Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson - Literary Tales Collection

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapters one to three. Chapter one, Story of the Door.
Mister Utterson, the Lawyer was a man of rugged countenance
that was never lighted by a smile, cold, scanty, and
embarrassed in discourse, backward in sentiment, lean, long, dusty, dreary,

(00:28):
and yet somehow lovable at friendly meetings, and when the
wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from
his eye, something indeed, which never found its way into
his talk, but which spoke not only in the silent
symbols of the after dinner face, but more often and

(00:50):
loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere
with himself, drank gin when he was alone to mortify
a tape for vintages, and though he enjoyed the theater, had
not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But
he had an approved tolerance for others, sometimes wandering almost

(01:14):
with envy at the high pressure of spirits involved in
their misdeeds, and in any extremity, inclined to help rather
than to reprove I incline to Cain's heresy, he used
to say, quaintly, I let my brother go to the
devil in his own way. In this character, It was

(01:37):
frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and
the last good influence in the lives of down going men.
And to such as these, so long as they came
about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change
in his demeanor. No doubt, the feat was easy to

(01:58):
mister Otterson, for he was on demonstrative at the best,
and even his friendships seemed to be founded in a
similar catholicity of good nature. It is the mark of
a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready made
from the hands of opportunity, and that was the lawyer's way.

(02:19):
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 mister Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman, the well known

(02:39):
man about town. It was a not 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

(03:02):
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
cause of business, that they might enjoy them uninterrupted. It
chanced on one of these rambles that their way led

(03:23):
them down a by street in a busy quarter of London.
The street was small and what is called quiet, but
it drove a thriving trade on the week days. The
inhabitants were all doing well, it seemed, and all emulously
hoping to do better still, and laying out the surplus
of their gains in coquetry, so that the shop fronts

(03:46):
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

(04:08):
painted shutters, well polished brasses, and general cleanliness and gaiety
of note, instantly caught and pleased the eye of the passenger.
Two doors from one corner on the left hand, going east,
the line was broken by the entry of a court,
and just at that point a certain sinister block of

(04:31):
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 sordid negligence. The door, which was

(04:53):
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

(05:15):
visitors or to repair their ravages. Mister 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

(05:37):
in the affirmative, it is connected in my mind, added he,
with a very odd story. Indeed, said mister Utterson, with
a slight change of voice, and what was that? Well,
it was this way, returned, mister Enfield. I was coming

(05:57):
home from some place at the end of the world,
about the 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

(06:18):
as a church. Till at last I got into that
state of mind when a man listens and listens and
begins to long for the sight of a policeman. All
at once I saw two figures, one a little man
who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and
the other a girl of maybe eight or ten, who

(06:40):
was running as hard as she was able down across 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 girl's body and left
her screaming on the ground. It sounds nothing to hear,

(07:01):
but it was hellish to see. It wasn't like a man,
It was like some damned juggernaut. I gave a view Hallo,
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,

(07:23):
but gave me one look so ugly that it brought
out the sweat on me, like running the people who
turned out with a 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 saw Bones, And there, you

(07:44):
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 case was what
struck me. He was the usual cut and dry apocethary,

(08:05):
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 saw bones turn sick
and white with the desire to kill him. I knew
what was in his mind, just as he knew what

(08:27):
was in mine, and killing being out of the question,
we did the next best. We told the man we
could and would make such a scandal out of this
as should make his name stink from one end of
London to the other. If he had any friends or
any credit, we undertook that he should lose them. And

(08:47):
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 face, and there was the
man in the middle with a kind of black sneering coolness.
Frightened too, I could see that. But carrying it off, sir,

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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 have clearly liked to stick out,

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but there was something about the lot of us that
meant mischief, and at last he struck. The next thing
was to get the money. And where do you think
he carried us? But to that place with the door
whipped out, a key went in and presently came back
with the matter of ten pounds in gold and a
check for the balance at coots drawn payable to bearer,

(09:56):
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

(10:17):
whole business looked apocryphal, and that a man does not
in real life walk into a cellar door at four
in the morning and come out of it with another
man's 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 banks open,

(10:38):
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.
The 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

(11:00):
a forgery, not a bit of it. The check was genuine.
Tut tut, said mister Utterson. I see you feel as
I do, said mister 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

(11:21):
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 that place with the door. In consequence,

(11:44):
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 mister Utterson,
asking rather suddenly, and you don't know if the drawer
of the check there a likely place, isn't it, returned
mister Renfield. But I happen to have noticed his address.

(12:06):
He lives in some square or other, and you never
asked about the place with the door, said mister Utterson. No, sir,
I had a delicacy. Was the reply. I feel very
strongly about putting questions. It partakes too much of the
style of the day of judgment. You start a question,
and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on

(12:30):
the top of a hill, and away the stone goes,
starting others, and presently some bland old bird, the last
you would have thought of, is knocked on the head
in his own back garden, and the family have to
change their name. No, sir, I make it a rule
of mine. The more it looks like Queer Street, the
less I ask. A very good rule too, said the lawyer.

(12:55):
But I have studied the place for myself, continued mister 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

(13:17):
they're clean. And then there is a chimney which is
generally smoking, so somebody must live there. And yet it's
not so sure, for the buildings are so packed together
about that court that it's hard to say where one
ends and another begins. The pair walked on again for
a while in silence, and then Enfield said, mister Utterson,

(13:42):
that's a good rule of yours. Yes, I think it
is returned Enfield. And for all of 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 mister n Ffie. I can't see what harm it
would do. It was a man by the name of Hyde,

(14:06):
hum said mister Ruttereson. 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

(14:26):
I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere. He
gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I can'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 for want of memory, for I declare

(14:49):
I can see him this moment. Mister Uttereson again walked
some way in silence, and obviously under a weight of consideration.
You are sure he used a key, he inquired at last,
My dear sir, began Enfield, surprised out of himself. Yes,
I know, said Utterson. I know it must seem strange.

(15:13):
The fact is, if I do not ask you the
name of the other party, it is because I know
it already. You see, Richard, your tale has gone home.
If you have been in exact in any point, you
had better correct it. I think you might have warned me,
returned the other with a touch of sullenness. But I've

(15:35):
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. Mister Utterson
sighed deeply, but said never a word, and the young
man presently resumed. Here is another lesson to say nothing,

(15:57):
said he. I'm ashamed of my long time hung Let
us make a bargain never to refer to this again.
With all my heart, said the lawyer, I shake hands
on that, Richard. Chapter two, Search for Mister Hyde. That evening,

(16:20):
mister Utterson came home to his bachelor house in Somber
Spirits and sat down to dinner without relish. It was
his custom of a Sunday, when his 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 twelve, when

(16:42):
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 doctor

(17:03):
Jeckyll's will, and sat down with a clouded brow to
study its contents. The will was holograph for mister Utterson,
though he took charge of it now that it was made,
had refused to lend the least assistance in the making
of it. It provided not only that in the case

(17:25):
of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M, D, 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
doctor Jeckyll's disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding

(17:46):
three calendar months, the said Edward Hyde should step into
the said Henry Jekyll's shoes without further delay, and free
from any burden 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 eye saw. It

(18:09):
offended him, both as a lawyer and as a lover
of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom
the fanciful was the immodest. And hitherto it was his
ignorance of mister Hyde that had swelled his indignation. Now
by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge. It was

(18:30):
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 in substantial mists that had
so baffled his eye, there leapt up the sudden, definite
presentment of a fiend. I thought it was madness, he said,

(18:54):
as he replaced the obnoxious paper in the safe, And
now I begin to fear it disgrace. With that, he
blew out his candle, put on a greatcoat, and set
forth in the direction of Cavendish Square, that citadel of medicine,
where his friend, the great Doctor Lanion had his house,

(19:16):
and received his crowding patience. If any one knows it
will be Lanion, 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 Doctor Lanion sat alone over his wine. He was

(19:36):
a hearty, healthy, dapper, red faced gentleman, with a shock
of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and decided manner.
At sight of mister Otterson, he sprang up from his
chair and welcomed him with both hands. The geniality, as
was the way of the man, was somewhat theatrical to
the eye, but it reposed on genuine feeling. For these

(20:01):
two were old friends, old mates both at school and college,
both thorough respectors of themselves and of each other. And
what does not always follow men who thoroughly enjoyed each
other's company. After a little rambling talk, the lawyer led
up to the subject which so disagreeably preoccupied his mind.

(20:24):
I suppose Lanion, he said, you and I must be
the two oldest friends that Henry Jeckyll, has I wish
the friends were younger, chuckled doctor Lanion. But I suppose
we are, and what of that? I see little of
him now, indeed, said Utterson, I thought you had a

(20:44):
bond of common interest we had, was the reply. But
it is more than ten years since Henry Jackyll became
too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong
in the mind, and though of course I continued to
take an interest in him for old sake's sake, as
they say, I see and have seen devilish little of

(21:06):
the man. Such unscientific balderdash, added the doctor, flushing Suddenly
Purple would have estranged Damon and Pytheas this little spirit
of temper was somewhat of relief to mister Utterson. They
have only differed on some point of science, he thought,
And being a man of no scientific passions except in

(21:29):
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 approach the question he
had come to put. Did you ever come across a
protege of his? One hide? He asked, Hide, repeated Lanyon, No,

(21:52):
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

(22:15):
by questions. Six o'clock struck on the bells of the
church that was so conveniently near to mister Rottereson's dwelling,
And still he was digging at the problem. Hitherto it
had touched him on the intellectual side alone, But now
his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved. And as

(22:39):
he lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the
night and the curtained room, mister 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
a nocturnal city, Then of the figure of a man
walking swiftly, of a child running from the doctors, And

(23:03):
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,

(23:26):
and lo there would stand by his side, a figure
to whom power was given, and even at that dead
hour he must rise and do its bidding. The figure
in these two phases haunted the lawyer all night, and
if at any time he dozed over, it was but
to see it glide more stealthily through sleeping houses, or

(23:49):
move the more swiftly, and still the more swiftly, even
to dizziness, through wider labyrinths of lamp lighted city, and
at every street corner crush a child and leave her screaming.
And still the figure had no face by which he
might know it even in his dreams. It had no face,

(24:09):
or one that baffled him and melted before his eyes.
And thus it was that there sprang up and grew
apace in the lawyer's mind, a singularly strong, almost an
inordinate curiosity to behold the features of the real mister Hide.
If he could but once set his eyes on him,

(24:30):
he thought the mystery would lighten and perhaps roll away altogether,
as was the habit of mysterious things. When well examined,
he might see a reason for his friend's strange preference
or bondage, call it which you please, and even for
the startling clauses of the will. And at least it
would be a face worth seeing, the face of a

(24:52):
man who was without bowels of mercy, a face which
had but to show itself, to raise up in the
the mind of the unimpressionable Enfield, a spirit of enduring hatred.
From that time forward, mister Utterson began to haunt the
door in the by street of shops in the morning

(25:14):
before office hours, at noon, when business was plenty and
time scarce, at night, under the face of the fog
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 missed a hide he

(25:35):
had thought I shall be missed to seek, And at
last his patience was rewarded. It was a fine, dry night,
frost in the air, the streets as clean as a
ballroom floor, the lamps unshaken by any wind, drawing a
regular pattern of light and shadow. By ten o'clock when

(25:58):
the shops were closed. The by street was very solitary, and,
in spite of the low growl of London, from all around,
very silent. Small sounds carried far. Domestic sounds out of
the houses were clearly audible on either side of the roadway,
and the rumor of the approach of any passenger preceded

(26:21):
him by a long time. Mister Otterson 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

(26:42):
he is still a great way off, suddenly sprung out
distinct from the vast hum and clatter of the city.
Yet his attention had never before been so sharply and
decisively arrested, and it was with a strong superstitious prevision
of success that he withdrew into the entry of the court.

(27:04):
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

(27:25):
at that distance, went somehow strongly against the watcher's inclination.
But he made straight for the door, crossing the roadway
to save time, and as he came he drew a
key from his pocket, like one approaching home. Mister Uttereson
stepped out and touched him on the shoulder as he passed.

(27:46):
Mister Hyde. I think mister 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 cooldy enough, that is my name. What do
you want? I see you are going in, returned the lawyer.
I am an old friend of doctor Jekyll's, mister Utterson,

(28:09):
of Gaunt Street. You must have heard my name, and
meeting you so conveniently, I thought you might admit me.
You will not find doctor Jekyll. He is from home,
replied mister Hyde, blowing in the key, and then suddenly,
but still without looking up, how do you know me?

(28:29):
He asked? On your side, said mister Utterson, Will you
do me a favor with pleasure? Replied the other, What
shall it be? Will you let me see your face,
said the lawyer. Mister Hyde appeared to hesitate, and then,
as if upon some sudden reflection, fronted about with an

(28:50):
air of defiance, and the pair stared at each other
pretty fixedly for a few seconds. Now I shall know
you again, said mister Utterson. It may be useful, yes,
returned mister Hyde. It is as well we have met,
and a propos you should have my address, and he

(29:10):
gave a number of a street in Soho. Good God,
thought mister Routtereson. Can he too have been thinking of
the will, But he kept his feelings to himself and
only grunted an acknowledgment of the address. And now said
the other, how do you know me by description? Was

(29:32):
the reply? Whose description we have common friends, said mister Routtereson.
Common friends, uttered mister Hyde a little hoarsely. Who are
they Jekyll, for instance? Said the lawyer. He never told you,
cried mister Hyde, with a flush of anger. I did
not think you would have lied. Come, said mister Utterson.

(29:54):
That is not fitting language. The other snarled aloud with
a savage laugh, and the next moment, with extraordinary quickness,
he had unlocked the door and disappeared into the house.
The lawyer stood awhile when mister Hyde had left him
the picture of disquietude. Then he began slowly to mount

(30:17):
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. Mister Hyde
was pale and dwarfish. He gave an impression of deformity

(30:38):
without any nameable malformation. He had a displeasing smile. He
had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of
murderous mixture of timidity and boldness. And he spoke with
a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice. All these were
points against him, but not all of these together that

(31:00):
could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing, and fear with
which mister Utterson regarded him. There must be something else,
said the perplexed gentleman. There is something more, if I
could find a name for it, God bless me. The
man seems hardly human, something troglodittic, shall we say, or

(31:24):
can it be? The old story of doctor fell or
is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that
thus transpires through and transfigures its clay continent? The last
I think for oh, my poor old Harry Jekyl. If
ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is

(31:44):
on that of your new friend. Round the corner from
the by street, there was a square of ancient, handsome houses,
now for the most part decayed from their high estate,
and let in flats and chambers to all sorts and
conditions of men, mapping, gravers, architects, shady lawyers, and the

(32:06):
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,
mister Rotterson stopped and knocked. A well dressed elderly servant

(32:29):
opened the door. Is doctor Jekyll at home? Paul asked
the lawyer. I will see, mister Utterson, said Paul, 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

(32:52):
with costly cabinets of oak. Will you wait here by
the fire, sir? Or shall I give you a light
in the dining room? Here? Thank you, said the lawyer,
and he drew near and leaned on the tall fender.
This hall, in which he was now left alone, was
a pet fancy of his friend, the doctor's, and Otterson

(33:14):
himself was wont to speak of it as the pleasantest
room in London. But to night there was a shodder
in his blood. The face of Hyde sat heavy in
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

(33:36):
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 Paul presently returned to announce
that doctor Jekyll was gone out. I saw mister Hyde
go in by the old dissecting room door, Paul, he said,

(33:57):
is that right when doctor Jeckyll is from home? Quite right,
mister Utterson, Sir, replied the servant, mister Hyde has a key.
Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust
in that young man. Paul resumed the other musingly, Yes, sir,
he do, indeed, said Paul. We all have orders to

(34:17):
obey him. I do not think I ever met mister Hyde,
asked Uttereson. Oh dear, No, sir, he never dines here,
replied the butler. Indeed, we see very little of him
on this side of the house. He mostly comes and
goes by the laboratory. Well, good night, Paul, Good night,

(34:37):
mister Utterson. And the lawyer set out homeward with a
very heavy heart. Poor Harry Jekyll, he thought, my mind
misgives me. He is in deep waters. He was wild
when he was young, a long while ago, to be sure.
But in the law of God there is no statute
of limitations. It must be that the ghost of some

(35:02):
old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace, punishment coming
pede Claudo years after memory has forgotten, and self love
condoned the fault. And the lawyer, scared by the thought,
brooded awhile on his own past, groping in all the

(35:22):
corners of memory, lest by chance, some jack in the
box of an old iniquity should leap to light. There
his past was fairly blameless. Few men could read the
rolls of their life with less apprehension. Yet he was
humbled to the dust by the many ill things he
had done, and raised up again into a sober and

(35:45):
fearful gratitude by the many that he had come so
near to doing yet avoided. And then by a return
on his former subject. He conceived a spark of hope.
This mister Hyde, if he were studdied, thought he must
have secrets of his own, black secrets, by the look

(36:06):
of him, secrets compared to which poor Jeckyal's worst would
be like sunshine. Things cannot continue as they are. It
turns me cold to think of this creature stealing like
a thief to Harry's bedside. Poor Harry, What a wakening,
and the danger of it. For if this hide suspects

(36:27):
the existence of the will, he may grow impatient to inherit. Aye,
I must put my shoulder to the wheel, if Jeckyl
will but let me, he added, if Jeckyl will only
let me. For once more he saw before his mind's eye,
as clear as a transparency, the strange clauses of the will.

(36:53):
Chapter three, Doctor Jeckyll 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 mister

(37:14):
Utterson so contrived that he remained behind after the others
had departed. This was no new arrangement, but a thing
that had befallen many scores of times where Utterson was liked.
He was liked well. Hosts loved to detail the dry lawyer.
When the light hearted and the loose tongued had already

(37:36):
their foot on the threshold. They liked to sit awhile
in his unobtrusive company, practicing for solitude, sobering their minds
in the man's rich silence after the expense and strain
of gaiety. To this rule, doctor Jekyll was no exception,
And as he now sat on the opposite side of

(37:57):
the fire, a large, well made, smooth faced man of fifty,
with something of a slyish caste, perhaps, but every mark
of capacity and kindness you could see by his looks
that he cherished mister Utterson a sincere and warm affection.
I've been wanting to speak to you, Jackal began the latter,

(38:20):
You know that will of yours. A close observer might
have gathered that the topic was distasteful, but the doctor
carried it off gaily. My poor Utterson, he said, you
are unfortunate in such a client. I never saw a
man so distressed as you were by my will, unless
it were that hide bound pedant Lanyon at what he

(38:42):
called my scientific heressies. Oh, I know he's a good fellow.
You needn't frown, an excellent fellow, and I always mean
to see more of him. But a hide bound pedant
for all that, an ignorant, blatant pedant. I was never
more disappointed in any man than Lanyon. You know I

(39:03):
never approved of it, pursued Utterson, ruthlessly, disregarding the fresh
topic my will. Yes, certainly I know that, said the doctor.
A trifle sharply. You told me so, well, I tell
you so again, continued the lawyer. I have been learning
something of young hide. The large handsome face of doctor

(39:26):
Jekyll grew pale to the very lips, and there came
a blackness about his eyes. I do not care to
hear more, said he. This is a matter I thought
we had agreed to stop. What I heard was abominable,
said Utterson. It can make no change. You do not

(39:46):
understand my position, returned the doctor, with a certain incoherency
of manner. I am painfully situated, Utterson. My position is
a very strange, a very strange one. It is one
of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking, Jekyl,
said Utterson. You know me, I'm a man to be trusted.

(40:09):
Make a clean breast of this in confidence, and I
make no doubt I can get you out of it.
My good Utterson, said the doctor. This is very good
of you, This is downright good of you, and I
cannot find words to thank you in I believe you fully.
I would trust you before any man alive, ay before myself,

(40:29):
if I could make the choice. But indeed, it isn't
what you fancy. It is not so bad as that.
And just to put your good heart at rest, I
will tell you one thing. The moment I choose I
can be rid of mister Hyde. I give you my
hand upon that, and I thank you again and again.

(40:51):
And I will just add one little word, Utterson, that
I'm sure you'll take in good part. This is a
private matter, and I beg of you to let it sleep.
Utterson reflected a little, looking in the fire. I have
no doubt you are perfectly right, he said, at last,
getting to his feet. Well, but since we have touched

(41:15):
upon the 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 Hide. 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

(41:36):
in that young man. And if I am taken away, Utterson,
I wish you to promise me that you will bear
with him and get his rights for him. I think
you would if you knew all, and it would be
a weight off my mind if you would promise. I
can't promise that I shall ever like him, said the lawyer.

(41:58):
I don't ask that, pleaded Jekyl, laying his hand upon
the other's arm. I ask only for justice. I only
ask you to help him for my sake. When I
am no longer here, Utterson heaved an irrepressible sigh. Well,
he said, I promise the end of Chapter three, Chapters

(42:25):
four to seven, chapter four, the Koru murder case. Nearly
a year later, in the month of October eighteen something,
London was startled by a crime of singular ferocity, and
rendered all the more notable by the high position of

(42:48):
the victim. The details were few and startling. A maid
servant living alone in a house not far from the river,
had gone upstairs to bed about eleven. Although a fog
rolled over the city in the small hours, the early
part of the night was cloudless, and the lane which

(43:11):
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 the experience, never had

(43:35):
she felt more at peace with all men, or thought
more kindly of the world. And as she so sat,
she became aware of an aged and beautiful gentleman with
white hair, drawing near along the lane, and advancing to
meet him, another and very small gentleman, to whom at

(43:56):
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,

(44:17):
it sometimes appeared as if he were only inquiring his way.
But the moon shone on his face as he spoke,
and the girl was pleased to watch it. It seemed
to breathe such an innocent and old world kindness of disposition,
yet with something high too, as of a well founded
self content. Presently, her eye wandered to the other, and

(44:43):
she was surprised to recognize in him a certain mister 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

(45:03):
contained impatience. 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 mister hyde broke out of

(45:27):
all bounds and clubbed him to the earth, and next moment,
with apelike fury, he was trampling his victim under foot
and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the
bones were audibly shattered, and the body jumped upon the roadway.
At the horror of these sights and sounds, the maid fainted.

(45:53):
It was two o'clock when she came to herself and
called for the police. The murderer was gone long ago,
but there lay his victim in the middle of the lane,
incredibly mangled. The stick with which the deed had been done,
although it was of some rare and very tough and
heavy wood, had broken in the middle under the stress

(46:16):
of this insensate 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 a gold
watch were found upon the victim, but no cards or papers,
except a sealed and stamped envelope, which he had been

(46:39):
probably carrying to the post, and which bore the name
and address of mister Utterson. This was brought to the
lawyer the next morning, before he was out of bed,
and he had no sooner seen it and been told
the circumstances than he shot out a solemn lip. I
shall say nothing till I have seen the body, said he.

(47:02):
This may be very serious. Have the kindness to wait
while I dress. And with the same grave countenance, he
hurried through his breakfast and drove to the police station,
whither the body had been carried. As soon as he
came into the cell, he nodded, yes, said he I

(47:22):
recognize him. I am sorry to say that this is
Sir Danver's carew good God, sir, exclaimed the officer. Is
it possible? And the next moment is I lighted up
with professional ambition. This will make a deal of noise,
he said, And perhaps you can help us to the man.

(47:43):
And he briefly narrated what the maid had seen and
showed the broken stick. Mister Utterson had already quailed at
the name of hide, 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

(48:09):
this mister Hyde, a person of small stature, he inquired.
Particularly small and particularly wicked looking, is what the maid
calls him, said the officer, mister Utterson reflected, and then
raising his head, if you will come with me in
my cab, he said, I think I can take you

(48:29):
to his house. It was by this time about nine
in the morning, and the first fog of the season.
A great chocolate colored paul lowered over Heaven. But the
wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapors, so
that as the cab crawled from street to street, mister

(48:50):
Rotterson beheld a marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight.
For here it would be dark like the back end
of evening, and there would be a glow of a rich,
lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration. And here,
for a moment the fog would be quite broken up,

(49:11):
and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between
the swirling wreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under
these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways and slatternly passengers,
and its lamps which had never been extinguished or had
been kindled afresh to combat this mournful reinvasion of darkness

(49:35):
seemed in the lawyer's eyes like a district of some
city in a nightmare. The thoughts of his mind, besides,
were of the gloomiest dye, and when he glanced at
the companion of his drive, he was conscious of some
touch of that terror of the law and the law's officers,

(49:55):
which may at times assail the most honest. As the
cab drew up before the address indicated, the fog lifted
a little and showed him a dingy street, a gin palace,
a low French eating house, a shop for the retail
of penny numbers and topenny salads, many ragged children huddled

(50:17):
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 omber, and cut him off
from his blackguardly surroundings. This was the home of Henry

(50:37):
Jekyll's favourite, of a man who was heir to a
quarter of a million sterling. An ivory faced and silvery
haired old woman opened the door. She had an evil
face smoothed by hypocrisy, but her manners were excellent, Yes,

(50:58):
she said, this was mister Hyde's, but he was not
at home. He had been in that night very late,
but had gone away again in less than an hour.
There was nothing strange in that his habits were very irregular,
and he was often absent. For instance, it was nearly
two months since she had seen him till yesterday. Very well, then,

(51:20):
we wished to see his rooms, said the lawyer, And
when the woman began to declare it was impossible. I
had better tell you who this person is, he added,
This is Inspector Newcommon of Scotland. Yard. A flash of
odious joy appeared upon the woman's face. Ah, said she
he's in trouble. What has he done? Mister Otterson and

(51:44):
the Inspector exchanged glances. He don't seem a very popular character,
observed the latter. And now, my good woman, just let
me and this gentleman have a look about us. In
the whole extent of the house, which but for the
old woman, remained otherwise empty, mister Hyde had only used

(52:04):
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 knapery excellent. A good picture
hung upon the walls, a gift, as Utterson supposed, from
Henry Jekyl, who was much of a connoisseur, and the

(52:26):
carpets were of many plies and agreeable in color. At
this moment, however, the rooms bore every mark of having
been recently and hurriedly ransacked. Clothes lay about the floor
with their pockets inside out. Lockfast drawers stood open, and
on the hearth there lay a pile of gray ashes,

(52:48):
as though many papers had been burned from these embers.
The inspector disinterred the butt end of a green check book,
which had resisted the action of the fire. The other
half of the stick was found behind the door, and
as this clinched his suspicions, the officer declared himself delighted.

(53:11):
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 on it, sir, he told mister Rotterson,
I have him in my hand. He must have lost
his head, or he would never have left the stick,
or above all, burned the check book. Why money's life

(53:34):
to the man. We have nothing to do but wait
for him at the bank and get out the handbills.
This last, however, was not so easy of accomplishment, for
mister Hyde had numbered few familiars. Even the master of
the servant maid had only seen him twice. His family
could nowhere be traced, he had never been photographed, and

(53:58):
the few who could describe differed widely, as common observers will.
Only on one point were they agreed, and that was
the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive
impressed his beholders. Chapter five, Incident of the Letter. It

(54:24):
was late in the afternoon when mister Utterson found his
way to doctor Jekyll's door, where he was at once
admitted by Paul and carried down by the kitchen offices
and across a yard which had once been a garden,
to the building which was indifferently known as the laboratory
or the dissecting rooms. The doctor had bought the house

(54:46):
from the airs 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

(55:11):
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 cupola. At the further end a flight

(55:34):
of stairs mounted to a door covered with red baize,
and through this mister Utterson was at last received into
the doctor's cabinet. It was a large room, fitted round
with glass presses, furnished, among other things, with a cheval
glass and a business table, and looking out upon the

(55:55):
court by three dusty windows barred with iron. The fire
burned in the grate. A lamp was set lighted on
the chimney shelf. For even in the houses, the fog
began to lie thickly, and there, close up to the
warmth sat Doctor Jekyll, looking deadly sick. He did not

(56:17):
rise to meet his visitor, but held out a cold
hand and bade him welcome in a changed voice, And
now said mister Otterson, as soon as Paul had left them.
You have heard the news, the doctor shuddered. They were
crying it in the square, he said, I heard them

(56:38):
in my dining room. One word, said the lawyer. Carew
was my client. But so are you, and I want
to know what I am doing. You have not been
mad enough to hide this fellow Otterson. I swear to God,
cried the doctor. I swear to God I will never
set eyes on him again. I bind my honor toy

(57:01):
that I am done with him in this world. It
is all at an end. And indeed he does not
want my help. You do not know him as I do.
He is safe. He is quite safe, mark my words.
He will never more be heard of. The lawyer listened gloomily.

(57:22):
He did not like his friend's feverish manner. You seem
pretty sure of him, he said, And for your sake,
I hope you may be right. If it came to
a trial, your name might appear. I am quite sure
of him, replied Jekyll. I have grounds for certainty that
I cannot share with any one. But there is one

(57:45):
thing of which you may advise me. I have. I
have received a letter, and I am at a loss
whether I should show it to the police. I should
like to leave it in your hands, Utterson, you would
judge wisely. I am sure I have so great a
trust in you. You fear I suppose that it might
lead to his detection, asked the lawyer. No, said the other.

(58:09):
I cannot say that I care what becomes of Hide.
I am quite done with him. I was thinking of
my own character, which this hateful business has rather exposed.
Otterson ruminated a while. He was surprised at his friend's selfishness,
and yet relieved by it. Well said he at last

(58:32):
let me see the letter. The letter was written in
an old upright hand, and signed Edward Hyde, and it
signified briefly enough that the writer's benefactor, doctor Jekyll, whom
he had long so unworthily repaid for a thousand generosities,
need labor under no alarm for his safety, as he

(58:55):
had means of escape on which he placed a sure 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,

(59:18):
before I thought what I was about. But it bore
no postmark. The note was handed in. Shall I keep
this and sleep upon it? Asked Utterson, I wish you
to judge for me entirely was the reply. I have
lost confidence in myself. Well I shall consider, returned the lawyer.

(59:39):
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 shot his
mouth tight and nodded. I knew it, said Utterson. He
meant to murder you. You have had a fine escape.

(01:00:00):
I have had what is far more to the purpose,
returned the doctor solemnly, I have had a lesson, O God, Utterson,
what a lesson I have had? And he covered his
face for a moment with his hands. On his way out,
the lawyer stopped and had a word or two with Paul.

(01:00:20):
By the bye said he there was a letter handed
in to day. What was the messenger like? But Paul
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

(01:00:41):
the laboratory door. Possibly indeed it had been written in
the cabinet, and if that were so, it must be
differently judged and handled with the more caution. The newsboys
as he went were crying themselves hoarse along the footway
special edition, shocking murder of an MP. That was the

(01:01:06):
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,

(01:01:26):
he began to cherish a longing for advice. It was
not to be had directly, but perhaps he thought it
might be fished for presently. After he sat on one
side of his own hearth, with mister Guest his head
clerk upon the other, and midway between, at a nicely

(01:01:47):
calculated distance from the fire, a bottle of a particular
old wine that had long dwelt unsunned in the foundations
of his house. The fog still slept on the wing
above the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles.
And through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds,

(01:02:09):
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

(01:02:34):
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 mister Guest, and he was not always sure that
he kept as many as he meant. Guests had often

(01:02:55):
been on business to the doctors. He knew Paul, he
could scare have failed to hear of mister 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 writs? And above all, since Guest,
being a great student and critic of handwriting, would consider

(01:03:18):
the step natural and obliging. The clerk, besides, was a
man of counsel, he would scarce read so strange a
document without dropping a remark, and by that remark mister
Utterson might shape his future course. This is a sad business,

(01:03:39):
about sir Danvers, he said, yes, sir, indeed it has
elicited a great deal of public feeling, returned Guest. The man,
of course, was mad. I should like to hear your
views on that, replied Utterson. I have a document here
in his handwriting. It is between us ourselves. For I

(01:04:01):
scarce knew 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

(01:04:22):
and by all accounts, a very odd writer, added the lawyer.
Just then the servant entered with a note. Is that
from doctor Jackyll, Sir, inquired the clerk. I thought, I
knew the writing anything private, mister Utterson, only an invitation
to dinner. Why do you want to see it? One moment?

(01:04:45):
I thank you, sir, and the clerk laid the two
sheets of paper alongside and sedulously compared their contents. Thank you, sir,
he said, at last, returning both it's a very interesting
autograp There was a pause during which mister Utterson struggled
with himself. Why did you compare them, guest, he inquired. Suddenly, Well, Sir,

(01:05:13):
returned the clerk, there's a rather singular resemblance. The two
hands are in many points identical, only differently sloped. Rather quaint,
said Utterson. It is as you say, rather quaint, returned Guest.
I wouldn't speak of this note, you know, said the master. No, sir,

(01:05:36):
said the clerk. I understand, but no sooner was mister
Uttereson alone that night than he locked the note into
his safe, where it reposed from that time forward what
he thought Henry Jekyll forge for a murderer, and his
blood ran cold in his veins. Chapter six remarkable incident

(01:06:04):
of doctor Lanyon. Time ran on. Thousands of pounds were
offered in reward for the death of Sir Danvers was
resented as a public injury, But mister Hyde had disappeared
out of the ken of the police, as though he
had never existed. Much of his past was unearthed, indeed,

(01:06:28):
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 seems to
have surrounded his career, but of his present whereabouts not
a whisper from the time he had left the house

(01:06:51):
in Soho on the morning of the murder, he was
simply blotted out, And gradually, as time drew on, Missus
Utterson began to recover from the hotness of his alarm,
and to grow more at quiet with himself. The death
of Sir Danvers was, to his way of thinking, more

(01:07:12):
than paid for by the disappearance of mister Hyde. Now
that that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life
began for Doctor Jekyl. 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

(01:07:33):
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

(01:07:56):
the eighth of January Otterson had dined at the doctor's
with a small party. Lanion 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 twelfth, and again on the fourteenth, the door
was shut against the lawyer. The doctor was confined to

(01:08:19):
the house, Paul said, and saw no one. On the
fifteenth he tried again, and was again refused. And having
now been used for the last two months to see
his friend almost daily, he found this return of solitude
to weigh upon his spirits. The fifth night he had

(01:08:40):
in guest to dine with him, and the sixth he
betook himself to doctor Lanion's. There at least he was
not denied admittance, But when he came in, he was
shocked at the change which had taken place in the
doctor's appearance. He had his death warrant written legibly upon
him face. The rosy man had grown pale, his flesh

(01:09:05):
had fallen away. He was visibly balder and older. And
yet it was not so much these tokens of a
swift physical decay that arrested the lawyer's notice as a
look in the eye and quality of manner that seemed
to testify to some deep seated terror of the mind.

(01:09:26):
It was unlikely that the doctor should fear death, and
yet that was what Otterson 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
Otterson remarked on his ill looks, it was with an

(01:09:48):
air of great firmness that Lanyon declared himself a doomed man.
I have had a shock, he said, and I shall
never recover. It is a question of weeks. Well. Life
has been pleasant. I liked it, yes, sir, I used
to like it. I sometimes think if we knew all,

(01:10:10):
we should be more glad to get away. Jekyl is ill, too,
observed Utterson. Have you seen him? But Lanion's face changed
and he held up a trembling hand. I wish to
see or hear no more of doctor Jekyll, he said,
in a loud, unsteady voice. I am quite done with

(01:10:32):
that person, and I beg that you will spare me
any allusion to one whom I regard as dead. Tut tut,
said mister Utterson, and then, after a considerable pause, can't
I do anything? He inquired, We are three very old friends, Lanion,
we shall not live to make others. Nothing can be done,

(01:10:56):
returned Lanion, ask himself. He will not see me, said
the doctor. I'm not surprised at that was the reply.
Some day, Utterson, after I am dead, you may perhaps
come to learn the right and wrong of this. I
cannot tell you. And in the meantime, if you can
sit and talk with me of other things, for God's sake,

(01:11:16):
stay and do so. But if you cannot keep clear
of this accursed topic, then in God's name, go, for
I cannot bear it. As soon as he got home,
Otterson sat down and wrote to Jekyl, complaining of his
exclusion from the house and asking the cause of this

(01:11:36):
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, Jekyl wrote, but I
share his view that we must never meet. I mean,

(01:12:00):
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,

(01:12:22):
I am the chief of sufferers. Also, I could not
think that this earth contained a place for sufferings and
terrors so unmanning. And you can do but one thing, Utterson,
to lighten this destiny, and that is to respect my silence.
Utterson was amazed. The dark influence of hide had been withdrawn.

(01:12:46):
The doctor had returned to his old tasks and amateurs.
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

(01:13:07):
a change pointed to madness. But in view of Lanion's
manner and words, there must lie for it some deeper ground.
A week afterwards, doctor Lanion took to his bed, and
in something less than a fortnight he was dead. The

(01:13:27):
night after the funeral at which he had been sadly affected,
Otterson 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 dear friend private

(01:13:48):
for the hands of J. G. Utterson alone, and in
case of his predecease, to be destroyed unread. So it
was emphatically superscribed, and the lawyer dreaded to behold the contents.
I have buried one friend to day he thought, what
if this should cost me another? And then he condemned

(01:14:12):
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 doctor Henry Jekyl. Otterson could not trust his eyes. Yes,

(01:14:33):
it was disappearance here again, as in the mad will,
which he had long ago restored to its author, Here
again were the idea of a disappearance, and the name
of Henry Jekyl bracketed. But in the will that idea
had sprung from the sinister suggestion of the man hide.

(01:14:54):
It was set there with a purpose all too plain,
and horrible written by the hand of Lanyon. What could
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

(01:15:14):
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 Otterson desired

(01:15:35):
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 Paul upon the doorstep and

(01:15:58):
surrounded by the air and sound of the open city,
rather than to be admitted into that house of voluntary
bondage and to sit and speak with its inscrutable recluse.
Paul had indeed no very pleasant news to communicate. The doctor,
it appeared, now more than ever, confined himself to the

(01:16:20):
cabinet over the laboratory, where he would sometimes even sleep.
He was out of spirits. He had grown very silent.
He did not read. It seemed as if he had
something on his mind. Utterson became so used to the
unvarying character of these reports that he fell off little

(01:16:42):
by little in the frequency of his visits. Chapter seven
incident at the window. It chanced on Sunday, when mister
Utterson was on his usual walk with mister Enfield, that
their way lay once again through the by street, and

(01:17:05):
that when they came in front of the door, both
stopped to gaze at it. Well, said Enfield, that story
is at an end. At least we shall never see
more of mister Hyde. I hope not, said Utterson. Did
I ever tell you that I once saw him and
shared your feeling of repulsion? It was impossible to do

(01:17:27):
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 Jeckylls.
It was partly your own fault that I found out,
even when I did so. You found it out, did you,
said Utterson? But if that be so, we may step

(01:17:48):
into the court and take a look at the windows.
To tell you the truth. I am uneasy about poor Jekyl,
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.

(01:18:13):
The middle one of the three windows was half way open,
and sitting close beside it, taking the air with an
infinite sadness of mien, like some disconsolate prisoner. Utterson saw
doctor Jeckyll. What Jeckyll, he cried, I trust you are better.
I am very low, Utterson replied the doctor, drearily, very low.

(01:18:39):
It will not last long. Thank god you stayed too
much indoors, said the lawyer. You should be out whipping
up the circulation like mister Enfield and me. This is
my cousin, mister Enfield, doctor Jeckyll, Come now, get your
hat and take a quick turn with us. You are
very good, sighed the other. I should like to very much,

(01:19:02):
But no, no, no, it is quite impossible. I dare not,
but indeed utters and I am very glad to see you.
This is really a great pleasure. I would ask you
and mister 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

(01:19:23):
with you from where we are. That is just what
I was about to venture to propose, returned the doctor
with a smile. But the words were hardly uttered before
the smile was struck out of his face and succeeded
by an expression of such abject terror and despair as

(01:19:44):
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,

(01:20:07):
even upon a Sunday, there were still some stirrings of
life that mister Utterson at last turned and looked at
his companion. They were both pale, and there was an
answering horror in their eyes. God forgive us, God forgive us,
said mister Utterson. But mister Enfield only nodded his head

(01:20:30):
very seriously and walked on once more in silence. End
of chapter seven. Chapters eight and nine. Chapter eight the
last night. Mister Utterson was sitting by his fireside one
evening after dinner, when he was surprised to receive a

(01:20:53):
visit from Paul. Bless me, Paul, what brings you here?
He cried, and then, taking a second look at him,
what ails you? He added? Is the doctor ill? Mister
Utterson said the man. There is something wrong. Take a seat,
and here is a glass of wine for you, said

(01:21:14):
the lawyer. Now take your time and tell me plainly
what you want. You know the doctor's ways, sir, replied Paul,
And how he shuts himself up. Well, he's shot up
again in the cabinet. And I don't like it, Sir.
I wish I may die if I like it. Mister Utterson, Sir,

(01:21:35):
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 Paul 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,

(01:21:58):
and except for the moment when he had first announced
his terror, he had not once looked the lawyer in
the face. Even now he sat with the glass of
wine untasted on his knee and his eyes directed to
a corner of the floor. I can bear it no more,
he repeated, Come, said the lawyer. I see you have

(01:22:20):
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 Paul hoarsely. Foul play, cried the lawyer,
a good deal frightened and rather inclined to be irritated
in consequence, What foul play? What does the man mean?

(01:22:45):
I daren't say, sir, was the answer. But will you
come along with me and see for yourself? Mister Utterson's
only answer was to rise and get his hat and greatcoat.
But he observed with wonder the greatness of the relief
that appeared upon the butler's face, and perhaps with no
less that the wine was still untasted when he set

(01:23:08):
it down. To follow It was a wild, cold, seasonable
night of March, with a pale moon lying on her
back as though the wind had tilted her, and a
flying rack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture. The
wind made talking difficult and flecked the blood into the face.

(01:23:31):
It seemed to have swept the streets unusually bare of passengers. Besides,
for mister Utterson thought he had never seen that part
of London so deserted. He could have wished it otherwise.
Never in his life had he been conscious of so
sharp a wish to see and touch his fellow creatures.

(01:23:52):
For struggle as he might, there was borne in upon
his mind a crushing anticipation of calamity. The square, when
they got there, was all full of wind and dust,
and the thin trees in the garden were lashing themselves
against the railing Paul, who had kept all the way

(01:24:12):
apace or two a head, 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 the
red pocket handkerchief. But for all the hurry of his coming,
these were not the dews of exertion that he wiped away,
but the moisture of some strangling anguish. For his face

(01:24:36):
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, Paul, said the lawyer. Thereupon the servant
knocked in a very guarded manner. The door was opened

(01:24:57):
on the chain, and a voice asked from within, is
that you Paul? It's all right, said Paul, opened 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

(01:25:17):
like a flock of sheep. At the sight of mister Utterson,
the housemaid broke into hysterical whimpering, and the cook, crying out,
bless God, it's mister Utterson, ran forward as if to
take him in her arms. What what are you all here,
said the lawyer. Peevishly, very irregular, very unseemly. Your master

(01:25:42):
would be far from pleased. They're all afraid, said Paul.
Blank silence followed, no one protesting. Only the maid lifted
up her voice and now wept loudly. Hold your tongue,
Paul said to her, with a ferocity of an accent
that testified to his own jangled nerves. And indeed, when

(01:26:05):
the girl had so suddenly raised the note of her lamentation,
they had all started and turned towards the inner door
with faces of dreadful expectation, and now continued the butler,
addressing the knife boy, reach me a candle and we'll
get this through hands at once. And then he begged

(01:26:28):
mister Utterson to follow him, and led the way to
the back garden. Now, Sir said he you come as
gently as you can. I want you to hear, and
I don't want you to be heard and see here, sir,
if by any chance he was to ask you in,
don't go. Mister Utterson's nerves at this unlooked for termination

(01:26:55):
gave a jerk that nearly threw him from his balance,
but he recollected his curry bridge and followed the butler
into the laboratory building and through the surgical theater with
its lumber of crates and bottles, to the foot of
the stair. Here Paul motioned him to stand on one
side and listen, while he himself, setting down the candle

(01:27:19):
and making a great and obvious call on his resolution,
mounted the steps and knocked with a somewhat uncertain hand
on the red baize of the cabinet door. Mister Rotterson, Sir,
asking to see you, he called, and even as he
did so, once more violently signed to the lawyer to

(01:27:41):
give ear. A voice answered from within. Tell him I
cannot see any one, it answered, complainingly. Thank you, sir,
said Paul, with a note of something like triumph in
his voice, and taking up his candle head mister Utterson
back across the yard and into the great kitchen, where

(01:28:04):
the fire was out and the beatles were leaping on
the floor. Sir, he said, looking mister Utterson in the eyes,
was that my master's voice? It seems much changed, replied
the lawyer, very pale, but giving look for look changed. Well, yes,

(01:28:26):
I think so, said the butler. Have I been twenty
years in this man's house to be deceived about his voice? No, Sir,
Master's made away with. He was made away with eight
days ago when we heard him cry out upon the
name of God. And who's in there instead of him?
And why it stays there is a thing that cries

(01:28:49):
to heaven, mister Utterson, This is a very strange tale, Paul,
This is rather a wild tale, my man, said mister
u Utterson, biting his finger. Suppose it were as you suppose,
supposing doctor Jekyll to have been well murdered, what could

(01:29:11):
induce the murderer to stay that won't hold water. It
doesn't commend itself to reason. Well, mister Utterson, 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, or whatever it is that lives in that

(01:29:32):
cabinet has been crying night and day for some sort
of medicine and cannot get it to his mind. It
was sometimes his way, the master's, that is, to write
his orders on a sheet of paper and throw it
on the stair. We've had nothing else this week back,
nothing but papers and a closed door, and the very

(01:29:54):
meals left there to be smuggled in when no one
was looking. Well, sir, Every day, ay and twice and
thrice in the same day. There have been orders and complaints,
and I've 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

(01:30:16):
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 mister Utterson. Paul felt
in his pocket and handed out a crumpled note which
the lawyer, bending nearer to the candle, carefully examined its contents.

(01:30:41):
Ran Thus Dr Jekyl presents his compliments to Messrs More.
He assures them that their last sample is impure and
quite useless for his present purpose. In the year eighteen something,
Dr J purchased a somewhat largey from Messrs m. He

(01:31:02):
now begs them to search with the most sedulous care,
and should any of the same quality be left to
forward it to him at once, expense is no consideration.
The importance of this to Doctor J can hardly be exaggerated.
So far the letter had run composedly enough, but here,

(01:31:23):
with a sudden splotter of the pen, the writer's emotion
had broken loose. For God's sake, he had added, find
me some of the old This is a strange note,
said mister Utterson, and then sharply, how do you come
to have it open? The man at Maw's was made angry, sir,

(01:31:45):
and he threw it back to me like so much dirt.
Returned Paul, 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,

(01:32:07):
seen him, repeated mister Ruttereson. Well that's it, said Paul.
It was this way. I came suddenly into the theater
from the garden. It seems he'd 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

(01:32:31):
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 hare
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

(01:32:53):
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 mister Utterson. But I think I begin to see daylight.
Your master, Paul is plainly seized with one of those

(01:33:15):
maladies that both torture and transform the sufferer. Hence for aught,
I know, the alteration of his voice, hence the mask,
and his avoidance of his friends, hence his eagerness to
find this drug by means of which the poor soul
retains some hope of ultimate recovery. God grants that he

(01:33:37):
be not deceived. There is my explanation. It is sad enough, Paul,
I am appalling to consider, but it is plain and natural,
hangs together well and delivers us from all exorbitant alarms. Sir,
said the butler, turning to a sort of mottled pallor.

(01:34:00):
That thing was not my master, and there's the truth.
My master here, He looked around him and began to whisper.
Is a tall, fine build of a man, and this
was more of a dwarf. Utterson attempted to protest. Oh, Sir,
cried Paul. Do you think I do not know my

(01:34:21):
master after twenty years? Do you think I do not
know where his head comes to in the cabinet door
where I saw him every morning of my life? No, Sir,
that thing in the mask was never Dr Jekyll. God
knows what it was, but it was never Dr Jekyl.
And it is the belief of my heart that there

(01:34:43):
was murder done. Paul replied the lawyer. If you say that,
it will become my duty to make certain much as
I desire to spare your master's feelings, much as I
am puzzled by this note, which seems to prove him
to be still alive, I shall consider it my duty

(01:35:04):
to break in that door. Ah, mister Utterson, that's talking,
cried the butler. And now comes the second question, resumed Utterson.
Who is going to do it? Why you and me? Sir?
Was the undaunted reply. That is very well, said, returned

(01:35:24):
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 Paul, and you
might take the kitchen poker for yourself. The lawyer took
that rude but weighty instrument into his hand and balanced it.

(01:35:45):
Do you know, Paul, he said, looking up, that you
and I are about to place ourselves in a position
of some peril. You may say so, sir. Indeed, returned
the butler. It is well then that we should be, Frank,
said the other. We both think more than we have said.
Let us make a clean breast. This masked figure that

(01:36:08):
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 mister Hyde, why yes, I
think it was. You see, it was much of the
same bigness, and it had the same quick light way

(01:36:30):
with it. And then who else could have got in
by the laboratory door. You've not forgot, sir, that at
the time of the murder he still had the key
with him. But that's not all I don't know, mister Utterson.
If you ever met this mister Hyde, yes, said the lawyer,
I once spoke with him, then you must know as

(01:36:51):
well as the rest of us, that there was something
queer about that gentleman, something that gave a man a turn.
I don't know rightly how to say it, sir, beyond
this that you felt it in your marrow, kind of
cold and thin. I own I felt something of what
you describe, said mister Utterson. Quite so, sir, returned Paul. Well,

(01:37:15):
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,
mister Utterson. I'm book learned enough for that but a
man has his feelings, and I give you my Bible word.
It was mister Hyde. Aye aye, said the lawyer. My

(01:37:38):
fears inclined to the same point. Evil, I fear founded,
evil was sure to come of that conviction. Ay, truly,
I believe you. I believe poor Harry is killed, and
I believe his murderer, for what purpose God alone can tell,
is still lurking in his victim's room. Well, let our

(01:38:01):
name be vengeance. Call Bradshaw. The footmen 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. Paul here and I are going to force

(01:38:22):
our way into the cabinet. If all is well, my
shoulders are broad enough to bear the blame. Meanwhile, lest
anything should really be amiss, or any malefactor seek to
escape by the back, you and the boy must go
round the corner with a pair of good sticks and
take your post at the laboratory door. We give you

(01:38:44):
ten 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, he led the way into the yard.
The scud had banked over the moon, and it was
now quite dark. The wind, which only broke in puffs

(01:39:08):
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 honed solemnly all around,
but nearer at hand. The stillness was only broken by

(01:39:30):
the sound of a footfall, moving to and fro along
the cabinet floor. So it will walk all day, sir,
whispered paul Ay, and the better part of the night.
Only when a new sample comes from the chemist. There's
a bit of a break. Ah. It's an ill conscience

(01:39:50):
that's such an enemy to rest. Ah, Sir, there's blood
foully shed in every step of it. But hark again
a little closer. Put your heart into your ears, mister Utterson,
and tell me is that the doctor's foot. The steps
fell lightly and oddly, with a certain swing. For all

(01:40:12):
they went so slowly. It was different, indeed, from the
heavy creaking tread of Henry Jekyl, Utterson sighed. Is there
never anything else? He asked. Paul nodded once, he said,
Once I heard it weeping, weeping? How's that? Said the lawyer,

(01:40:33):
conscious of a sudden chill of horror. Weeping like a
woman or a lost soul, said the butler. I came
away with that upon my heart. That I could have
wept too. But now the ten minutes drew to an end.
Paul disinterred the axe from under a sack of packing straw.

(01:40:54):
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. Jekyl
cried Utterson, with a loud voice. I demand to see you.

(01:41:14):
He paused a moment, but there came no reply. I
give you fair warning. Our suspicions are aroused, and I
must and shall see you, he resumed. If not by
fair means, then by foul. If not of your consent,
then by brute force, Utterson said, the voice, for God's sake,

(01:41:37):
have mercy. Ah, that's not Jekyl's voice, it's hide cried Utterson.
Down with the door Paul. Paul swung the axe over
his shoulder. The blow shook the building, and the red
baized door leaped against the lock and hinges. A dismal
screech as of mere animal terror, rang from the cabinet,

(01:41:59):
up where the axe again and again, the panels crashed,
and the flame 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 insunder, and the wreck of the door fell inwards
on the carpet. The besiegers, appalled by their own riot

(01:42:23):
and the stillness that had succeeded, stood back a little
and peered in. There lay the cabinet before their eyes,
in the quiet lamp light, a good fire glowing and
chattering on the hearth, the kettle singing its thin strain,
A drawer or two open papers neatly set forth on

(01:42:44):
the business table, and nearer the fire, the things laid
out for tea the quietest room, you would have said,
and but for the glazed presses full of chemicals, the
most commonplace that night in London. Right in the midst
there lay the body of a man, sorely contorted and

(01:43:06):
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 the semblance of life, but life was quite gone.

(01:43:29):
And by the crushed file in the hand and the
strong smell of kernels that hung upon the air, Uttersur
knew that he was looking on the body of a
self destroyer. We have come too late, he said sternly.
Whether to save or punish hide is gone to his account,
and it only remains for us to find the body

(01:43:50):
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

(01:44:12):
door on the by street, and with this the cabinet,
communicated separately by a second flight of stairs. There were
besides a few dark closets and a spacious cellar. All
these they now thoroughly examined each closet needed but a glance,
for all were empty, and all, by the dust that

(01:44:35):
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 Jackal'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

(01:44:56):
of cobweb, which had for years sealed up the the entrance.
Nowhere was there any trace of Henry Jekyll, dead or alive.
Paul stamped on the flags of the corridor. He must
be buried here, he said, hearkening to the sound, or
he may have fled, said Utterson, and he turned to

(01:45:20):
examine the door in the by street. It was locked,
and lying near by on the flags, they found the
key already stained with rust. This does not look use,
observed the lawyer. Use, echoed Paul, do you not see, sir,
It is broken, much as if a man had stamped

(01:45:40):
on it, a continued Utterson. And the fractures, too are rusty.
The two men looked at each other with a scare.
This is beyond me, Paul, said the lawyer let us
go back to the cabinet. They mounted the stair in silence, and,

(01:46:00):
still with an occasional awe struck glance at the dead body,
proceeded more thoroughly to examine the contents of the cabinet.
At one table, there were traces of chemical work, various
measured heaps of some white salt being laid on glass saucers,
as though for an experiment in which the unhappy man

(01:46:22):
had been prevented. That is the same drug that I
was always bringing him, said Paul, And even as he
spoke the kettle with the startling noise boiled over. This
brought them to the fireside, where the easy chair was
drawn cozily up, and the tea things stood ready to

(01:46:42):
the sitter's elbow, the very sugar in the cop There
were several books on a shelf. One lay beside the
tea things, open, and Otterson was amazed to find it
a copy of a pious work for which Jekyl had
several times expressed a great esteem, annotated in his own
hand with startling blasphemies. Next, in the course of their

(01:47:08):
review of the chamber, the searchers came to the cheval glass,
into whose depth they looked with an involuntary horror, but
it was so turned as to show them nothing but
the rosy glow playing on the roof, the fire, sparkling
in a hundred repetitions along the glazed front of the presses,

(01:47:29):
and their own pale and fearful countenances, 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 Jekyl? He caught himself

(01:47:50):
up at the word with a start, and then conquering
the weakness. What could Jekyl 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

(01:48:11):
the doctor's hand the name of mister Utterson. The lawyer
unsealed it, and several enclosures fell to the floor. The
first was a will drawn in the same eccentric terms
as the one which he had returned six months before,
to serve as a testament in case of death and

(01:48:32):
as a deed of gift in case of disappearance, but
in place of the name of Edward Hyde, the lawyer,
with indescribable amazement, read the name of Gabriel John Utterson.
He looked at Paul, and then back at the paper,
and last of all at the dead malefactor stretched upon

(01:48:53):
the carpet. My head goes round, he said. He has
been all the 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

(01:49:15):
doctor's hand and dated at the top. Oh, Paul, the
lawyer cried, He was alive, and here this day he
cannot have been disposed of in so short a space.
He must be still alive. He must have fled, And
then why fled? And how? And in that case can

(01:49:36):
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, said Paul,
because I fear, replied the lawyer. Solemnly, God grant that
I have no cause for it. And with that he

(01:49:59):
brought the pa to his eyes and read as follows,
my dear Utterson, when this shall fall into your hands,
I shall have disappeared under what circumstances. I have not
the penetration to foresee. But my instinct and all the
circumstances of my nameless situation tell me that the end

(01:50:22):
is sure and must be early. Go then, and first
read the narrative which Lanyon warned me he was to
place in your hands. And if you care to hear more,
turn to the confession of your unworthy and unhappy friend,
Henry Jekyll. There was a third enclosure, asked Uttereson Here, sir,

(01:50:47):
said Paul, and gave into his hands a considerable packet,
sealed in several places. The lawyer put it into his pocket.
I would say nothing of this paper. If your master
has fled or is dead, we may at least save
his credit. It is now ten. I must go home

(01:51:08):
and read these documents in quiet. But I shall be
back before midnight, when we shall send for the police.
They went out, locking the door of the theatre behind them,
and Utterson, once more, leaving the servants gathered about the
fire in the hall, trudged back to his office to

(01:51:28):
read the two narratives in which this mystery was now
to be explained Chapter nine, Doctor Lanyon's Narrative. On the
ninth of January, now four days ago, I received by

(01:51:49):
the evening delivery a registered envelope addressed in the hand
of my colleague and old school companion, Henry Jekyl. I
was a good deal surprise 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,

(01:52:09):
and I could imagine nothing in our intercourse that should
justify the formality of registration. The contents increased my wonder,
for this is how the letter ran tenth of December
eighteen something. Dear Lanion, you are one of my oldest friends,

(01:52:34):
and although we may have differed at times on scientific questions,
I cannot remember, at least on my side, any break
in our affection. There was never a day when if
you had said to me Jackal, my life, my honor,
my reason depend on you. I would not have sacrificed

(01:52:54):
my fortune or my left hand to help you. Lanion.
My life, my honor, my reason are all at your mercy.
If you fail me to night, I am lost. You
might suppose after this preface that I am going to

(01:53:14):
ask you for something dishonorable to grant judge for yourself.
I want you to postpone all other engagements for to night, ay,
even if you were summoned to the bedside of an emperor,
to take a cab unless your carriage should be actually
at the door, and with this letter in your hand

(01:53:37):
for consultation, to drive straight to my house. Paul, 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,

(01:53:59):
breaking the lock if it be shot, and to draw
out with all its contents as they stand, 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

(01:54:19):
if I am in error, you may know the right
draw by its contents. Some powders, a file and a
paper book. The draw I beg of you to carry
back with you to Cavendish Square exactly as it stands.
This is the first part of the service. Now for

(01:54:40):
the second you should be back if you set out
at once on the receipt of this long before midnight.
But I will leave you that amount of margin, not
only in the fear of one of those obstacles that
can neither be prevented nor foreseen, but because an hour
when your servants are in bed is to be preferred

(01:55:02):
for what will then remain to do At midnight? Then
I will 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

(01:55:24):
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

(01:55:48):
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

(01:56:10):
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 Lanion, and save your friend H. J. P. S.

(01:56:31):
I had already sealed this up when a fresh terror
struck 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 Lanion, do
my errand when it shall be most convenient for you
in the course of the day, and once more expect

(01:56:52):
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 Jekyl. Upon
the reading of this letter, I made sure my colleague
was insane, But till that was proved beyond the possibility

(01:57:14):
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

(01:57:35):
a hansom, and drove straight to Jekyll's house. The butler
was awaiting my arrival. He had received by the same
post as mine a registered letter of instruction, and had
sent at once for the locksmith and a carpenter. The
tradesmen came while we were yet speaking, and we moved

(01:57:56):
in a body to old Doctor Denman's surgical theater, from which,
as you are doubtless aware, Jeckyll'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,

(01:58:18):
and the locksmith was near despair. But this last was
a handy fellow, and after two hours work the door
stood open. The press marked e was unlocked, and I
took out the drawer, had it filled up with straw
and tied in a sheet, and returned with it to
Cavendish Square. Here I proceeded to examine its contents. The

(01:58:43):
powders were neatly enough made up, but not with the
nicety of the dispensing chemist, so that it was plain
they were of Jeckyll's private manufacture, and when I opened
one of the wrappers, I found what seemed to me
a simple crystal line salt of a white color. The
file to which I next turned my attention might have

(01:59:06):
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

(01:59:28):
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

(01:59:50):
several hundred entries, and once very early in the list,
and followed by several marks of exclamation total failure. All this,
though it whetted my curiosity, told me little that was definite.
There were a file of some tincture, a paper of
some salt, and the record of a series of experiments

(02:00:14):
that had led, like too many of Jekyl'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

(02:00:36):
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

(02:00:57):
that I might be found in some posture of self defense.
Twelve o'clock had scarce rung out over London Ere. The
knocker sounded very gently on the door. I went myself
at the summons and found a small man crouching against
the pillars of the portico. Are you come from, doctor Jekyll?

(02:01:21):
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. I open, and at the sight

(02:01:41):
I thought my visitors started and made greater haste. These
particulars struck me, I confess disagreeably, And as I followed
him into the bright light of the consulting room, I
kept my hand ready on my weapon. Here at last
I had a chance of clearly seeing him. I had

(02:02:02):
never set eyes on him before, so much was certain.
He was small, As I have said, I was struck
besides with the shocking expression of his face, with his
remarkable combination of great muscular activity and great apparent debility
of constitution, And last, but not least, with the odd

(02:02:26):
subjective disturbance caused by his neighborhood. This bore some resemblance
to incipient rigor, and was accompanied by a marked sinking
of the pulse. At the time I set it down
to some idiosyncratic personal distaste and merely wondered at the

(02:02:47):
acuteness of the symptoms. But I have since had reason
to believe the cause to lie much deeper in the
nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge
than the principle of hatred. This person, who had thus
from the first moment of his entrance, struck in me

(02:03:08):
what I can only describe as a disgustful curiosity was
dressed in a fashion that would have made an ordinary
person laughable. His clothes, that is to say, although they
were of rich and sober fabric, were enormously too large
for him in every measurement, the trousers hanging on his

(02:03:29):
legs and rolled up to keep them from the ground,
the waist of the coat below his haunches, and the
collar sprawling wide over his shoulders. Strange to relate this
ludicrous accouterment was far from moving me to laughter, Rather,
as there was something abnormal and misbegotten in the very

(02:03:52):
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

(02:04:15):
status in the world. These observations, though they have taken
so great a space to be set down, 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

(02:04:39):
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, ye, forget that I have not yet the
pleasure of your acquaintance. Be seated, if you please. And
I showed him an exam and sat down myself in

(02:05:02):
my customary seat, and with as fair an imitation of
my ordinary manner to a patient as the lateness of
the house, the nature of my preoccupations, and the horror
I had of my visitor would suffer me to muster.
I beg your pardon, Doctor Lanyon, he replied civilly enough.

(02:05:24):
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, doctor Henry Jackal, 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

(02:05:47):
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

(02:06:08):
still covered with the sheet. He sprang to it, and
then paused and laid his hand upon his heart. I
could hear his teeth grate with the convulsive action of
his jaws, and his face was so ghastly to see that.
I grew alarmed, both for his life and reason. Compose yourself,

(02:06:32):
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

(02:06:52):
next moment, in a voice that was already fairly well
under control, have you a graduated glass, he asked. I
rose from my place with something of an effort, and
gave him what he asked. He thanked me with a
smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red tincture,

(02:07:14):
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 efferesse audibly,
and to throw off small fumes of vapor. Suddenly, and

(02:07:34):
at the same moment, the ebullition ceased, and the compound
changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly
to a watery green. My visitor, who had watched those
metamorphoses with a keen eye, smiled, set down the glass
upon the table, and then turned and looked upon me

(02:07:58):
with an air of scrutiny, And now said he to
settle what remains? Will you be wise? Will you be guided?
Will you suffer me to take this glass in my
hand and to go forth from your house without further parley?
Or has the greed of curiosity too much command of you?

(02:08:21):
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.

(02:08:42):
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 this instant, and your sights shall be blessed. Did
by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan, Sir,

(02:09:07):
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.

(02:09:30):
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.

(02:10:01):
He put the glass to his lips and drank at
one gulp. A cry followed. He reeled, staggered, clutched at
the table, and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping
with open mouth. And as I looked, there came my

(02:10:22):
thought a change. He seemed to swell. His face became
suddenly black, and the features seemed to melt and alter.
And the next moment I had sprung to my feet
and leaped back against the wall, my arm raised to
shield me from that prodigy. My mind submerged in terror.

(02:10:46):
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

(02:11:09):
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 is faded from my eyes,

(02:11:30):
I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannot answer.
My life is shaken to its roots. Sleep has left me.
The deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of
the day and night. I feel that my days are numbered,

(02:11:50):
and that I must die. And yet I shall die incredulous.
As for the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me,
even with tears of penitence, I cannot, even in memory
dwell on it without a start of horror. I will
say but one thing, Utterson, and that if you can

(02:12:14):
bring your mind to credit, it will be more than enough.
The creature who crept into my house that night was
on Jekyl's own confession, known by the name of hide,
and hunted for in every corner of the land as
the murderer of carw end of Chapter nine, Chapter ten,

(02:12:44):
Henry Jekyl's full statement of the case. I was born
in the year eighteen something 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

(02:13:06):
fellow men, 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 gaiety
of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many,

(02:13:26):
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

(02:13:47):
round me and take stock of my progress and position
in the world, I stood already committed to a profound
duplicity of life. Many a man would have even blazoned
such irregularities as I was guilty of. But from the
high views that I had set before me. I regarded

(02:14:09):
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

(02:14:31):
of good and evil which divide and compound man's dual nature.
In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and
inveterately on that hard law of life which lies at
the root of religion and is one of the most
plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double dealer,

(02:14:57):
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.

(02:15:18):
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,

(02:15:41):
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

(02:16:05):
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,

(02:16:26):
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

(02:16:47):
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
possible mobility of such a miracle, I had learned to
dwell with pleasure as a beloved day dream on the

(02:17:08):
thought of the separation of these elements. If each, I
told myself, could but be housed in separate identities, life
would be relieved of all that was unbearable. The unjust
might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse
of his more upright twin. And the just could walk

(02:17:32):
steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good
things in which he found pleasure, and no longer exposed
to disgrace and penitence by the hands of his extraneous evil.
It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous fagots

(02:17:53):
were thus bound together, that in the agonized womb of consciousness,
these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How then, were
they disconnected? I was so far in my reflections, when,
as I have said, a side light began to shine

(02:18:15):
upon the subject from the laboratory table. I began to perceive,
more deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the
trembling immateriality, the mist like transience of this seemingly so
solid body in which we walk. Attired certain agents I

(02:18:36):
have found to have the power to shake and to
pluck back that fleshly vestment, even as a wind might
toss the curtains of a pavilion. For two good reasons,
I will not enter deeply into this scientific branch of
my confession. First because I have been made to learn

(02:18:57):
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. Secondly, because, as my
narrative will make alas too evident, my discoveries were incomplete

(02:19:22):
enough then that I not only recognized my natural body
for the mere aura and effulgence of certain of the
powers that made up my spirit, but managed to compound
a drug by which these powers should be dethroned from
their supremacy, and a second form and countenance substituted nonetheless

(02:19:44):
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

(02:20:07):
identity might by the least scruple of an overdose or,
at the least in opportunity, in the moment of exhibition,
utterly blot out that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to
it to change. But the temptation of a discovery so
singular and profound, at last overcame the suggestions of alarm.

(02:20:31):
I had long since prepared my tincture. I purchased at
once from a firm of wholesale chemists a large quantity
of a particular salt, which I knew from my experiments
to be the last ingredient required. And late one accursed night,
I compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together

(02:20:54):
in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with
a strong glow of courage, drank off the potion. The
most racking pangs succeeded, a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea,
and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded

(02:21:16):
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,

(02:21:37):
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

(02:21:58):
not an innocent frit 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 sin. And the thought in that moment braced
and delighted me like wine. I stretched out my hands,

(02:22:22):
exulting in the freshness of these sensations, and in the
act I was suddenly aware that I had lost in stature.
There was no mirror at that date in my room.
That which stands beside me as I write was brought
there later on, and for the very purpose of these transformations.

(02:22:46):
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.

(02:23:09):
I crossed the yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon me,
I could have thought with wonder the first creature of
that sort that thereon 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

(02:23:31):
time the appearance of Edward Hyde. I must here speak
by theory alone, saying not that which I know, but
that which I supposed 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

(02:23:55):
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
I think it came about that Edward Hyde was so

(02:24:15):
much smaller, slighter, and younger than Henry Jekyl. 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

(02:24:38):
of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon
that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of
no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This too
was myself. It seemed natural and human in my eyes.

(02:24:59):
It bore a light ivelier image of the spirit. It
seemed more express and single than the imperfect and divided
countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine, And
in so far I was doubtless right. I have observed
that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hide, none

(02:25:21):
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 Hide, alone in
the ranks of mankind, was pure evil. I lingered, but

(02:25:44):
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

(02:26:05):
more prepared and drank the cop once more suffered the
pangs of dissolution, and came to myself once more with
the character, the stature, and the face of Henry Jekyl.
That night I had come to the fatal crossroads. Had

(02:26:25):
I approached my discovery in a more noble spirit, had
I risked the experiment while under the empire of generous
or pious aspirations? All must have been otherwise? And from
these agonies of death and birth I had come forth
an angel instead of a fiend. The drug had no

(02:26:48):
discriminating action. It was neither diabolical nor divine. It but
shook the doors of the prison house of my disposition,
and like the captive of Philippi, that which stood within
ran forth. At that time my virtue slumbered, my evil,

(02:27:09):
kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize
the occasion. And the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence,
although I had now two characters, as well as two appearances,
one was wholly evil, and the other was still the

(02:27:29):
old Henry Jekyl, that incongruous compound of whose reformation and
improvement I had already learned to despair. The movement was
thus wholly toward the worse, even At that time I
had not yet conquered my aversion to the dryness of

(02:27:50):
a life of study. I would still be merely 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

(02:28:13):
side that my new power tempted me until I fell
in slavery. I had but to drink the coup, 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

(02:28:36):
with the most studious care. I took and furnished that
house in Soho to which Hide was tracked by the
police and engaged as housekeeper, a creature whom I well
knew to be silent and unscrupulous. On the other side,
I announced to my servants that a mister Hyde, whom

(02:28:56):
I described, was to have full liberty and about my
house in the square, and to parry mishaps I even
called and made myself a familiar object in my second character.
I next drew up that will to which you so
much objected, so that if anything befell me in the

(02:29:18):
person of doctor Jekyll, I could enter on that of
Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss, And thus fortified, as I supposed,
on every side, I began to profit by the strange
immunities of my position. Men have before hired bravos to

(02:29:40):
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 thus
plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability,
and in a moment, like a school boy, strip off

(02:30:02):
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

(02:30:24):
I had always standing ready. And whatever he had done,
Edward Hide 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.

(02:30:47):
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
High they soon began to turn towards the monstrous. When
I would come back from these excursions, I was often

(02:31:08):
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 avidity, from

(02:31:34):
any degree of torture to another, relentless, like a man
of stone. Henry Jekyl 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

(02:31:54):
was hide, after all, and hide alone that was guilty.
Jekyl 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

(02:32:18):
which I thus connived. For even now I can scarce
grant that I committed it, I have no design of entering.
I mean, but to point out the warnings and the
successive steps with which my chastisement approached. I met with
one accident, which, as it brought on no consequence, I

(02:32:39):
shall no more than mention an act of cruelty to
a child aroused against me the anger of a passer
by 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 length asked, in order to pacify their too just resentment,

(02:33:04):
Edward Hide had to bring them to the door and
pay them in a check drawn in the name of
Henry Jekyl. But this danger was easily eliminated from the
future by opening an account at another bank in the
name of Edward Hide himself. And when by sloping my
own hand backward I had supplied my double with a signature,

(02:33:28):
I thought I sat beyond the reach of fate. Some
two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, I had
been out for one of my adventures, had returned at
a late hour, and woke the next day in bed
with somewhat odd sensations. It was in Vain. I looked

(02:33:50):
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

(02:34:10):
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,

(02:34:32):
dropping back in a comfortable morning doze, I was still
so engaged when, in one of my more wakeful moments,
my eye fell upon my hand. Now, the hand of
Henry Jekyl, as you have often remarked, was professional in
shape and size. It was large, firm, white and comely.

(02:34:56):
But the hand which I now saw clearly enough, in
the yellow light of a mid London morning, Lying half
shot on the bedclothes, was lean, cordid, mockly of a
dusky pallor, and thickly shaded with a smart growth of hair.
It was the hand of Edward Hide. I must have

(02:35:19):
stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as
I was in the mere stupidity of wonder, before terror
woke up in my breast, as sudden and startling as
the crash of cymbals, and bounding from my bed, I
rushed to the mirror. At the sight that met my eyes,
my blood was changing into something exquisitely thin and icy. Yes,

(02:35:43):
I had gone to bed Henry Jekyl. I had awakened
Edward Hide. How was this to be explained? I asked myself,
And then, with another bound of horror, how was it
to be remedied? It was well on in the morning,
the servants were up, all my drugs were in the cabinet.

(02:36:05):
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 of my stature, And then, with an overpowering sweetness

(02:36:31):
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 mister Hyde at such an hour and

(02:36:54):
in such a strange array, And ten minutes later Dr
Jekyll had returned to his old shape and was sitting
down with a darkened brow to make a feint of breakfasting.
Small indeed was my appetite, this inexplicable incident, this reversal

(02:37:16):
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,

(02:37:38):
had lately been much exercised and nourished. It had seemed
to me, of late, as though the body of Edward
Hyde had grown in stature, as though when I wore
that form, I were conscious of a more generous tide
of blood, And I began to spy a danger that
if this were much prolonged, the ballots of my nature

(02:38:01):
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 always equally displayed. Once,
very early in my career it had totally failed me.

(02:38:22):
Since then I had been obliged, on more than one
occasion to double, and once with infinite risk of death,
to treble the amount, and these rare uncertainties had cast
hitherto the sole shadow on my contentment. Now, however, and
in the light of that morning's accident, I was led

(02:38:44):
to remark that whereas in the beginning the difficulty had
been to throw off the body of Jekyl, it had
of late gradually but decidedly transferred itself to the other side.
All things therefore seen to point to this that I
was slowly losing hold of my original and better self,

(02:39:07):
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. Jekyl, who was composite,

(02:39:30):
now with the most sensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto,
projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of Hide.
But Hyde was indifferent to Jekyl, or but remembered him
as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in which he
conceals himself from pursuit. Jekyl had more than a father's interest,

(02:39:56):
Hide had more than a son's indifference. To cast in
my lot with Jekyl was to die to those appetites
which I had long secretly indulged, and had of late
begune to pamper. To cast it in with Hide was
to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to

(02:40:17):
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 Jekyl would suffer smartingly in
the fires of abstinence, Hide would be not even conscious

(02:40:38):
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 inducement and alarms cast
the die for any tempted and trembling sinner, And it
fell out with me, as it falls with so vast

(02:41:01):
a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part,
and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it. Yes,
I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends
and cherishing honest hopes, and bade a resolute farewell to

(02:41:22):
the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping pulses,
and secret pleasures that I had enjoyed in the disguise
of hide. 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

(02:41:46):
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.

(02:42:10):
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

(02:42:36):
when a drunkard reasons with himself upon his vice, he
is once out of five hundred times affected by the
dangers that he runs through his brutish physical insensibility. Neither
had I, long as I had considered my position, made
enough allowance for the complete moral insensibility and insensate readiness

(02:42:59):
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

(02:43:23):
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 saying, could have been guilty of that
crime upon so pitiful a provocation, and that I struck

(02:43:45):
in no more reasonable spirit than that in which a
sick child may break a plaything. But I had voluntarily
stripped myself of all those balancing instincts by which even
the worst of us continues to walk with some degree
of steadiness among temptations, and in my case, to be tempted,

(02:44:07):
however slightly, was to fall. Instantly, the spirit of hell
awoke in me, and raged with a transport of glee,
I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow.
And it was not till weariness had begun to succeed

(02:44:28):
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

(02:44:52):
my love of life. Screwed to the topmost peg, I
ran to the house in soho, and to make assurance,
doubly sure destroyed my papers. Thence I set out through
the lamp lit streets in the same divided ecstasy of mind,
gloating on my crime, lightheadedly devising others in the future,

(02:45:16):
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 Jekyl, with

(02:45:38):
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 hand to foot. I saw
my life as a whole. I followed it up from
the days of childhood, when I had walked with my

(02:45:59):
father's hand, and through the self denying toils of my
professional life, to arrive again and again with the same
sense of unreality. At the damned horrors of the evening.
I could have screamed aloud. I sought with tears and
prayers to smother down the crowd of hideous images and

(02:46:21):
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.

(02:46:42):
The problem of my conduct was solved. Hide was thenceforth impossible,
whether I would or not. I was now confined to
the better part of my existence, And oh how I
rejoiced to think it. With what willing humility I embraced
anew the restrictions of natural life, with what sincere renunciation.

(02:47:08):
I locked the door by which I had so often gone,
and come and ground the key under my heel. The
next day came the news that the murder had been overlooked,
that the guilt of Hide was patent to the world,
and that the victim was a man high in public estimation.

(02:47:31):
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,
Jekyl was now my city of refuge. Let but Hide

(02:47:52):
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

(02:48:12):
months of 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 wearied of this beneficent and innocent life.
I think instead that I daily enjoyed it more completely.

(02:48:36):
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

(02:48:59):
startle me to frey. 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

(02:49:22):
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

(02:49:46):
under foot where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead,
and the Regent's Park was full of winter chirrupings and
sweet with spring odours. I sat in the sun on
a bench, the animal within me, licking the chops of memory,
the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but

(02:50:11):
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 good will with the
lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment
of that vainglorious thought, a qualm came over me, a

(02:50:34):
horrid nausea, and the most deadly shuddering. These passed away
and left me faint. And then, as in its turn,
the faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a
change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness,
a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation.

(02:51:00):
I looked down, my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs,
the hand that lay on my knee was cordid and hairy.
I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I
had been safe of all men's respect, wealthy, beloved the

(02:51:21):
cloth laying for me on the dining room at home.
And now I was the common quarry of mankind, hunted houseless,
a known murderer, thrall to the gallows. My reason wavered,
but it did not fail me utterly. I have more

(02:51:42):
than once observed that in my second character, my faculties
seemed sharpened to a point, and my spirits more tensely elastic.
Thus it came about that where Jekyl perhaps might have succumbed,
Hide rose to the importance of the moment. My drugs
were in one of the presses of my cabinet. How

(02:52:05):
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,

(02:52:27):
and thought of Lanion. How was he to be reached?
How persuaded? Supposing that I escaped capture in the streets,
how was I to make my way into his presence,
And how should I, an unknown and displeasing visitor, prevail
on the famous physician to rifle the study of his colleague,

(02:52:50):
Dr Jekyl. 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.

(02:53:11):
Thereupon I arranged my clothes as best I could, and,
sommoning a passing hansom, drove to an hotel in Portland Street,
the name of which I chanced to remember at my appearance,
which was indeed comical enough. However tragic a fate these
garments covered. The driver could not conceal his mirth. I

(02:53:36):
gnashed my teeth upon him with a gust of devilish fury,
and the smile withered from his face, happily for him,
yet more happily for myself, for in another instant I
had certainly dragged him from his perch at the inn.
As I entered, I looked about me with so black

(02:53:56):
a countenance as to make the attendants tremble. Not a
look did they exchange in my presence, but obsequiously took
my orders, led me to a private room, and brought
me wherewithal to write Hide in danger of his life
was a creature new to me, shaken with inordinate anger,

(02:54:20):
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 Paul, and that he
might receive actual evidence of their being posted, sent them

(02:54:42):
out with directions that they should be registered. Thenceforward he
sat all day over the fire in the private room,
gnawing his nails. There he dined, sitting alone with his fears,
the waiter visibly quailing before his eye. And thence, when

(02:55:03):
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

(02:55:24):
at last, thinking the driver had begun to grow suspicious,
he discharged the cab and ventured on foot, attired in
his misfitting clothes. An object marked out for observation into
the midst of the nocturnal passengers. These two base passions
raged within him like a tempest. He walked fast, hunted

(02:55:48):
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 Lanion's the

(02:56:13):
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 racked me. I

(02:56:36):
received Lanion'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 wrong me could avail to break.

(02:56:59):
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

(02:57:19):
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,

(02:57:45):
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 hide. 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

(02:58:09):
be readministered in short From that day forth, it seemed
only by a great effort as of gymnastics, and only
under the immediate stimulation of the drug, that I was
able to wear the countenance of Jekyl at all hours
of the day and night, I would be taken with

(02:58:30):
the premonitory shudder. 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

(02:58:51):
possible to man. I became in my own person a
creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly, weak both
in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought,
the horror of my other self. But when I slept,

(02:59:12):
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

(02:59:34):
the raging energies of life. The powers of Hide seemed
to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyl, and certainly
the hate that now divided them was equal on each
side with Jeckyl. It was a thing of vital instinct.
He had now seen the full deformity of that creature

(02:59:57):
that shared with him some of the phenomena of consciousness,
and was coer with him to death and beyond these
links of community, which in themselves made the most poignant
part of his distress. He thought of hide for all
his energies of life, as of something not only hellish

(03:00:19):
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 would usurp the offices of life.

(03:00:41):
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 borne, and at every hour of
weakness and in the confevidence of slumber prevailed against him

(03:01:03):
and deposed him out of life. The hatred of hide,
for Jekyl was of a different order. His terror of
the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide and
return to his subordinate station of a part instead of

(03:01:24):
a person. But he loathed the necessity. He loathed the
despondency into which Jekyl was now fallen, and he resented
the dislike with which he was himself regarded. Hence the
apelike tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my
own hand, blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning

(03:01:48):
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

(03:02:08):
mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection and
passion of this attachment, and when I know how he
fears my power to cut him off by suicide, I
find it in my heart to pity him. It is useless,
and the time awfully fails me to prolong this description.

(03:02:33):
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

(03:02:54):
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.

(03:03:17):
The ebullition followed, and the first change of color, not
the second. I drank it, and it was without efficacy.
You will learn from Paul how I have had London ransacked.
It was in vain, and I am now persuaded that
my first supply was impure, and that it was that

(03:03:39):
unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the draft. About a
week has passed, and I am now finishing this statement
under the influence of the last of the old powders.
This then, is the last time, short of a miracle,

(03:04:00):
that Henry Jackal can think his own thoughts or see
his own face now, how sadly altered in the glass.
Nor must I delay too long to bring my writing
to an end. For if my narrative has hitherto escaped destruction,
it has been by a combination of great prudence and

(03:04:22):
great good luck. Should the throes of change take me
in the act of writing, it hide will tear it
in pieces. But if some time shall have elapsed after
I have laid it, by his wonderful selfishness and circumscription
to the moment, will probably save it once again from

(03:04:44):
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 for ever re endere that hated personality,
I know how I shall sit shuddering and weeping in

(03:05:06):
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

(03:05:27):
he find the courage to release himself at the last moment?
God knows I am careless. This is my true hour
of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here, then,
as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal

(03:05:50):
up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy
Henry Jekyl to an end. End of the strange case
of Doctor Jekyll and mister Hyde

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Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson