The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (best free e book reader txt) 📖

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