Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Incident of Dr. Lanyon

Time went by, and a large reward was offered, but Mr. Hyde had disappeared as completely as if he had never existed.Many stories came out about his cruel and evil past, but there was not a whisper of where he was now.With that evil influence gone, a new life began for Dr. Jekyll: he saw his friends again, gave dinners, did good works and went to church, and for more than two months he was at peace.

On the 8th of January Utterson and Lanyon dined at Jekyll’s house, and the three friends were together as in the old days.But on the 12th, and again on the 14th and 15th, Jekyll’s door was shut against the lawyer: Poole said the doctor was confined to the house and saw no one.Worried, Utterson went to see Lanyon, and was shocked: the rosy doctor had grown pale, thin, bald and old, and in his eyes was a look of deep terror.

“I have had a shock,” Lanyon said, “and I shall never recover. It is a question of weeks.”When Utterson mentioned that Jekyll was ill too, Lanyon held up a trembling hand: “I wish to see or hear no more of Dr. Jekyll. I regard him as dead.”“Some day, Utterson, after I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this. I cannot tell you.”

Utterson wrote to Jekyll, and Jekyll’s long reply said that he and Lanyon must never meet again, and that from now on he would live in complete seclusion.“I have brought on myself a punishment and a danger that I cannot name,” he wrote. “If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also. Respect my silence.”A week later Lanyon took to his bed, and in less than two weeks he was dead.

The night after the funeral, Utterson opened an envelope that Lanyon had left for him, marked “PRIVATE: for the hands of G. J. Utterson ALONE”.Inside was another sealed envelope, marked “not to be opened till the death or disappearance of Dr. Henry Jekyll”, the same strange word, disappearance, that was in Jekyll’s will.Curiosity burned in him, but faith to his dead friend was stronger, and the packet went unopened into the deepest corner of his safe.After that he visited Jekyll less and less, for Poole’s news was always the same: the doctor lived shut up in the cabinet above the laboratory, silent and low in spirits, and sometimes even slept there.