THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE


By Robert Louis Stevenson


Chapter 1

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; backward in 
sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable. At friendly 
meetings, 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 approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, 
almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; 
and in 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 character, it was frequently his fortune to be the 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 demeanour.
No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; 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 common. It was reported by those who encountered them in their Sunday 
walks, that they said nothing, looked singularly dull, and would hail with 
obvious relief the appearance of a friend. For all that, the two men put the 
greatest store by these excursions, counted them the chief jewel of each week, 
and not only set aside occasions of pleasure, but even resisted the calls of 
business, that they might enjoy them uninterrupted.
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 emulously 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 contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, 
like a fire in a forest; and with its freshly painted shutters, well-polished 
brasses, and general cleanliness and gaiety 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 certain sinister block of 
building thrust forward its gable on the street. It was two storeys high; 
showed no window, nothing but a door on the lower storey and a blind forehead 
of discoloured 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 recess 
and struck matches on the panels; children kept shop upon the steps; the 
schoolboy had tried his knife on the mouldings; and for close on a generation, 
no one had appeared to drive away these random visitors or to repair their 
ravages.
Mr. Enfield and the lawyer were on the other side of the by-street; but when 
they 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 replied 
in the affirmative, "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 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 stumping 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 one another 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 halloa, took to my heels, collared my 
gentleman, and brought him back to where there was already quite a group about 
the screaming child. He 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 appearance. Well, the child was not much 
the worse, more frightened, according to the Sawbones; 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-dry apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with a 
strong Edinburgh 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 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 accident,' 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 place with the door? -whipped out a key, went 
in, and presently came back with the matter of ten pounds in gold and a cheque 
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 cheque 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 cheque 
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 the bank. I gave in the cheque 
myself, and said I had every reason to believe it was a forgery. Not a bit of 
it. The cheque 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 fellow that nobody could have to do with, a really damnable man; and the 
person that drew the cheque is the very pink of the proprieties, celebrated, 
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 explaining 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 cheque lives there?"
"A likely place, isn't it?" returned Mr. 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, starting 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 the first floor; none below; the windows 
are always shut, but they're clean. And then there is a chimney, which is 
generally smoking; 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."
"Hm," 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; 
something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so 
disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a 
strong feeling 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 
consideration. "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 inexact in any 
point, you had better correct it."
"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 
resumed. "Here is another lesson to say nothing," 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."


Chapter 2

SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE

That evening Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in sombre 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 neighbouring 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 endorsed on the envelope 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 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 Dr. Jekyll's "disappearance or unexplained 
absence for any period exceeding 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 
eyesore. 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, 
insubstantial mists that had so long baffled his eye, there leaped up the 
sudden definite presentment of a fiend.
"I thought it was madness," 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 of Cavendish Square, that citadel of medicine, where his friend, the 
great Dr. Lanyon, had his house and received his crowding patients. "If anyone 
knows, it will be Lanyon," he thought.
The solemn butler knew and welcomed him; he was subjected to no stage of 
delay, but ushered direct from the door to the dining-room, where Dr. 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 preoccupied his mind.
"I suppose, Lanyon," he said, "you and I must be the two oldest friends that 
Henry Jekyll has?"
"I wish the friends were younger," chuckled Dr. Lanyon. "But I suppose we are. 
And what of that? I see little of him now."
"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 
became 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 suddenly purple, "would have estranged 
Damon and Pythias."
This little spirt 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 conveyancing), 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 protege of his -one Hyde?" he asked.
"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 
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 lamp-lighted 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 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 examined. 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. And 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 unimpressionable 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.
"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 rumour 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 so sharply and decisively arrested; and it was with a strong, 
superstitious prevision of success 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 roadway 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 intake of the breath. But his fear was 
only momentary; and though he did not look the lawyer in the face, he answered 
coolly enough: "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 favour?"
"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."
"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 laugh; and the next moment, with 
extraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and disappeared into the 
house.
The lawyer stood awhile when Mr. Hyde had left him, the picture of 
disquietude. Then he began slowly to mount the street, pausing every step or 
two, and putting his hand to his brow like a 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 nameable 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 
hitherto 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 troglodytic, 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, O my 
poor old Harry Jekyll, 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 Dr. Jekyll at home, Poole?" asked the lawyer.
"I will see, Mr. Utterson," said Poole, admitting 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 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 tonight there was a shudder in his blood; the 
face of Hyde sat heavy on his memory; he felt (what was 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 Dr. 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!"
"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 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. Ah, 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 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 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. Ah, 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.


Chapter 3

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 the loose-tongued had already their foot on the threshold; 
they liked to sit awhile 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. 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 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 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," 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."


Chapter 4

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 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 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 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 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 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 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; 
lockfast drawers stood open; and on the hearth 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

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 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 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.
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 news-boys, 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 rights? 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 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, 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.


Chapter 6

REMARKABLE 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 the 
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. He had 
his death-warrant 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 suspect. "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 he can bear." And yet when Utterson 
remarked 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 Dr. 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 anything?" he inquired. "We are three very old friends, Lanyon; we shall 
not live to make others."
"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 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 exclusion from the house, and asking the cause 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 terrors so unmanning; and you 
can do but one thing, Utterson, to lighten this destiny, and 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 honoured 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 madness; but in 
view of Lanyon's manner and words, there must lie for it some deeper ground.
A week afterwards Dr. 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 sitting there by 
the light of a melancholy candle, drew out and set before him an envelope 
addressed by the hand and sealed with the seal of his dead friend. "PRIVATE: 
for the hands of J.G. Utterson PALONE, and in case of his predecease to be 
destroyed unread," so it was emphatically superscribed; and the lawyer dreaded 
to behold the contents. "I have buried one friend today," 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 enclosure, likewise sealed, and 
marked upon the cover as "not to be opened till the death or disappearance of 
Dr. 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 horrible. Written by the hand of Lanyon, what should it mean? A 
great curiosity came to the trustee, to disregard the prohibition and dive at 
once to the bottom of these mysteries; but professional honour and faith to 
his dead friend were stringent obligations; and the packet slept in the inmost 
corner of his private safe.
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 preferred 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 communicate. 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. Utterson became so used to the 
unvarying character of these reports, that he fell off little by little in the 
frequency of his visits.


Chapter 7

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 Dr. 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 Utterson. "But if that be so, we may step 
into the court and take a look at the windows. 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 Dr. 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 -Dr. 
Jekyll.) Come now; get your hat, and take a quick turn with us."
"You are very good," sighed the other. "I should like to very much; but no, 
no, no; it is quite impossible; I dare not. But indeed, Utterson, I 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 neighbouring thoroughfare, where even 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.


Chapter 8

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 ?"
"I've been afraid for about a week," returned Poole, doggedly disregarding the 
question; "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'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 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 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 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?"
"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 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 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 re-collected his courage and 
followed the butler into the laboratory building and 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 any one," 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 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, 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 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 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 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 had 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 theatre 
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 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 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. "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 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 about 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 is 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 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. Utterson, 
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, 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 evidence, Mr. Utterson; I'm book-learned 
enough for that; but a man 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 connection. Ay, truly, I believe you; 
I believe poor Harry is killed; and I believe his murderer (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.
"Pull yourself together, Bradshaw," said the lawyer. "This suspense, I know, 
is telling upon all of you; but it is now our intention 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 candle to and fro about their steps, until they came into the 
shelter of the theatre, where they sat down silently to wait. London hummed 
solemnly all around; but nearer at hand, the stillness was only broken by the 
sound 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.
"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 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 excellent 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 lamplight, 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 commonplace that night in London.
Right in the midst there lay the body of a 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 that 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 storey, and was lighted from above, and by the 
cabinet, which formed an upper storey 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 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 advertised 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, 
hearkening 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.
"Use!" echoed Poole. "Do you not see, sir, it is broken? much as if a man had 
stamped on it."
"Ah," continued Utterson, "and the fractures, 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 awestruck 
glance at the dead body, proceeded more thoroughly to examine 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 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 depth 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 tone. 
"For what did Jekyll" -he caught himself up at the word with a start, and then 
conquering 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 papers, 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."
He caught 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 
cannot 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, solemnly. "God grant I have no cause for 
it!" And with that he brought the paper to his eye, 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 instincts 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 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 enclosure?" 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.


Chapter 9

DR. LANYON'S NARRATIVE

On the ninth of January, now four days ago, I received by the evening delivery 
a registered envelope, addressed 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 formality of registration. The contents 
increased my wonder; for this is how the letter ran: -

10th December 18 -
DEAR LANYON, -You are one of my oldest friends; and although we may have 
differed at times on scientific questions, I cannot 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 honour, my reason, depend upon you," I would not 
have sacrificed my fortune or my left hand to help you. Lanyon, my life, my 
honour, my reason, are all at your mercy; if you fail me tonight, I am lost. 
You might suppose, after this preface, that I am going to ask you for 
something dishonourable to grant. Judge for yourself.
I want you to postpone all other engagements for tonight -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, 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 preferred 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 afterwards, 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 possibility. Think of me at 
this hour, in a strange place, labouring 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 post office may fail me, and this letter not come into 
your hands until tomorrow morning. In that case, dear Lanyon, do my errand 
when it shall be most convenient 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 
without a grave responsibility. I rose accordingly from 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 
instruction, 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 Dr. 
Denman's surgical theatre, 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 
colour. 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 seemed to me to contain phosphorus and some volatile ether. At the 
other ingredients I could make no guess. The book was an ordinary 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 honour, the sanity, or the life of my flighty colleague? If his messenger 
could go to one place, why could he not go to another? And even granting some 
impediment, 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-defence.
Twelve o'clock had scarce rung out over London, ere the knocker sounded very 
gently on the door. I went myself at the summons, and found a small man 
crouching against the pillars of the portico.
"Are you from Dr. Jekyll?" I asked.
He told me "yes" by a constrained gesture; and when I had bidden him enter, he 
did not obey me without a searching backward 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.
These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably; 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 neighbourhood. This bore some resemblance to incipient rigor, 
and was accompanied 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 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 -something seizing, surprising, and revolting -this fresh 
disparity seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce 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 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 this 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 example, and sat 
down myself in my customary seat and with as fair an imitation of my ordinary 
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, Dr. Lanyon," he replied, civilly enough. "What you say is 
very well founded; and my impatience has sown its heels to my politeness. I 
come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr. Henry Jekyll, on a piece of 
business of some 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 hysteria -"I understood, a drawer..."
But here I took pity on my visitor's suspense, 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 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 the sight of the contents, he uttered one loud sob 
of such immense relief that I sat petrified. And the next moment, in a voice 
that was already fairly well under 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, measured 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 
colour, to effervesce audibly, and to throw off small fumes of vapour. 
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 remains. Will you be wise? will you be 
guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand, and to go forth from 
your house without 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 instant; 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 
inexplicable services to pause before I see the end."
"It is well," replied my visitor. "Lanyon, you may remember your vows: what 
follows is under the seal of our profession. And now, you who have so long 
been bound to the 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 followed; 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 suddenly black, and the features 
seemed to melt and alter -and 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.
"O God!" I screamed, and "O God!" again and again; for there before my eyes 
-pale and shaken, and half-fainting, and groping before him with his hands, 
like a man restored from death -there stood Henry Jekyll!
What he told me in the next hour I cannot 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 cannot, even in memory, dwell 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.


Chapter 10

HENRY JEKYLL'S FULL STATEMENT OF THE CASE

I was 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 honourable and distinguished future. And indeed, the worst of 
my faults was a certain impatient gaiety 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 
before 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 progress and position in the world, I stood already 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 laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance 
of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering. And it chanced that the 
direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly towards 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 
intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to 
that truth, by whose partial discovery I have 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 recognise the thorough and 
primitive quality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the 
field of my consciousness, even if I 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 
beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements. If each, 
I told myself, could but be housed in separate identities, 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 faggots were thus bound together -that in the agonised womb of 
consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How, then, 
were they dissociated?
I was so far in my reflections, 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 
burthen of our life is bound for ever on man's shoulders; and when the attempt 
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 recognised my 
natural body for the mere aura and effulgence of certain of the powers that 
made up my spirit, but managed to compound a drug by which these powers should 
be dethroned from their supremacy, and a second form and countenance 
substituted, none the less natural to me because they were the expression, and 
bore the stamp, of 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 overdose or at the 
least inopportunity in the moment 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 prepared 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 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 cannot 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, something 
indescribably new, and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt 
younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious 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 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 those 
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 disclosed 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 appearance of Edward Hyde.
I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I know, but that 
which I 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 deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in 
the glass, I was conscious 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 divided countenance I had been hitherto accustomed 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 
visible 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 dissolution, 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 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 occasion; 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; 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 notion; 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 housekeeper 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 myself a familiar object 
in my second character. I next drew up that will to which you so much 
objected; so that if anything befell me in the person of Dr. 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 person and 
reputation 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 standing 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 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, 
undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But in the hands of Edward Hyde 
they soon began 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 familiar 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 centred 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 unimpaired; 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 consequence, I 
shall no more than mention. An act of cruelty to a child aroused against me 
the anger of a passer-by, whom I recognised 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 
cheque 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 when, by sloping my own hand backwards, 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 
adventures, 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 
recognised 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 myself, and, in my 
psychological way, began lazily to inquire into the elements of this illusion, 
occasionally, even as I did so, dropping back into a comfortable morning doze. 
I was still so engaged when, in one of my more wakeful moments, my eye fell 
upon 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 bedclothes, 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 -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, Dr. 
Jekyll had returned to his own shape, and was sitting down, with a darkened 
brow, to make a feint of breakfasting.
Small indeed was my appetite. This inexplicable incident, this reversal of my 
previous experience, seemed, like the Babylonian finger 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 projecting 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, 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 becoming 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 unequally shared between them. 
Jekyll (who was composite), now with the most sensitive apprehensions, now 
with a greedy gusto, projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of 
Hyde; but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the 
mountain 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 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 be 
not even conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstances 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 discontented doctor, surrounded by friends, 
and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to the liberty, the 
comparative youth, the light step, leaping pulses and secret pleasures, 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 
struggling 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 had considered my 
position, made enough allowance for the complete moral insensibility and 
insensate readiness to evil which were the leading characters 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 provocation; and that I struck in no more reasonable 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 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 
dispersed; I saw my life to be forfeit; and fled from the scene of these 
excesses, at once glorying and trembling, my lust of evil gratified 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 lamplit streets, in the same divided ecstasy of mind, gloating 
on my crime, light-headedly devising others in the future, and yet still 
hastening and still harkening 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 streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen 
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 professional 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 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 murder 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 laboured 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 instead that I daily enjoyed it more completely; but I was still 
cursed with my duality of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence wore 
off, the lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began 
to growl for licence. 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 discovery. 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 odours. I 
sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops 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 neighbours; and then 
I smiled, comparing 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 the 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 contempt 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, houseless, 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 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 displeasing visitor, prevail on the famous 
physician to rifle the study of his colleague, Dr. Jekyll? Then I remembered 
that of my original character, one part remained to me: I could write my own 
hand; and once I had conceived the 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 an 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 attendants tremble; not a 
look did they exchange in my presence; but obsequiously took my orders, led me 
to a private room, and brought me wherewithal to write. Hyde in 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 cannot say, I. That child of Hell had 
nothing human; nothing live 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 midst of the nocturnal passengers, these two base 
passions raged within him like a tempest. He walked fast, hunted by his fears, 
chattering to himself, skulking through the less frequented 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 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 almost 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 heralded 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 
passions 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 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 condemned 
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 transition (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 raging energies of life. The powers of Hyde seemed to have 
grown with the sickliness of 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 something 
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 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 regarded. Hence the apelike 
tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the 
pages of my books, burning 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 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 colour, 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.
About 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 face 
(now how sadly altered!) in the glass. Nor must I delay too long to bring my 
writing to an end; for if my narrative has hitherto 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 selfishness and circumscription to the moment will probably save it 
once again from the action of his apelike 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 for ever reindue that hated personality, I know how I 
shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with the most 
strained and fear-struck 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 the courage to release himself at the last 
moment? God 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.