Mr. Utterson had already quailed at the name of Hyde; but when the
stick was laid before him, he could doubt no longer; broken and
battered as it was, he recognised it for one that he had himself
presented many years before to Henry Jekyll.
Is this Mr. Hyde a person of small stature? he inquired.
Particularly small and particularly wicked-looking, is what the maid
calls him, said the officer.
Mr. Utterson reflected; and then, raising his head, If you will come
with me in my cab, he said, I think I can take you to his house.
It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the
season. A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the
wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so
that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a
marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be
dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich,
lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here,
for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of
daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal
quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy
ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been
extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful
reinvasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer s eyes, like a district
of some city in a nightmare. The thoughts of his mind, besides, were of
the gloomiest dye; and when he glanced at the companion of his drive,
he was conscious of some touch of that terror of the law and the law s
officers, which may at times assail the most honest.
As the cab drew up before the address indicated, the fog lifted a
little and showed him a dingy street, a gin palace, a low French eating
house, a shop for the retail of penny numbers and twopenny salads, many
ragged children huddled in the doorways, and many women of many
different nationalities passing out, key in hand, to have a morning
glass; and the next moment the fog settled down again upon that part,
as brown as umber, and cut him off from his blackguardly surroundings.
This was the home of Henry Jekyll s favourite; of a man who was heir to
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