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 by-street 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 _a 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 by-street 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 he, "must
have secrets of his own: black secrets, by the look of him; secrets
compared to which poor Jekyll's worst would be like sunshine. Things
cannot continue as they are. It turns me cold to think of this creature
stealing like a thief to Harry's bedside; poor Harry, what a wakening!
And the danger of it; for if this Hyde suspects the existence of the
will, he may grow impatient to inherit. 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. Oh, 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, 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
re-invasion 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 grey ashes, as though many papers had
been burned. From these embers the inspector disinterred the butt-end of
a green cheque-book, which had resisted the action of the fire; the
other half of the stick was found behind the door; and as this clinched
his suspicions, the officer declared himself delighted. A visit to the
bank, where several thousand pounds were found to be lying to the
murderer's credit, completed his gratification.
"You may depend upon it, sir," he told Mr. Utterson: "I have him in my
hand. He must have lost his head, or he never would have left the stick
or, above all, burned the cheque-book. Why, money's life to the man. We
have nothing to do but wait for him at the bank, and get out the
handbills."
This last, however, was not so easy of accomplishment; for Mr. Hyde had
numbered few familiars--even the master of the servant-maid had only
seen him twice; his family could nowhere be traced; he had never been
photographed; and the few who could describe him differed widely, as
common observers will. Only on one point were they agreed; and that was
the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive
impressed his beholders.
INCIDENT OF THE LETTER
It was late in the afternoon when Mr. Utterson found his way to Dr.
Jekyll's door, where he was at once admitted by Poole, and carried down
by the kitchen offices and across a yard which had once been a garden to
the building which was indifferently known as the laboratory or 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 farther
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."