Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Dr. Lanyon's Narrative

On the ninth of January I received a registered letter from my old school friend Henry Jekyll, which surprised me, because I had dined with him only the night before.“Lanyon,” he wrote, “my life, my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy; if you fail me to-night, I am lost.”He asked me to go straight to his house, where Poole would be waiting with a locksmith, to break open his cabinet and bring home a certain drawer from a glass case marked E, with all its contents.

Then, at midnight, I was to be alone, let in a man who would come in his name, and give him the drawer.I was sure my colleague was insane, but I felt bound to do as he asked, and after two hours’ work the locksmith opened the cabinet door, and I carried the drawer home to Cavendish Square.Inside were some packets of white salt, a little bottle half full of a blood-red liquid, and a notebook of dates in which the word “double” appeared several times, and once, “total failure!!!”Thinking I was dealing with a madman, I sent my servants to bed and loaded an old revolver.

Just after twelve, the knocker sounded very gently, and I found a small man crouching by the pillars of my door, who glanced back nervously at a policeman in the square.In the bright light of my consulting room I saw him clearly: his face was shocking, his rich clothes were far too large for him, and something about him filled me with a cold disgust.“Have you got it?” he cried, and when I pointed to the drawer, he sprang to it and gave one loud sob of relief.

He asked for a measuring glass, mixed some of the red liquid with one of the powders, and watched the mixture bubble, turn dark purple and then fade to a watery green.“Will you be wise?” he asked. “Will you let me take this glass and go? Or has the greed of curiosity too much command of you?”I told him I had gone too far to stop before I saw the end, and he answered, “Then behold!” and drank the glass at one gulp.

He cried out, staggered and held on to the table, and as I watched, he seemed to swell, his face turned black and his features seemed to melt and change.I leapt back against the wall, screaming “O God!” again and again, for there before my eyes, pale and shaken, like a man come back from death, stood Henry Jekyll!What he told me in the next hour I cannot write down; my life is shaken to its roots, sleep has left me, and I feel that my days are numbered.I will say but one thing, Utterson: the creature who crept into my house that night was, by Jekyll’s own confession, the man called Hyde, hunted in every corner of the land as the murderer of Carew.