CHAPTER FIVE
The 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; 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 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.
"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 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 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."
"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.
Chapter Six |
