Chapter 9:
Dr. Lanyon's Narrative
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 a good deal 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 justify formality of registration. The contents increased my wonder; for this is how the letter ran:
"10th December, 18—.
| "Dear Lanyon,—You are one of my oldest friends; and |
| although we may have differed at times on scientific questions, I |
| cannot remember, at least on my side, any break in our affection. |
| There was never a day when, 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 fail me to-night, I am |
| lost. You might suppose, after this preface, that I am going to |
| ask you for something dishonourable to grant. Judge for yourself. |
| "I want you to postpone all other engagements for to-night— |
| ay, even if you were summoned to the bedside of an emperor; to |
| take a cab, unless your carriage should be actually at the door; |
| and with this letter in your hand for consultation, to drive |
| straight to my house. Poole, my butler, has his orders; you will |
| find him waiting your arrival with a locksmith. The door of my |
| cabinet is then to be forced: and you are to 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 contents as they stand, |
| the fourth drawer from the top or (which is the same thing) the |
| third from the bottom. In my extreme distress of mind, I have a |
| morbid fear of misdirecting you; but even if I am in error, you |
| may know the right drawer by its contents: some powders, a phial |
| and a paper book. This drawer I beg of you to carry back with you |
| to Cavendish Square exactly as it stands. |
| "That is the first part of the service: now for the second. |
| You should be back, if you set out at once on the receipt of this, |
| long before midnight; but I will leave you that amount of margin, |
| not only in the fear of one of those obstacles that can neither be |
| prevented nor foreseen, but because an hour when your servants are |
| in bed is to be preferred for what will then remain to do. At |
| midnight, then, I have to ask you to be alone in your consulting |
| room, to admit with your own hand into the house a man who will |
| present himself in my name, and to place in his hands the drawer |
| that you will have brought with you from my cabinet. Then you |
| will have played your part and earned my gratitude completely. |
| Five minutes afterwards, if you insist upon an explanation, you |
| will have understood that these arrangements are of capital |
| importance; and that by the neglect of one of them, fantastic as |
| they must appear, you might have charged your conscience with my |
| death or the shipwreck of my reason. |
| "Confident as I am that you will not trifle with this appeal, |
| my heart sinks and my hand trembles at the bare thought of such a |
| possibility. Think of me at this hour, in a strange place, |
| labouring under a blackness of distress that no fancy can |
| exaggerate, and yet well aware that, if you will but punctually |
| serve me, my troubles will roll away like 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 my soul. It is possible that the post-office may fail |
| me, and this letter not come into your hands until to-morrow |
| morning. In that case, dear Lanyon, do my errand when it shall be |
| most convenient for you in the course of the day; and once more |
| expect my messenger at midnight. It may then already be too late; |
| and if that night passes without event, you will 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 bound to do as he requested. The less I understood of this |
| farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its importance; |
| and an appeal so worded could not be set aside without a grave |
| responsibility. I rose accordingly 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 a body to old Dr. Denman's surgical theatre, from which |
| (as you are doubtless aware) Jekyll's private cabinet is most |
| conveniently entered. The door was very strong, the lock |
| excellent; the carpenter avowed he would have great trouble and |
| have to do much damage, if force were to be used; and the |
| locksmith was near despair. 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 the drawer, had it filled up with |
| straw and tied in a sheet, and returned with it to Cavendish |
| Square. |
| Here I proceeded to examine its contents. The powders were |
| neatly enough made up, but not with the nicety of the dispensing |
| chemist; so that it was plain they were of Jekyll's private |
| manufacture: 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 liquor, which was highly pungent to the |
| sense of smell and seemed to me to contain phosphorus and some |
| volatile ether. At the other ingredients I could make no guess. |
| The book was an ordinary version book and contained little but 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!!!" All this, though it whetted my curiosity, told me |
| little that was definite. Here were a phial of some salt, and the |
| record of a series of experiments that had led (like too many of |
| Jekyll's investigations) to no end of practical usefulness. How |
| could the presence of these articles in my house affect either the |
| honour, the sanity, or the life of my flighty colleague? If his |
| messenger could go to one place, why could he not go to another? |
| And even granting some impediment, why was this gentleman 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; and |
| though I dismissed my servants to bed, I loaded an old revolver, |
| that I might be found in some posture of self-defence. |
| Twelve o'clock had scarce rung out over London, ere the |
| knocker sounded very gently on the door. I went myself at the |
| summons, and found a small man 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 him enter, he did not obey me without a searching backward |
| glance into the darkness of the square. There was a policeman not |
| far off, advancing with his bull's eye open; and at the sight, I |
| thought my visitor started and made greater haste. |
| These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably; and as 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. I had never set eyes on him before, so much |
| was certain. 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—last but not least—with the odd, |
| subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood. This bore |
| some resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a |
| marked sinking 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 in the nature of man, and to turn on |
| some nobler hinge than the principle of hatred. |
| This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his |
| entrance, struck in me what I can only, describe as a disgustful |
| curiosity) 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. Strange to relate, this ludicrous accoutrement was far |
| from moving me to laughter. Rather, as there was something |
| abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature that |
| now faced me—something seizing, surprising and revolting— |
| this fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce |
| it; so that to my interest in the man's nature and character, |
| there was added a curiosity as to his origin, his life, his |
| fortune and status in the world. |
| These observations, though they have taken so great a space to |
| be set down in, were yet the work of a few seconds. My visitor |
| was, indeed, on fire with sombre excitement. |
| "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, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang |
| along my blood. "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 and with as fair an imitation of my ordinary manner to a |
| patient, as the lateness of the hour, the nature of my |
| preoccupations, and the horror I had of my visitor, would suffer |
| me to muster. |
| "I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon," he replied civilly enough. |
| "What you say is very well founded; and my impatience has shown |
| its heels to my politeness. 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, in spite of his collected manner, that he |
| was wrestling against the approaches of the hysteria—"I |
| understood, a drawer ..." |
| But here I took pity on my visitor's suspense, and some |
| perhaps on my own growing curiosity. |
| "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," said I.
| He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with the decision |
| of despair, 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?" 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, in proportion as the |
| crystals melted, 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 with an air of scrutiny. |
| "And now," said he, "to settle what remains. Will you be |
| wise? will you be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in |
| my hand and to go forth from your house without further parley? or |
| has the greed of curiosity too much command of you? 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, unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortal |
| distress may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if |
| you shall so 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, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by a |
| prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan." |
| "Sir," said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from truly |
| possessing, "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 remember your |
| vows: what follows is under the seal of our profession. And now, |
| you who have so long been bound to the most narrow and material |
| views, you who have denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, |
| you who have derided your superiors—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 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 arms 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 shaken, 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 bring my mind to |
| 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; 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 man unveiled to me, |
| even with tears of penitence, I can not, even in memory, 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 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
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