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

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; 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. 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 Dr. Jekyll, looking deathly 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 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 awhile; 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.

“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 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 bye,” 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

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 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 could 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.”

“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.