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 up
on my head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask
upon his face? If it was my master, why did he cry out like a rat, and
run from me? I have served him long enough. And then ..." the man paused
and passed his hand over his face.
"These are all very strange circumstances," said Mr. Utterson, "but I
think I begin to see daylight. Your master, Poole, is plainly seized
with one of those maladies that both torture and deform the sufferer;
hence, for aught I know, the alteration of his voice; hence the mask and
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. Oh, 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
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
awe-struck 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? Oh, 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 the formality of
registration. The contents increased my wonder; for this is how the
letter ran:--
"10th December, 18--
"Dear Lanyon,--You are one of my oldest friends; and although we may
have differed at times on scientific questions, I cannot remember, at
least on my side, any break in our affection. There was never a day
when, if you had said to me, 'Jekyll, my life, my honour, my reason,
depend upon you,' I would not have sacrificed my 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 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 was a phial of some
tincture, a paper of some salt, and a 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.