Incident of the Letter

IT was late in the afternoon, when Mr. Utterson found his way to
Dr. Jekyll's door, where he was at once admitted by Poole, and
carried down 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 from the heirs of a celebrated surgeon; and his own
tastes being rather chemical than anatomical, had changed the
destination of the block at the bottom of the garden. It was the
first time that the lawyer had been received in that part of his
friend's quarters; and he eyed the dingy, windowless structure with
curiosity, and gazed round with a distasteful sense of strangeness
as he crossed the theatre, 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 of stairs mounted to a door covered with red baize;

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and through this, Mr. 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 court by three dusty
windows barred with iron. A 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 Dr.
Jekyll, looking deadly sick. He did not rise to meet his visitor,
but held out a cold hand and bade him welcome in a changed voice.

"And now," said Mr. Utterson, as soon as Poole had left them, "you
have heard the news?"

The doctor shuddered." They were crying it in the square," he said.
"I heard them in my dining-room."

"One word," said the lawyer. "Carew was my client, but so are you,
and I want to know what I am doing. You have not been mad enough to
hide this fellow?"

"Utterson, I swear to God, " cried the doctor," I swear to God I
will never set eyes on him again. I bind my honour to you that I am
done with him in this world. It is all at an end. And indeed he does
not want my help; you do not know him as I do; he is safe, he is
quite safe; mark my words, he will never more be heard of."


The lawyer listened gloomily; he did not like his friend's feverish
manner. "You seem pretty

37)

sure of him," said he; "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 thing
on which you may advise me. I have -- I have received a letter; and
I am at a loss whether I should show it to the police. I should like
to leave it in your hands, 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." I cannot say that I care what becomes of
Hyde; I am quite done with him. I was thinking of my own character,
which this hateful business has rather exposed."

Utterson ruminated a while; he was surprised at his friend's
selfishness, and yet relieved by it. "Well," said he, at last, "let
me see the letter."

The letter was written in an odd, upright hand and signed "Edward
Hyde": and it signified, briefly enough, that the writer's
benefactor, Dr. Jekyll, whom he had long so unworthily repaid for a
thousand generosities, need labour under no alarm for his safety, As
he had means of escape on which he placed a sure dependence. The
lawyer liked this letter well enough; it put a better colour on the
intimacy than he had looked for; and he blamed himself for some of
his past suspicions.

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"Have you the envelope?" he asked.

"I burned it," replied Jekyll," before I thought what I was about.
But it bore no postmark. The note was handed in."

"Shall I keep this and sleep upon it?" asked Utterson.

"I wish you to judge for me entirely," was the reply. "I have lost
confidence in myself."

"Well, I shall consider," returned the lawyer. "And now one word
more: it was Hyde who dictated the terms in your will about that
disappearance?"

The doctor seemed seized with a qualm of faintness: he shut his
mouth tight and nodded.

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

"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
Poole. "By the by," said he, "there was a letter handed in to-day:
what was the messenger like?" But Poole was positive nothing had
come except by post;" and only circulars by that," he added.

This news sent off the visitor with his fears renewed. Plainly the
letter had come by the laboratory door; possibly, indeed, it had
been

39)

written in the cabinet; and if that were so, it must be differently
judged, and handled with the more caution. The newsboys, as he went,
were crying themselves hoarse along the footways: "Special edition.
Shocking murder of an M. P." That was the funeral oration of one
friend and client; and he could not help a certain apprehension lest
the good name of another should be sucked down in the eddy of the
scandal. It was, at least, a ticklish decision that he had to make;
and self-reliant as he was by habit, he began to cherish a longing
for advice. It was not to be had directly; but perhaps, he thought,
it might be fished for.

Presently after, he sat on one side of his own hearth, with Mr.
Guest, his head clerk, upon the other, and midway between, at a
nicely calculated distance from the fire, a bottle of a particular
old wine that had long dwelt 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, 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 colour grows richer in stained windows; and the glow of
hot autumn afternoons on hillside vineyards was ready to be set free

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and to disperse the fogs of London. Insensibly the lawyer melted.
There was no man from whom he kept fewer secrets than Mr. Guest;
and he was not always sure that he kept as many as he meant. Guest
had often been on business to the doctor's; he knew Poole; he could
scarce have failed to hear of Mr. Hyde's familiarity about the
house; he might draw conclusions: was it not as well, then, that he
should see a letter which put that mystery to rights? and above all
since Guest, being a great student and critic of handwriting, would
consider 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 Mr. Utterson might shape his
future course.

"This is a sad business 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 ourselves,
for I scarce know what to do about it; it is an ugly business at
the best. But there it is; quite in your way a murderer's
autograph."

Guest's eyes brightened, and he sat down at once and studied it
with passion. "No, sir," he said: "not mad; but it is an odd hand."

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"And by all accounts a very odd writer," added the lawyer.

Just then the servant entered with a note.

"Is that from Dr. Jekyll, sir?" inquired the clerk. "I thought I
knew the writing. Anything private, Mr. Utterson?"

"Only an invitation to dinner. Why? Do you want to see it?"

"One moment. I thank you, sir"; and the clerk laid the two sheets
of paper alongside and sedulously compared their contents. "Thank
you, sir," he said at last, returning both; "it's a very
interesting autograph."

There was a pause, during which Mr. Utterson struggled with
himself. "Why did you compare them, Guest?" he inquired suddenly.

"Well, sir," returned the clerk, "there's a rather singular
resemblance; the two hands are in many points identical: only
differently sloped."

"Rather quaint," said Utterson.

"It is, as you say, rather quaint," returned Guest.

"I wouldn't speak of this note, you know," said the master.

"No, sir," said the clerk. "I understand."

But no sooner was Mr. Utterson alone that night than he locked the
note into his safe, where it reposed from that time forward.
"What!" he thought." Henry Jekyll forge for a murderer!" And his
blood ran cold in his veins.

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