Помоги проекту - поделись книгой:
“Well, sir, it went so quick, that I could hardly swear to that,” was the answer. “But if you mean, was it Mr. Hyde?—why, yes, I think it was! You see, it was much of the same bigness; and then who else could have got in by the laboratory door? You have not forgot, sir that at the time of the murder he had still the key with him? But that’s not all. I don’t know, Mr. Utterson, if ever you met this Mr. Hyde?”
“Yes,” said the lawyer, “I once spoke with him.”
“Then you must know as well as the rest of us that there was something queer about that gentleman, sir.”
“Yes, I felt something of what you describe,” said Mr. Utterson.
“Quite so, sir,” returned Poole. “Well, that masked thing like a monkey jumped from among the chemicals and whipped into the cabinet. Oh, I know it’s not evidence, Mr. Utterson. But I give you my Bible-word it was Mr. Hyde!”
“Ay, ay,” said the lawyer. “My fears incline to the same point. Ay, truly, I believe you; I believe poor Harry is killed; and I believe his murderer (for what purpose, God alone can tell) is still lurking in his victim’s room. Well, call Bradshaw[33].”
The footman came, very white and nervous.
“So, Bradshaw,” said the lawyer,” it is our intention to make an end of it. Poole, here, and I are going to force our way into the cabinet. And you and the boy must go round the corner with a pair of good sticks and take your post at the laboratory door. We give you ten minutes to get there.”
As Bradshaw left, the lawyer looked at his watch. “And now, Poole, let us go,” he said; and taking the poker under his arm, led the way into the yard. It was now quite dark. The wind tossed the light of the candle to and fro about the steps, until they came into the shelter of the theatre, where they sat down silently to wait. London hummed solemnly all around; but the stillness was only broken by the sounds of a footfall moving to and fro along the cabinet floor.
“So it will walk all day, sir,” whispered Poole; “ay, and all night. Only when a new sample comes from the chemist, there’s a break. Mr. Utterson, please tell me, is that the doctor’s foot?”
It was different indeed from the heavy creaking tread of Henry Jekyll. Utterson sighed.
“Is there anything else?” he asked.
Poole nodded.
“Once,” he said. “Once I heard it weeping!”
“Weeping? How that?” said the lawyer, conscious of a sudden chill of horror.
“Weeping like a woman or a lost soul,” said the butler.
But now the ten minutes drew to an end. Poole took the axe; the candle was set upon the nearest table to light them to the attack; and they drew near. The foot was still going up and down, up and down, in the quiet of the night.
“Jekyll,” cried Utterson, with a loud voice, “I demand to see you.”
He paused a moment, but there came no reply.
“I give you my warning, our suspicions are aroused, and I must and shall see you,” he resumed; “if not of your consent, then by brute force!”
“Utterson,” said the voice, “for God’s sake, have mercy!”
“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 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 it was not until the fifth, that the lock burst in sunder and the wreck of the door fell inwards on the carpet.
The besiegers stood back a little and peered in. There lay the cabinet before their eyes: the quietest room, you would have said.
But right in the midst 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 too 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. 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[34].
“We have come too late,” he said sternly, “whether to save or punish. Hyde is gone; and it only remains for us to find the body of your master.”
The greater proportion of the building was occupied by the theatre, which filled almost the whole ground story and was lighted from above. 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 thoroughly examined.
Each closet needed a glance, all were empty, and all, by the dust that fell from their doors, had stood long unopened. Nowhere was there any trace of Henry Jekyll, dead or alive.
“He must be buried here,” Poole said.
“Or he may have fled,” said Utterson, and he turned to examine the door. It was locked; and lying near by, 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?”
“Ay,” continued Utterson, “and the fractures, too, are rusty.”
The two men looked at each other with a scare.
“I cannot understand, Poole,” said the lawyer. “Let us go back to the cabinet.”
They mounted the stair in silence, and glancing 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.
There were several books on a shelf; one lay beside the tea-cup, 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 mirror, into whose depths they looked with an involuntary horror. But it showed them nothing.
“This mirror has seen strange things, sir,” whispered Poole.
“And surely none stranger than itself,” echoed the lawyer in the same tones. “But why did Jekyll need it?”
“Who knows!” 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 had no cause to like me. He has not destroyed this document, why?”
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 must be still alive, he must have fled! And then, why fled? and how? Oh, we must be careful. We may involve your master in some dire catastrophe.”
“Why don’t you read it, sir?” asked Poole.
“Because I fear,” replied the lawyer solemnly. And with that he brought the paper to his eyes and read as follows:
“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[35]. 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 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 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 demand sending letters. The contents increased my wonder; for this is how the letter ran:
Upon the reading of this letter, I made sure my colleague was insane; but I decided to do as he requested. I rose 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 to old Dr. Denman’s surgical theatre, from which Jekyll’s private cabinet is most conveniently entered. The locksmith was a handy fellow, and after two hours’ work, the door stood open. The press marked E was unlocked; and I took out the drawer, and returned with it to Cavendish Square.
Here I proceeded to examine its contents. The powders were neatly enough made up; 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 liquid, which was highly pungent to the sense of smell and seemed to me to contain phosphorus and some volatile ether.
The copy-book contained 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!!!” Here were a phial of some tincture, a paper of some salt, and the record of a series of experiments. How could the presence of these articles in my house affect either the honour, the sanity, or the life of my colleague? And why was the messenger 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.
Twelve o’clock had scarce rung out over London, when the knocker sounded very gently on the door. I found a small man crouching against the pillars of the portico.
“Are you from Dr. Jekyll?” I asked.
He told me “yes”; and I had bidden him enter. There was a policeman not far off; and, I thought my visitor started and made great haste.
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. 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 with the odd, subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood. At the time, I set it down to some personal distaste.
This person 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. There was something abnormal in the very essence of the creature that now faced me—something seizing, surprising, and revolting.
These observations were yet the work of a few seconds. My visitor was on fire.
“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.
“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.
“I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon,” he replied civilly enough. “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 that he was wrestling against the approaches of the hysteria— “I understood, a drawer…”
“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[38],” said I.
He turned a dreadful smile to me, and 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[39]?” 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 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.
“And now,” said he, “will you be wise? will you let me take this glass in my hand and go forth from your house? or you are curious? 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. Or, if you 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.”
“Sir,” said I, “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 who have denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, behold!”
He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A cry followed; he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table, staring with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as I looked there came, I thought, a change—he seemed to swell—his 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 arm 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 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 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; I feel that my days are numbered, and that I must die. I will say but one thing, Utterson, and that if you can bring 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, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future. And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition[40]. When I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life. I hid my views with a morbid sense of shame. It was the nature of my aspirations that made me what I was. I was driven to reflect deeply on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion. Though I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were earnest. I drew steadily nearer to that truth 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, 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, learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man. It was the curse of mankind that these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How to dissociate them?
I was so far in my reflections when a light began to shine upon the subject from the laboratory table. I began to perceive the trembling immateriality, the mist-like transience of this seemingly so solid body in which we walk attired. Certain agents I found to have the power to shake and to pluck back that fleshly vestment. I not only recognised my natural body for 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.
I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of practice. I knew well that I risked death. 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 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, drank off the potion.
The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit[41] that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself.
There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; I was conscious of 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. I stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of these sensations; and I was suddenly aware that I had lost in stature[42].
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. I crossed the yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon me; I went 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.
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 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 had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay. But this, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. I have observed that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me without some visible disgust. This was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and eviname = "note" and Edward Hyde alone was pure evil.
The second and conclusive experiment had yet to be attempted. 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 crossroads. The drug was neither diabolical nor divine; it but shook the doors of the prison-house of my disposition. 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. The movement was wholly toward the worse.
Even at that time, I had not yet conquered my aversion to the life of study. I would still be merrily disposed at times; and as my pleasures were undignified, the incoherency of my life was daily growing more unwelcome. And 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.
Поделиться книгой: