Incident at the Window

It happened on Sunday. Mr. Utterson was on his usual walk with Mr. Enfield, their way lay once again through the by-street; and 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?”

“I can imagine,” returned Enfield. “And by the way, this is 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. “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. The middle one of the three windows was half-way open; and Dr. Jekyll himself was sitting close beside it, taking the air with infinite sadness, like some disconsolate prisoner.

“What! Jekyll!” he cried. “I hope 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. 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, “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 propose,” returned the doctor with a smile. His words were hardly uttered, before the smile was struck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of abject terror and despair. The two gentlemen 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, they traversed the by-street. They were both pale; and there was a 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 in silence.

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 ideas, 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, “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.

Poole 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, frightened and irritated. “What foul play? What does this 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 coat. He observed with wonder the greatness of the relief that appeared upon the butler’s face.

It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon. The wind made talking difficult, and flecked the blood into the face. Mr. Utterson thought he had never seen that part of London so deserted. 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 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. 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; 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? Why are you all here?” said the lawyer peevishly. “Your master won’t like it.”

“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. “And now,” continued the butler, addressing the knife-boy, “reach me a candle.”

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, sir, if by any chance he asks you in, don’t go.”

Mr. Utterson 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.

A voice answered from within:

“Tell him I cannot see anyone,” it said complainingly.

“Thank you, sir,” said Poole, with a note of something like triumph in his voice; and taking up his candle, he led Mr. Utterson back across the yard and into the great kitchen, where the fire was out and the beetles were leaping on the floor.

“Sir,” he said, looking Mr. Utterson in the eyes, “was that my master’s voice?”

“It seems much changed,” replied the lawyer, very pale.

“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. But who’s in there instead of him, and why it stays there, we don’t know, 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’s not reasonable.”

“Well, Mr. Utterson, I’ll try to persuade you,” 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. Master used to write his orders on a sheet of paper and throw it on the stair. We’ve had nothing else this week; nothing but papers, and a closed door, and the meals left there was taken when nobody was looking. Well, sir, every day, and twice and thrice in the same day, there have been orders and complaints, and I have been sent to all the 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. He wants this drug, sir, I don’t know why.”

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

Poole felt in his pocket and handed out a crumpled note, which the lawyer carefully examined. Its contents ran thus:

“Dr. Jekyll presents his compliments to Messrs. M. 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.”

“This is a strange note,” said Mr. Utterson; and then sharply, “Why do you have it open?”

“The man at M.’s was 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 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. 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 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 understand. Your master, Poole, is seized with one of those maladies that both torture and deform the sufferer; hence the alteration of his voice; hence the mask and the avoidance of his friends; hence his eagerness to find this drug! There is my explanation; it is sad enough, Poole, but it is plain and natural.”

“Sir,” said the butler, “that creature was not my master, and there’s the truth. My master” here he looked round him and began to whisper— “is a tall man, and this was a dwarf.”

Utterson attempted to protest.

“O, sir,” cried Poole, “do you think I do not know my master after twenty years? Do you think I cannot recognize him? 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. I am puzzled by this note which seems to prove him to be still alive. I shall consider it my duty to break in that door.”

“Ah Mr. Utterson, that’s a good idea!” cried the butler.

“And now comes the second question,” resumed Utterson: “Who is going to do it?”

“Why, you and me,” was the reply.

“That’s very well said,” returned the lawyer.

“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?”

“Yes, 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.

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

“Well, sir, it went so quick, 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 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, sir.”

“Yes, I felt something of what you describe,” said Mr. Utterson.

“Quite so, sir,” returned Poole. “Well, that masked thing like a monkey jumped from among the chemicals and whipped into the cabinet. Oh, I know it’s not evidence, Mr. Utterson. But I give you my Bible-word it was Mr. Hyde!”

“Ay, ay,” said the lawyer. “My fears incline to the same point. 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, call Bradshaw.”

The footman came, very white and nervous.

“So, Bradshaw,” said the lawyer,” it is our intention to make an end of it. Poole, here, and I are going to force our way into the cabinet. And 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 there.”

As Bradshaw left, the lawyer looked at his watch. “And now, Poole, let us go,” he said; and taking the poker under his arm, led the way into the yard. It was now quite dark. The wind tossed the light of the candle to and fro about the steps, until they came into the shelter of the theatre, where they sat down silently to wait. London hummed solemnly all around; but the stillness was only broken by the sounds of a footfall moving to and fro along the cabinet floor.

“So it will walk all day, sir,” whispered Poole; “ay, and all night. Only when a new sample comes from the chemist, there’s a break. Mr. Utterson, please tell me, is that the doctor’s foot?”

It was different indeed from the heavy creaking tread of Henry Jekyll. Utterson sighed.

“Is there 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.

But now the ten minutes drew to an end. Poole took the axe; the candle was set upon the nearest table to light them to the attack; and they drew near. The 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 my warning, our suspicions are aroused, and I must and shall see you,” he resumed; “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 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 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 stood back a little and peered in. There lay the cabinet before their eyes: the quietest room, you would have said.

But 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. 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; and it only remains for us to find the body of your master.”

The greater proportion of the building was occupied by the theatre, which filled almost the whole ground story and was lighted from above. 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 a glance, all were empty, and all, by the dust that fell from their doors, had stood long unopened. Nowhere was there any trace of Henry Jekyll, dead or alive.

“He must be buried here,” Poole said.

“Or he may have fled,” said Utterson, and he turned to examine the door. It was locked; and lying near by, 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?”

“Ay,” continued Utterson, “and the fractures, too, are rusty.”

The two men looked at each other with a scare.

“I cannot understand, Poole,” said the lawyer. “Let us go back to the cabinet.”

They mounted the stair in silence, and glancing 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.

There were several books on a shelf; one lay beside the tea-cup, 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 mirror, into whose depths they looked with an involuntary horror. But it showed them nothing.

“This mirror has seen strange things, sir,” whispered Poole.

“And surely none stranger than itself,” echoed the lawyer in the same tones. “But why did Jekyll need it?”

“Who knows!” 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 paper, and last of all at the dead malefactor stretched upon the carpet.

“My head goes round,” he said. “He had no cause to like me. He has not destroyed this document, why?”

He caught up the next paper; it was a brief note in the doctor’s hand and dated at the top.

“O Poole!” the lawyer cried, “he was alive and here this day. He must be still alive, he must have fled! And then, why fled? and how? Oh, we must be careful. We may involve your master in some dire catastrophe.”

“Why don’t you read it, sir?” asked Poole.

“Because I fear,” replied the lawyer solemnly. And with that he brought the paper to his eyes and read as follows:

“My dear Utterson,

When this fall into your hands, I shall disappear. My instinct and all the circumstances of 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 trudged back to his office to read the two narratives in which this mystery was now to be explained.