The Last Night

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

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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
great-coat; 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 a 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

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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 all 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 cowing, 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

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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
up 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 toward 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 re-collected
his courage

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and followed the butler into the laboratory building and 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 any one," 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!"

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"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, or 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

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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
the most sedulous care, and should any of the same quality be
left, to 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 had 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

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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 up-stairs 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 seised 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

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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," 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

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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 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 -- something that gave a man
a turn -- I don't know rightly how to say it, sir, beyond this:
that you felt it 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

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that masked thing like a monkey jumped from among the chemicals
and whipped into the cabinet, it went down my spine like ice. Oh,
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,"

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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

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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 baise 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 in sunder and the wreck
of the door fell inwards on the carpet.

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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 glased
presses full of chemicals, the most commonplace that night in
London.

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; 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 story and was
lighted from above, and by the cabinet, which formed an upper
story at one end and looked upon the

65)

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,

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Poole," said the lawyer. "Let us go back to the cabinet."

They mounted the stair in silence, and still with an occasional
awe-struck 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 teathings 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.

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"This glass have 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.

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"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? Oh, 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.

69)

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.

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