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THE STRANGE CASE OF
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

^
fit

THE STRANGE CASE
OF DR. JEKYLL AND
^ MR. HYDE

By Robert Louis Stevenson

Illustrated by
CHARLES RAYMOND MACAULKY

NEW YORK

SCOTT-THAW COMPANY

542 Fifth Avenue
M C M I V

SCOTT-THAW COMPANY
J9°3

5485

fii
1904

DeDtcacion

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 if s still for you and me
That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.

Illustrations

List of Photogravure Plates

The Door - Frontispiece

Facing
page

"Mr. Utterson . . . was aware of an odd, light foot-
step drawing near " j8
"Clubbed him to the earth " - 62
" They saw it but for a glimpse " - f8
"He . . . gave a kind of cry, and whipped upstairs " 1 12
" Tossed the light of the candle to and fro about their

steps " - Il8

"Will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand" - 14.2

"I was once more Edward Hyde " - - Ij8
"Solely occupied by one thought — the horror of my other

self" - - 182

List of Other Drawings

Page

Mr. Utterson - 14

"Like some damned Juggernaut" - - 18

Dr. Lanyon - JJ

" The lawyer stood awhile " - 43

Dr. Jekyll 55

"She had an evil face " Of

"It's a very interesting autograph" - 8 1

"Keep clear of this accursed topic" - - 8ty

"Mr. Utterson, sir, Pm afraid " - - 104

" There stood Henry Jekyll " - - 14-5

Contents

STORY OF THE DOOR - 1 1

SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE - 29

DR. JEKYLL WAS QUITE AT EASE 51

THE CAREW MURDER CASE 59

INCIDENT OF THE LETTER 71

REMARKABLE INCIDENT OF DR. LANYON 83

INCIDENT AT THE WINDOW - 95

THE LAST NIGHT - 101

DR. LANYON'S NARRATIVE - 129

HENRY JEKYLL'S FULL STATEMENT OF THE

CASE - - 149

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; back-
ward in sentiment ; lean, long, dusty, dreary,
and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meet-
ings, 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 ap-
proved tolerance for others; sometimes won-
dering, almost with envy, at the high pressure
of spirits involved in their misdeeds ; and in

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 char-
acter, it was frequently his fortune to be the

Story of the Door

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 demeanor.

No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utter-
son ; 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 com-
mon. It was reported by those who encoun-
tered them in their Sunday walks that they said

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

nothing, looked singularly dull, and would hail
with obvious relief the appearance of a friend.
For all that, the two put the greatest store
by these excursions, counted them the chief
jewel of each week, and not only set aside oc-
casions of pleasure, but even resisted the calls
of business, that they might enjoy them un-
interrupted.

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 emu-
lously 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 con-
trast to its dingy neighborhood, like a fire in
a forest; and with its freshly painted shutters,

Story of the Door

well-polished brasses, and general cleanliness
and gayety 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 cer-
tain sinister block of building thrust forward
its gable on the street. It was two stories
high, showed no window, nothing but a door
on the lower story and a blind forehead of dis-
colored 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 re-
cess and struck matches on the panels; the
children kept shop upon the steps ; the school-
boy had tried his knife on the moldings ; and
for close on a generation no one had appeared
to drive away these random visitors or to repair
their ravages.

Mr. En field and the lawyer were on the
other side of the by-street; but when they

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 re-
plied in the affirma-
tive, " 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

Story of the Door

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 stump-
ing 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 each 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 halloo,
took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and
brought him back to where there was already
quite a group about the screaming child. He

The Strange Case of Dr. "Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 appear-
ance. Well, the child was not much the
worse — more frightened, according to the saw-
bones; 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-dried apothecary, of no
particular age and color, with a strong Edin-
burgh 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 turned 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

Story of the Door

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 acci-
dent,' 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

'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

place with the door? — whipped out a key,
went in, and presently came back with the
matter of ten pounds in gold and a check 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 check 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 check 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

Story of the Door

the bank. I gave in the check myself, and
said I had every reason to believe it was a
forgery. Not a bit of it. The check 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 fel-
low that nobody could have to do with, a really
damnable man ; and the person that drew the
check is the very pink of proprieties, cele-
brated, too, and — what makes it worse — one
of your fellows who do what they call good.
Blackmail, 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 ex-
plaining 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 check lives there?"

"A likely place, isn't it?" returned Mr.
23

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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, start-
ing 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

Story of the Door

the first floor; none below; the windows are
always shut, but they're clean. And then
there is a chimney which is generally smok-
ing; 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."

" H'm," 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 ;

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

something displeasing, something downright
detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked,
and yet I scarcely know why. He must be
deformed somewhere ; he gives a strong feel-
ing 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 con-
sideration. " 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 in-
exact in any point, you had better correct it."

Story of the Door

" 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 re-
sumed. " Here is another lesson to say noth-
ing," 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."

Search for Mr. Hyde

evening Mr. Utterson came
home to his bachelor house in som-
ber 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 neigh-
boring 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 indorsed on the en-
velope 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

The Strange Case of Dr. "Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

that, in case of the decease of Henry Jekyll,
M.D., D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., etc., all his
possessions were to pass into the hands of his
" friend and benefactor, Edward Hyde," but
that in case of Doctor Jekyll's " disappearance
or unexplained absence for any period exceed-
ing 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 eye-sore. 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,

Search for Mr. Hyde

insubstantial mists that had so long baffled
his eye, there leaped up the sudden, definite
presentment of a fiend. »

" I thought it was mad-
ness," 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
Cavendish Square, that cit-
adel of medicine, where his
friend, the great Doctor
Lanyon, had his house, and
received his crowding pa-
tients. " If any one 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 din-

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

ing-room where Doctor 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 pre-
occupied 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
Doctor Lanyon. "But I suppose we are.
And what of that ? I see little of him now."

Search for Mr. Hyde

" 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 be-
came 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 sud-
denly purple, " would have estranged Damon
and Pythias."

This little spirit 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 convey-
ancing— 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.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

"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

Search for Mr. Hyde

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 lamplit 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

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 exam-
ined. 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. 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 un-
impressionable Enfield a spirit of enduring
hatred.

From that time forward Mr. Utterson
began to haunt the door in the by-street 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.

Search for Mr. Hyde

" 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 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 rumor 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

The Strange Case of Dr. yekyll and Mr. Hyde

so sharply and decisively arrested, and it was
with a strong, superstitious prevision of suc-
cess 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 road-
way 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 in-
take of the breath. But his fear was only
momentary ; and, though he did not look the
lawyer in the face, he answered, coolly enough :

Search for Mr. Hyde

"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 favor?"

"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."

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

"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
42

Search for Mr. Hyde

laugh; and the next mo-
ment, with extraordinary
quickness, he had unlocked
the door and disappeared
into the house.

The law-
yer stood
a while
when Mr.
Hyde had
left him,
the p i c-
ture of dis-
quietude.
Then he
began to
slowly
mount the
street, paus-
ing every
or two and
putting his hand
to his brow, like a

step

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 nam-
able 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 hith-
erto 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 trog-
lodytic, 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 oh, my poor old Harry Jekyll,

Search for Mr. Hyde

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 Doctor Jekyll at home, Poole?" asked
the lawyer.

" I will see, Mr. Utterson," said Poole, ad-
mitting 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

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 is 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 Doctor
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?"

Search for Mr. Hyde

"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 all have orders to obey him."

" I do not think I ever met Mr. Hyde ? "
asked Utterson.

" Oh, 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; pun-

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

ishment coming, pede claudo, years after
memory has forgotten, and self-love con-
doned 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 in-
iquity 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 bed-
side; poor Harry, what a wakening! And

Search for Mr. Hyde

the danger of it; for if this Hyde suspects
the existence of the will, he may grow im-
patient 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.

Quite at Rase

Dr. Jekyll Was Quite at Rase

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 be-
fallen 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 a while in
his unobtrusive company, practising for soli-
tude, sobering their minds in the man's rich
silence after the expense and strain of gayety.
To this rule Doctor 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,

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 car-
ried it off gayly. " 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 scien-
tific 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 disap-
pointed 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,"
54

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

said the doctor, a trifle sharply. "You have
told me so."

"Well, I tell you so again," continued
the lawyer. " I have been learning some-
thing of young Hyde."

The large, handsome face of Doctor 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 can not 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."

Dr. Jekyll Was Quite at Ease

"My good Utterson," said the doctor,
"this is very good of you; this is downright
good of you, and I can not 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, in-
deed, 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," con-
tinued the doctor, " there is one point I should
like you to understand. I have really a very

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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

The Carew Murder Case

NEARLY a year later, in the month
of October, 1 8 — , London was
startled by a crime of singular feroc-
ity, 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 up stairs to bed about eleven. Al-
though a fog rolled over the city in the small
hours, the early part of the night was cloud-
less, and the lane, which the maid's window
overlooked, was brilliantly lighted 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

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 disposi-
tion, yet with something high, too, as of a
well-founded self-content. Presently her eye
wandered to the other, and she was surprised
to recognize 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

The Carew Murder Case

seemed to listen with an ill-contained impa-
tience. 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 in the roadway. At the horror
of these sights and sounds the maid fainted.

It was two o'clock when she came to her-
self 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

The Strange Case of Dr. "Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

cruelty ; and one splintered half had rolled in
the neighboring 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 recognize 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

'The Carew Murder Case

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 recognized 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 morn-
ing, and the first fog of the season. A great

The Strange Case of Dr. yekyll and Mr. Hyde

chocolate -colored pall lowered over heaven,
but the wind was continually charging and
routing these embattled vapors ; so that as
the cab crawled from street to street, Mr.
Utterson beheld a marvelous number of de-
grees 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 day-
light 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 night-
mare. 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

'The Carew Murder Case

law and the law's officers which may at times
assail the most honest.

As the cab drew up before the address in-
dicated, 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 num-
bers and twopenny salads,
many ragged children huddled
in the doorways, and many
women of many different na-
tionalities 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 favorite ; of a man
who was heir to quarter of a million sterling.

An ivory - faced and silvery - haired old
67

The Strange Case of Dr. "Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 in-
stance, 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 gentle-
man have a look about us."

The Carew Murder Case

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 rilled 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 color.
At this moment, however, the rooms bore
every mark of having been recently and hur-
riedly ransacked; clothes lay about the floor,
with their pockets inside out; lock-fast
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 check-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

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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
check-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 ac-
complishment ; 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 de-
formity with which the fugitive impressed
his beholders.

Incident of the Letter

IT was late in the afternoon when Mr.
Utterson found his way to Doctor
Jekyll's door, where he was at once ad-
mitted 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 sur-
geon ; and his own tastes being rather chemi-
cal than anatomical, had changed the destina-
tion 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

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
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 cry-
ing it in the square," he said. " I heard
them in my dining-room."

Incident of the Letter

" 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 swcar_£o God I will never set eyes
on him again. I bind my honor 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 can not
share with any one. 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

The Strange Case of Dr. yekyll and Mr. Hyde

should like to leave it in your hands, Utter-
son ; 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 can not 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 a while ; he was sur-
prised at his friend's -selfishness, and yet re-
lieved 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 ben-
efactor, Doctor Jekyll, whom he had long so
unworthily repaid for a thousand generosities,
need labor 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 color on the in-

Incident of the Letter

timacy 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 law-
yer. " 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 pur-
pose," returned the doctor, solemnly : " I »
have had a lesson — oh, God, Utterson, what a
lesson I have had ! " And he covered his
face for a moment with his hands.

'The Strange Case of Dr. yekyll and Mr. Hyde

On his way out, the lawyer stopped and
had a word or two with Poole. "By the
bye," 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

Incident of the Letter

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 color 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. Insensi-
bly the lawyer melted. There was no man
from whom he kept fewer secrets than Mr.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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

• ' o o

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,

Incident of the Letter

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 bright-
ened, 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 ac <

* ^

counts 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 pri-
vate, Mr. Utterson ? "

" Only an invitation to dinner. Why? Do
you want to see it ? "

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

"One moment. I thank you, sir;" and
the clerk laid the two sheets of paper along-
side 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. Utter-
son struggled with himself. " Why did you
-f, compare them, Guest?" he inquired, suddenly.

" Well, sir," returned the clerk, " there's a
rather singular resemblance : the 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 Dr. Lanyon

t I

Remarkable Incident of
Dr. Lanyon

*\IME 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 un-
earthed, 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

The Strange Case of Dr. yekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 Doctor 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 1 2th, and again on the 1 4th, the door
was shut against the lawyer. " The doctor
was confined to the house," Poole said, " and
saw no one." On the 1 5th he tried again, and

Remarkable Incident of Dr. Lanyon

was again refused ; and having now been used
for the last two months to seeing 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 Doctor Lanyon's.
There at least he was not denied admit-
tance ; but when he came in, he was shocked
at the change which had taken place in the
doctor's appearance. He^ hadjiis death- war- *
rant 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 sus-
pect. "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

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

he can bear." And yet when Utterson re-
marked 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 any-
thing ?" he inquired. "We are three very
old friends, Lanyon; we shall not live to
make others."

Remarkable Incident of Dr. Lanyon

"Nothing can be done," returned Lanyon;
"ask himself."

"He will not see me," said the lawyer.

" I am not -surprised at that," was the reply.
" Some day, Utterson, after I am dead, you

may perhaps come to learn the right and
wrong of this. I cannot tell you. And in
the meantime, if you can sit and talk with me
of other things, for God's sake, stay and do
so ; but if you cannot keep clear of this

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 ex-
clusion from the house, and asking the cause
i 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 ter-
rors so unmanning; and you can do but one
thing, Utterson, to lighten this destiny, and

Remarkable Incident of Dr. Lanyon

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 honored 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 mad-
ness; but in view of Lanyon's manner and
words, there must lie for it some deeper ground.
A week afterward Doctor 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 sit-
ting there by the light of a melancholy
candle, drew out and set before him an en-
velope addressed by the hand and sealed with
the seal of his dead friend. "PRIVATE; for
the hands of G. J. UTTERSON ALONE, and in
case of his pre-decease to be destroyed unread"
so it was emphatically superscribed; and the

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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
inclosure, likewise sealed, and marked upon
the cover as " not to be opened till the death
or disappearance of Doctor Henry Jekyll."
Utterson could not trust his eyes. Yes, it was
disappearance; here again, as in the mad will
which he had long ago restored to its author,
here again were the idea of a disappearance
and the name of Henry Jekyll 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 hor-
rible. 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
f professional honor and faith to his dead friend
were stringent obligations; and the packet
slept in the inmost corner of -his private safe.

Remarkable Incident of Dr. Lanyon

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
desired 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 communi-
cate. 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. Utter-
son became so used to the unvarying character
ot these reports, that he fell off little by little
in the frequency of his visits.

Incident at the Window

IT chanced on Sunday, when Mr. Utterson
was on his usual walk with Mr. Enfield,
that their way lay once again through
the by-street, and that when they came in
front of the door, both stopped to gaze on it.

" Well," said Enfield, " that story's at an
end at least. We shall never see more of
Mr. Hyde."

"I hope not," said Utterson. "Did I ever
tell you that I once saw him, and shared your
feeling of repulsion?"

" It was impossible to do the one without
the other," returned Enfield. " And, by the
way, what an ass you must have thought me,
not to know that this was a back way to
Doctor 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 Ut-
terson. " But if that be so, we may step into
the court and take a look at the windows.

The Strange Case of Dr. *Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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
Doctor 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 — Doctor
Jekyll.) Come, now; get your hat and take
a quick turn with us."

"You are very good," sighed the other.
98

Incident at the Window

" I should like to very much ; but no, no, no,
it is quite impossible ; I dare not. But in-
deed, Utterson, J am very glad to see you ;
this is really a great pleasure; I would ask
you and Mr. Enfield up, but the place is
really not fit."

" Why, then," said the lawyer, good-
naturedly, " the best thing we can do is to
stay down here and speak with you from
where we are."

" That is just what I was about to venture
to propose," returned the doctor with a smile.
But the words were hardly uttered before the
smile was struck out of his face and succeeded
by an expression of such abject terror and
despair as froze the very blood of the two
gentlemen below. They saw it but for a
glimpse, for the window was instantly thrust
down; but that glimpse had been sufficient,
and they turned and left the court without a
word. In silence, too, they traversed the by-
street; and it was not until they had come
into a neighboring thoroughfare, where even

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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.

IOO

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?"

103

The Strange Case of Dr. "Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

"I've been afraid for about a week," re-
turned Poole, doggedly disregarding the ques-
tion, "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 has been foul play," said
Poole, hoarsely.

"Foul play!" cried the lawyer, a good
104

The Last Night

deal frightened and rather inclined to be irri-
tated 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 fly-
ing 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 Lon-
don so deserted. He could have wished it
otherwise; never in his life had he been con-

105

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

scious 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?"

1 06

The Last Night

"Jt'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

107

"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

lamentation, they had all started and turned
toward 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 our 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 re-collected his
courage, and followed the butler into the
laboratory building and through the surgical
theater, 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 mak-
ing a great and obvious call on his resolu-
tion, mounted the steps and knocked with a

108

The Last Night

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 any qne," 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
wejieard him cry out upon the name of God ;

109

'The Strange Case of Dr. "Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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. Utter-
son, biting his finger. "Suppose it were as
you suspect ; supposing Doctor 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

1 10

The Last Night

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 an-
other 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 : " Doctor 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 — Doctor 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

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

to Doctor 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. Utter-
son ; 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 serv-
ant, rather sulkily ; and then, with another
voice, " But what matters hand of write," he
said. " IVe seer^ 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

I 12

T/ie Last Night

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 up stairs into the
cabinet. It was but for one minute that I
saw him, but the hair stood upon my head
like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why
had he a mask upon his face? If it was my
master, why did he cry out like a rat, and
run from me? I have served him long
enough. And then" — The man paused
and passed his hand over his face.

" These are all very strange circumstances,"
said Mr. Utterson, "but I think I begin to
see daylight. Your master, Poole, is plainly
seized with one of those maladies that both
torture and deform the sufferer; hence, for
aught I know, the alteration of his voice;
hence the mask and 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

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

he be not deceived! There is my explana-
tion ; it is sad enough, Poole, ay, and ap-
palling 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 mas-
ter, 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. "Oh, 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 Doctor
Jekyll — God knows what it was, but it was
never Doctor 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 cer-
tain. Much as I desire to spare your master's

114

T/ie Last Night

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," was the undaunted
reply.

"That's very well said," returned the law-
yer ; " 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.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

" 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
recognize 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. Uttersou, 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,

116

The Last Night

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 evi-
dence, Mr. Utterson; I'm book-learned
enough for that; but a ma'n 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 con-
nection. Ay, truly, I believe you ; I believe
poor Harry is killed, and I believe his mur-
derer— 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.

117

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

"Pull yourself together, Bradshaw," said
the lawyer. "This suspense, I know, is tell-
ing upon all of you; but it is now our inten-
tion 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 can-
dle to and fro about their steps, until they
came into the shelter of the theatre, where

118

The Last Night

they sat down silently to wait. London
hummed solemnly all round ; 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.

119

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

" 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
1 20

The Last Night

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 ex-
cellent 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 lamp-
light, 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 common-
place that night in London.

Right in the midst there lay the body of a
121

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 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

122

The Last Night

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 advised 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, hearken-
ing 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.

123

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

" 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 frac-
tures, 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 ex-
amine 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

124

The Last Night

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 words with a start, and then conquering

125

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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."

126

The Last Night

He caught up the next paper; it was a
brief note in the doctor's hand and dated at
the top. "Oh, Poole!" the lawyer cried,
" he was alive and here this day. He can
not 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, sol-
emnly. " 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

127

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 inclosure ? " 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.

128

Dr. Lanyotis Narrative

Doctor Lanyorf s Narrative

ON the ninth of January, now four days
ago, I received by the evening de-
livery a registered envelope, ad-
dressed 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 for-
mality of registration. The contents increased
my wonder ; for this is how the letter ran :

" loth December, 18 — .

" DEAR LANYON, — You are one of my
oldest friends ; and although we may have
differed at times on scientific questions, I can-
not 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 honor, my reason, depend upon you,' I

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

would not have sacrificed my fortune or my
left hand to help you. Lanyon, my life, my
honor, 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 dishonorable to grant.
Judge for yourself.

" I want you to postpone all other engage-
ments 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,

132

Dr. Lanyon's Narrative

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 pre-
ferred 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 after-

133

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

ward, 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 possi-
bility ? Think of me at this hour, in a
strange place, laboring 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 postoffice may fail me, and
this letter not come into your hands until

134

Dr. Lanyon's Narrative

to-morrow morning. In that case, dear Lan-
yon, do my errand when it shall be most con-
venient 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 with-
out a grave responsibility. I rose accordingly
from the 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 in-
struction, 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 Doctor Denman's surgical theatre

135

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

— 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 color. 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

136

Dr. Lanyoris Narrative

seemed to me to contain phosphorus and some
volatile ether. At the other ingredients I
could make no guess. The book was an or-
dinary 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 honor, the sanity, or the life
of my flighty colleague ? If his messenger
could go to one place, why could he not go

137

'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

to another ? and even granting some impedi-
ment, 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-defense.

Twelve o'clock had scarce rung out over
London, ere the knocker sounded very gently
on the door. I went myself at the sum-
mons, and found a small man crouching
against the pillars of the portico.

"Are you come from Doctor Jekyll?" I
asked.

He told me "Yes" by a constrained ges-
ture; and when I had bidden him enter, he
did not obey me without a searching back-
ward 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.

138

Dr. Lanyons Narrative

These particulars struck me, I confess, dis-
agreeably; 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 neighborhood. This bore some
resemblance to incipient rigor and was accom-
panied 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
139

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 — some-
thing seizing, surprising, and revolting — this
fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with and
to re-enforce 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

140

Dr. Lanyons Narrative

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 ex-
ample, and sat down myself in my customary
seat and with as fair an imitation of my ordi-
nary 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, Doctor 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, Doctor
Henry Jekyll, on a piece of business of some

141

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 hys-
teria— " I understood, a drawer " —

But here I took pity on my visitor's sus-
pense, 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 ut-
tered one loud sob of such immense relief
that I sat petrified. And the next moment,
in a voice that was already fairly well under

142

Dr. Lanyons Narrative

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, meas-
ured 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 color, to effervesce audibly, and to throw
off small fumes of vapor. 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 re-
mains. Will you be wise ? will you be guided ?
will you surfer me to take this glass in my
hand and to go forth from your house without

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 in-
stant, 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 inex-
plicable 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

144

Dr. Lanyon's Narrative

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 fol-
lowed ; 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 sud-
denly black, and the
features seemed to
melt and alter, and
H5

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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.

"Oh, God!" I screamed, and "Oh, God!"
again and again; for there before my eyes —
pale and shaken, and half fainting, and grop-
ing before him with his hands, like a man
restored from death — there stood Henry
Jekyll!

What he told me in the next hour I can-
not 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 can not, even in memory, dwell

146

Dr. Lanyon's Narrative

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.

147

Henry yekylF s Full Statement
of the Case

Henry JekyW s Full Statement
of the Case

1WAS 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 honorable and distinguished future. And
indeed the worst of my faults was a certain
impatient gayety 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 be-
fore 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 prog-
ress and position in the world, I stood already

The Strange Case of Dr. yekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 labored,
in the eye of day, at the furtherance of
knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffer-
ing. And it chanced that the direction of

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Henry Jekyll 's Full Statement of the Case

my scientific studies, which led wholly toward
the mystic and the transcendental, reacted and
shed a strong light on this consciousness of
the perennial war among my members. With
every day, and from both sides of my intelli-
gence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus
drew steadily nearer to that truth by whose
partial discovery I had 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 recognize 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

153

The Strange Case of Dr. *Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 be-
loved day-dream, on the thought of the sepa-
ration of these elements. If each, I told
myself, could but be housed in separate iden-
tities, 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 fagots were thus bound
together — that in the agonized womb of con-
sciousness these polar twins should be con-
tinuously struggling. How, then, were they
dissociated ?

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Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case

I was so far in my reflection 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 burden of our life are bound
forever on man's shoulders, and when the at-
tempt 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 recognized my natural body for the mere
aura and effulgence of certain of the powers
that made up my spirit, but managed to

155

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

compound a drug by which these powers should
be dethroned from their supremacy, and a sec-
ond form and countenance substituted, none
the less natural to me because they were the
expression, and bore the stamp, of the 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 over-
dose or at the least inopportunity in the mo-
ment 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 pre-
pared 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

156

Henry yeky/Ts Full Statement of the Case

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 can not 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, some-
thing indescribably new, and, from its very
novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger,
lighter, happier in body ; within I was con-
scious 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

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 dis-
closed 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 appear-
ance of Edward Hyde

I must here speak by theory alone, saying
not that which I know, but that which I

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Henry Jekyll 's Full Statement of the Case

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 de-
formity and decay. And yet when I looked
upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was con-
scious 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

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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

divided countenance I had been hitherto ac-
customed 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 visi-
ble 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 dis-
solution, 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

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Henry JekyWs Full Statement of the Case

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 prison-house 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 oc-
casion, 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 ;

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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 no-
tion; 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 a house-
keeper 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 my-
self a familiar object in my second character.
I next drew up that will to which you so

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Henry yekyll's Full Statement of the Case

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 rep-
utation 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 stand-
ing 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

163

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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, undigni-
fied; I would scarce use a harder term. But
in the hands of Edward Hyde, they soon be-
gan 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 farniliaj-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 centered 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 unim-

164

Henry "JekyW s Full Statement of the Case

paired; 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 conse-
quence, I shall no more than mention. An act
of cruelty to a child aroused against me the
anger of a passer-by, whom I recognized 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 check
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

165

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 ad-
ventures, 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 recognized 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 my-
self, and, in my psychological way, began
lazily to inquire into the elements of this
illusion, occasionally, even as I did so, drop-
ping back into a comfortable morning doze.
I was still so engaged when, in one of my
more wakeful moments, my eye fell upon

1 66

Henry "Jekyll 's Full Statement of the Case

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 —

167

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

a long journey down two pairs 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 Doctor Jekyll had returned to
his own shape and was sitting down, with a
darkened brow, to make a feint of break-
fasting.

Small indeed was my appetite. This inex-
plicable incident, this reversal of my previous
experience, seemed, like the Babylonian finger

1 68

Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case

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 pro-
jecting 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,

169

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 be-
coming 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 un-
equally shared between them. Jekyll — who
was composite — now with the most sensitive
apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, pro-
jected and shared in the pleasures and adven-
tures of Hyde ; but Hyde was indifferent to
Jekyll, or but remembered him as the moun-
tain 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

170

Henry JekyW 's Full Statement of the Case

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 for-
ever, 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 not be even conscious
of all that he had lost. Strange as my cir-
cumstances 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 discon-
tented doctor, surrounded by friends and cher-
ishing honest hopes ; and bade a resolute fare-
well to the liberty, the comparative youth, the

171

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

light step, leaping impulses, and secret pleas-
ures 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 strug-
gling 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

172

Henry yekyll's Full Statement of the Case

had considered my position, made enough al-
lowance for the complete moral insensibility and
insensate readiness to evil which were the lead-
ing characteristics of Edward Hyde. Yet it
was by these that I was punished. My devil
had been long 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 provo-
cation, and that I struck in no more reasona-
ble 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

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 dis-
persed ; I saw my life to be forfeit, and fled
from the scene of these excesses, at once
glorying and trembling, my lust of evil grati-
fied 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 lamp-lit streets, in the same divided ecstasy
of mind, gloating on my crime, light-head-
edly 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 stream-
ing tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen

174

Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case

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 pro-
fessional 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 oh, 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

175

The Strange Case of Dr. *Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 mur-
der 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 labored 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

176

Henry Jekyll 's Full Statement of the Case

instead that I daily enjoyed it more com-
pletely ; but I was still cursed with my duality
of purpose ; and as the first edge of my peni-
tence 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 discov-
ery. 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 chirrupings and sweet with
spring odors. I sat in the sun on a bench,

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The Strange Case of Dr. yekyll and Mr. Hyde

the animal within me licking the chaps 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 neighbors; and then I smiled, com-
paring myself with other men, comparing my
active good- will 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 a 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 con-
tempt 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, house-

178

Henry Jekyll 's Full Statement of the Case

less, 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 displeas-
ing visitor, prevail on the famous physician to
rifle the study of his colleague, Doctor Jekyll ?
Then I remembered that of my original

179

'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

character one part remained to me: I could
write my own hand; and once I had con-
ceived that kindling spark, the way that I
must follow became lighted up from end
to end.

Thereupon, I arranged my clothes as best
I could, and, summoning a passing hansom,
drove to a 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 at-
tendants tremble; not a look did they ex-
change in my presence ; but obsequiously took
my orders, led me to a private room, and
brought me wherewithal to write. Hyde in

1 80

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 can not 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

181

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

midst of the nocturnal passengers, these two
base passions raged within him like a tempest.
He walked fast, hunted by his fears, chatter-
ing to himself, skulking through the less fre-
quented 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

182

Henry yekyll's Full Statement of the Case

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 al-
most 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 her-
alded 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 pas-
sions 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 readministered. In short, from that day
forth it seemed only by a great effort, as of
gymnastics, and only under the immediate

183

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 con-
demned 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 transi-
tion— 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 rag-
ing energies of life. The powers of Hyde
seemed to have grown with the sickliness of

184

Henry yekyll's Full Statement of the Case

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 some-
thing 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

185

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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 re-
garded. Hence the ape-like tricks that he
would play me, scrawling in my own hand
blasphemies on the pages of my books, burn-
ing 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

1 86

Henry "Jekyll 's Pull Statement of the Case

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 color, 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.

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

187

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

face — now how sadly altered! — in the glass.
Nor must I delay too long to bring my writ-
ing to an end; for if my narrative has hith-
erto 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 selfish-
ness and circumscription to the moment will
probably save it once again from the action
of his ape-like 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 con-
tinue, 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 courage to
release himself at the last moment? God

1 88

Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case

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.

THE END

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The strange case

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