Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Mr. Utterson, a quiet and serious lawyer, often went for long Sunday walks with his distant cousin, Mr. Enfield.The two men rarely spoke much, yet they both treasured these walks more than almost anything else in their week.One evening their path led them down a quiet side street, where a strange, neglected door stood among otherwise cheerful shopfronts.

Mr. Enfield pointed his cane at the door and said it reminded him of a very odd story.Walking home alone late one winter night, he had seen a small, unpleasant-looking man crash into a little girl running the other way.The man had calmly trampled over the screaming child instead of stopping to help her.

Furious, Mr. Enfield had chased the man down and, together with the girl’s family, forced him to pay for the harm he had caused.To everyone’s surprise, the man returned with real gold and a cheque signed with a name that was actually respected and well known.Mr. Enfield had never learned why such a respectable name was tied to such an unpleasant man, and he called the mysterious door “Black Mail House” ever since.

Mr. Utterson listened closely and then asked, with unusual interest, for the name of the man who had trampled the child.“His name was Hyde,” said Mr. Enfield, though he admitted he could barely describe the man’s strange, unsettling appearance.At the sound of that name, Mr. Utterson fell silent and grew visibly troubled, though he said nothing more about it.

That night, alone in his study, Mr. Utterson took out the private will of his old friend, Dr. Jekyll.The will stated that if Dr. Jekyll ever disappeared, everything he owned would pass to a man named Edward Hyde.Mr. Utterson had always disliked this strange arrangement, and now that he had heard what kind of man Hyde truly was, it troubled him even more.

He wondered whether this Mr. Hyde was somehow blackmailing his old friend, or whether something far stranger connected the two men.Closing the will, he quietly resolved to find this Mr. Hyde and see the man’s face for himself.If Hyde truly had some dark hold over Henry Jekyll, Mr. Utterson meant to uncover it, whatever the mystery behind that door might be.