Dr. Lanyon's Narrative

by Robert Louis Stevenson

　　ON the ninth of January, now four days ago, I received by theevening delivery a registered envelope, addressed in the hand ofmy colleague and old school-companion, Henry Jekyll. I was a gooddeal surprised by this; for we were by no means in the habit ofcorrespondence; I had seen the man, dined with him, indeed, thenight before; and I could imagine nothing in our intercourse thatshould justify formality of registration. The contents increasedmy wonder; for this is how the letter ran:"10th December, 18 --"DEAR LANYON, You are one of my oldest friends; and although wemay have differed at times on scientific questions, I cannotremember, at least on my side, any break in our affection. Therewas never a day when, if you had said to me, 'Jekyll, my life, myhonour, my reason, depend upon you,' I would not have sacrificedmy 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 thispreface, that I am going to ask you for something dishonourableto 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 acab, unless your carriage should be actually at the door; andwith this letter in your hand for consultation, to drive straightto my house. Poole, my butler, has his orders; you will find, himwaiting your arrival with a locksmith. The door of my cabinet isthen to be forced: and you are to go in alone; to open the glazedpress (letter E) on the left hand, breaking the lock if it beshut; and to draw out, with all its contents as they stand, thefourth drawer from the top or (which is the same thing) the thirdfrom the bottom. In my extreme distress of wind, I have a morbidfear of misdirecting you; but even if I am in error, you may knowthe right drawer by its contents: some powders, a phial and apaper book. This drawer I beg of you to carry back with you toCavendish Square exactly as it stands."That is the first part of the service: now for the second. Youshould 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 neitherbe prevented nor foreseen, but because an hour when your servants are in bed is to bepreferred for what will then remain to do. At midnight, then, Ihave to ask you to be alone in your consulting-room, to admitwith your own hand into the house a man who will present himselfin my name, and to place in his hands the drawer that you willhave brought with you from my cabinet. Then you will have playedyour part and earned my gratitude completely. Five minutesafterwards, if you insist upon an explanation, you will haveunderstood that these arrangements are of capital importance; andthat by the neglect of one of them, fantastic as they mustappear, you might have charged your conscience with my death orthe shipwreck of my reason."Confident as I am that you will not trifle with this appeal, myheart sinks and my hand trembles at the bare thought of such apossibility. Think of me at this hour, in a strange place,labouring under a blackness of distress that no fancy canexaggerate, and yet well aware that, if you will but punctuallyserve 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 struckupon my soul. It is possible that the postoffice may fail me, andthis letter not come into your hands until to-morrow morning. In that case,dear Lanyon, do my errand when it shall be most convenient foryou in the course of the day; and once more expect my messengerat midnight. It may then already be too late; and if that nightpasses without event, you will know that you have seen the lastof Henry Jekyll."Upon the reading of this letter, I made sure my colleague wasinsane; but till that was proved beyond the possibility of doubt,I felt bound to do as he requested. The less I understood of thisfarrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its importance;and an appeal so worded could not be set aside without a graveresponsibility. I rose accordingly from table, got into a hansom,and drove straight to Jekyll's house. The butler was awaiting myarrival; he had received by the same post as mine a registeredletter of instruction, and had sent at once for a locksmith and acarpenter. The tradesmen came while we were yet speaking; and wemoved in a body to old Dr. Denman's surgical theatre, from which(as you are doubtless aware) Jekyll's private cabinet is mostconveniently entered. The door was very strong, the lockexcellent; the carpenter avowed he would have great trouble andhave to do much damage, if force were to be used; and thelocksmith was near despair. But this last was a handy fellow,and after two hours' work, the door stood open. The press markedE was unlocked; and I took out the drawer, had it filled up withstraw and tied in a sheet, and returned with it to CavendishSquare.Here I proceeded to examine its contents. The powders were neatlyenough made up, but not with the nicety of the dispensingchemist; so that it was plain they were of Jekyll's privatemanufacture; and when I opened one of the wrappers I found whatseemed to me a simple crystalline salt of a white colour. Thephial, to which I next turned my attention, might have been abouthalf-full of a blood-red liquor, which was highly pungent to thesense of smell and seemed to me to contain phosphorus and somevolatile ether. At the other ingredients I could make no guess.The book was an ordinary version-book and contained little but aseries of dates. These covered a period of many years, but Iobserved that the entries ceased nearly a year ago and quiteabruptly. Here and there a brief remark was appended to a date,usually no more than a single word: "double" occurring perhapssix times in a total of several hundred entries; and once veryearly in the list and followed by several marks of exclamation,"total failure!!!" All this, though it whetted my curiosity, toldme little that was definite. Here were a phial of some tincture,a paper of some salt, and the record of a series of experimentsthat had led (like too many of Jekyll's investigations) tono end of practical usefulness. How could the presence of thesearticles in my house affect either the honour, the sanity, or thelife of my flighty colleague? If his messenger could go to oneplace, why could he not go to another? And even granting someimpediment, why was this gentleman to be received by me insecret? The more I reflected the more convinced I grew that I wasdealing with a case of cerebral disease: and though I dismissedmy servants to bed, I loaded an old revolver, that I might befound in some posture of self-defence.Twelve o'clock had scarce rung out over London, ere the knockersounded very gently on the door. I went myself at the summons,and found a small man crouching against the pillars of theportico."Are you come from Dr. Jekyll?" I asked.He told me "yes" by a constrained gesture; and when I had biddenhim enter, he did not obey me without a searching backward glanceinto the darkness of the square. There was a policeman not faroff, advancing with his bull's eye open; and at the sight, Ithought my visitor started and made greater haste.These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably; and as Ifollowed him into the bright light of the consulting-room, I keptmy hand ready on my weapon. Here, at last, I had a chanceof clearly seeing him. I had never set eyes on him before,so much was certain. He was small, as I have said; I was struckbesides with the shocking expression of his face, with hisremarkable combination of great muscular activity and greatapparent 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 wasaccompanied by a marked sinking of the pulse. At the time, I setit down to some idiosyncratic, personal distaste, and merelywondered at the acuteness of the symptoms; but I have since hadreason to believe the cause to lie much deeper in the nature ofman, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the principle ofhatred.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 personlaughable; his clothes, that is to say, although they were ofrich and sober fabric, were enormously too large for him in everymeasurement -- the trousers hanging on his legs and rolled up tokeep them from the ground, the waist of the coat below hishaunches, and the collar sprawling wide upon his shoulders.Strange to relate, this ludicrous accoutrement was far frommoving me to laughter. Rather, as there was something abnormaland misbegotten in the very essence of the creature that now faced me --something seizing, surprising, and revolting -- this freshdisparity seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce it; so thatto my interest in the man's nature and character, there was addeda curiosity as to his origin, his life, his fortune and status inthe world.These observations, though they have taken so great a space to beset 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 washis impatience that he even laid his hand upon my arm and soughtto shake me.I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pangalong my blood. "Come, sir," said I. "You forget that I have notyet the pleasure of your acquaintance. Be seated, if you please."And I showed him an example, and sat down myself in my customaryseat and with as fair an imitation of my ordinary manner to apatient, as the lateness of the hour, the nature of mypre-occupations, and the horror I had of my visitor, would sufferme to muster."I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon," he replied civilly enough. "Whatyou say is very well founded; and my impatience has shown itsheels to my politeness. I come here at the instance of yourcolleague, Dr. Henry Jekyll, on a piece of business of somemoment; and I understood..." He paused and put his hand to his throat, and I couldsee, in spite of his collected manner, that he was wrestlingagainst the approaches of the hysteria -- "I understood, adrawer..."But here I took pity on my visitor's suspense, and some perhapson my own growing curiosity."There it is, sir," said I, pointing to the drawer, where it layon the floor behind a table and still covered with the sheet.He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon hisheart: I could hear his teeth grate with the convulsive action ofhis jaws; and his face was so ghastly to see that I grew alarmedboth for his life and reason."Compose yourself," said I.He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with the decision ofdespair, plucked away the sheet. At sight of the contents, heuttered one loud sob of such immense relief that I sat petrified.And the next moment, in a voice that was already fairly wellunder control, "Have you a graduated glass?" he asked.I rose from my place with something of an effort and gave himwhat he asked.He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims ofthe red tincture and added one of the powders. The mixture, whichwas at first of a reddish hue, began, in proportion as thecrystals melted, to brighten in colour, to effervesce audibly,and to throw off small fumes of vapour. Suddenly and at the same moment, the ebullitionceased and the compound changed to a dark purple, which fadedagain more slowly to a watery green. My visitor, who had watchedthese metamorphoses with a keen eye, smiled, set down the glassupon the table, and then turned and looked upon me with an air ofscrutiny."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 myhand and to go forth from your house without further parley? orhas the greed of curiosity too much command of you? Think beforeyou answer, for it shall be done as you decide. As you decide,you shall be left as you were before, and neither richer norwiser, unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortaldistress may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, ifyou shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge andnew avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, inthis room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by aprodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan.""Sir," said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from trulypossessing," you speak enigmas, and you will perhaps not wonderthat I hear you with no very strong impression of belief. But Ihave gone too far in the way of inexplicable services to pausebefore I see the end.""It is well," replied my visitor. "Lanyon, you remember yourvows: what follows is under the seal of ourprofession. And now, you who have so long been bound to the mostnarrow and material views, you who have denied the virtue oftranscendental medicine, you who have derided your superiors --behold!"He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A cryfollowed; he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table and heldon, staring with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as Ilooked there came, I thought, a change -- he seemed to swell --his face became suddenly black and the features seemed to meltand alter -- and the next moment, I had sprung to my feet andleaped back against the wall, my arm raised to shield me fromthat prodigy, my mind submerged in terror."O God!" I screamed, and "O God!" again and again; for therebefore my eyes -- pale and shaken, and half-fainting, and gropingbefore 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 seton paper. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soulsickened at it; and yet now when that sight has faded from myeyes, I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannot answer. My lifeis shaken to its roots; sleep has left me; the deadliest terrorsits by me at all hours of the day and night; I feel that my daysare numbered, and that I must die; and yet I shall die incredulous. As for the moralturpitude that man unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence,I cannot, even in memory, dwell on it without a start of horror.I will say but one thing, Utterson, and that (if you can bringyour mind to credit it) will be more than enough. The creaturewho crept into my house that night was, on Jekyll's ownconfession, known by the name of Hyde and hunted for in everycorner of the land as the murderer of Carew.HASTIE LANYON.