balanced it. “Do you know, Poole,” he said, looking up, “that you and I
are about to place ourselves in a position of some peril?”
“You may say so, sir, indeed,” returned the butler.
“It is well, then that we should be frank,” said the other. “We both
think more than we have said; let us make a clean breast. This masked
figure that you saw, did you recognise it?”
“Well, sir, it went so quick, and the creature was so doubled up, that
I could hardly swear to that,” was the answer. “But if you mean, was it
Mr. Hyde?—why, yes, I think it was! You see, it was much of the same
bigness; and it had the same quick, light way with it; and then who
else could have got in by the laboratory door? You have not forgot,
sir, that at the time of the murder he had still the key with him? But
that’s not all. I don’t know, Mr. Utterson, if you ever met this Mr.
Hyde?”
“Yes,” said the lawyer, “I once spoke with him.”
“Then you must know as well as the rest of us that there was something
queer about that gentleman—something that gave a man a turn—I don’t
know rightly how to say it, sir, beyond this: that you felt in your
marrow kind of cold and thin.”
“I own I felt something of what you describe,” said Mr. Utterson.
“Quite so, sir,” returned Poole. “Well, when that masked thing like a
monkey jumped from among the chemicals and whipped into the cabinet, it
went down my spine like ice. O, I know it’s not evidence, Mr. Utterson;
I’m book-learned enough for that; but a man has his feelings, and I
give you my bible-word it was Mr. Hyde!”
“Ay, ay,” said the lawyer. “My fears incline to the same point. Evil, I
fear, founded—evil was sure to come—of that connection. Ay truly, I
believe you; I believe poor Harry is killed; and I believe his murderer
(for what purpose, God alone can tell) is still lurking in his victim’s
room. Well, let our name be vengeance. Call Bradshaw.”
The footman came at the summons, very white and nervous.
“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, led the
way into the yard. The scud had banked over the moon, and it was now
quite dark. The wind, which only broke in puffs and draughts into that
deep well of building, tossed the light of the candle to and fro about
their steps, until they came into the shelter of the theatre, where
they sat down silently to wait. London hummed solemnly all around; but
nearer at hand, the stillness was only broken by the sounds of a
footfall moving to and fro along the cabinet floor.
“So it will walk all day, sir,” whispered Poole; “ay, and the better
part of the night. Only when a new sample comes from the chemist,
there’s a bit of a break. Ah, it’s an ill conscience that’s such an
enemy to rest! Ah, sir, there’s blood foully shed in every step of it!
But hark again, a little closer—put your heart in your ears, Mr.
Utterson, and tell me, is that the doctor’s foot?”
The steps fell lightly and oddly, with a certain swing, for all they
went so slowly; it was different indeed from the heavy creaking tread
of Henry Jekyll. Utterson sighed. “Is there never anything else?” he
asked.
Poole nodded. “Once,” he said. “Once I heard it weeping!”
“Weeping? how that?” said the lawyer, conscious of a sudden chill of
horror.
“Weeping like a woman or a lost soul,” said the butler. “I came away
with that upon my heart, that I could have wept too.”
But now the ten minutes drew to an end. Poole disinterred the axe from
under a stack of packing straw; the candle was set upon the nearest
table to light them to the attack; and they drew near with bated breath
to where that patient foot was still going up and down, up and down, in
the quiet of the night.
“Jekyll,” cried Utterson, with a loud voice, “I demand to see you.” He
paused a moment, but there came no reply. “I give you fair warning, our
suspicions are aroused, and I must and shall see you,” he resumed; “if
not by fair means, then by foul—if not of your consent, then by brute
force!”
“Utterson,” said the voice, “for God’s sake, have mercy!”
“Ah, that’s not Jekyll’s voice—it’s Hyde’s!” cried Utterson. “Down with
the door, Poole!”
Poole swung the axe over his shoulder; the blow shook the building, and
the red baize door leaped against the lock and hinges. A dismal
screech, as of mere animal terror, rang from the cabinet. Up went the
axe again, and again the panels crashed and the frame bounded; four
times the blow fell; but the wood was tough and the fittings were of
excellent workmanship; and it was not until the fifth, that the lock
burst and the wreck of the door fell inwards on the carpet.
The besiegers, appalled by their own riot and the stillness that had
succeeded, stood back a little and peered in. There lay the cabinet
before their eyes in the quiet lamplight, a good fire glowing and
chattering on the hearth, the kettle singing its thin strain, a drawer
or two open, papers neatly set forth on the business table, and nearer
the fire, the things laid out for tea; the quietest room, you would
have said, and, but for the glazed presses full of chemicals, the most
commonplace that night in London.
Right in the middle there lay the body of a man sorely contorted and
still twitching. They drew near on tiptoe, turned it on his back and
beheld the face of Edward Hyde. He was dressed in clothes far too large
for him, clothes of the doctor’s bigness; the cords of his face still
moved with a semblance of life, but life was quite gone; and by the
crushed phial in the hand and the strong smell of kernels that hung
upon the air, Utterson knew that he was looking on the body of a
self-destroyer.
“We have come too late,” he said sternly, “whether to save or punish.
Hyde is gone to his account; and it only remains for us to find the
body of your master.”
The far greater proportion of the building was occupied by the theatre,
which filled almost the whole ground storey and was lighted from above,
and by the cabinet, which formed an upper storey at one end and looked
upon the court. A corridor joined the theatre to the door on the
by-street; and with this the cabinet communicated separately by a
second flight of stairs. There were besides a few dark closets and a
spacious cellar. All these they now thoroughly examined. Each closet
needed but a glance, for all were empty, and all, by the dust that fell
from their doors, had stood long unopened. The cellar, indeed, was
filled with crazy lumber, mostly dating from the times of the surgeon
who was Jekyll’s predecessor; but even as they opened the door they
were advertised of the uselessness of further search, by the fall of a
perfect mat of cobweb which had for years sealed up the entrance.
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 by-street. It was locked; and lying near by on the flags, they
found the key, already stained with rust.
“This does not look like use,” observed the lawyer.
“Use!” echoed Poole. “Do you not see, sir, it is broken? much as if a
man had stamped on it.”
“Ay,” continued Utterson, “and the fractures, too, are rusty.” The two
men looked at each other with a scare. “This is beyond me, Poole,” said
the lawyer. “Let us go back to the cabinet.”
They mounted the stair in silence, and still with an occasional
awestruck glance at the dead body, proceeded more thoroughly to examine
the contents of the cabinet. At one table, there were traces of
chemical work, various measured heaps of some white salt being laid on
glass saucers, as though for an experiment in which the unhappy man had
been prevented.
“That is the same drug that I was always bringing him,” said Poole; and
even as he spoke, the kettle with a startling noise boiled over.
This brought them to the fireside, where the easy-chair was drawn
cosily up, and the tea things stood ready to the sitter’s elbow, the
very sugar in the cup. There were several books on a shelf; one lay
beside the tea things open, and Utterson was amazed to find it a copy
of a pious work, for which Jekyll had several times expressed a great
esteem, annotated, in his own hand with startling blasphemies.
Next, in the course of their review of the chamber, the searchers came
to the cheval-glass, into whose depths they looked with an involuntary
horror. But it was so turned as to show them nothing but the rosy glow
playing on the roof, the fire sparkling in a hundred repetitions along
the glazed front of the presses, and their own pale and fearful
countenances stooping to look in.
“This glass has seen some strange things, sir,” whispered Poole.
“And surely none stranger than itself,” echoed the lawyer in the same
tones. “For what did Jekyll”—he caught himself up at the word with a
start, and then conquering the weakness—“what could Jekyll want with
it?” he said.
“You may say that!” said Poole.
Next they turned to the business table. On the desk, among the neat
array of papers, a large envelope was uppermost, and bore, in the
doctor’s hand, the name of Mr. Utterson. The lawyer unsealed it, and
several enclosures fell to the floor. The first was a will, drawn in
the same eccentric terms as the one which he had returned six months
before, to serve as a testament in case of death and as a deed of gift
in case of disappearance; but in place of the name of Edward Hyde, the
lawyer, with indescribable amazement read the name of Gabriel John
Utterson. He looked at Poole, and then back at the paper, and last of
all at the dead malefactor stretched upon the carpet.
“My head goes round,” he said. “He has been all these days in
possession; he had no cause to like me; he must have raged to see
himself displaced; and he has not destroyed this document.”
He caught up the next paper; it was a brief note in the doctor’s hand
and dated at the top. “O Poole!” the lawyer cried, “he was alive and
here this day. He cannot have been disposed of in so short a space; he
must be still alive, he must have fled! And then, why fled? and how?
and in that case, can we venture to declare this suicide? O, we must be
careful. I foresee that we may yet involve your master in some dire
catastrophe.”
“Why don’t you read it, sir?” asked Poole.
“Because I fear,” replied the lawyer solemnly. “God grant I have no
cause for it!” And with that he brought the paper to his eyes and read
as follows:
“My dear Utterson,—When this shall fall into your hands, I shall have
disappeared, under what circumstances I have not the penetration to
foresee, but my instinct and all the circumstances of my nameless
situation tell me that the end is sure and must be early. Go then, and
first read the narrative which Lanyon warned me he was to place in your
hands; and if you care to hear more, turn to the confession of
“Your unworthy and unhappy friend,
“HENRY JEKYLL.”
“There was a third enclosure?” asked Utterson.
“Here, sir,” said Poole, and gave into his hands a considerable packet
sealed in several places.
The lawyer put it in his pocket. “I would say nothing of this paper. If
your master has fled or is dead, we may at least save his credit. It is
now ten; I must go home and read these documents in quiet; but I shall
be back before midnight, when we shall send for the police.”
They went out, locking the door of the theatre behind them; and
Utterson, once more leaving the servants gathered about the fire in the
hall, trudged back to his office to read the two narratives in which
this mystery was now to be explained.
DR. LANYON’S NARRATIVE
On the ninth of January, now four days ago, I received by the evening
delivery a registered envelope, addressed in the hand of my colleague
and old school companion, Henry Jekyll. I was a good deal surprised by
this; for we were by no means in the habit of correspondence; I had
seen the man, dined with him, indeed, the night before; and I could
imagine nothing in our intercourse that should justify formality of
registration. The contents increased my wonder; for this is how the
letter ran:
“10_th December_, 18—.
“Dear Lanyon,—You are one of my oldest friends; and although we may
have differed at times on scientific questions, I cannot remember, at
least on my side, any break in our affection. There was never a day
when, if you had said to me, ‘Jekyll, my life, my honour, my reason,
depend upon you,’ I would not have sacrificed my left hand to help you.
Lanyon, my life, my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy; if you
fail me to-night, I am lost. You might suppose, after this preface,
that I am going to ask you for something dishonourable to grant. Judge
for yourself.
“I want you to postpone all other engagements for to-night—ay, even if
you were summoned to the bedside of an emperor; to take a cab, unless
your carriage should be actually at the door; and with this letter in
your hand for consultation, to drive straight to my house. Poole, my
butler, has his orders; you will find him waiting your arrival with a
locksmith. The door of my cabinet is then to be forced; and you are to
go in alone; to open the glazed press (letter E) on the left hand,
breaking the lock if it be shut; and to draw out, _with all its
contents as they stand_, the fourth drawer from the top or (which is
the same thing) the third from the bottom. In my extreme distress of
mind, I have a morbid fear of misdirecting you; but even if I am in
error, you may know the right drawer by its contents: some powders, a
phial and a paper book. This drawer I beg of you to carry back with you
to Cavendish Square exactly as it stands.
“That is the first part of the service: now for the second. You should
be back, if you set out at once on the receipt of this, long before
midnight; but I will leave you that amount of margin, not only in the
fear of one of those obstacles that can neither be prevented nor
foreseen, but because an hour when your servants are in bed is to be
preferred for what will then remain to do. At midnight, then, I have to
ask you to be alone in your consulting room, to admit with your own
hand into the house a man who will present himself in my name, and to
place in his hands the drawer that you will have brought with you from
my cabinet. Then you will have played your part and earned my gratitude
completely. Five minutes afterwards, if you insist upon an explanation,
you will have understood that these arrangements are of capital
importance; and that by the neglect of one of them, fantastic as they
must appear, you might have charged your conscience with my death or
the shipwreck of my reason.
“Confident as I am that you will not trifle with this appeal, my heart
sinks and my hand trembles at the bare thought of such a possibility.
Think of me at this hour, in a strange place, labouring under a
blackness of distress that no fancy can exaggerate, and yet well aware
that, if you will but punctually serve me, my troubles will roll away
like a story that is told. Serve me, my dear Lanyon and save
“Your friend,
“H.J.
“P.S.—I had already sealed this up when a fresh terror struck upon my
soul. It is possible that the post-office may fail me, and this letter
not come into your hands until to-morrow morning. In that case, dear
Lanyon, do my errand when it shall be most convenient for you in the
course of the day; and once more expect my messenger at midnight. It
may then already be too late; and if that night passes without event,
you will know that you have seen the last of Henry Jekyll.”
Upon the reading of this letter, I made sure my colleague was insane;
but till that was proved beyond the possibility of doubt, I felt bound
to do as he requested. The less I understood of this farrago, the less
I was in a position to judge of its importance; and an appeal so worded
could not be set aside without a grave responsibility. I rose
accordingly from table, got into a hansom, and drove straight to
Jekyll’s house. The butler was awaiting my arrival; he had received by
the same post as mine a registered letter of instruction, and had sent
at once for a locksmith and a carpenter. The tradesmen came while we
were yet speaking; and we moved in a body to old Dr. Denman’s surgical
theatre, from which (as you are doubtless aware) Jekyll’s private
cabinet is most conveniently entered. The door was very strong, the
lock excellent; the carpenter avowed he would have great trouble and
have to do much damage, if force were to be used; and the locksmith was
near despair. But this last was a handy fellow, and after two hour’s
work, the door stood open. The press marked E was unlocked; and I took
out the drawer, had it filled up with straw and tied in a sheet, and
returned with it to Cavendish Square.
Here I proceeded to examine its contents. The powders were neatly
enough made up, but not with the nicety of the dispensing chemist; so
that it was plain they were of Jekyll’s private manufacture; and when I
opened one of the wrappers I found what seemed to me a simple
crystalline salt of a white colour. The phial, to which I next turned
my attention, might have been about half full of a blood-red liquor,
which was highly pungent to the sense of smell and seemed to me to
contain phosphorus and some volatile ether. At the other ingredients I
could make no guess. The book was an ordinary version book and
contained little but a series of dates. These covered a period of many
years, but I observed that the entries ceased nearly a year ago and
quite abruptly. Here and there a brief remark was appended to a date,
usually no more than a single word: “double” occurring perhaps six
times in a total of several hundred entries; and once very early in the
list and followed by several marks of exclamation, “total failure!!!”
All this, though it whetted my curiosity, told me little that was
definite. Here were a phial of some salt, and the record of a series of
experiments that had led (like too many of Jekyll’s investigations) to
no end of practical usefulness. How could the presence of these
articles in my house affect either the honour, the sanity, or the life
of my flighty colleague? If his messenger could go to one place, why
could he not go to another? And even granting some impediment, why was
this gentleman to be received by me in secret? The more I reflected the
more convinced I grew that I was dealing with a case of cerebral
disease; and though I dismissed my servants to bed, I loaded an old
revolver, that I might be found in some posture of self-defence.
Twelve o’clock had scarce rung out over London, ere the knocker sounded
very gently on the door. I went myself at the summons, and found a
small man crouching against the pillars of the portico.
“Are you come from Dr. Jekyll?” I asked.
He told me “yes” by a constrained gesture; and when I had bidden him
enter, he did not obey me without a searching backward glance into the
darkness of the square. There was a policeman not far off, advancing
with his bull’s eye open; and at the sight, I thought my visitor
started and made greater haste.
These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably; and as I followed
him into the bright light of the consulting room, I kept my hand ready
on my weapon. Here, at last, I had a chance of clearly seeing him. I
had never set eyes on him before, so much was certain. He was small, as
I have said; I was struck besides with the shocking expression of his
face, with his remarkable combination of great muscular activity and
great apparent debility of constitution, and—last but not least—with
the odd, subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood. This bore
some resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a marked
sinking of the pulse. At the time, I set it down to some idiosyncratic,
personal distaste, and merely wondered at the acuteness of the
symptoms; but I have since had reason to believe the cause to lie much
deeper in the nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the
principle of hatred.
This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance,
struck in me what I can only describe as a disgustful curiosity) was
dressed in a fashion that would have made an ordinary person laughable;
his clothes, that is to say, although they were of rich and sober
fabric, were enormously too large for him in every measurement—the
trousers hanging on his legs and rolled up to keep them from the
ground, the waist of the coat below his haunches, and the collar
sprawling wide upon his shoulders. Strange to relate, this ludicrous
accoutrement was far from moving me to laughter. Rather, as there was
something abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature
that now faced me—something seizing, surprising and revolting—this
fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce it; so that
to my interest in the man’s nature and character, there was added a
curiosity as to his origin, his life, his fortune and status in the
world.
These observations, though they have taken so great a space to be set
down in, were yet the work of a few seconds. My visitor was, indeed, on
fire with sombre excitement.
“Have you got it?” he cried. “Have you got it?” And so lively was his
impatience that he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shake
me.
I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang along my
blood. “Come, sir,” said I. “You forget that I have not yet the
pleasure of your acquaintance. Be seated, if you please.” And I showed
him an example, and sat down myself in my customary seat and with as
fair an imitation of my ordinary manner to a patient, as the lateness
of the hour, the nature of my preoccupations, and the horror I had of
my visitor, would suffer me to muster.
“I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon,” he replied civilly enough. “What you
say is very well founded; and my impatience has shown its heels to my
politeness. I come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr. Henry
Jekyll, on a piece of business of some moment; and I understood...” He
paused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite of his
collected manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches of the
hysteria—“I understood, a drawer...”
But here I took pity on my visitor’s suspense, and some perhaps on my
own growing curiosity.
“There it is, sir,” said I, pointing to the drawer, where it lay on the
floor behind a table and still covered with the sheet.
He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon his heart; I
could hear his teeth grate with the convulsive action of his jaws; and
his face was so ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for his life
and reason.
“Compose yourself,” said I.
He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with the decision of
despair, plucked away the sheet. At sight of the contents, he uttered
one loud sob of such immense relief that I sat petrified. And the next
moment, in a voice that was already fairly well under control, “Have
you a graduated glass?” he asked.
I rose from my place with something of an effort and gave him what he
asked.
He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red
tincture and added one of the powders. The mixture, which was at first
of a reddish hue, began, in proportion as the crystals melted, to
brighten in colour, to effervesce audibly, and to throw off small fumes
of vapour. Suddenly and at the same moment, the ebullition ceased and
the compound changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly to
a watery green. My visitor, who had watched these metamorphoses with a
keen eye, smiled, set down the glass upon the table, and then turned
and looked upon me with an air of scrutiny.