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Page 6
Mr. Utterson again walked some way in silence and obviously under a
weight of consideration.
"You are sure he used a key?" he inquired at last.
"My dear sir..." began Enfield, surprised out of himself.
10)
"Yes, I know," said Utterson; "I know it must seem strange. The
fact is, if I do not ask you the name of the other party, it is
because I know it already. You see, Richard, your tale has gone
home. If you have been inexact in any point, you had better correct
it."
"I think you might have warned me," returned the other, with a
touch of sullenness. "But I have been pedantically exact, as you
call it. The fellow had a key; and what's more, he has it still. I
saw him use it, not a week ago."
Mr. Utterson sighed deeply but said never a word; and the young man
presently resumed. "Here is another lesson to say nothing," said he.
"I am ashamed of my long tongue. Let us make a bargain never to
refer to this again."
"With all my heart," said the lawyer. "I shake hands on that,
Richard."
11)
SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE
THAT evening Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in sombre
spirits and sat down to dinner without relish. It was his custom of
a Sunday, when this meal was over, to sit close by the fire, a
volume of some dry divinity on his reading-desk, until the clock of
the neighbouring church rang out the hour of twelve, when he would
go soberly and gratefully to bed. On this night, however, as soon as
the cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went into his
business-room. There he opened his safe, took from the most private
part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr. Jekyll's Will,
and sat down with a clouded brow to study its contents. The will was
holograph, for Mr. Utterson, though he took charge of it now that it
was made, had refused to lend the least assistance in the making of
it; it provided not only that, in case of the decease of Henry
Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S., etc., all his possessions were
to pass into the hands of his "friend and benefactor Edward Hyde,"
but that in case of
12)
Dr. Jekyll's "disappearance or unexplained absence for any period
exceeding three calendar months," the said Edward Hyde should step
into the said Henry Jekyll's shoes without further delay and free
from any burthen or obligation, beyond the payment of a few small
sums to the members of the doctor's household. This document had
long been the lawyer's eyesore. It offended him both as a lawyer and
as a lover of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom the
fanciful was the immodest. And hitherto it was his ignorance of Mr.
Hyde that had swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden turn, it was
his knowledge. It was already bad enough when the name was but a
name of which he could learn no more. It was worse when it began to
be clothed upon with detestable attributes; and out of the shifting,
insubstantial mists that had so long baffled his eye, there leaped
up the sudden, definite presentment of a fiend.
"I thought it was madness," he said, as he replaced the obnoxious
paper in the safe, "and now I begin to fear it is disgrace."
With that he blew out his candle, put on a great-coat, and set
forth in the direction of Cavendish Square, that citadel of
medicine, where his friend, the great Dr. Lanyon, had his house and
received his crowding patients. "If any one knows, it will be
Lanyon," he had thought.
The solemn butler knew and welcomed him;
13)
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