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 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. The 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 deathly 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 awhile; 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 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 bye,” 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 right? 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 could 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. 