"
     "Ah, that's not Jekyll's voice-it's Hyde's!"  cried  Utterson.  "Down
with the door, Poole!"
     Poole swung the axe over his shoulder; the blow shook  the  building,
and the red baize door leaped  against  the  lock  and  hinges.  A  dismal
screech, as of mere animal terror, rang from the cabinet. Up went the  axe
again, and again the panels crashed and the frame bounded; four times  the
blow fell; but the wood was tough  and  the  fittings  were  of  excellent
workmanship; and it was not until the fifth, that the lock burst  and  the
wreck of the door fell inwards on the carpet.
     The besiegers, appalled by their own riot and the stillness that  had
succeeded, stood back a little and peered in. There lay the cabinet before
their eyes in the quiet lamplight, a good fire glowing and  chattering  on
the hearth, the kettle singing its thin strain,  a  drawer  or  two  open,
papers neatly set forth on the business table, and nearer  the  fire,  the
things laid out for tea; the quietest room, you would have said, and,  but
for the glazed presses full of chemicals, the most commonplace that  night
in London.
     Right in the middle there lay the body of a man sorely contorted  and
still twitching. They drew near on tiptoe,  turned  it  on  its  back  and
beheld the face of Edward Hyde. He was dressed in clothes far to large for
him, clothes of the doctor's bigness; the cords of his  face  still  moved
with a semblance of life, but life was quite  gone:  and  by  the  crushed
phial in the hand and the strong smell of kernels that hung upon the  air,
Utterson knew that he was looking on the body of a self-destroyer.
     "We have come too late," he said sternly, "whether to save or punish.
Hyde is gone to his account; and it only remains for us to find  the  body
of your master."
     The far greater proportion  of  the  building  was  occupied  by  the
theatre, which filled almost the whole ground storey and was lighted  from
above, and by the cabinet, which formed an upper  story  at  one  end  and
looked upon the court. A corridor joined the theatre to the  door  on  the
by-street; and with this the cabinet communicated separately by  a  second
flight of stairs. There were besides a few dark  closets  and  a  spacious
cellar. All these they now thorougly examined. Each closet  needed  but  a
glance, for all were empty, and all, by the  dust  that  fell  from  their
doors, had stood long unopened. The cellar, indeed, was filled with  crazy
lumber, mostly dating from the times  of  the  surgeon  who  was  Jekyll's
predecessor; but even as they opened the door they were advertised of  the
uselessness of further search, by the fall of  a  perfect  mat  of  cobweb
which had for years sealed up the entrance. No where was there  any  trace
of Henry Jekyll dead or alive.
     Poole stamped on the flags of the corridor. "He must be buried here,"
he said, hearkening to the sound.
     "Or he may have fled," said Utterson, and he turned  to  examine  the
door in the by-street. It was locked; and lying near by on the flags, they
found the key, already stained with rust.
     "This does not look like use," observed the lawyer.
     "Use!" echoed Poole. "Do you not see, sir, it is broken? much as if a
man had stamped on it."
     "Ay," continued Utterson, "and the fractures, too,  are  rusty."  The
two men looked at each other with a scare. "This  is  beyond  me,  Poole,"
said the lawyer. "Let us go back to the cabinet."
     They mounted the stair in  silence,  and  still  with  an  occasional
awestruck glance at the dead body, proceeded more  thoroughly  to  examine
the contents of the cabinet. At one table, there were traces  of  chemical
work, various measured heaps of  some  white  salt  being  laid  on  glass
saucers, as though for an experiment in which the  unhappy  man  had  been
prevented.
     "That is the same drug that I was always bringing him,"  said  Poole;
and even as he spoke, the kettle with a startling noise boiled over.
     This brought them to the fireside, where  the  easy-chair  was  drawn
cosily up, and the tea things stood ready to the sitter's elbow, the  very
sugar in the cup. There were several books on a shelf; one lay beside  the
tea things open, and Utterson was amazed to find it  a  copy  of  a  pious
work, for which  Jekyll  had  several  times  expressed  a  great  esteem,
annotated, in his own hand with startling blasphemies.
     Next, in the course of their review of  the  chamber,  the  searchers
came  to  the  cheval-glass,  into  whose  depths  they  looked  with   an
involuntary horror. But it was so turned as to show them nothing  but  the
rosy glow playing on the roof, the fire sparkling in a hundred repetitions
along the glazed front of the presses, and  their  own  pale  and  fearful
countenances stooping to look in.
     "This glass has seen some strange things, sir," whispered Poole.
     "And surely none stranger than itself," echoed the lawyer in the same
tones. "For what did Jekyll"-he caught himself  up  at  the  word  with  a
start, and then conquering the weakness-"what could Jekyll want with  it?"
he said.
     "You may say that!" said Poole.
     Next they turned to the business table. On the desk, among  the  neat
array of papers, a large envelope was uppermost, and bore, in the doctor's
hand, the name of Mr.  Utterson.  The  lawyer  unsealed  it,  and  several
enclosures fell to the floor. The first was a  will,  drawn  in  the  same
eccentric terms as the one which he had returned  six  months  before,  to
serve as a testament in case of death and as a deed of  gift  in  case  of
disappearance; but in place of the name of Edward Hyde, the  lawyer,  with
indescribable amazement read the name of Gabriel John Utterson. He  looked
at Poole, and then back at  the  paper,  and  last  of  all  at  the  dead
malefactor stretched upon the carpet.
     "My head goes round," he  said.  "He  has  been  all  these  days  in
possession; he had no cause to like me; he must have raged to see  himself
displaced; and he has not destroyed this document."
     He caught up the next paper; it was a brief note in the doctor's hand
and dated at the top. "O Poole!" the lawyer cried, "he was alive and  here
this day. He cannot have been disposed of in so short a space; he must  be
still alive, he must have fled! And then, why fled? and how? and  in  that
case, can we venture to declare this suicide? O, we  must  be  careful.  I
foresee that we may yet involve your master in some dire catastrophe."
     "Why don't you read it, sir?" asked Poole.
     "Because I fear," replied the lawyer solemnly. "God grant I  have  no
cause for it!" And with that he brought the paper to his 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 is sure and must be  early.  Go  then,  and
first read the narrative which Lanyon warned me he was to  place  in  your
hands; and if you care to hear more, turn to the confession of
     "Your unworthy and unhappy friend, "HENRY JEKYLL."
     "There was a third enclosure?" asked Utterson.
     "Here, sir," said Poole, and  gave  into  his  hands  a  considerable
packet sealed in several places.
     The lawyer put it in his pocket. "I would say nothing of this  paper.
If your master has fled or is dead, we may at least save his credit. It is
now ten; I must go home and read these documents in quiet; but I shall  be
back before midnight, when we shall send for the police."
     They went out, locking the door  of  the  theatre  behind  them;  and
Utterson, once more leaving the servants gathered about the  fire  in  the
hall, trudged back to his office to read the two narratives in which  this
mystery was now to be explained.



        Dr. Lanyon's Narrative

     On the ninth of January, now four days ago, I received by the evening
delivery a registered envelope, addressed in the hand of my colleague  and
old school companion, Henry Jekyll. I was a good deal surprised  by  this;
for we were by no means in the habit of correspondence;  I  had  seen  the
man, dined with him, indeed, the night before; and I could imagine nothing
in our intercourse that should  justify  formality  of  registration.  The
contents increased my wonder; for this is how the letter ran:
                                      "10th December, 18-.
     "Dear Lanyon,-You are one of my oldest friends; and although  we  may
have differed at times on scientific  questions,  I  cannot  remember,  at
least on my side, any break in our affection. There was never a day  when,
if you had said to me, `Jekyll, my life, my honour, my reason, depend upon
you,' I would not have sacrificed my left hand  to  help  you.  Lanyon  my
life, my honour, 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 ask you for something dishonourable to grant. Judge for yourself.
     "I want you to postpone all other engagements for to-nightay, even if
you were summoned to the bedside of an emperor; to take a cab, unless your
carriage should be actually at the door; and with this letter in your hand
for consultation, to drive straight to my house. Poole, my butler, has his
orders; you will find him waiting your arrival with a locksmith. The  door
of my cabinet is then to be forced: and you are to go in  alone;  to  open
the glazed press (letter E) on the left hand, breaking the lock if  it  be
shut; and to draw out, with all its contents as  they  stand,  the  fourth
drawer from the top or (which is  the  same  thing)  the  third  from  the
bottom. In  my  extreme  distress  of  mind,  I  have  a  morbid  fear  of
misdirecting you; but even if I am in error, you may know the right drawer
by its contents: some powders, a phial and a paper book. This drawer I beg
of you to carry back with you to Cavendish Square exactly as it stands.
     "That is the first part of the  service:  now  for  the  second.  You
should be back, if you set out at once on the receipt of this, long before
midnight; but I will leave you that amount of margin, not only in the fear
of one of those obstacles that can neither be prevented nor foreseen,  but
because an hour when your servants are in bed is to be preferred for  what
will then remain to do. At midnight, then, I have to ask you to  be  alone
in your consulting room, to admit with your own hand into the house a  man
who will present himself in my name, and to place in his hands the  drawer
that you will have brought with you from my cabinet. Then  you  will  have
played  your  part  and  earned  my  gratitude  completely.  Five  minutes
afterwards, if you insist upon an explanation, you  will  have  understood
that these arrangements are of capital importance; and that by the neglect
of one of them, fantastic as they must appear, you might have charged your
conscience with my death or the shipwreck of my reason.
     "Confident as I am that you will not  trifle  with  this  appeal,  my
heart  sinks  and  my  hand  trembles  at  the  bare  thought  of  such  a
possibility. Think of me at this hour, in a strange place, labouring under
a blackness of distress that no fancy can exaggerate, and yet  well  aware
that, if you will but punctually serve me, my troubles will roll away like
a story that is told. Serve me, my dear Lanyon and save
                                 "Your friend,
                                              "H.J.
     "P.S.-I had already sealed this up when a fresh terror struck upon my
soul. It is possible that the post-office may fail me, and this letter not
come into your hands until to-morrow morning. In that case,  dear  Lanyon,
do my errand when it shall be most convenient for you in the course of the
day; and once more expect my messenger at midnight. It may then already be
too late; and if that night passes without event, you will know  that  you
have seen the last of Henry Jekyll."
     Upon the reading of this letter, I made sure my colleague was insane;
but till that was proved beyond the possibility of doubt, I felt bound  to
do as he requested. The less I understood of this farrago, the less I  was
in a position to judge of its importance; and an appeal  so  worded  could
not be set aside without a grave responsibility. I rose  accordingly  from
table, got into a hansom, and drove straight to Jekyll's house. The butler
was awaiting my arrival; he had received  by  the  same  post  as  mine  a
registered letter of instruction, and had sent at once for a locksmith and
a carpenter. The tradesmen came while we were yet speaking; and  we  moved
in a body to old Dr. Denman's surgical theatre, from  which  (as  you  are
doubtless aware) Jekyll's private cabinet is  most  conveniently  entered.
The door was very strong, the lock  excellent;  the  carpenter  avowed  he
would have great trouble and have to do much damage, if force were  to  be
used; and the locksmith was near  despair.  But  this  last  was  a  handy
fellow, and after two hour's work, the door stood open. The press marked E
was unlocked; and I took out the drawer, had it filled up with  straw  and
tied in a sheet, and returned with it to Cavendish Square.
     Here I proceeded to examine its contents.  The  powders  were  neatly
enough made up, but not with the nicety of the dispensing chemist; so that
it was plain they were of Jekyll's private manufacture: and when I  opened
one of the wrappers I found what seemed to me a simple crystalline salt of
a white colour. The phial, to which I next turned my attention, might have
been about half full of a blood-red liquor, which was  highly  pungent  to
the sense of smell and  seemed  to  me  to  contain  phosphorus  and  some
volatile ether. At the other ingredients I could make no guess.  The  book
was an ordinary version book and contained little but a series  of  dates.
These covered a period of many years, but  I  observed  that  the  entries
ceased nearly a year ago and quite abruptly. Here and there a brief remark
was appended to a date, usually no  more  than  a  single  word:  "double"
occurring perhaps six times in a total of  several  hundred  entries;  and
once very early in the list and followed by several marks of  exclamation,
"total failure!!!" All this, though  it  whetted  my  curiosity,  told  me
little that was definite. Here were a phial of some salt, and  the  record
of a series of experiments  that  had  led  (like  too  many  of  Jekyll's
investigations) to no end of practical usefulness. How could the  presence
of these articles in my house affect either the honour, the sanity, or the
life of my flighty colleague? If his messenger could go to one place,  why
could he not go to another? And even granting  some  impediment,  why  was
this gentleman to be received by me in secret? The more  I  reflected  the
more convinced I grew that I was dealing with a case of cerebral  disease;
and though I dismissed my servants to bed, I loaded an old revolver,  that
I might be found in some posture of self-defence.
     Twelve o'clock had scarce rung  out  over  London,  ere  the  knocker
sounded very gently on the door. I went myself at the summons, and found a
small man crouching against the pillars of the portico.
     "Are you come from Dr. Jekyll?" I asked.
     He told me "yes" by a constrained gesture; and when I had bidden  him
enter, he did not obey me without a searching  backward  glance  into  the
darkness of the square. There was a policeman not far off, advancing  with
his bull's eye open; and at the sight, I thought my  visitor  started  and
made greater haste.
     These particulars struck  me,  I  confess,  disagreeably;  and  as  I
followed him into the bright light of the consulting room, I kept my  hand
ready on my weapon. Here, at last, I had a chance of clearly seeing him. I
had never set eyes on him before, so much was certain. He was small, as  I
have said; I was struck besides with the shocking expression of his  face,
with his remarkable combination  of  great  muscular  activity  and  great
apparent debility of constitution, and-last but not  least-with  the  odd,
subjective  disturbance  caused  by  his  neighbourhood.  This  bore  some
resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a  marked  sinking
of the pulse. At the time, I set it down to some  idiosyncratic,  personal
distaste, and merely wondered at the acuteness of the symptoms; but I have
since had reason to believe the cause to lie much deeper in the nature  of
man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the principle of hatred.
     This person (who had thus, from the first  moment  of  his  entrance,
struck in me what I can only, describe  as  a  disgustful  curiosity)  was
dressed in a fashion that would have made an  ordinary  person  laughable;
his clothes, that is to say, although they were of rich and sober  fabric,
were enormously too  large  for  him  in  every  measurement-the  trousers
hanging on his legs and rolled up to keep them from the ground, the  waist
of the coat below his haunches, and the collar  sprawling  wide  upon  his
shoulders. Strange to relate, this ludicrous  accoutrement  was  far  from
moving me to  laughter.  Rather,  as  there  was  something  abnormal  and
misbegotten  in  the  very  essence  of  the  creature  that   now   faced
me-something seizing, surprising and revoltingthis fresh disparity  seemed
but to fit in with and to reinforce it; so that  to  my  interest  in  the
man's nature and character, there was added a curiosity as to his  origin,
his life, his fortune and status in the world.
     These observations, though they have taken so great a space to be set
down in, were yet the work of a few seconds. My visitor  was,  indeed,  on
fire with sombre excitement.
     "Have you got it?" he cried. "Have you got it?" And so lively was his
impatience that he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shake me.
     I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang along my
blood. "Come, sir," said I. "You forget that I have not yet  the  pleasure
of your acquaintance. Be seated, if you  please."  And  I  showed  him  an
example, and sat down myself in my customary seat  and  with  as  fair  an
imitation of my ordinary manner to a patient, as the lateness of the hour,
the nature of my preoccupations, and the horror I had of my visitor, would
suffer me to muster.
     "I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon," he replied civilly enough. "What you
say is very well founded; and my impatience has  shown  its  heels  to  my
politeness. I come here at the  instance  of  your  colleague,  Dr.  Henry
Jekyll, on a piece of business of some moment; and I  understood  ..."  He
paused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in  spite  of  his
collected manner, that he was wrestling  against  the  approaches  of  the
hysteria-"I understood, a drawer ..."
     But here I took pity on my visitor's suspense, and some perhaps on my
own growing curiosity.
     "There it is, sir," said I, pointing to the drawer, where it  lay  on
the floor behind a table and still covered with the sheet.
     He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon his heart: I
could hear his teeth grate with the convulsive action of his jaws; and his
face was so ghastly to see that I grew  alarmed  both  for  his  life  and
reason.
     "Compose yourself," said I.
     He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as  if  with  the  decision  of
despair, plucked away the sheet. At sight of the contents, he uttered  one
loud sob of such immense relief that I sat petrified. And the next moment,
in a voice that was  already  fairly  well  under  control,  "Have  you  a
graduated glass?" he asked.
     I rose from my place with something of an effort and gave him what he
asked.
     He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few  minims  of  the
red tincture and added one of the powders. The mixture, which was at first
of a reddish hue, began, in proportion as the crystals melted, to brighten
in colour, to effervesce audibly, and to throw off small fumes of  vapour.
Suddenly and at the same moment, the ebullition ceased  and  the  compound
changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly to a watery green.
My visitor, who had watched these metamorphoses with a keen  eye,  smiled,
set down the glass upon the table, and then turned and looked upon me with
an air of scrutiny.
     "And now," said he, "to settle what remains. Will you be  wise?  will
you be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand and to  go
forth from your  house  without  further  parley?  or  has  the  greed  of
curiosity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for  it  shall
be done as you decide. As you decide,  you  shall  be  left  as  you  were
before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service rendered
to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a  kind  of  riches  of  the
soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new  province  of  knowledge
and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this
room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by  a  prodigy  to
stagger the unbelief of Satan."
     "Sir," said I, affecting  a  coolness  that  I  was  far  from  truly
possessing, "you speak enigmas, and you will perhaps  not  wonder  that  I
hear you with no very strong impression of belief. But I have gone too far
in the way of inexplicable services to pause before I see the end."
     "It is well," replied my visitor. "Lanyon, you  remember  your  vows:
what follows is under the seal of our profession. And now, you who have so
long been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who have denied
the  virtue  of  transcendental  medicine,  you  who  have  derided   your
superiors-behold!"
     He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A  cry  followed;
he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table  and  held  on,  staring  with
injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as  I  looked  there  came,  I
thought, a change-he seemed to swellhis face became suddenly black and the
features seemed to melt and alter-and the next moment, I had sprung to  my
feet and leaped back against the wall, my arms raised to  shield  me  from
that prodigy, my mind submerged in terror.
     "O God!" I screamed, and "O God!" again and again; for  there  before
my eyes-pale and shaken, and half fainting, and groping  before  him  with
his hands, like a man restored from death-there stood Henry Jekyll!
     What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind  to  set  on
paper. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at it;
and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes,  I  ask  myself  if  I
believe it, and I cannot answer. My life is shaken to its roots; sleep has
left me; the deadliest terror sits by me at  all  hours  of  the  day  and
night; and I feel that my days are numbered, and that I must die; and  yet
I shall die incredulous. As for the moral turpitude that man  unveiled  to
me, even with tears of penitence, I can not, even in memory, dwell  on  it
without a start of horror. I will say but one thing,  Utterson,  and  that
(if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be more  than  enough.  The
creature who  crept  into  my  house  that  night  was,  on  Jekyll's  own
confession, known by the name of Hyde and hunted for in  every  corner  of
the land as the murderer of Carew.

     HASTIE LANYON



        Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case

     I was born in the year 18- to a large fortune, endowed  besides  with
excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of  the  respect  of
the wise and good among  my  fellowmen,  and  thus,  as  might  have  been
supposed, with every guarantee of an honorurable and distinguished future.
And indeed the worst of my  faults  was  a  certain  impatient  gaiety  of
disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as  I  found
it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head  high,  and
wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the  public.  Hence  it
came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of
reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my  progress  and
position in the world, I stood already committed to a  profound  duplicity
of me. Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities  as  I  was
guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before  me,  I  regarded
and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather  the
exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular  degradation  in  my
faults, that made me what I was, and, with even a deeper  trench  than  in
the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and  ill  which
divide and compound man's dual nature. In  this  case,  I  was  driven  to
reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life,  which  lies  at
the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress.
Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense  a  hypocrite;  both
sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I  laid  aside
restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye  of  day,
at the futherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering.  And
it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies, which  led  wholly
towards the mystic and the transcendental, reacted and shed a strong light
on this consciousness of the perennial war among my  members.  With  every
day,  and  from  both  sides  of  my  intelligence,  the  moral  and   the
intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose  partial
discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not
truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of my own knowledge
does not pass beyond that point. Others will follow, others will  outstrip
me on the same lines; and I hazard the guess that man will  be  ultimately
known for a mere  polity  of  multifarious,  incongruous  and  independent
denizens. I, for my part, from the nature of my life, advanced  infallibly
in one direction and in one direction only. It was on the moral side,  and
in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough  and  primitive
duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field
of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it  was
only because I was radically both; and from an early date, even before the
course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest  the  most  naked
possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as  a
beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these  elements.  If
each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be
relieved of all  that  was  unbearable;  the  unjust  might  go  his  way,
delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright  twin;  and
the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the
good things in which he found his  pleasure,  and  no  longer  exposed  to
disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.  It  was  the
curse  of  mankind  that  these  incongruous  faggots  were   thus   bound
together-that in the agonised womb of  consciousness,  these  polar  twins
should be continuously struggling. How, then were they dissociated?
     I was so far in my reflections when, as I have  said,  a  side  light
began to shine upon the subject from the  laboratory  table.  I  began  to
perceive more deeply than it has  ever  yet  been  stated,  the  trembling
immateriality, the mistlike transience, of this seemingly so solid body in
which we walk attired. Certain agents I found to have the power  to  shake
and pluck back that fleshly vestment,  even  as  a  wind  might  toss  the
curtains of a pavilion. For two good reasons, I will not enter deeply into
this scientific branch of my confession. First, because I have  been  made
to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is bound for ever on  man's
shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it  off,  it  but  returns
upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure. Second, because,  as
my narrative will make, alas! too evident, my discoveries were incomplete.
Enough then, that I not only recognised my natural body from the mere aura
and effulgence of certain of the  powers  that  made  up  my  spirit,  but
managed to compound a drug by which these powers should be dethroned  from
their supremacy, and a second form and countenance substituted,  none  the
less natural to me because they were the expression, and bore the stamp of
lower elements in my soul.
     I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of practice.  I
knew well that I risked death; for any drug that  so  potently  controlled
and shook the very fortress of identity, might, by the least scruple of an
overdose or at the  least  inopportunity  in  the  moment  of  exhibition,
utterly blot out that immaterial  tabernacle  which  I  looked  to  it  to
change. But the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound at last
overcame the suggestions of alarm. I had long since prepared my  tincture;
I purchased at once, from a firm of wholesale chemists, a  large  quantity
of a particular salt which I knew, from my experiments,  to  be  the  last
ingredient required;  and  late  one  accursed  night,  I  compounded  the
elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when  the
ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow  of  courage,  drank  off  the
potion.
     The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding  in  the  bones,  deadly
nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour  of
birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to
myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something  strange  in  my
sensations, something  indescribably  new  and,  from  its  very  novelty,
incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within  I  was
conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual  images
running like  a  millrace  in  my  fancy,  a  solution  of  the  bonds  of
obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of  the  soul.  I  knew
myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more  wicked,  tenfold
more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the  thought,  in  that
moment, braced and delighted me like  wine.  I  stretched  out  my  hands,
exulting in the freshness of these sensations;  and  in  the  act,  I  was
suddenly aware that I had lost in stature.
     There was no mirror, at that date, in  my  room;  that  which  stands
beside me as I write, was brought there later on and for the very  purpose
of these transformations.  The  night  however,  was  far  gone  into  the
morning-the morning, black as it was, was nearly ripe for  the  conception
of the day-the inmates of my house were locked in the most rigorous  hours
of slumber; and I determined, flushed as I was with hope and  triumph,  to
venture in my new shape as far as to  my  bedroom.  I  crossed  the  yard,
wherein the constellations looked down upon me, I could have thought, with
wonder, the first creature of that sort that  their  unsleeping  vigilance
had yet disclosed to them; I stole through the corridors, a stranger in my
own house; and coming to my room, I saw for the first time the  appearance
of Edward Hyde.
     I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I know,  but
that which I suppose to be most probable. The evil side of my  nature,  to
which I had now transferred the stamping efficacy,  was  less  robust  and
less developed than the good which I  had  just  deposed.  Again,  in  the
course of my life, which had been,  after  all,  nine  tenths  a  life  of
effort, virtue and control, it had been much less exercised and much  less
exhausted. And hence, as I think, it came about that Edward  Hyde  was  so
much smaller, slighter and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even as  good  shone
upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and  plainly  on
the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still believe to be  the
lethal side of man) had left on that body  an  imprint  of  deformity  and
decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly  idol  in  the  glass,  I  was
conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome.  This,  too,  was
myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes it bore a  livelier  image
of the spirit, it seemed more express and single, than the  imperfect  and
divided countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine. And in so
far I was doubtless right. I have observed that when I wore the  semblance
of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me  at  first  without  a  visible
misgiving of the flesh. This, as I take it, was because all human  beings,
as we meet them, are commingled out of good and  evil:  and  Edward  Hyde,
alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.
     I lingered but a moment at the  mirror:  the  second  and  conclusive
experiment had yet to be attempted; it yet remained to be seen  if  I  had
lost my identity beyond redemption and must flee before  daylight  from  a
house that was no longer mine; and hurrying back to  my  cabinet,  I  once
more prepared  and  drank  the  cup,  once  more  suffered  the  pangs  of
dissolution, and came to myself once more with the character, the  stature
and the face of Henry Jekyll.
     That night I had come to the fatal cross-roads. Had I  approached  my
discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment while  under
the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have been otherwise,
and from these agonies of death and birth,  I  had  come  forth  an  angel
instead of a fiend. The drug had no discriminating action; it was  neither
diabolical nor divine; it but shook the doors of  the  prisonhouse  of  my
disposition; and like the captives of Philippi, that  which  stood  within
ran forth. At that time my  virtue  slumbered;  my  evil,  kept  awake  by
ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and  the  thing  that
was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence, although I had now two characters as
well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other was still  the
old Henry Jekyll, that  incongruous  compound  of  whose  reformation  and
improvement I had already learned to despair. The movement was thus wholly
toward the worse.
     Even at that time, I had not conquered my aversions to the dryness of
a life of study. I would still be merrily disposed at  times;  and  as  my
pleasures were (to say the least) undignified, and I  was  not  only  well
known and highly considered, but growing towards  the  elderly  man,  this
incoherency of my life was daily growing more unwelcome. It  was  on  this
side that my new power tempted me until I fell in slavery. I  had  but  to
drink the cup, to doff at once the body of the  noted  professor,  and  to
assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde. I smiled at  the  notion;
it seemed to me at the time to be humourous; and I  made  my  preparations
with the most studious care. I took and furnished that house in  Soho,  to
which Hyde was tracked by the police;  and  engaged  as  a  housekeeper  a
creature whom I knew well to be silent  and  unscrupulous.  On  the  other
side, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I described) was to
have full liberty and power about my house in the  square;  and  to  parry
mishaps, I even called and made myself a familiar  object,  in  my  second
character. I next drew up that will to which you so much objected; so that
if anything befell me in the person of Dr. Jekyll, I could enter  on  that
of Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss. And thus fortified, as I  supposed,
on every side, I began to profit by the strange immunities of my position.
     Men have before hired bravos to transact their  crimes,  while  their
own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did
so for his pleasures. I was the first that could plod in  the  public  eye
with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like  a  schoolboy,
strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty.  But
for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safely was complete. Think of  it-I
did not even exist! Let me but escape into my laboratory door, give me but
a second or two to mix and swallow the draught that I had always  standing
ready; and whatever he had done, Edward Hyde  would  pass  away  like  the
stain of breath upon a mirror; and there in his stead,  quietly  at  home,
trimming the midnight lamp in his study, a man who could afford  to  laugh
at suspicion, would be Henry Jekyll.
     The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise  were,  as  I
have said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But in the hands
of Edward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward the monstrous. When I would
come back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind of wonder
at my vicarious depravity. This familiar that I called out of my own soul,
and sent forth alone to do his  good  pleasure,  was  a  being  inherently
malign and villainous;  his  every  act  and  thought  centered  on  self;
drinking pleasure with bestial avidity  from  any  degree  of  torture  to
another; relentless like a man of  stone.  Henry  Jekyll  stood  at  times
aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation  was  apart  from
ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp  of  conscience.  It  was
Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse;  he
woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even  make
haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus  his
conscience slumbered.
     Into the details of the infamy at which I thus connived (for even now
I can scarce grant that I committed it) I have no design  of  entering;  I
mean but to point out the warnings and the successive steps with which  my
chastisement approached. I met with one accident which, as it  brought  on
no consequence, I shall no more than mention. An act of cruelty to a child
aroused against me the anger of a passer-by, whom I recognised  the  other
day in the person of your kinsman;  the  doctor  and  the  child's  family
joined him; there were moments when I feared for my life; and at last,  in
order to pacify their too just resentment, Edward Hyde had to  bring  them
to the door, and pay them in a cheque drawn in the name of  Henry  Jekyll.
But this danger was easily eliminated  from  the  future,  by  opening  an
account at another bank in the name of Edward Hyde himself; and  when,  by
sloping my own hand backward, I had supplied my double with a signature, I
thought I sat beyond the reach of fate.
     Some two months before the, murder of Sir Danvers, I had been out for
one of my adventures, had returned at a late hour, and woke the  next  day
in bed with somewhat odd sensations. It was in vain I looked about me;  in
vain I saw the decent furniture and tall proportions of  my  room  in  the
square; in vain that I recognised the pattern of the bed curtains and  the
design of the mahogany frame; something still kept insisting  that  I  was
not where I was, that I had not wakened where I seemed to be, but  in  the
little room in Soho where I was accustomed to sleep in the body of  Edward
Hyde. I smiled to myself, and in my psychological  way,  began  lazily  to
inquire into the elements of this illusion, occasionally, even  as  I  did
so, dropping back into a comfortable morning doze. I was still so  engaged
when, in one of my more wakeful moments, my eyes fell upon  my  hand.  Now
the hand of Henry Jekyll (as you have often remarked) was professional  in
shape and size: it was large, firm, white and comely. But the hand which I
now saw, clearly enough, in the yellow  light  of  a  mid-London  morning,
lying half shut on the bedclothes, was lean, corder, knuckly, of  a  dusky
pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair. It was the hand  of
Edward Hyde.
     I must have stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as I  was  in
the mere stupidity of wonder, before terror woke up in my breast as sudden
and startling as the crash of cymbals; and bounding from my bed  I  rushed
to the mirror. At the sight that met my eyes, my blood  was  changed  into
something exquisitely thin and icy. Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I
had awakened Edward Hyde. How was this to be explained?  I  asked  myself;
and then, with another bound of terror-how was it to be remedied?  It  was
well on