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 to the building which was known as the laboratory or the dissecting-rooms. The doctor had bought the house from the heirs of a celebrated surgeon. But his own tastes were rather chemical than anatomical, so he had changed the destination of the block. 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. 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, furnished, among other things, with a mirror-glass and a big table. There were three dusty windows barred with iron in the room. A fire burned in the grate; a lamp was set lighted on the chimney shelf; and there 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 meet 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.

“Are you sure? For your sake,” said he; “I hope you may be right. If it came to a trial, your name might appear.”

“I am quite sure,” replied Jekyll; “I have grounds for certainty that I cannot share with anyone. I have—I have received a letter; and I don’t know 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.”

Utterson ruminated a while.

“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 not worry for his safety, as he had means of escape. The lawyer liked this letter.

“Have you the envelope?” he asked.

“I burned it,” replied Jekyll. “But it bore no postmark. The letter was brought to me.”

“May I keep this?” 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 shut his mouth tight and nodded.

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

“Even more,” 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 by,” said he, “there was a letter handed in today: what was the messenger like?”

But Poole said that nobody had come.

Plainly the letter had come by the laboratory door; possibly, indeed, it had been written in the cabinet; and if that were so, it must be differently judged, and handled with the more caution. The newsboys, as he went, were crying themselves hoarse along the footways:

“Special edition! Shocking murder of an M. P.!”

Presently after, Utterson sat at home, with Mr. Guest, his head clerk. The fog still slept above the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles. But the room was gay with firelight. Insensibly the lawyer melted. There was no man from whom he kept fewer secrets than Mr. Guest. Guest he knew Poole; he could hear of Mr. Hyde’s familiarity about the house; he might draw conclusions. And above all since Guest, being a great student and critic of handwriting, would consider something useful.

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

“Yes, sir, indeed,” 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. But there it is; a murderer’s autograph.”

Guest 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.

“What!” he thought. “Henry Jekyll writes for a murderer!”

And his blood ran cold in his veins.

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 his alarm, and to grow more at quiet with himself.

Now that that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for Dr. Jekyll. He came out of his seclusion, renewed relations with his friends, became once more their familiar guest and entertainer. 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 is busy,” Poole said.

On the 15th, Utterson tried again, and was again refused. 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. 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 greatness 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 this person is dead for me.”

“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 cannot make others.”

“Nothing can be done,” returned Lanyon; “ask Dr. Jekyll.”

“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 everything. 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 forget 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. 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. 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. And you can do but one thing, Utterson, 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; and now in a moment, friendship, and peace of mind, and the whole life of his were wrecked. So great and unprepared a change pointed to madness.

A week afterwards Dr. Lanyon took to his bed, and in something less than a fortnight he was dead. The night after the funeral, 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 G. J. Utterson ALONE 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. 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 on 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.

From that day forth, Utterson did not desire the society of his surviving friend with the same eagerness. He thought of him kindly; but his thoughts were disquieted and fearful. 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 had grown very silent, he did not read; it seemed as if he had something on his mind. So Utterson fell off little by little in the frequency of his visits.