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

“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’s been foul play,” said Poole, hoarsely.

 

“Foul play!” cried the lawyer, a good deal frightened and

rather inclined to be irritated 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

greatcoat; 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

flying 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

London so deserted. He could have wished it otherwise; never in

his life had he been conscious 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 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?”

 

“It’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 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 lamentation, they

had all started and turned towards 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

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 recollected

his courage and followed the butler into the laboratory building

through the surgical theatre, 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 making a great and obvious call on his resolution,

mounted the steps and knocked with a 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 anyone,”

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 we heard him cry out upon the name of God;

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. Utterson, biting his finger. “Suppose it

were as you suppose, supposing Dr. 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, whatever it is that lives in that cabinet, has been crying

night and day for some sort of medicine and cannot get it to his

mind. It was sometimes his way—the master’s, that is—to

write his orders on a sheet of paper and throw it on the stair.

We’ve had nothing else this week back; nothing but papers, and a

closed door, and the very meals left there to be smuggled in when

nobody was looking. Well, sir, every day, ay, and twice and

thrice in the same day, there have been orders and complaints, and

I have been sent flying to all the wholesale chemists in town.

Every time I brought the stuff back, there would be another paper

telling me to return it, because it was not pure, and another

order to a different firm. This drug is wanted bitter bad, sir,

whatever for.”

 

“Have you any of these papers?” asked Mr. Utterson.

 

Poole felt in his pocket and handed out a crumpled note, which

the lawyer, bending nearer to the candle, carefully examined. Its

contents ran thus: “Dr. Jekyll presents his compliments to Messrs.

Maw. He assures them that their last sample is impure and quite

useless for his present purpose. In the year 18—, Dr. J.

purchased a somewhat large quantity from Messrs. M. He now begs

them to search with most sedulous care, and should any of the same

quality be left, forward it to him at once. Expense is no

consideration. The importance of this to Dr. J. can hardly be

exaggerated.” So far the letter had run composedly enough, but

here with a sudden splutter of the pen, the writer’s emotion had

broken loose. “For God’s sake,” he added, “find me some of the

old.”

 

“This is a strange note,” said Mr. Utterson; and then sharply,

“How do you come to have it open?”

 

“The man at Maw’s was main angry, sir, and he threw it back to

me like so much dirt,” returned Poole.

 

“This is unquestionably the doctor’s hand, do you know?”

resumed the lawyer.

 

“I thought it looked like it,” said the servant rather

sulkily; and then, with another voice, “But what matters hand of

write?” he said. “I’ve seen him!”

 

“Seen him?” repeated Mr. Utterson. “Well?”

 

“That’s it!” said Poole. “It was this way. I came suddenly

into the theater from the garden. It seems he had slipped out to

look for this drug or whatever it is; for the cabinet door was

open, and there he was at the far end of the room digging among

the crates. He looked up when I came in, gave a kind of cry, and

whipped upstairs into the cabinet. It was but for one minute that

I saw him, but the hair stood 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 the avoidance of his

friends; hence his eagerness to find this drug, by means of which

the poor soul retains some hope of ultimate recovery—God grant

that he be not deceived! There is my explanation; it is sad

enough, Poole, ay, and appalling to consider; but it is plain and

natural, hangs well together, and delivers us from all exorbitant

alarms.”

 

“Sir,” said the butler, turning to a sort of mottled pallor,

“that thing was not my master, and there’s the truth. My

master”—here he looked round him and began to whisper—“is a

tall, fine build of a man, and this was more of a dwarf.”

Utterson attempted to protest. “O, sir,” cried Poole, “do you

think I do not know my master after twenty years? Do you think I

do not know where his head comes to in the cabinet door, where I

saw him every morning of my life? No, sir, that thing in the mask

was never Dr. Jekyll—God knows what it was, but it was never

Dr. Jekyll; and it is the belief of my heart that there was murder

done.”

 

“Poole,” replied the lawyer, “if you say that, it will become

my duty to make certain. Much as I desire to spare your master’s

feelings, much as I am puzzled by this note which seems to prove

him to be still alive, I shall consider it my duty to break in

that door.”

 

“Ah, Mr. Utterson, that’s talking!” cried the butler.

 

“And now comes the second question,” resumed Utterson: “Who

is going to do it?”

 

“Why, you and me, sir,” was the undaunted reply.

 

“That’s very well said,” returned the lawyer; “and whatever

comes of it, I shall make it my business to see you are no loser.”

 

“There is an axe in the theatre,” continued Poole; “and you

might take the kitchen poker for yourself.”

 

The lawyer took that rude but weighty instrument into his

hand, and balanced it. “Do you know, Poole,” he said, looking up,

“that you and I are about to place ourselves in a position of

some peril?”

 

“You may say so, sir, indeed,” returned the butler.

 

“It is well, then that we should be frank,” said the other.

“We both think more than we have said; let us make a clean breast.

This masked figure that you saw, did you recognise it?”

 

“Well, sir, it went so quick, and the creature was so doubled

up, that I could hardly