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“You may depend upon it, sir,” the inspector told 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.”
The difficulty would be in identifying him, for Hyde had numbered few familiars, never been photographed, and was known by that haunting sense of unexpressed deformity which he left on all beholders.
Late that same afternoon Utterson made his way, through kitchen offices and across a yard that had once been a garden, to the building known indifferently as the laboratory or dissecting rooms. He was admitted at last to Dr. Jekyll’s cabinet, a large room lined with glass presses and looking out through dusty barred windows upon the court. There, close to the fire, sat the doctor, looking deathly sick.
“And now,” said Utterson, “you have heard the news?”
“They were crying it in the square,” said Jekyll. “I heard them in my dining-room.”
When pressed, the doctor swore by God that he would never set eyes on Hyde again. The matter was at an end. He had, however, received a letter that very day, and wished to leave it in Utterson’s hands. The letter, written in an odd upright hand and signed Edward Hyde, briefly signified that the writer’s benefactor, Dr. Jekyll, need labour under no alarm for his safety, as he had means of escape on which he placed a sure dependence.
Utterson liked the letter well enough; it put a better colour on the intimacy than he had looked for. Then he asked one last question: “It was Hyde who dictated the terms in your will about that disappearance?”
The doctor seemed seized with a qualm of faintness. He shut his mouth tight and nodded.
“I knew it,” said Utterson. “He meant to murder you. You had a fine escape.”
“I have had what is far more to the purpose,” returned the doctor solemnly: “I have had a lesson—O God, Utterson, what a lesson I have had!”
And he covered his face for a moment with his hands.
On his way out, the lawyer stopped and had a word with Poole. “There was a letter handed in to-day: what was the messenger like?” But Poole was positive nothing had come except by post; and only circulars by that.
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