Mr. Utterson was sitting by his fireside one evening 
after dinner, when he was surprised to receive a 
visit from Poole. 

“Bless me, Poole, what brings you here?” he cried; 
and then taking a second look at him, “What ails 
you?” he added; “is the doctor ill?” 

“Mr. Utterson,” said the man, “there is something 
wrong.” 

“Take a seat, and here is a glass of wine for you,” 
said the lawyer. “Now, take your time, and tell me 
plainly what you want.” 

“You know the doctor’s ways, sir,” replied Poole, 
“and how he shuts himself up. Well, he’s shut up 
again in the cabinet; and I don’t like it, sir — 
I wish I may die if I like it. Mr. Utterson, sir, 
I’m afraid.”
 
“Now, my good man,” said the lawyer, “be explicit. 
What are you afraid of?” 

“I’ve been afraid for about a week,” returned Poole, 
doggedly disregarding the question, “and I can bear 
it no more.” 

The man’s appearance amply bore out his words; his 
manner was altered for the worse; and except for 
the moment when he had first announced his terror, 
he had not once looked the lawyer in the face. Even 
now, he sat with the glass of wine untasted on his 
knee, and his eyes directed to a corner of the floor. 
“I can bear it no more,” he repeated. 

“Come,” said the lawyer, “I see you have some good 
reason, Poole; I see there is something seriously 
amiss. Try to tell me what it is.” 

“I think there’s been foul play,” said Poole, 
hoarsely. 

“Foul play!” cried the lawyer, a good deal 
frightened and rather inclined to be irritated in 
consequence. “What foul play! What does the man 
mean?” 

“I daren’t say, sir,” was the answer; “but will 
you come along with me and see for yourself?”
 
Mr. Utterson’s only answer was to rise and get 
his hat and greatcoat; but he observed with wonder 
the greatness of the relief that appeared upon 
the butler’s face, and perhaps with no less, that 
the wine was still untasted when he set it down 
to follow. 

It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, 
with a pale moon, lying on her back as though 
the wind had tilted her, and flying wrack of the 
most diaphanous and lawny texture. The wind made 
talking difficult, and flecked the blood into the 
face. It seemed to have swept the streets unusually
bare of passengers, besides; for Mr. Utterson 
thought he had never seen that part of London so 
deserted. He could have wished it otherwise; never in 
his life had he been conscious of so sharp a wish to 
see and touch his fellow-creatures; for struggle as he
might, there was borne in upon his mind a crushing 
anticipation of calamity. The square, when they got 
there, was full of wind and dust, and the thin trees 
in the garden were lashing themselves along the railing. 
Poole, who had kept all the way a pace or two ahead, 
now pulled up in the middle of the pavement, and in 
spite of the biting weather, took off his hat and 
mopped his brow with a red pocket-handkerchief. 
But for all the hurry of his coming, these were not 
the dews of exertion that he wiped away, but the 
moisture of some strangling anguish; for his face 
was white and his voice, when he spoke, harsh and 
broken. 

“Well, sir,” he said, “here we are, and God grant 
there be nothing wrong.” 

“Amen, Poole,” said the lawyer. 

Thereupon the servant knocked in a very guarded 
manner; the door was opened on the chain; and a 
voice asked from within, “Is that you, Poole?” 

“It’s all right,” said Poole. “Open the door.” 

The hall, when they entered it, was brightly lighted 
up; the fire was built high; and about the hearth the
whole of the servants, men and women, stood huddled 
together like a flock of sheep. At the sight of Mr. Utterson, 
the housemaid broke into hysterical whimpering; and the 
cook, crying out “Bless God! it’s Mr. Utterson,” 
ran forward as if to take him in her arms. 

“What, what? Are you all here?” said the lawyer 
peevishly. “Very irregular, very unseemly; your master 
would be far from pleased.” 

“They’re all afraid,” said Poole. 

Blank silence followed, no one protesting; only the maid 
lifted her voice and now wept loudly. 

“Hold your tongue!” Poole said to her, with a ferocity 
of accent that testified to his own jangled nerves; 
and indeed, when the girl had so suddenly raised the 
note of her lamentation, they had all started and turned 
towards the inner door with faces of dreadful expectation. 
“And now,” continued the butler, addressing the knife-boy, 
“reach me a candle, and we’ll get this through hands at 
once.” And then he begged Mr. Utterson to follow him, 
and led the way to the back garden. 

“Now, sir,” said he, “you come as gently as you can. I 
want you to hear, and I don’t want you to be heard. And 
see here, sir, if by any chance he was to ask you in, 
don’t go.” 

Mr. Utterson’s nerves, at this unlooked-for termination, 
gave a jerk that nearly threw him from his balance; but 
he recollected his courage and followed the butler into 
the laboratory building through the surgical theatre, 
with its lumber of crates and bottles, to the foot of the 
stair. Here Poole motioned him to stand on one side and 
listen; while he himself, setting down the candle and 
making a great and obvious call on his resolution, mounted 
the steps and knocked with a somewhat uncertain hand on 
the red baize of the cabinet door. 

“Mr. Utterson, sir, asking to see you,” he called; and 
even as he did so, once more violently signed to the 
lawyer to give ear. 

A voice answered from within: “Tell him I cannot see 
anyone,” it said complainingly. 

“Thank you, sir,” said Poole, with a note of something 
like triumph in his voice; and taking up his candle, he 
led Mr. Utterson back across the yard and into the great 
kitchen, where the fire was out and the beetles were 
leaping on the floor. 

“Sir,” he said, looking Mr. Utterson in the eyes, “Was 
that my master’s voice?” 

“It seems much changed,” replied the lawyer, very pale, 
but giving look for look. 

“Changed? Well, yes, I think so,” said the butler. “Have 
I been twenty years in this man’s house, to be deceived 
about his voice? No, sir; master’s made away with; he was 
made away with eight days ago, when we heard him cry out 
upon the name of God; and who’s in there instead of him, 
and why it stays there, is a thing that cries to Heaven, 
Mr. Utterson!” 

“This is a very strange tale, Poole; this is rather a 
wild tale my man,” said Mr. Utterson, biting his finger.
“Suppose it were as you suppose, supposing Dr. Jekyll to 
have been — well, murdered, what could induce the murderer 
to stay? That won’t hold water; it doesn’t commend itself 
to reason.” 

“Well, Mr. Utterson, you are a hard man to satisfy, but 
I’ll do it yet,” said Poole. “All this last week (you must 
know) him, or it, whatever it is that lives in that cabinet, 
has been crying night and day for some sort of medicine and 
cannot get it to his mind. It was sometimes his way — the 
master’s, that is — to write his orders on a sheet of paper  
and throw it on the stair. We’ve had nothing else this week 
back; nothing but papers, and a closed door, and the very 
meals left there to be smuggled in when nobody was looking. 
Well, sir, every day, ay, and twice and thrice in the same 
day, there have been orders and complaints, and I have been 
sent flying to all the wholesale chemists in town. Every time 
I brought the stuff back, there would be another paper telling 
me to return it, because it was not pure, and another order 
to a different firm. This drug is wanted bitter bad, sir, 
whatever for.” 

“Have you any of these papers?” asked Mr. Utterson. 

Poole felt in his pocket and handed out a crumpled note, 
which the lawyer, bending nearer to the candle, carefully 
examined. Its contents ran thus: “Dr. Jekyll presents his 
compliments to Messrs. Maw. He assures them that their last 
sample is impure and quite useless for his present purpose. 
In the year 18—, Dr. J. purchased a somewhat large quantity 
from Messrs. M. He now begs them to search with most sedulous 
care, and should any of the same quality be left, forward it 
to him at once. Expense is no consideration. The importance 
of this to Dr. J. can hardly be exaggerated.” So far the 
letter had run composedly enough, but here with a sudden 
splutter of the pen, the writer’s emotion had broken loose. 
“For God’s sake,” he added, “find me some of the old.” 

“This is a strange note,” said Mr. Utterson; and then sharply, 
“How do you come to have it open?” 

“The man at Maw’s was main angry, sir, and he threw it 
back to me like so much dirt,” returned Poole. 

“This is unquestionably the doctor’s hand, do you know?”
resumed the lawyer. 

“I thought it looked like it,” said the servant rather 
sulkily; and then, with another voice, “But what matters 
hand of write?” he said. “I’ve seen him!” 

“Seen him?” repeated Mr. Utterson. “Well?” 

“That’s it!” said Poole. “It was this way. I came 
suddenly into the theatre from the garden. It seems 
he had slipped out to look for this drug or whatever 
it is; for the cabinet door was open, and there he was 
at the far end of the room digging among the crates. 
He looked up when I came in, gave a kind of cry, and 
whipped upstairs into the cabinet. It was but for one 
minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head 
like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a 
mask upon his face? If it was my master, why did he cry 
out like a rat, and run from me? I have served him long 
enough. And then...” The man paused and passed his hand 
over his face. 

“These are all very strange circumstances,” said 
Mr. Utterson, “but I think I begin to see daylight. Your 
master, Poole, is plainly seized with one of those maladies 
that both torture and deform the sufferer; hence, for aught 
I know, the alteration of his voice; hence the mask and the 
avoidance of his friends; hence his eagerness to find this drug, 
by means of which the poor soul retains some hope of ultimate 
recovery — God grant that he be not deceived! There is my 
explanation; it is sad enough, Poole, ay, and appalling to 
consider; but it is plain and natural, hangs well together, 
and delivers us from all exorbitant alarms.” 

“Sir,” said the butler, turning to a sort of mottled pallor, 
“that thing was not my master, and there’s the truth. My master” — 
here he looked round him and began to whisper — “is a tall, fine 
build of a man, and this was more of a dwarf.” Utterson attempted 
to protest. “O, sir,” cried Poole, “do you think I do not know my 
master after twenty years? Do you think I do not know where his head 
comes to in the cabinet door, where I saw him every morning of my 
life? No, sir, that thing in the mask was never Dr. Jekyll — 
God knows what it was, but it was never Dr. Jekyll; and it is the 
belief of my heart that there was murder done.” 

“Poole,” replied the lawyer, “if you say that, it will become 
my duty to make certain. Much as I desire to spare your master’s 
feelings, much as I am puzzled by this note which seems to prove 
him to be still alive, I shall consider it my duty to break in 
that door.” 

“Ah, Mr. Utterson, that’s talking!” cried the butler. 

“And now comes the second question,” resumed Utterson: “Who is 
going to do it?” 

“Why, you and me, sir,” was the undaunted reply. 

“That’s very well said,” returned the lawyer; “and whatever comes 
of it, I shall make it my business to see you are no loser.” 

“There is an axe in the theatre,” continued Poole; “and you might 
take the kitchen poker for yourself.” 

The lawyer took that rude but weighty instrument into his hand,
and balanced it. “Do you know, Poole,” he said, looking up, “that 
you and I are about to place ourselves in a position of some peril?” 

“You may say so, sir, indeed,” returned the butler. 

“It is well, then that we should be frank,” said the other. 
“We both think more than we have said; let us make a clean breast. 
This masked figure that you saw, did you recognise it?” 

“Well, sir, it went so quick, and the creature was so doubled up, 
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 it had the same quick, light way with it; 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 you ever 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—something that gave a man a turn — I don’t 
know rightly how to say it, sir, beyond this: that you felt in your 
marrow kind of cold and thin.” 

“I own I felt something of what you describe,” said Mr. Utterson. 

“Quite so, sir,” returned Poole. “Well, when that masked thing like a 
monkey jumped from among the chemicals and whipped into the cabinet, it 
went down my spine like ice. O, I know it’s not evidence, Mr. Utterson; 
I’m book-learned enough for that; but a man has his feelings, and I give 
you my bible-word it was Mr. Hyde!” 

“Ay, ay,” said the lawyer. “My fears incline to the same point. Evil, I 
fear, founded — evil was sure to come — of that connection. 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, let our name be vengeance. Call Bradshaw.” 

The footman came at the summons, very white and nervous. 

“Pull yourself together, Bradshaw,” said the lawyer. “This suspense, I 
know, is telling upon all of you; but it is now our intention to make an 
end of it. Poole, here, and I are going to force our way into the cabinet.
 If all is well, my shoulders are broad enough to bear the blame. Meanwhile, 
lest anything should really be amiss, or any malefactor seek to 
escape by the back, 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 to your stations.” 

As Bradshaw left, the lawyer looked at his watch. “And now, Poole, let us 
get to ours,” he said; and taking the poker under his arm, led the way into 
the yard. The scud had banked over the moon, and it was now quite dark. 
The wind, which only broke in puffs and draughts into that deep well of 
building, tossed the light of the candle to and fro about their steps, 
until they came into the shelter of the theatre, where they sat down silently
 to wait. London hummed solemnly all around; but nearer at hand, 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 the better part of 
the night. Only when a new sample comes from the chemist, there’s a bit of a 
break. Ah, it’s an ill conscience that’s such an enemy to rest! Ah, sir, 
there’s blood foully shed in every step of it! But hark again, a little closer — 
put your heart in your ears, Mr. Utterson, and tell me, is that the doctor’s
foot?” 

The steps fell lightly and oddly, with a certain swing, for all they went 
so slowly; it was different indeed from the heavy creaking tread of Henry 
Jekyll. Utterson sighed. “Is there never 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. “I came away with 
that upon my heart, that I could have wept too.” 

But now the ten minutes drew to an end. Poole disinterred the axe from 
under a stack of packing straw; the candle was set upon the nearest table 
to light them to the attack; and they drew near with bated breath to where 
that patient 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 fair warning, our 
suspicions are aroused, and I must and shall see you,” he resumed; “if 
not by fair means, then by foul—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, as of mere animal terror, 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 the fittings were of 
excellent workmanship; and it was not until the fifth, that the lock 
burst and the wreck of the door fell inwards on the carpet. 

The besiegers, appalled by their own riot and the stillness that had 
succeeded, stood back a little and peered in. There lay the cabinet 
before their eyes in the quiet lamplight, a good fire glowing and 
chattering on the hearth, the kettle singing its thin strain, a 
drawer or two open, papers neatly set forth on the business table, 
and nearer the fire, the things laid out for tea; the quietest room, 
you would have said, and, but for the glazed presses full of chemicals, 
the most commonplace that night in London. 

Right in the middle 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; and 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. 

“We have come too late,” he said sternly, “whether to save or punish. 
Hyde is gone to his account; and it only remains for us to find the 
body of your master.” 

The far greater proportion of the building was occupied by the theatre, 
which filled almost the whole ground storey and was lighted from above, 
and by the cabinet, which formed an upper storey at one end and looked 
upon the court. 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 but a glance, 
for all were empty, and all, by the dust that fell from their doors, had 
stood long unopened. The cellar, indeed, was filled with crazy lumber, 
mostly dating from the times of the surgeon who was Jekyll’s predecessor;
but even as they opened the door they were advertised of the uselessness 
of further search, by the fall of a perfect mat of cobweb which had for 
years sealed up the entrance. Nowhere was there any trace of Henry Jekyll, 
dead or alive. 

Poole stamped on the flags of the corridor. “He must be buried here,” 
he said, hearkening to the sound. 

“Or he may have fled,” said Utterson, and he turned to examine the door 
in the by-street. It was locked; and lying near by on the flags, 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? much as if a 
man had stamped on it.” 

“Ay,” continued Utterson, “and the fractures, too, are rusty.” The two 
men looked at each other with a scare. “This is beyond me, Poole,” said 
the lawyer. “Let us go back to the cabinet.” 

They mounted the stair in silence, and still with an occasional awestruck 
glance 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; 
and even as he spoke, the kettle with a startling noise boiled over. 

This brought them to the fireside, where the easy-chair was drawn 
cosily up, and the tea things stood ready to the sitter’s elbow, the 
very sugar in the cup. There were several books on a shelf; one lay 
beside the tea things open, 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 cheval-glass, into whose depths they looked with an 
involuntary horror. But it was so turned as to show them nothing 
but the rosy glow playing on the roof, the fire sparkling in a 
hundred repetitions along the glazed front of the presses, and 
their own pale and fearful countenances stooping to look in. 

“This glass has seen some strange things, sir,” whispered Poole.
 
“And surely none stranger than itself,” echoed the lawyer in the 
same tones. “For what did Jekyll”—he caught himself up at the 
word with a start, and then conquering the weakness — “what could 
Jekyll want with it?” he said. 

“You may say that!” 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 has been all these days in 
possession; he had no cause to like me; he must have raged to 
see himself displaced; and he has not destroyed this document.” 

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 cannot have been disposed of in so 
short a space; he must be still alive, he must have fled! And 
then, why fled? and how? and in that case, can we venture to declare 
this suicide? O, we must be careful. I foresee that we may yet 
involve your master in some dire catastrophe.” 

“Why don’t you read it, sir?” asked Poole. 

“Because I fear,” replied the lawyer solemnly. “God grant I have 
no cause for it!” And with that he brought the paper to his eyes 
and read as follows:

“My dear Utterson, — When this shall fall into your hands, I shall 
have disappeared, under what circumstances I have not the 
penetration to foresee, but my instinct and all the circumstances 
of my nameless situation tell me that the end is sure and must be 
early. Go then, and first read the narrative which Lanyon warned 
me he was to place in your hands; and if you care to hear more, 
turn to the confession of 

“Your unworthy and unhappy friend, 

“HENRY JEKYLL.” 

“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. 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, once more leaving the servants gathered about the fire 
in the hall, trudged back to his office to read the two narratives 
in which this mystery was now to be explained. 