“With all my heart,” said the lawyer.

That evening Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in somber spirits[8] and sat down to dinner without relish. It was his custom of a Sunday, when this meal was over, to sit close by the fire and to read, until the clock of the neighbouring church rang out the hour of twelve, when he would go to bed. On this night, however, as soon as the cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went into his business-room[9]. There he opened his safe, took from the most private part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr. Jekyll’s Will, and sat down to study its contents. It provided not only that, in case of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., etc., all his possessions were to pass into the hands of his “friend and benefactor Edward Hyde,” but that in case of Dr. Jekyll’s “disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months,” the said Edward Hyde should inherit the said Henry Jekyll’s possessions without further delay and free from any burden or obligation. This document offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover of regular life. It was already bad enough when the name was but a name of which he could learn no more.

“I thought it was madness,” he said, as he replaced the obnoxious paper in the safe, “and now I begin to fear it is disgrace.”

With that he blew out his candle, put on his coat, and set forth in the direction of Cavendish Square[10], that citadel of medicine, where his friend, Dr. Lanyon[11], had his house and received his patients.

“If any one knows, it will be Lanyon,” he had thought.

The butler welcomed him; he was ushered direct from the door to the dining-room where Dr. Lanyon sat alone. This was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with a boisterous and decided manner. At sight of Mr. Utterson, he sprang up from his chair and welcomed him with both hands. The geniality was somewhat theatrical to the eye; but it reposed on genuine feeling. For these two were old friends, old mates both at school and college, and enjoyed each other’s company.

After a little talk, the lawyer led up to the subject which so disagreeably pre-occupied his mind.

“I suppose, Lanyon,” said he “you and I must be the two oldest friends that Henry Jekyll has?”

“I wish the friends were younger,” chuckled Dr. Lanyon. “But I suppose we are. And what of that? I see little of him now.”

“Indeed?” said Utterson. “I thought you had some common interest.”

“We had,” was the reply. “But it is more than ten years since Henry Jekyll became too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in mind; and though of course I continue to take an interest in him, as they say, I see and I have seen little of the man. Such unscientific balderdash,” added the doctor, flushing suddenly purple, “has estranged us.”

“They have only differed on some point of science,” Mr. Utterson thought. He gave his friend a few seconds to calm himself, and then approached the question.

“Did you ever come across a protege of his—Mr. Hyde?” he asked.

“Hyde?” repeated Lanyon. “No. Never heard of him.”

That was all the information that the lawyer carried back with him.

Six o’clock struck on the bells of the church that was so conveniently near to Mr. Utterson’s dwelling, and still he was thinking about the problem. Hitherto it had touched him on the intellectual side alone; but now his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved; and as he lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the night and the curtained room, Mr. Enfield’s tale went by before his mind.