DR. LANYON'S NARRATIVE
On the ninth of January, now four days ago, I received by the eveningdelivery a registered envelope, addressed in the hand of my colleagueand old school companion, Henry Jekyll. I was a good deal surprised bythis; for we were by no means in the habit of correspondence; I had seenthe man, dined with him, indeed, the night before; and I couldimagine nothing in our intercourse that should justify formality ofregistration. The contents increased my wonder; for this is how theletter ran:
"10th December, 18--.
"Dear Lanyon,--You are one of my oldest friends; and although we mayhave differed at times on scientific questions, I cannot remember, atleast on my side, any break in our affection. There was never a daywhen, 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 failme to-night, I am lost. You might suppose, after this preface, that Iam going to ask you for something dishonourable to grant. Judge foryourself.
"I want you to postpone all other engagements for to-night--ay, even ifyou were summoned to the bedside of an emperor; to take a cab, unlessyour carriage should be actually at the door; and with this letter inyour hand for consultation, to drive straight to my house. Poole, mybutler, has his orders; you will find him waiting your arrival with alocksmith. The door of my cabinet is then to be forced: and you areto 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 contentsas they stand, the fourth drawer from the top or (which is the samething) the third from the bottom. In my extreme distress of mind, I havea morbid fear of misdirecting you; but even if I am in error, you mayknow the right drawer by its contents: some powders, a phial and apaper book. This drawer I beg of you to carry back with you to CavendishSquare exactly as it stands.
"That is the first part of the service: now for the second. You shouldbe back, if you set out at once on the receipt of this, long beforemidnight; but I will leave you that amount of margin, not only inthe fear of one of those obstacles that can neither be prevented norforeseen, but because an hour when your servants are in bed is to bepreferred for what will then remain to do. At midnight, then, I have toask you to be alone in your consulting room, to admit with your own handinto the house a man who will present himself in my name, and to placein his hands the drawer that you will have brought with you from mycabinet. Then you will have played your part and earned my gratitudecompletely. Five minutes afterwards, if you insist upon an explanation,you will have understood that these arrangements are of capitalimportance; and that by the neglect of one of them, fantastic as theymust appear, you might have charged your conscience with my death or theshipwreck of my reason.
"Confident as I am that you will not trifle with this appeal, my heartsinks and my hand trembles at the bare thought of such a possibility.Think of me at this hour, in a strange place, labouring under ablackness of distress that no fancy can exaggerate, and yet well awarethat, if you will but punctually serve me, my troubles will roll awaylike 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 mysoul. It is possible that the post-office may fail me, and this letternot come into your hands until to-morrow morning. In that case, dearLanyon, do my errand when it shall be most convenient for you in thecourse of the day; and once more expect my messenger at midnight. It maythen already be too late; and if that night passes without event, youwill 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 boundto do as he requested. The less I understood of this farrago, the lessI was in a position to judge of its importance; and an appeal soworded could not be set aside without a grave responsibility. I roseaccordingly from table, got into a hansom, and drove straight toJekyll's house. The butler was awaiting my arrival; he had received bythe same post as mine a registered letter of instruction, and had sentat once for a locksmith and a carpenter. The tradesmen came while wewere yet speaking; and we moved in a body to old Dr. Denman's surgicaltheatre, from which (as you are doubtless aware) Jekyll's privatecabinet is most conveniently entered. The door was very strong, the lockexcellent; the carpenter avowed he would have great trouble and haveto do much damage, if force were to be used; and the locksmith was neardespair. 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 thedrawer, had it filled up with straw and tied in a sheet, and returnedwith it to Cavendish Square.
Here I proceeded to examine its contents. The powders were neatly enoughmade up, but not with the nicety of the dispensing chemist; so that itwas plain they were of Jekyll's private manufacture: and when I openedone of the wrappers I found what seemed to me a simple crystalline saltof 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 highlypungent to the sense of smell and seemed to me to contain phosphorus andsome volatile ether. At the other ingredients I could make no guess. Thebook was an ordinary version book and contained little but a series ofdates. These covered a period of many years, but I observed that theentries ceased nearly a year ago and quite abruptly. Here and there abrief remark was appended to a date, usually no more than a singleword: "double" occurring perhaps six times in a total of several hundredentries; and once very early in the list and followed by several marksof exclamation, "total failure!!!" All this, though it whetted mycuriosity, told me little that was definite. Here were a phial of somesalt, and the record of a series of experiments that had led (like toomany of Jekyll's investigations) to no end of practical usefulness.How could the presence of these articles in my house affect eitherthe honour, the sanity, or the life of my flighty colleague? If hismessenger could go to one place, why could he not go to another? Andeven granting some impediment, why was this gentleman to be received byme in secret? The more I reflected the more convinced I grew that Iwas dealing with a case of cerebral disease; and though I dismissed myservants to bed, I loaded an old revolver, that I might be found in someposture of self-defence.
Twelve o'clock had scarce rung out over London, ere the knocker soundedvery gently on the door. I went myself at the summons, and found a smallman 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 himenter, he did not obey me without a searching backward glance into thedarkness of the square. There was a policeman not far off, advancingwith his bull's eye open; and at the sight, I thought my visitor startedand made greater haste.
These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably; and as I followedhim into the bright light of the consulting room, I kept my hand readyon my weapon. Here, at last, I had a chance of clearly seeing him. I hadnever set eyes on him before, so much was certain. He was small, asI have said; I was struck besides with the shocking expression of hisface, with his remarkable combination of great muscular activity andgreat apparent debility of constitution, and--last but not least--withthe odd, subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood. This boresome resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a markedsinking 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 inthe nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the principleof hatred.
This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance, struckin me what I can only describe as a disgustful curiosity) was dressedin a fashion that would have made an ordinary person laughable; hisclothes, that is to say, although they were of rich and sober fabric,were enormously too large for him in every measurement--the trousershanging on his leg
s and rolled up to keep them from the ground, thewaist of the coat below his haunches, and the collar sprawling wide uponhis shoulders. Strange to relate, this ludicrous accoutrement was farfrom moving me to laughter. Rather, as there was something abnormaland misbegotten in the very essence of the creature that now facedme--something seizing, surprising and revolting--this fresh disparityseemed but to fit in with and to reinforce it; so that to my interestin the man's nature and character, there was added a curiosity as to hisorigin, his life, his fortune and status in the world.
These observations, though they have taken so great a space to be setdown in, were yet the work of a few seconds. My visitor was, indeed, onfire with sombre excitement.
"Have you got it?" he cried. "Have you got it?" And so lively was hisimpatience that he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shakeme.
I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang along myblood. "Come, sir," said I. "You forget that I have not yet the pleasureof your acquaintance. Be seated, if you please." And I showed him anexample, and sat down myself in my customary seat and with as fair animitation of my ordinary manner to a patient, as the lateness of thehour, the nature of my preoccupations, and the horror I had of myvisitor, would suffer me to muster.
"I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon," he replied civilly enough. "What yousay is very well founded; and my impatience has shown its heels to mypoliteness. I come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr. HenryJekyll, on a piece of business of some moment; and I understood..." Hepaused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite of hiscollected manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches of thehysteria--"I understood, a drawer..."
But here I took pity on my visitor's suspense, and some perhaps on myown growing curiosity.
"There it is, sir," said I, pointing to the drawer, where it lay on thefloor behind a table and still covered with the sheet.
He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon his heart: Icould hear his teeth grate with the convulsive action of his jaws; andhis face was so ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for his life andreason.
"Compose yourself," said I.
He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with the decision ofdespair, plucked away the sheet. At sight of the contents, he utteredone loud sob of such immense relief that I sat petrified. And the nextmoment, in a voice that was already fairly well under control, "Have youa graduated glass?" he asked.
I rose from my place with something of an effort and gave him what heasked.
He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the redtincture and added one of the powders. The mixture, which was at firstof a reddish hue, began, in proportion as the crystals melted, tobrighten in colour, to effervesce audibly, and to throw off small fumesof vapour. Suddenly and at the same moment, the ebullition ceased andthe compound changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly toa watery green. My visitor, who had watched these metamorphoses with akeen eye, smiled, set down the glass upon the table, and then turned andlooked upon me with an air of scrutiny.
"And now," said he, "to settle what remains. Will you be wise? will yoube guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand and togo forth from your house without further parley? or has the greed ofcuriosity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for it shallbe done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you werebefore, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of servicerendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of richesof the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province ofknowledge 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 bya prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan."
"Sir," said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from trulypossessing, "you speak enigmas, and you will perhaps not wonder that Ihear you with no very strong impression of belief. But I have gone toofar in the way of inexplicable services to pause before I see the end."
"It is well," replied my visitor. "Lanyon, you remember your vows: whatfollows is under the seal of our profession. And now, you who have solong been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who havedenied the virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided yoursuperiors--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 withinjected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as I looked there came, Ithought, a change--he seemed to swell--his face became suddenly blackand the features seemed to melt and alter--and the next moment, I hadsprung to my feet and leaped back against the wall, my arms raised toshield me from that prodigy, my mind submerged in terror.
"O God!" I screamed, and "O God!" again and again; for there before myeyes--pale and shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him withhis 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 onpaper. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened atit; and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself ifI believe it, and I cannot answer. My life is shaken to its roots; sleephas left me; the deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of the day andnight; 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 manunveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, I can not, even inmemory, 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 bemore 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 inevery corner of the land as the murderer of Carew.
HASTIE LANYON