A voice answered from within: Tell him I cannot see anyone, it said
complainingly.
Thank you, sir, said Poole, with a note of something like triumph in
his voice; and taking up his candle, he led Mr. Utterson back across
the yard and into the great kitchen, where the fire was out and the
beetles were leaping on the floor.
Sir, he said, looking Mr. Utterson in the eyes, Was that my master s
voice?
It seems much changed, replied the lawyer, very pale, but giving look
for look.
Changed? Well, yes, I think so, said the butler. Have I been twenty
years in this man s house, to be deceived about his voice? No, sir;
master s made away with; he was made away with eight days ago, when we
heard him cry out upon the name of God; and _who s_ in there instead of
him, and _why_ it stays there, is a thing that cries to Heaven, Mr.
Utterson!
That is a very strange tale, Poole; this is rather a wild tale my
man, said Mr. Utterson, biting his finger. Suppose it were as you
suppose, supposing Dr. Jekyll to have been well, murdered, what could
induce the murderer to stay? That won t hold water; it doesn t commend
itself to reason.
Well, Mr. Utterson, you are a hard man to satisfy, but I ll do it
yet, said Poole. All this last week (you must know) him, or it,
whatever it is that lives in that cabinet, has been crying night and
day for some sort of medicine and cannot get it to his mind. It was
sometimes his way the master s, that is to write his orders on a sheet
of paper and throw it on the stair. We ve had nothing else this week
back; nothing but papers, and a closed door, and the very meals left
there to be smuggled in when nobody was looking. Well, sir, every day,
ay, and twice and thrice in the same day, there have been orders and
complaints, and I have been sent flying to all the wholesale chemists
in town. Every time I brought the stuff back, there would be another
paper telling me to return it, because it was not pure, and another
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