a  crime, it  had been a tragic folly. I think I
was glad  to know  it; I  think I  was glad  to have my better
impulses thus  buttressed and  guarded by  the terrors  of the
scaffold. Jekyll  was now my city of refuge; let but Hyde peep
out an  instant, and  the hands  of all men would be raised to
take and slay him.
I resolved  in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can
say with  honesty that  my resolve  was fruitful of some good.
You know  yourself how  earnestly in  the last  months of last
year, I  laboured to relieve suffering; you know that much was
done for  others, and  that the  days passed  quietly,  almost
happily for myself. Nor can I truly say that I wearied of this
beneficent and  innocent life;  I think  instead that  I daily
enjoyed it  more completely;  but I  was still  cursed with my
duality of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence wore
off, the  lower side  of me,  so long  indulged,  so  recently
chained down,  began to  growl for license. Not that I dreamed
of resuscitating  Hyde; the bare idea of that would startle me
to frenzy:  no, it  was in my own person, that I was once more
tempted to  trifle with  my  conscience;  and  it  was  as  an
ordinary secret  sinner,  that  I  at  last  fell  before  the
assaults of temptation.
There comes  an end  to all things; the most capacious measure
is filled  at last;  and this  brief condescension  to my evil
finally destroyed  the balance  of my  soul. And yet I was not
alarmed; the  fall seemed  natural, like  a return  to the old
days before  I had  made my  discovery. It  was a fine, clear,
January day,  wet under  foot where  the frost had melted, but
cloudless overhead;  and the  Regent's park was full of winter
chirruppings and sweet with Spring odours. I sat in the sun on
a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the
spiritual  side   a  little   drowsed,  promising   subsequent
penitence, but  not yet moved to begin. After all, I reflected
I was  like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing myself
with other  men, comparing  my active  goodwill with  the lazy
cruelty of  their neglect.  And at  the very  moment  of  that
vainglorious thought,  a qualm  came over  me, a horrid nausea
and the most deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me
faint; and then as in its turn the faintness subsided, I began
to be  aware of  a change  in the  temper of  my  thoughts,  a
greater boldness,  a contempt  of danger,  a solution  of  the
bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly
on my  shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded
and hairy.  I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had
been safe  of all  men's respect, wealthy, beloved - the cloth
laying for  me in  the dining  room at home; and now I was the
common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer,
thrall to the gallows.
My reason wavered, but it did not fail me utterly. I have more
than once  observed that, in my second character, my faculties
seemed sharpened  to a  point  and  my  spirits  more  tensely
elastic; thus  it came  about that, where Jekyll perhaps might
have succumbed,  Hyde rose to the importance of the moment. My
drugs were  in one  of the presses of my cabinet; how was I to
reach them?  That was the problem that (crushing my temples in
my hands)  I set  myself to  solve. The  laboratory door I had
closed. If  I sought  to enter  by the  house, my own servants
would consign  me to  the gallows. I saw I must employ another
hand, and  thought of  Lanyon. How  was he  to be reached? how
persuaded? Supposing  that I  escaped capture  in the streets,
how was  I to make my way into his presence? and how should I,
an unknown  and displeasing  visitor, prevail  on  the  famous
physician to rifle the study of his colleague, Dr Jekyll? Then
I remembered  that of my original character, one part remained
to me:  I could  write my  own hand;  and once I had conceived
that kindling spark, the way that I must follow became lighted
up from end to end.
Thereupon, I  arranged my  clothes as  best as  I  could,  and
summoning a  passing hansom,  drove to  an hotel  in  Portland
street, the  name of  which  I  chanced  to  remember.  At  my
appearance (which  was indeed comical enough, however tragic a
fate these  garments covered) the driver could not conceal his
mirth. I  gnashed my  teeth upon  him with  a gust of devilish
fury; and the smile withered from his face - happily for him -
yet more  happily for  myself, for  in another  instant I  had
certainly dragged  him from  his  perch.  At  the  inn,  as  I
entered, I looked about me with so black a countenance as made
the attendants  tremble; not  a look  did they  exchange in my
presence; but obsequiously took my orders, led me to a private
room, and  brought me  wherewithal to write. Hyde in danger of
his life  was a  creature new  to me:  shaken with  inordinate
anger, strung to the pitch of murder, lusting to inflict pain.
Yet the  creature was  astute; mastered  his fury with a great
effort of the will; composed his two important letters, one to
Lanyon and  one to  Poole; and  that he  might receive  actual
evidence of  their being posted, sent them out with directions
that they should be registered.
Thenceforward, he  sat all  day over  the fire  in the private
room, gnawing  his nails;  there he  dined, sitting alone with
his fears,  the waiter  visibly quailing  before his  eye; and
thence, when  the night  was fully  come, he  set forth in the
corner of  a closed  cab, and  was driven to and fro about the
streets of  the city.  He, I say - I cannot say, I. That child
of Hell  had nothing  human; nothing lived in him but fear and
hatred. And  when at  last, thinking  the driver  had begun to
grow suspicious,  he discharged  the cab and ventured on foot,
attired in  his misfitting  clothes, an  object marked out for
observation, into the midst of the nocturnal passengers, these
two base  passions raged  within him like a tempest. He walked
fast, hunted  by his  fears, chattering  to himself,  skulking
through  the   less  frequented  thoroughfares,  counting  the
minutes that  still divided  him from  midnight. Once  a woman
spoke to him, offering, I think, a box of lights. He smote her
in the face, and she fled.
When I came to myself at Lanyon's, the horror of my old friend
perhaps affected  me somewhat:  I do not know; it was at least
but a  drop in  the sea  to the abhorrence with which I looked
back upon  these hours.  A change  had come over me. It was no
longer the  fear of  the gallows,  it was  the horror of being
Hyde that  racked me.  I received Lanyon's condemnation partly
in a  dream; it  was partly  in a dream that I came home to my
own house  and got  into bed. I slept after the prostration of
the day,  with a stringent and profound slumber which not even
the nightmares  that wrung me could avail to break. I awoke in
the morning shaken, weakened, but refreshed. I still hated and
feared the  thought of  the brute  that slept within me, and I
had not  of course  forgotten the appalling dangers of the day
before; but I was once more at home, in my own house and close
to my drugs; and gratitude for my escape shone so strong in my
soul that it almost rivalled the brightness of hope.
I was  stepping leisurely  across the  court after  breakfast,
drinking the chill of the air with pleasure, when I was seized
again with  those indescribable  sensations that  heralded the
change; and  I had  but the  time to  gain the  shelter of  my
cabinet, before  I was once again raging and freezing with the
passions of  Hyde. It  took on  this occasion a double dose to
recall me  to myself;  and alas,  six hours  after, as  I  sat
looking sadly  in the  fire, the  pangs returned, and the drug
had to  be re-administered.  In short,  from that day forth it
seemed only by a great effort as of gymnastics, and only under
the immediate stimulation of the drug, that I was able to wear
the countenance  of Jekyll. At all hours of the day and night,
I would be taken with the premonitory shudder; above all, if I
slept, or  even dozed  for a moment in my chair, it was always
as Hyde  that I awakened. Under the strain of this continually
impending doom  and  by  the  sleeplessness  to  which  I  now
condemned myself,  ay, even beyond what I had thought possible
to man,  I became,  in my  own person, a creature eaten up and
emptied by  fever, languidly  weak both  in body and mind, and
solely occupied  by one  thought: the horror of my other self.
But when I slept, or when the virtue of the medicine wore off,
I would  leap almost  without transition  (for  the  pangs  of
transformation grew  daily less marked) into the possession of
a fancy  brimming with  images of  terror, a soul boiling with
causeless hatreds, and a body that seemed not strong enough to
contain the raging energies of life. The powers of Hyde seemed
to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And certainly the
hate that  now divided  them was  equal  on  each  side.  With
Jekyll, it  was a thing of vital instinct. He had now seen the
full deformity  of that  creature that shared with him some of
the phenomena  of consciousness,  and was  co-heir with him to
death:  and   beyond  these   links  of  community,  which  in
themselves made  the most  poignant part  of his  distress, he
thought of  Hyde, for  all his energy of life, as of something
not only  hellish but  inorganic. This was the shocking thing;
that the  slime of  the pit  seemed to utter cries and voices;
that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was
dead, and  had no shape, should usurp the offices of life. And
this again,  that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer
than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where
he heard  it mutter  and felt  it struggle  to be born; and at
every hour  of weakness,  and in  the confidence  of  slumber,
prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life. The hatred
of Hyde  for Jekyll,  was of  a different order. His terror of
the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide,
and return  to his  subordinate station of a part instead of a
person;  but   he  loathed   the  necessity,  he  loathed  the
despondency into  which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented
the dislike  with which  he was  himself regarded.  Hence  the
apelike tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand
blasphemies on  the pages of my books, burning the letters and
destroying the  portrait of  my father; and indeed, had it not
been for  his fear  of death,  he would  long ago  have ruined
himself in  order to  involve me  in the ruin. But his love of
life is  wonderful; I  go further: I, who sicken and freeze at
the mere  thought of  him, when  I recall  the  abjection  and
passion of  this attachment,  and when  I know how he fears my
power to cut him off by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity
him.
It is  useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong this
description; no  one has ever suffered such torments, let that
suffice; and  yet even  to these,  habit  brought  -  no,  not
alleviation -  but a  certain callousness  of soul,  a certain
acquiescence of  despair; and my punishment might have gone on
for years, but for the last calamity which has now fallen, and
which has  finally severed  me from my own face and nature. My
provision of  the salt, which had never been renewed since the
date of the first experiment, began to run low. I sent out for
a  fresh   supply,  and  mixed  the  draught;  the  ebullition
followed, and  the first  change of  colour, not the second; I
drank it  and it  was without  efficiency. You will learn from
Poole how  I have  had London ransacked; it was in vain; and I
am now  persuaded that my first supply was impure, and that it
was that unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the draught.
About a week has passed, and I am now finishing this statement
under the  influence of  the last  of the  old powders.  This,
then, is  the last time, short of a miracle, that Henry Jekyll
can think  his own thoughts or see his own face (now how sadly
altered!) in  the glass. Nor must I delay too long to bring my
writing to  an end;  for if  my narrative has hitherto escaped
destruction, it  has been  by a  combination of great prudence
and great  good luck.  Should the  throes of change take me in
the act  of writing  it, Hyde  will tear  it in pieces; but if
some time  shall have  elapsed after  I have  laid it  by, his
wonderful selfishness  and circumscription  to the moment will
probably save  it once  again from  the action  of his apelike
spite. And  indeed the  doom that  is closing  on us both, has
already changed and crushed him. Half an hour from now, when I
shall again and forever reindue that hated personality, I know
how I  shall sit  shuddering  and  weeping  in  my  chair,  or
continue, with  the most  strained and  fearstruck ecstasy  of
listening, to  pace up  and down  this room  (my last  earthly
refuge) and  give ear  to every sound of menace. Will Hyde die
upon the  scaffold? or  will he  find the  courage to  release
himself at  the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is
my true  hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another
than myself.  Here then,  as I lay down the pen and proceed to
seal up  my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry
Jekyll to an end.

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