4. Loose clouds driven rapidly before the wind.
.
THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE / 1669
Right in the midst there lay the body of a man sorely contorted and still
twitching. They drew near on tip-toe, 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
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 mea
sured 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.
5. I.e., pits: cyanide smells of bitter almond or of peach pits.
