(as Utterson supposed) from Henry Jekyll, who was much of a connoisseur;
and the carpets were of many piles and agreeable in colour. At this moment,
however, the rooms bore every mark of having been recently and hurriedly
ransacked; clothes lay about the floor, with their pockets inside out; lock-fast
drawers stood open; and on the hearth there lay a pile of gray ashes, as though
many papers had been burned. From these embers the inspector disinterred
the butt end of a green cheque book, which had resisted the action of the fire;
the other half of the stick was found behind the door; and as this clinched his
suspicions, the officer declared himself delighted. A visit to the bank, where
several thousand pounds were found to be lying to the murderer's credit, com
pleted his gratification. 'You may depend upon it, sir,' he told Mr. Utterson: 'I have him in my
hand. He must have lost his head, or he never would have left the stick or,
above all, burned the cheque book. Why, money's life to the man. We have
nothing to do but wait for him at the bank, and get out the handbills.' This last, however, was not so easy of accomplishment; for Mr. Hyde had
numbered few familiars?even the master of the servant maid had only seen
him twice; his family could nowhere be traced; he had never been photo
graphed; and the few who could describe him differed widely, as common
observers will. Only on one point, were they agreed; and that was the haunting
sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive impressed his
beholders.
Incident of the Letter
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 indifferently1 known as the laboratory or the 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 destination2
of the block at the bottom of the garden. It was the first time that the lawyer
9. Table linen. 2. Purpose. I. Without distinction.
.
1658 / ROBERT Louis STEVENSON
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,3 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.4 It was a large room, fitted round with glass
presses, furnished, among other things, with a cheval-glass5 and a business
table, and looking out upon the court by three dusty windows barred with iron.
A 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 deadly 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.'
