Chapter 2

He was ashamed of his relief, when Poole presently
returned to announce that Dr. Jekyll was gone out.

“I saw Mr. Hyde go in by the old dissecting room, Poole,” he said. “Is
that right, when Dr. Jekyll is from home?”

“Quite right, Mr. Utterson, sir,” replied the servant. “Mr. Hyde has a
key.”

“Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust in that young man,
Poole,” resumed the other musingly.

“Yes, sir, he does indeed,” said Poole. “We have all orders to obey
him.”

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

“O, dear no, sir. He never _dines_ here,” replied the butler. “Indeed
we see very little of him on this side of the house; he mostly comes
and goes by the laboratory.”

“Well, good-night, Poole.”

“Good-night, Mr. Utterson.”

And the lawyer set out homeward with a very heavy heart. “Poor Harry
Jekyll,” he thought, “my mind misgives me he is in deep waters! He was
wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of
God, there is no statute of limitations. Ay, it must be that; the ghost
of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment
coming, _pede claudo_, years after memory has forgotten and self-love
condoned the fault.” And the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded
awhile on his own past, groping in all the corners of memory, lest by
chance some Jack-in-the-Box of an old iniquity should leap to light
there. His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of
their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by
the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into a sober and
fearful gratitude by the many he had come so near to doing yet avoided.
And then by a return on his former subject, he conceived a spark of
hope. “This Master Hyde, if he were studied,” thought he, “must have
secrets of his own; black secrets, by the look of him; secrets compared
to which poor Jekyll’s worst would be like sunshine. Things cannot
continue as they are. It turns me cold to think of this creature
stealing like a thief to Harry’s bedside; poor Harry, what a wakening!
And the danger of it; for if this Hyde suspects the existence of the
will, he may grow impatient to inherit. Ay, I must put my shoulders 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
transparency, the strange clauses of the will.

DR. JEKYLL WAS QUITE AT EASE

A fortnight later, by excellent good fortune, the doctor gave one of
his pleasant dinners to some five or six old cronies, all intelligent,
reputable men and all judges of good wine; and Mr. Utterson so
contrived that he remained behind after the others had departed. This
was no new arrangement, but a thing that had befallen many scores of
times. Where Utterson was liked, he was liked well. Hosts loved to
detain the dry lawyer, when the light-hearted and loose-tongued had
already their foot on the threshold; they liked to sit a while in his
unobtrusive company, practising for solitude, sobering their minds in
the man’s rich silence after the expense and strain of gaiety. To this
rule, Dr. Jekyll was no exception; and as he now sat on the opposite
side of the fire—a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with
something of a slyish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and
kindness—you could see by his looks that he cherished for Mr. Utterson
a sincere and warm affection.

“I have been wanting to speak to you, Jekyll,” began the latter. “You
know that will of yours?”

A close observer might have gathered that the topic was distasteful;
but the doctor carried it off gaily. “My poor Utterson,” said he, “you
are unfortunate in such a client. I never saw a man so distressed as
you were by my will; unless it were that hide-bound pedant, Lanyon, at
what he called my scientific heresies. O, I know he’s a good fellow—you
needn’t frown—an excellent fellow, and I always mean to see more of
him; but a hide-bound pedant for all that; an ignorant, blatant pedant.
I was never more disappointed in any man than Lanyon.”

“You know I never approved of it,” pursued Utterson, ruthlessly
disregarding the fresh topic.

“My will? Yes, certainly, I know that,” said the doctor, a trifle
sharply. “You have told me so.”

“Well, I tell you so again,” continued the lawyer. “I have been
learning something of young Hyde.”

The large handsome face of Dr. Jekyll grew pale to the very lips, and
there came a blackness about his eyes. “I do not care to hear more,”
said he. “This is a matter I thought we had agreed to drop.”

“What I heard was abominable,” said Utterson.

“It can make no change. You do not understand my position,” returned
the doctor, with a certain incoherency of manner. “I am painfully
situated, Utterson; my position is a very strange—a very strange one.
It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking.”

“Jekyll,” said Utterson, “you know me: I am a man to be trusted. Make a
clean breast of this in confidence; and I make no doubt I can get you
out of it.”

“My good Utterson,” said the doctor, “this is very good of you, this is
downright good of you, and I cannot find words to thank you in. I
believe you fully; I would trust you before any man alive, ay, before
myself, if I could make the choice; but indeed it isn’t what you fancy;
it is not as bad as that; and just to put your good heart at rest, I
will tell you one thing: the moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde.
I give you my hand upon that; and I thank you again and again; and I
will just add one little word, Utterson, that I’m sure you’ll take in
good part: this is a private matter, and I beg of you to let it sleep.”

Utterson reflected a little, looking in the fire.

“I have no doubt you are perfectly right,” he said at last, getting to
his feet.

“Well, but since we have touched upon this business, and for the last
time I hope,” continued the doctor, “there is one point I should like
you to understand. I have really a very great interest in poor Hyde. I
know you have seen him; he told me so; and I fear he was rude. But I do
sincerely take a great, a very great interest in that young man; and if
I am taken away, Utterson, I wish you to promise me that you will bear
with him and get his rights for him. I think you would, if you knew
all; and it would be a weight off my mind if you would promise.”

“I can’t pretend that I shall ever like him,” said the lawyer.

“I don’t ask that,” pleaded Jekyll, laying his hand upon the other’s
arm; “I only ask for justice; I only ask you to help him for my sake,
when I am no longer here.”

Utterson heaved an irrepressible sigh. “Well,” said he, “I promise.”

THE CAREW MURDER CASE

Nearly a year later, in the month of October, 18—, London was startled
by a crime of singular ferocity and rendered all the more notable by
the high position of the victim. The details were few and startling. A
maid servant living alone in a house not far from the river, had gone
upstairs to bed about eleven. Although a fog rolled over the city in
the small hours, the early part of the night was cloudless, and the
lane, which the maid’s window overlooked, was brilliantly lit by the
full moon. It seems she was romantically given, for she sat down upon
her box, which stood immediately under the window, and fell into a
dream of musing. Never (she used to say, with streaming tears, when she
narrated that experience), never had she felt more at peace with all
men or thought more kindly of the world. And as she so sat she became
aware of an aged beautiful gentleman with white hair, drawing near
along the lane; and advancing to meet him, another and very small
gentleman, to whom at first she paid less attention. When they had come
within speech (which was just under the maid’s eyes) the older man
bowed and accosted the other with a very pretty manner of politeness.
It did not seem as if the subject of his address were of great
importance; indeed, from his pointing, it sometimes appeared as if he
were only inquiring his way; but the moon shone on his face as he
spoke, and the girl was pleased to watch it, it seemed to breathe such
an innocent and old-world kindness of disposition, yet with something
high too, as of a well-founded self-content. Presently her eye wandered
to the other, and she was surprised to recognise in him a certain Mr.
Hyde, who had once visited her master and for whom she had conceived a
dislike. He had in his hand a heavy cane, with which he was trifling;
but he answered never a word, and seemed to listen with an
ill-contained impatience. And then all of a sudden he broke out in a
great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and
carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman. The old gentleman
took a step back, with the air of one very much surprised and a trifle
hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to
the earth. And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his
victim under foot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the
bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway. At
the horror of these sights and sounds, the maid fainted.

It was two o’clock when she came to herself and called for the police.
The murderer was gone long ago; but there lay his victim in the middle
of the lane, incredibly mangled. The stick with which the deed had been
done, although it was of some rare and very tough and heavy wood, had
broken in the middle under the stress of this insensate cruelty; and
one splintered half had rolled in the neighbouring gutter—the other,
without doubt, had been carried away by the murderer. A purse and gold
watch were found upon the victim: but no cards or papers, except a
sealed and stamped envelope, which he had been probably carrying to the
post, and which bore the name and address of Mr. Utterson.

This was brought to the lawyer the next morning, before he was out of
bed; and he had no sooner seen it and been told the circumstances, than
he shot out a solemn lip. “I shall say nothing till I have seen the
body,” said he; “this may be very serious. Have the kindness to wait
while I dress.” And with the same grave countenance he hurried through
his breakfast and drove to the police station, whither the body had
been carried. As soon as he came into the cell, he nodded.

“Yes,” said he, “I recognise him. I am sorry to say that this is Sir
Danvers Carew.”

“Good God, sir,” exclaimed the officer, “is it possible?” And the next
moment his eye lighted up with professional ambition. “This will make a
deal of noise,” he said. “And perhaps you can help us to the man.” And
he briefly narrated what the maid had seen, and showed the broken
stick.

Mr. Utterson had already quailed at the name of Hyde; but when the
stick was laid before him, he could doubt no longer; broken and
battered as it was, he recognised it for one that he had himself
presented many years before to Henry Jekyll.

“Is this Mr. Hyde a person of small stature?” he inquired.

“Particularly small and particularly wicked-looking, is what the maid
calls him,” said the officer.

Mr. Utterson reflected; and then, raising his head, “If you will come
with me in my cab,” he said, “I think I can take you to his house.”

It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the
season. A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the
wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so
that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a
marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be
dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich,
lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here,
for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of
daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal
quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy
ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been
extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful
reinvasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer’s eyes, like a district
of some city in a nightmare. The thoughts of his mind, besides, were of
the gloomiest dye; and when he glanced at the companion of his drive,
he was conscious of some touch of that terror of the law and the law’s
officers, which may at times assail the most honest.

As the cab drew up before the address indicated, the fog lifted a
little and showed him a dingy street, a gin palace, a low French eating
house, a shop for the retail of penny numbers and twopenny salads, many
ragged children huddled in the doorways, and many women of many
different nationalities passing out, key in hand, to have a morning
glass; and the next moment the fog settled down again upon that part,
as brown as umber, and cut him off from his blackguardly surroundings.
This was the home of Henry Jekyll’s favourite; of a man who was heir to
a quarter of a million sterling.

An ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman opened the door. She had an
evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy: but her manners were excellent. Yes,
she said, this was Mr. Hyde’s, but he was not at home; he had been in
that night very late, but he had gone away again in less than an hour;
there was nothing strange in that; his habits were very irregular, and
he was often absent; for instance, it was nearly two months since she
had seen him till yesterday.

“Very well, then, we wish to see his rooms,” said the lawyer; and when
the woman began to declare it was impossible, “I had better tell you
who this person is,” he added. “This is Inspector Newcomen of Scotland
Yard.”

A flash of odious joy appeared upon the woman’s face. “Ah!” said she,
“he is in trouble! What has he done?”

Mr. Utterson and the inspector exchanged glances. “He don’t seem a very
popular character,” observed the latter. “And now, my good woman, just
let me and this gentleman have a look about us.”

In the whole extent of the house, which but for the old woman remained
otherwise empty, Mr. Hyde had only used a couple of rooms; but these
were furnished with luxury and good taste. A closet was filled with
wine; the plate was of silver, the napery elegant; a good picture hung
upon the walls, a gift (as Utterson supposed) from Henry Jekyll, who
was much of a connoisseur; and the carpets were of many plies and
agreeable in colour. At this moment, however, the rooms bore every mark
of having been recently and hurriedly ransacked; clothes lay about the
floor, with their pockets inside out; lock-fast drawers stood open; and
on the hearth there lay a pile of grey ashes, as though many papers had
been burned. From these embers the inspector disinterred the butt end
of a green cheque book, which had resisted the action of the fire; the
other half of the stick was found behind the door; and as this clinched
his suspicions, the officer declared himself delighted. A visit to the
bank, where several thousand pounds were found to be lying to the
murderer’s credit, completed his gratification.

“You may depend upon it, sir,” he told Mr. Utterson: “I have him in my
hand. He must have lost his head, or he never would have left the stick
or, above all, burned the cheque book. Why, money’s life to the man. We
have nothing to do but wait for him at the bank, and get out the
handbills.”

This last, however, was not so easy of accomplishment; for Mr. Hyde had
numbered few familiars—even the master of the servant maid had only
seen him twice; his family could nowhere be traced; he had never been
photographed; and the few who could describe him differed widely, as
common observers will. Only on one point were they agreed; and that was
the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive
impressed his beholders.

INCIDENT OF THE LETTER

It was late in the afternoon, when Mr. Utterson found his way to Dr.
Jekyll’s door, where he was at once admitted by Poole, and carried down
by the kitchen offices and across a yard which had once been a garden,
to the building which was indifferently known as the laboratory or
dissecting rooms. The doctor had bought the house from the heirs of a
celebrated surgeon; and his own tastes being rather chemical than
anatomical, had changed the destination of the block at the bottom of
the garden. It was the first time that the lawyer had been received in
that part of his friend’s quarters; and he eyed the dingy, windowless
structure with curiosity, and gazed round with a distasteful sense of
strangeness as he crossed the theatre, once crowded with eager students
and now lying gaunt and silent, the tables laden with chemical
apparatus, the floor strewn with crates and littered with packing
straw, and the light falling dimly through the foggy cupola. At the
further end, a flight of stairs mounted to a door covered with red
baize; and through this, Mr. Utterson was at last received into the
doctor’s cabinet. It was a large room fitted round with glass presses,
furnished, among other things, with a cheval-glass and a business
table, and looking out upon the court by three dusty windows barred
with iron. The fire burned in the grate; a lamp was set lighted on the
chimney shelf, for even in the houses the fog began to lie thickly; and
there, close up to the warmth, sat Dr. Jekyll, looking deathly sick. He
did not rise to meet his visitor, but held out a cold hand and bade him
welcome in a changed voice.

“And now,” said Mr. Utterson, as soon as Poole had left them, “you have
heard the news?”

The doctor shuddered. “They were crying it in the square,” he said. “I
heard them in my dining-room.”

“One word,” said the lawyer. “Carew was my client, but so are you, and
I want to know what I am doing. You have not been mad enough to hide
this fellow?”

“Utterson, I swear to God,” cried the doctor, “I swear to God I will
never set eyes on him again. I bind my honour to you that I am done
with him in this world. It is all at an end. And indeed he does not
want my help; you do not know him as I do; he is safe, he is quite
safe; mark my words, he will never more be heard of.”

The lawyer listened gloomily; he did not like his friend’s feverish
manner. “You seem pretty sure of him,” said he; “and for your sake, I
hope you may be right. If it came to a trial, your name might appear.”

“I am quite sure of him,” replied Jekyll; “I have grounds for certainty
that I cannot share with 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 should like to leave it in
your hands, Utterson; you would judge wisely, I am sure; I have so
great a trust in you.”

“You fear, I suppose, that it might lead to his detection?” asked the
lawyer.

“No,” said the other. “I cannot say that I care what becomes of Hyde; I
am quite done with him. I was thinking of my own character, which this
hateful business has rather exposed.”

Utterson ruminated awhile; he was surprised at his friend’s
selfishness, and yet relieved by it. “Well,” said he, at last, “let me
see the letter.”

The letter was written in an odd, upright hand and signed “Edward
Hyde”: and it signified, briefly enough, that the writer’s benefactor,
Dr. Jekyll, whom he had long so unworthily repaid for a thousand
generosities, need labour under no alarm for his safety, as he had
means of escape on which he placed a sure dependence. The lawyer liked
this letter well enough; it put a better colour on the intimacy than he
had looked for; and he blamed himself for some of his past suspicions.

“Have you the envelope?” he asked.

“I burned it,” replied Jekyll, “before I thought what I was about. But
it bore no postmark. The note was handed in.”

“Shall I keep this and sleep upon it?” asked Utterson.

“I wish you to judge for me entirely,” was the reply. “I have lost
confidence in myself.”

“Well, I shall consider,” returned the lawyer. “And now one word more:
it was Hyde who dictated the terms in your will about that
disappearance?”

The doctor seemed seized with a qualm of faintness; he shut his mouth
tight and nodded.

“I knew it,” said Utterson. “He meant to murder you. You had a fine
escape.”

“I have had what is far more to the purpose,” returned the doctor
solemnly: “I have had a lesson—O God, Utterson, what a lesson I have
had!” And he covered his face for a moment with his hands.

On his way out, the lawyer stopped and had a word or two with Poole.
“By the 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 be had directly; but perhaps, he thought, it
might be fished for.

Presently after, he sat on one side of his own hearth, with Mr. Guest,
his head clerk, upon the other, and midway between, at a nicely
calculated distance from the fire, a bottle of a particular old wine
that had long dwelt unsunned in the foundations of his house. The fog
still slept on the wing above the drowned city, where the lamps
glimmered like carbuncles; and through the muffle and smother of these
fallen clouds, the procession of the town’s life was still rolling in
through the great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind. But the
room was gay with firelight. In the bottle the acids were long ago
resolved; the imperial dye had softened with time, as the colour grows
richer in stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn afternoons on
hillside vineyards, was ready to be set free and to disperse the fogs
of London. Insensibly the lawyer melted. There was no man from whom he
kept fewer secrets than Mr. Guest; and he was not always sure that he
kept as many as he meant. Guest had often been on business to the
doctor’s; he knew Poole; he could scarce have failed to hear of Mr.
Hyde’s familiarity about the house; he might draw conclusions: was it
not as well, then, that he should see a letter which put that mystery
to right? and above all since Guest, being a great student and critic
of handwriting, would consider the step natural and obliging? The
clerk, besides, was a man of counsel; he could scarce read so strange a
document without dropping a remark; and by that remark Mr. Utterson
might shape his future course.

“This is a sad business about Sir Danvers,” he said.

“Yes, sir, indeed. It has elicited a great deal of public feeling,”
returned Guest. “The man, of course, was mad.”

“I should like to hear your views on that,” replied Utterson. “I have a
document here in his handwriting; it is between ourselves, for I scarce
know what to do about it; it is an ugly business at the best. But there
it is; quite in your way: a murderer’s autograph.”

Guest’s eyes brightened, and he sat down at once and studied it with
passion. “No sir,” he said: “not mad; but it is an odd hand.”

“And by all accounts a very odd writer,” added the lawyer.

Just then the servant entered with a note.

“Is that from Dr. Jekyll, sir?” inquired the clerk. “I thought I knew
the writing. Anything private, Mr. Utterson?”

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

“One moment. I thank you, sir;” and the clerk laid the two sheets of
paper alongside and sedulously compared their contents. “Thank you,
sir,” he said at last, returning both; “it’s a very interesting
autograph.”

There was a pause, during which Mr. Utterson struggled with himself.
“Why did you compare them, Guest?” he inquired suddenly.

“Well, sir,” returned the clerk, “there’s a rather singular
resemblance; the two hands are in many points identical: only
differently sloped.”

“Rather quaint,” said Utterson.

“It is, as you say, rather quaint,” returned Guest.

“I wouldn’t speak of this note, you know,” said the master.

“No, sir,” said the clerk. “I understand.”

But no sooner was Mr. Utterson alone that night, than he locked the
note into his safe, where it reposed from that time forward. “What!” he
thought. “Henry Jekyll forge for a murderer!” And his blood ran cold in
his veins.

INCIDENT OF DR. LANYON

Time ran on; thousands of pounds were offered in reward, for the death
of Sir Danvers was resented as a public injury; but Mr. Hyde had
disappeared out of the ken of the police as though he had never
existed. Much of his past was unearthed, indeed, and all disreputable:
tales came out of the man’s cruelty, at once so callous and violent; of
his vile life, of his strange associates, of the hatred that seemed to
have surrounded his career; but of his present whereabouts, not a
whisper. From the time he had left the house in Soho on the morning of
the murder, he was simply blotted out; and gradually, as time drew on,
Mr. Utterson began to recover from the hotness of his alarm, and to
grow more at quiet with himself. The death of Sir Danvers was, to his
way of thinking, more than paid for by the disappearance of Mr. Hyde.
Now that that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for
Dr. Jekyll. He came out of his seclusion, renewed relations with his
friends, became once more their familiar guest and entertainer; and
whilst he had always been known for charities, he was now no less
distinguished for religion. He was busy, he was much in the open air,
he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as if with an inward
consciousness of service; and for more than two months, the doctor was
at peace.

On the 8th of January Utterson had dined at the doctor’s with a small
party; Lanyon had been there; and the face of the host had looked from
one to the other as in the old days when the trio were inseparable
friends. On the 12th, and again on the 14th, the door was shut against
the lawyer. “The doctor was confined to the house,” Poole said, “and
saw no one.” On the 15th, he tried again, and was again refused; and
having now been used for the last two months to see his friend almost
daily, he found this return of solitude to weigh upon his spirits. The
fifth night he had in Guest to dine with him; and the sixth he betook
himself to Dr. Lanyon’s.

There at least he was not denied admittance; but when he came in, he
was shocked at the change which had taken place in the doctor’s
appearance.