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  • Listeners As the twilight descends and shadows lengthen,

  • obsidian river Productions invites you to journey into a world where the line

  • between man's inherent good and haunting evil is blurred.

  • We stand on the precipice of a tail that delves deep into the heart of our

  • darkest desires and the duality that resides within each of us.

  • The bustling streets of Victorian London hide more than secrets.

  • They echo with the haunting duality of one man's soul.

  • In the hands of the masterful Robert Louis Stevenson,

  • we are about to embark on an exploration of identity,

  • morality and the duality of human nature.

  • The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is not just a tale,

  • it's a reflection,

  • a mirror that makes us question are we ever truly one person and what might

  • we be capable of when the societal masks we wear are cast aside.

  • So with each heartbeat,

  • let's step closer to the enigmatic door behind which lies the mystery of a man

  • Torn between two worlds.

  • Prepare yourself for a tale that has haunted readers for generations,

  • making them wonder which face they see in their own reflection.

  • Hold tight for as the story unfolds.

  • You might just discover that the line between Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

  • Hyde is finer than you ever imagined.

  • The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

  • Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Story of the door, Mr.

  • Terson, 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 beacon from his eye,

  • something indeed which never found its way into his torque,

  • 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 theater, had not crossed the doors of one for 20 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 inclined to Cain's heresy. He used to say Quain,

  • 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 downgoing men and to such as these

  • so long as they came about his chambers,

  • he never marked a shade of change in his demeanor.

  • No doubt the feat was easy to Mr.

  • Terson for he was undemonstrative at the best and even his friendship 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 weekdays.

  • The inhabitants were all doing well it seemed and all em hoping to do

  • better still and laying out the surplus of their grains in coquet tree 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 neighborhood like a fire in a

  • forest and with its freshly painted shutters,

  • well polished brass and general cleanliness and gaity 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 stories high showed, no window,

  • nothing but a door on the lower story and a blind forehead of discolored

  • wall on the upper and bore in every feature the marks of prolonged

  • and sorted negligence.

  • The door which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker was blistered and

  • disdained.

  • 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 moldings 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. Terson,

  • with a slight change of voice and what was that? Well,

  • it was this way. Returned Mr. Enfield.

  • I was coming home from someplace 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 Eastwood at a good walk and the other a

  • girl of maybe eight or 10 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 few hello,

  • 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 sore bones 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 color

  • 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 mind 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 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'm 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've 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 a matter of 10 pounds in

  • gold and a check for the balance on couches 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 with another man's check 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 bank's open and cash the check 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 check myself and said I had every reason to believe it was a

  • forgery, not a bit of it. The check was genuine.

  • Tutut said, Mr. Terson, 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 check 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 the 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.

  • Terson asking rather suddenly and you don't know if the drawer of the check

  • 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. Terson. No sir,

  • I had a delicacy was the reply.

  • I feel very strongly about putting questions.

  • It partakes too much of 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've 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 the 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. Terson,

  • 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. Hmm said Mr. Terson,

  • 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. No. 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.

  • Terson 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 terson. 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 tail has gone home.

  • If you have been inexact in any point you had better correct it.

  • I think you might have warned me return 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.

  • Terson sighed deeply but said never a word and the young man presently

  • resumed. Here is another lesson to say nothing said he,

  • I'm 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

  • search for Mr. Hyde.

  • That evening Mr.

  • Terson came home to his bachelor house in somber 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

  • neighboring church rang out the hour of 12 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.

  • Terson 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 deceased of Henry Jekyll Maryland,

  • D C L L L D F R S, et cetera,

  • 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 burdening 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 here the too 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 MTTs 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 had 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 face gentleman with a shock of hair prematurely white and a

  • boisterous and decided manner at sight of Mr. Terson.

  • He spr 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 disagreeable preoccupied his mind.

  • I suppose Lanyon said he,

  • 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 Sison, I thought you had a bond of common interest.

  • We had was the reply,

  • but it is more than 10 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

  • sakes sake, as they say,

  • I see and I have seen devilish little of the man such

  • unscientific boulder dash added the doctor flushing suddenly purple

  • would've estranged Damon and Pitus.

  • This little spirit of temper was somewhat of a relief to Mr. Terson.

  • 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 hide?

  • He asked Hide 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. Edison's dwelling and still he was digging at the problem here. The two,

  • 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 tail went by before his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures,

  • he would be aware of the great field of lamps of an nocturnal city then of

  • the figure of a man walking swiftly then of a child running from the doctors

  • 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 low 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

  • wide 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 they sspr up and grew a pace 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 claw of the will,

  • 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 unim,

  • impressionable enfield, a spirit of enduring hatred.

  • From that time forward, Mr.

  • Terson 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. Sikh.

  • 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 10 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 on either side of the roadway

  • and the rumor of the approach of any passenger preceded him by a long time.

  • Mr. Terson 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's still a great way off,

  • suddenly spring out distinct from the vast hum and clutter of the city.

  • Yet his attention had never before been so sharply and decisively arrested and

  • it was with a strong superstitious provision 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 watch'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.

  • Terson 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 return the lawyer.

  • I'm an old friend of Dr. Jekyll's. Mr. Terson of Gaunt Street.

  • You must have heard of 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.

  • Terson, will you do me a favor with pleasure replied the other.

  • What shall it be? Will you let me see your face? Ask 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.

  • Terson, it may be useful. Yes, returned Mr. Hyde.

  • It is as well we have met and our propo,

  • you should have my address and he gave a number of a street in Soho.

  • Good God thought Mr.

  • Terson can he too have been thinking of the will but he kept his feelings to

  • himself and only grunted in acknowledgement 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. Terson common friends echoed Mr.

  • Hyde a little sly. 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've lied.

  • Come said Mr. Terson. 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 a while 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 born 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 hi two unknown disgust,

  • loathing and fear with which Mr. Terson regarded him.

  • There must be something else said. The perplexed gentleman,

  • their underscore is underscore something more. If I could find a name for it,

  • God bless me. The man seems hardly human.

  • Something tic 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 transf figures its clay continent.

  • The last I think for, oh 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 Bay Street there was a square of ancient handsome

  • houses now for the most part decayed from their higher state and let in flats

  • and chambers to all sorts and conditions of men mapping graves,

  • 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.

  • Terson stopped and knocked a well-dressed elderly servant.

  • Opened the door. Is Dr. Jekyll at home pool? Asked the lawyer,

  • I will see Mr. Terson said pool.

  • 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

  • doctors and Tusan himself was won't to speak of it as the pleasant 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 pool presently returned to announce that Dr. Jekyll was gone out,

  • I saw Mr. Hyde go in by the old dissecting room pool. He said,

  • is that right when Dr. Jekyll is from home quite right Mr.

  • Terson sir replied the servant Mr. Hyde has a key.

  • Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust in that young man.

  • Pool resume. The other musing. Yes sir,

  • he does indeed said pool. We have all orders to obey him.

  • I do not think I ever met Mr. Hyde. Asked Sison. Oh dear.

  • No sir. He never underscore 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 goodnight Paul.

  • Goodnight Mr. Terson and the lawyer set out Homewood with a very heavy heart.

  • Poor Harry Jekyll.

  • He thought my mind miss gives 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.

  • Aye it must be that the ghost of some old sin,

  • the cancer of some concealed disgrace punishment coming underscore ped

  • claudeo

  • years after memory has forgotten and self-love condoned the fault

  • and the lawyer scared by the thought brooded a while on his own past

  • groping in all the corners of memory,

  • least 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 roles 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 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 was 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 awakening and the danger of it for if this hide suspects the

  • existence of the will,

  • he may grow impatient to inherit I I must put my shoulders 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 transparency.

  • The strange clauses of the will. 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.

  • Terson so contrived that he remained behind after the others had departed.

  • This was no new arrangement but a thing that had befall many scores of times

  • where Attison was liked. He was liked.

  • Well hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer when the lighthearted and

  • loose tongue had already their foot on the threshold.

  • They liked to sit a while in his unobtrusive company, practicing for solitude,

  • sobering their minds in the man's rich silence after the expense and

  • strain of gaity 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 50 with something of a SL cast perhaps,

  • but every mark of capacity and kindness you could see by his looks that he

  • cherished for Mr. Terson 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. Galy,

  • my poor utter son 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 pendant. Lanyon a what? He called my scientific heresy.

  • 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 pendant for all that an ignorant blatant penant.

  • I was never more disappointed in any man than lanyon.

  • You know I never approved of it. Pursued,

  • utter and 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've 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'd agreed to drop.

  • What I heard was abominable said Addison, it can make no change.

  • You do not understand my position.

  • Return the doctor with a certain incoherency of manner.

  • I am situated sison. My position is a very strange,

  • a very strange one. It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking.

  • Jekyll said Sison, 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 utter son 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.

  • I before myself if I could make the choice.

  • But indeed it isn't what you fancy it is not as 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 utter that I'm sure you'll take in good part.

  • This is a private matter and I beg of you to let it sleep.

  • Utan 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'm taken away utter,

  • 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

  • utter and heaved an irrepressible sigh well said he I

  • promise the Karu 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 11,

  • 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 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 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 you 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 recognize in him a

  • certain muster.

  • 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.

  • A next moment with ape-like fury,

  • he was trampling his victim underfoot 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 they lay his victim in the middle of the lane incredibly mangled.

  • The stick with which the deeded 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 incensed cruelty and one splintered half

  • had rolled in the neighboring gutter.

  • The other without doubt had been carried away by the murderer.

  • A purse and 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. Terson.

  • 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 with the body

  • had been carried as soon as he came into the cell. He nodded yes,

  • said he. I recognize him. I'm sorry to say that. This is Sir Danvers. Carou.

  • 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.

  • Terson 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 recognized 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.

  • Terson 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 colored pool lowered over heaven but the wind was continually

  • charging and routing these embattled vapors so that as the cab crawled

  • from street to street, Mr.

  • Tson beheld a marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight.

  • For here it would be dark like the backend 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 slatt passengers and its lamps which had never been extinguished

  • or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful re invasion 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 die.

  • 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 asai 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 two penny 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

  • umba and cut him off from his black guardly surroundings.

  • This was the home of Henry Jekyll's favorite 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.

  • Hydes but he was not at home. He had been in that night very late,

  • but he'd 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 better tell you who this person is.

  • He added this is Inspector Newman 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.

  • Terson and the inspector exchanged glances.

  • He don't seem a very popular character. Observe 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 neighboring elegant, a good picture hung upon the walls,

  • a gift as utter and supposed from Henry Jekyll who was much of a connoisseur

  • and the carpets were of many plys and agreeable in color.

  • At this moment however,

  • the rooms bore every mark of having been recently and hurriedly ransacked

  • cloth lay about the floor with their pockets inside out.

  • Lock fast drawers stood open and on the half they 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 checkbook 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. Terson,

  • I have him in my hand.

  • He must have lost his head or he never would've left the stick or above all

  • burned the checkbook.

  • Why money's life to the man We have nothing to do but wait for him at the bank

  • and get out the hand bills.

  • This last however was not so easy of accomplishment for Mr. Hyde.

  • Had numbered few familiars,

  • even the master of the servant mate 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 where they

  • agreed and that was the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the

  • fugitive impressed his beholders incident of the letter.

  • It was late in the afternoon when Mr. Terson found his way to Dr.

  • Jekyll's door where he was at once admitted by pool and carried down by the

  • kitchen offices and across a yard which had once been a garden to the building

  • which was indifferent known as the laboratory or dissecting rooms.

  • The doctor had bought the house from the heirs of a celebrated surgeon and his

  • own tastes being rather chemical than anatomical had changed the destination of

  • the block at the bottom of the garden.

  • It was the first time that the lawyer had been received in that part of his

  • friend's quarters and he eyed the dingy windowless structure with

  • curiosity and gazed round with a distasteful sense of strangeness as he

  • crossed the theater 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 cupula. At the further end,

  • a flight of stairs mounted to a door covered with red bays.

  • And through this Mr. Terson 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 chavel glass and a business table and looking out upon the court by three

  • dusty windows barred with iron. The fire burned in the great,

  • A lamp was set lighted on the chimney shelf for even in the houses.

  • The fog began to lie thickly and there close up to the warmth,

  • sat Dr. Jekyll looking deathly sick.

  • He did not rise to meet his visitor but held out a cold hand and bait him.

  • Welcome in a changed voice and now said Mr. Terson,

  • as soon as pool had left them, you have heard the news, the doctor shuttered.

  • They were crying it in the square. He said,

  • I heard them in my dining room.

  • One word said the lawyer Karru was my client.

  • But so are you and I want to know what I'm doing.

  • You have not been mad enough to hide this fellow artan.

  • I swear to God. Cried the doctor.

  • I swear to God I will never set eyes on him again.

  • I bind my honor to you that I'm 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 glumly. He did not like his friends 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, I am quite sure of him replied. Jekyll,

  • I have grounds for certainty that I cannot share with anyone.

  • 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.

  • Artan. You would judge wisely. I'm sure I have so greater trust in you.

  • You fear I suppose that it might lead to his detection.

  • Ask the lawyer no said the other.

  • I cannot say that I care what becomes of Hyde. I'm quite done with him.

  • I was thinking of my own character,

  • which this hateful business is rather exposed artisan ruminated.

  • A while 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 labor under no alarm for his safety as he had means of escape on which

  • he placed assure dependence. The lawyer liked this letter well enough,

  • it put a better color 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 Attison. I wish you to judge for me entirely was the reply.

  • I have lost confidence in myself.

  • Well I shall consider return 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 Addison.

  • He meant to murder you. You had a fine escape.

  • I have had what is far more to the purpose. Return the doctor solemnly.

  • I have had a lesson. Oh God,

  • utter 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 pool by the by.

  • Said he There was a letter handed in today. What was the messenger like?

  • But pool 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 was 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 mp 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, hear with Mr. Guest,

  • his head Clark 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 unsu sunned in the

  • foundations of his house.

  • The fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city where the lamps glimmered

  • like car bunks. 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 color 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 doctors he knew pool.

  • He could scarce or fail 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

  • write. And above all,

  • since guest being a great student and critic of handwriting would consider the

  • step natural and obliging the Clark, besides was a man of counsel.

  • He could scarce, read so strange a document without dropping a remark.

  • And by that remark, Mr. Terson might shape his future course.

  • This is a sad business about vers. 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 utter.

  • 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.

  • Jeller inquired the clerk. I thought I knew the writing anything private. Mr.

  • Terson 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 sly 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.

  • Terson struggled with himself. Why did you compare them? Guest?

  • He inquired suddenly, well sir, return the Clark.

  • There's a rather singular resemblance.

  • The two hands are in many points identical, only differently sloped,

  • rather quaint said artisan. 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 Clark. I understand.

  • But no sooner was Mr.

  • Terson alone that night than he locked the note into his safe where it reposed

  • from that time forward what he thought.

  • Henry Jekyll forged for a murderer and his blood ran cold in his veins.

  • Incident of Dr. Lanyon

  • time ran on thousands of pounds were offered in reward for the death of

  • sedans, 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.

  • Terson began to recover from the hotness of his alarm and to grow more at quiet

  • with himself.

  • The death of sedans was to his way of thinking more than paid for by the

  • disappearance of Mr. Hyde.

  • Now that that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for Dr.

  • Jekyll. He came out of his seclusion, renewed relations with his friends,

  • became once more their familiar guest and entertainer.

  • And whilst he had always been known for charities,

  • he was now no less distinguished for religion. He was busy,

  • he was much in the open air. He did good.

  • His face seemed to open and brighten as if with an inward consciousness of

  • service. And for more than two months, the doctor was at peace.

  • On the 8th of January, Terson had dined at the doctors 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 pool, 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 spirit.

  • The fifth night he had in guest to dine with him and the sixth he overtook

  • himself to Dr. Landons. 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 bolder and older and yet it was not so much these tokens of a

  • swift physical decay that arrested the lawyers.

  • 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 Sison

  • 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 Terson remarked on his ill looks,

  • it was with an heir 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.

  • Utan, have you seen him?

  • But Landon'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 illusion

  • to one whom I regard as dead. Tutt Tutt said Mr.

  • Terson. 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'm not surprised at that was the reply.

  • Someday utter 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 a cursed topic,

  • then in God's name go for I cannot bear it.

  • As soon as he got home utters and 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 un manning and you can do but one thing uan to lighten this

  • destiny and that is to respect my silence.

  • Uan 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

  • honored 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 Landon'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,

  • utters and 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 GJ Terson alone and in case of his

  • predecease underscore to be destroyed unread underscore.

  • So it was emphatically super scribed 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 Terson 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 with 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

  • hide.

  • 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 honor 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 Eson

  • 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 pool 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 pool 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 spirit.

  • He had grown very silent. He did not read.

  • It seemed as if he had something on his mind.

  • Utan became so used to the un varying character of these reports that he fell

  • off little by little in the frequency of his visits. Incident at the window,

  • it chanced on Sunday when Mr. Terson 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 at an end at least we shall never see more of Mr. Hyde.

  • I hope not said attison.

  • 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. Jells.

  • It was partly your own fault that I found it out even when I did.

  • So you found it out did you said artisan,

  • but if that be so we may step into the court and take a look at the windows.

  • To tell you the truth, I'm 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 halfway open and sitting close beside

  • it, taking the air with an infinite sadness of mean like some disc consulate

  • prisoner Eson saw Dr. Jekyll what?

  • Jekyll he cried. I trust you are better. I am very low.

  • Sison replied, the doctor drily 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 side.

  • The other I should like to very much but no, no, no.

  • It is quite impossible. I dare not but indeed, Addison,

  • I'm 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 return 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

  • neighboring thoroughfare where even upon a Sunday there were still some

  • stirrings of life that Mr.

  • Terson 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. Terson. But Mr.

  • Enfield only nodded his head very seriously and walked on once more in

  • silence. The last night Mr.

  • Terson was sitting by his fireside one evening after dinner when he was

  • surprised to receive a visit from pool. Bless me, pool,

  • what brings you here? He cried and then taking a second look at him,

  • what ails you he added is the doctor Ill. Mr.

  • Terson 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 way sir replied pool 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. Terson. 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 pool 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,

  • un tastes it 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 Paul. I see there is something seriously amiss.

  • Try to tell me what it is.

  • I think there's been foul play said pool horsley 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 dance say sir was the answer but will you come along with me and see for

  • yourself Mr.

  • UT's only answer was to rise and get his hat in 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 un tasted when he

  • set it down to follow.

  • It was a wild cold seasonable night of march with a

  • pale moon lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her and

  • flying rack of the most diaphanous and lorney 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.

  • Terson 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 born in upon his mind a

  • crushing anticipation of calamity.

  • The square when they got there was full of wind and dust and the thin

  • trees in the garden were lashing themselves along the railing pool 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 dues 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.

  • Pool 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

  • pool it's all right said pool 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. Terson.

  • The housemaid broke into hysterical whimpering and the cook crying out,

  • bless God its meister utter 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 Paul. Blank silence followed.

  • No one protesting,

  • only the maid lifted her voice and now wept loudly.

  • Hold your tongue.

  • Pool said to her with a ferocity of accent that testified to his own 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 will get this through hands at once and then he begged

  • Mr. Terson 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.

  • UT's nerves at this unlooked for termination gave a jerk that nearly threw him

  • from his balance but he recollected his courage and followed the butler into the

  • laboratory building through the surgical theater with its lumber of crates and

  • bottles to the foot of the stair here.

  • Pool 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 bays of

  • the cabinet door. Mr. Artisan sir asking to see you.

  • He called and even as he did so once more violently signed to the lawyer

  • to give ear a voice answered from within.

  • Tell him I cannot see anyone it said complaining. Thank you sir.

  • Said Paul with a note of something like triumph in his voice and taking up his

  • candle. He led Mr.

  • Terson back across the yard and into the great kitchen where the fire was out

  • and the Beatles were leaping on the floor. Sir,

  • he said looking Mr. Terson 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 20 years in this man's house to be deceived about his voice? No sir.

  • Masters made a way with he was made a way with eight days ago when we heard him

  • cry out upon the name of God and underscore whose underscore in there instead of

  • him and underscore why underscore it stays.

  • There is a thing that cries to heaven. Mr. Terson,

  • this is a very strange tale pool. This is rather a wild tale. My man said.

  • Mr. Terson 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. Terson,

  • you are a hard man to satisfy but I'll do it yet.

  • Said Paul all this last week you must know him or

  • it whatever it is that lives in that cabinet has been crying night and day for

  • some sort of medicine and cannot get it to his mind.

  • It was sometimes his way,

  • the masters 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 I 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.

  • Terson pool 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 messes more.

  • 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 messes M.

  • He now begs them to search with most ulous care and should any of the same

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

  • The importance of this to Dr J can hardly be exaggerated.

  • So far the letter had run supposedly enough but here with a sudden splutter of

  • the pen,

  • the writer's emotion had broken loose for God's sake he added find

  • me some of the old, this is a strange note, said Mr.

  • Terson and then sharply how do you come to have it open?

  • The man at Moore's was main angry sir and he threw it back to me like so much

  • dirt returned. Pool. 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 right he said I've seen him.

  • Seen him repeated Mr. Terson.

  • Well that's it said pool. It was this way.

  • I came suddenly into the theater from the garden.

  • It seems he had slipped out to look for this drug or whatever it is for the

  • cabinet.

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

  • crates. He looked up when I came in,

  • gave a kind of cry and whipped up stairs 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. Terson,

  • but I think I begin to see daylight.

  • Your master pool is plainly seized with one of those maladies that torture

  • and deform the sufferer. Hence for what I know,

  • the alteration of his voice hence the mask and the avoidance of his friends.

  • Hence his eagerness to find this drug by means of which the poor soul retains

  • some hope of ultimate recovery. God grant that he be not deceived.

  • There is my explanation.

  • It is sad enough Paul I 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 palor.

  • 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. Terson attempted to protest.

  • Oh sir, cried pool.

  • Do you think I do not know my master after 20 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

  • pool 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'm 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.

  • Terson that's talking cried the butler and now comes the

  • second question resumed utter who is going to do it?

  • Why you and me sir was the undaunted reply?

  • That's very well said.

  • Return 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 theater continued pool 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 pool?

  • 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 return 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 recognize 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. Terson, if you ever met this Mr.

  • 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 in your marrow kind of cold and thin

  • I own. I felt something of what you describe said Mr.

  • Terson quite so sir. Returned pool.

  • 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. Terson.

  • I'm book learned enough for that but a man has his feelings and I give you my

  • Bible word. It was Mr. Hyde I I said the lawyer,

  • my fears inclined to the same point.

  • Evil I fear founded evil was sure to come of that

  • connection. I 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.

  • Pull 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 or any mal factor 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 10 minutes to get to your stations. As Bradshaw left,

  • the lawyer looked at his watch and now Paul let us get to

  • ours he said,

  • and taking the poker under his arm 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 drafts 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 theater where they sat down silently to wait.

  • London hummed solemnly all around but nearer at hand.

  • 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 pool I 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 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.

  • Terson 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 utters side.

  • Is there never anything else he asked? Pool 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 10 minutes drew to an end pool,

  • disinterred the ax 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, utter and 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.

  • Utter said the voice for God's sake have mercy.

  • Ah, that's not jekyll's voice, it's hides. Cried,

  • utter down with the door pool.

  • Pool swung the ax over his shoulder.

  • The blow shook the building and the red bay's door leapt against the lock and

  • hinges a dismal screech.

  • As of mere animal terror rang from the cabinet up went the ax 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 and the wreck of the door fell inwards on

  • the carpet.

  • The procedures appalled by their own riot and the stillness that had

  • succeeded stood back a little and peered in.

  • They 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 draw 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've said and but for the glazed presses full of

  • chemicals, the most commonplace that night in London.

  • Right in the middle they 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 file in the hand and the strong smell of kernels

  • that hung upon the air,

  • UAN knew that he was looking on the body of a self destroyer.

  • We have come too.

  • He said sternly whether to save or punish hide 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 theater which

  • filled almost the whole ground story and was lighted from above and by the

  • cabinet,

  • which formed an upper story at one end and looked upon the court a

  • corridor joined the theater to the door on the bi 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 kn 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 pool stamped on the flags of the

  • corridor. He must be buried here.

  • He said hearkening to the sound or he may have fled,

  • said attison and he turned to examine the door in the bi street.

  • It was locked and lying nearby on the flags they found the key already

  • stained with rust.

  • This does not look like use observed the lawyer use echoed

  • pool. Do you not see sir? It is broken much as if a man had stamped on it.

  • I continued utter and the fractures too are rusty.

  • The two men looked at each other with a scare.

  • This is beyond me pool 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 sources 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 Paul.

  • 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 cozily up and the

  • teething stood ready to the sitter's elbow, the very sugar in the cup.

  • There were several books on a shelf,

  • one laid beside the tea things open and Terson was amazed to find it.

  • A copy of a pious work for which Jekyll had several times expressed a greater

  • steam annotated in his own hand with startling blasphemy.

  • Next, in the course of their review of the chamber,

  • the searches came to the chavelle 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 countenance is stooping to look

  • in.

  • This glass has seen some strange things sir whispered Paul and

  • surely none stranger than itself echoed the lawyer in the same tones

  • 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 Paul.

  • 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.

  • Terson. 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

  • deeded 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 Terson.

  • He looked at pool and then back at the paper and last of all at the dead malif

  • factor 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 up the next paper.

  • It was a brief note in the doctor's hand and dated at the top.

  • Oh pool. The lawyer cried.

  • He was alive and here this day he cannot have been disposed of in so shorter

  • 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 Paul.

  • Because I fear replied the lawyer solemnly God Grant I have no cause

  • for it and with that he brought the paper to his eyes and read as follows,

  • my dear utter, when this shall fall into your hands, I shall have disappeared.

  • Under what circumstances I have not the penetration to foresee but my instinct

  • 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

  • Jell.

  • There was a third enclosure asked Attison here sir,

  • said Paul 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 10. 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 theater behind them and terson 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.

  • Dr. Lanning's narrative on the 9th 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 formality of registration.

  • The contents increased.

  • My wonder for this is how the letter ran Tenco,

  • the December 18. Dear LA,

  • you are one of my oldest friends and although we may have dd 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 honor, my reason depend upon you.

  • I would not have sacrificed my left hand to help you lanyon my life.

  • My honor, my reason are all your mercy. If you fail me tonight,

  • I am lost.

  • You might suppose after this preface that I'm going to ask you for something

  • dishonorable to grant judge for yourself.

  • I want you to postpone all other engagements for tonight I even if you are

  • 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 pool. 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 underscore with all its

  • contents as they stand underscore the fourth draw 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 draw by its contents,

  • some powders, a file and a paper book.

  • This draw 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've 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 draw

  • 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 laboring 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 Laan 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 Laan,

  • 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 handsome and drove straight to Jekyll's house.

  • The butler was awaiting my arrival. He had received by the same poster as mine,

  • a registered letter of instruction and had sent it once for a locksmith and a

  • carpenter.

  • The tradesman came while we were yet speaking and we moved in a body to old Dr.

  • Denman's surgical theater. 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 was a handy fellow and after two hours 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 color.

  • The file 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 wetted my curiosity told me little that was definite.

  • Here were a file 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 honor,

  • 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-defense.

  • 12 o'clock had scarce rung out over London air.

  • 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 come 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 bulls eye open.

  • And at the site I thought my visitor started and made greater haste.

  • These particulars struck me. I confess disagreeable.

  • 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'd never set eyes on him before. So much was certain he was small.

  • As I've 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 neighborhood.

  • This bought 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 noble 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 disgust.

  • Curiosity was dressed in a fashion that would've 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 greater space to be set down in were yet the work of a

  • few seconds,

  • my visitor was indeed on fire with somber 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 his 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 and 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. Lanin.

  • He replied civilly enough.

  • What you say is very well founded and my impatience has shown 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 draw.

  • 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 great with the convulsive action of his jaws and his face

  • was so ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for his 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 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 minimums 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 color to effer ss audibly and to throw

  • off small fumes of vapor. Suddenly and at the same moment,

  • the abolition ceased and the compound changed to a dark purple,

  • which faded again more slowly to a watery green.

  • My visitor who had watched these metamorphosis with a keen eye smiled,

  • sat down the glass upon the table and then turned and looked upon me with an

  • heir 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 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 look 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 arms raised to shield me from that prodigy.

  • My mind submerged in terror. Oh God,

  • I screamed and oh 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 has shaken to its roots. Sleep has left me.

  • The deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of the day and night,

  • and 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, utan,

  • 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 Caru hasty lanyon

  • Henry Jells. 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 fellowmen,

  • and thus as might have been supposed with every guarantee of an honorable and

  • distinguished future.

  • And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient garrity 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 around 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've 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 inveterate 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 labored 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 recognize the

  • thorough and primitive duality 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 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 agonized 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 sidelight 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 a

  • tired certain agents.

  • I found to have the power to shake and 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 burden of our life is bound

  • forever 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

  • recognize my natural body from the mere aura and nce 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 nonetheless 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 look 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, a cursed night. I compounded the elements,

  • watched them boil and smoke together in the glass,

  • and when the elution had subsided with a strong glow of courage,

  • drank off the potion, the most wracking pang 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 exalting 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 these 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 un

  • sleeping 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 hear 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,

  • slight 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 and yet when I looked upon that ugly

  • idol in the glass,

  • I was conscious of no repugnant 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'd been hither to 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 crossroads.

  • 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 agos 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 holy 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 holy toward the worst.

  • Even at that time,

  • I had not conquered my aversions to the dryness of a life of study.

  • I would still be merily 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 a

  • housekeeper,

  • a creature whom I knew well 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 par 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 befall me in the person of Dr.

  • Jekyll,

  • I could enter on that of Edward Hyde without peculiar 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 own person and

  • reputation sat under shelter.

  • I was the first that ever did so for his pleasures.

  • I was the first that could pl 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 draft 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 toward 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 centered on self drinking pleasure with bestial

  • lividity 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 hide after all and hide 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 hide

  • and thus his conscience slumbered into the details of the infamy at which I

  • thus ConEd 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 passerby whom I recognized 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 two just resentment,

  • Edward Hyde had to bring them to the door and pay them in a check 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 backward,

  • I'd supplied my double with a signature.

  • I thought I sat beyond the reach of fate.

  • Some two months before the murder of sedans,

  • 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 recognized 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 awakened 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 eyes 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 calmly, 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 kny of a dusky palor 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 symbols and bounding from my

  • bed. I rushed to the mirror at the site 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 theater.

  • 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 10 minutes later, Dr.

  • Jekyll had returned to his own shape and was sitting down with a darkened brow

  • to make a faint 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 spire 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 hither to 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 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 forever despised and

  • friendless. The bargain might appear unequal,

  • but there was still another consideration in the scales.

  • For while Jekyll would suffer smartly in the fires of abstinence,

  • hide 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 obeyed a resolute farewell to the liberty,

  • the comparative youth,

  • the light step leaping impulses 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 hide,

  • struggling after freedom. And at last in an hour of moral weakness,

  • I once again compounded and swallowed the transforming draft.

  • I do not suppose that when a drunkard reasons with himself upon his vice,

  • he is once outta 500 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 insensible

  • 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 draft 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 play thing.

  • 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 awoken me,

  • enraged 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 screw to the top most peg.

  • I ran to the house in Soho and to make assurance doubly sure

  • destroyed my papers.

  • Then I set out through the lamp litt 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

  • hearkening in my wake for the steps of the avenger,

  • Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the draft 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 threw 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.

  • Hide was then forth impossible. Whether I would or not,

  • I was now confined to the better part of my existence and O how I rejoice to

  • think of it with what willing humility.

  • I embraced and knew the restrictions of natural life with what sincere

  • renunciation I lock the door by which I had so often gone and come and

  • ground the key under my heel.

  • The next day came news that the murder had not 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 hide,

  • 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 the last year I labored 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 weeded 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 license,

  • not that I dreamed of resuscitating hide.

  • 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 underfoot where the frost had melted,

  • but cloudless overhead and the regent's park was full of winter chirping and

  • sweet with spring odors. I sat in the sun on a bench,

  • the animal within me licking the chops of memory, the spiritual side,

  • a little drow promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.

  • After all I reflected, I was like my neighbors. And then I smiled,

  • comparing myself with other men,

  • comparing my active goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their neglect.

  • And at the very moment of that vain, glorious thought, a qualm came over me,

  • A horrid nausea and the most deadly shuttering.

  • These passed away and left me faint. And then as in its turn,

  • 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 formless on my shrunken limbs.

  • The hand that lay 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, thrawled 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 faculty seemed sharpened to a point and my spirits more tensely elastic.

  • Thus it came about that where Jekyll perhaps might have succumbed hide,

  • rose to the importance of 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 and 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 that kindling spark the way that I must follow became

  • lighted up from end to end thereon,

  • I arranged my clothes as best I could and summoning a passing handsome drove

  • to a hotel in Portland Street,

  • the name of which I chance 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 nashed 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 countenance has made the attendance 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.

  • Hide 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 pool,

  • and that he might receive actual evidence of their being posted,

  • sent them out with directions that they should be registered. Then forward.

  • He sat all day over the fire in the private room, gnawing his nails.

  • There he dined, sitting alone with fears.

  • The waiter visibly wailing before his eye.

  • And then 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 lived 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 attire 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 Landons,

  • 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 hide that wracked me.

  • I received Landon'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 rung 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 rivaled

  • 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 re-administer. 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 pro shutter above all if I slept or even

  • dozed for a moment in my chair,

  • it was always as hide that I awakened under the strain of this

  • continually impending doom.

  • And by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself,

  • I even beyond what I had thought possible to man,

  • I became in my own person,

  • a creature eaten up and emptied by fever,

  • ly 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 sicks 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 its 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

  • returned to his subordinate station of apart 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 ape-like 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

  • objection 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 draft,

  • the abolition followed and the first change of color,

  • not the second I drank it and it was without efficiency.

  • You will learn from pool. How I have had London ransacked.

  • It was in vain and I'm now persuaded that my first supply was impure

  • and that it was that unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the draft.

  • About a week has passed and I'm 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

  • hither to escape 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.

  • Hide will tear it in pieces.

  • But if sometimes 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 ape-Like 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 forever that hated personality,

  • I know how I shall sit shuttering 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 hide,

  • die upon the scaffold or will he find 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 as we step back into the

  • light, leaving behind the shadowy world of Dr.

  • Jekyll and the unsettling presence of Mr. Hyde.

  • One cannot help but ponder how many selves lie dormant within

  • us. Waiting for the right moment to emerge.

  • Robert Lewis Stevenson's Haunting narrative presented to you by Obsidian River

  • Productions serves as a chilling.

  • Reminder of the complexities within the human psyche. If this tale has sense,

  • shivers down your spine, intrigued your mind,

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  • Thank you for journeying with us dear listener. Until our next tale,

  • may you find the balance within and embrace all that makes you, you.

Listeners As the twilight descends and shadows lengthen,

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Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde | Full Length Audiobook

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