The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

‘Is this Mr Hyde a person of small stature?’ he inquired.

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

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

It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season. A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr Utterson beheld a marvellous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful 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 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 piles 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 gray 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.

CHAPTER 5 Incident of the Letter (#ulink_d61e5ff5-2989-5f84-97c4-5eab79a089ff)

It was late in the afternoon, when Mr Utterson found his way to Dr Jekyll’s door, where he was at once admitted by Poole, and carried down by the kitchen offices and across a yard which had once been a garden, to the building which was indifferently known as the laboratory or the dissecting rooms. The doctor had bought the house from the heirs of a celebrated surgeon; and his own tastes being rather chemical than anatomical, had changed the destination of the block at the bottom of the garden. It was the first time that the lawyer had been received in that part of his friend’s quarters; and he eyed the dingy windowless structure with curiosity, and gazed round with a distasteful sense of strangeness as he crossed the theatre, once crowded with eager students, and now lying gaunt and silent, the tables laden with chemical apparatus, the floor strewn with crates and littered with packing straw, and the light falling dimly through the foggy cupola. At the 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 deadly sick. He did not rise to meet his visitor, but held out a cold hand, and bade him welcome in a changed voice.

‘And now,’ said Mr Utterson, as soon as Poole had left them, ‘you have heard the news?’

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

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

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

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 anyone. 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 have 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 today: what was the messenger like?’ But Poole was positive nothing had come except by post; ‘and only circulars by that,’ he added.