Next, in the course of their review of the chamber, the searchers came to the cheval glass, into whose depths they looked with an involuntary horror. But it was so turned as to show them nothing but the rosy glow playing on the roof, the fire sparkling in a hundred repetitions along the glazed front of the presses, and their own pale and fearful countenances stooping to look in.
“This glass have seen some strange things, sir,” whispered Poole.
“And surely none stranger than itself,” echoed the lawyer in the same tones. “For what did Jekyll” — he caught himself up at the word with a start, and then conquering the weakness — “what could Jekyll want with it?” he said.
“You may say that!” said Poole. Next they turned to the business-table. On the desk among the neat array of papers, a large envelope was uppermost, and bore, in the doctor’s hand, the name of Mr. Utterson. The lawyer unsealed it, and several enclosures fell to the floor. The first was a will, drawn in the same eccentric terms as the one which he had returned six months before, to serve as a testament in case of death and as a a deed of gift in case of disappearance; but, in place of the name of Edward Hyde, the lawyer, with indescribable amazement, read the name of Gabriel John Utterson. He looked at Poole, and then back at the paper, and last of all at the dead malefactor stretched upon the carpet.
“My head goes round,” he said. “He has been all these days in possession; he had no cause to like me; he must have raged to see himself displaced; and he has not destroyed this document.”
He caught up the next paper; it was a brief note in the doctor’s hand and dated at the top.
“O Poole!” the lawyer cried, “he was alive and here this day. He cannot have been disposed of in so short a space, he must be still alive, he must have fled! And then, why fled? and how? and in that case, can we venture to declare this suicide? Oh, we must be careful. I foresee that we may yet involve your master in some dire catastrophe.”
“Why don’t you read it, sir?” asked Poole.
“Because I fear,” replied the lawyer solemnly. “God grant I have no cause for it!” And with that he brought the paper to his eyes and read as follows:
“MY DEAR UTTERSON, — When this shall fall into your hands, I shall have disappeared, under what circumstances I have not the penetration to foresee, but my instinct and all the circumstances of my nameless situation tell me that the end is sure and must be early. Go then, and first read the narrative which Lanyon warned me he was to place in your hands; and if you care to hear more, turn to the confession of
Your unworthy and unhappy friend,
HENRY JEKYLL.”
“There was a third enclosure?” asked Utterson.
“Here, sir,” said Poole, and gave into his hands a considerable packet sealed in several places.
“Moreau!” said I. “I know that name.”
“The devil you do!” said he. “What an ass I was to mention it to you! I might have thought. Anyhow, it will give you an inkling of our — mysteries. Whiskey?”
“No, thanks; I’m an abstainer.”
“I wish I’d been. But it’s no use locking the door after the steed is stolen. It was that infernal stuff which led to my coming here, — that, and a foggy night. I thought myself in luck at the time, when Moreau offered to get me off. It’s queer — ”
“Montgomery,” said I, suddenly, as the outer door closed, “why has your man pointed ears?”
“Damn!” he said, over his first mouthful of food. He stared at me for a moment, and then repeated, “Pointed ears?”
“Little points to them,” said I, as calmly as possible, with a catch in my breath; “and a fine black fur at the edges?”
He helped himself to whiskey and water with great deliberation. “I was under the impression — that his hair covered his ears.”
“I saw them as he stooped by me to put that coffee you sent to me on the table. And his eyes shine in the dark.”
By this time Montgomery had recovered from the surprise of my question. “I always thought,” he said deliberately, with a certain accentuation of his flavouring of lisp, “that there was something the matter with his ears, from the way he covered them. What were they like?”
I was persuaded from his manner that this ignorance was a pretence. Still, I could hardly tell the man that I thought him a liar. “Pointed,” I said; “rather small and furry, — distinctly furry. But the whole man is one of the strangest beings I ever set eyes on.”
A sharp, hoarse cry of animal pain came from the enclosure behind us. Its depth and volume testified to the puma. I saw Montgomery wince.
“Yes?” he said.
“Where did you pick up the creature?”
“San Francisco. He’s an ugly brute, I admit. Half-witted, you know. Can’t remember where he came from. But I’m used to him, you know. We both are. How does he strike you?”
“He’s unnatural,” I said. “There’s something about him — don’t think me fanciful, but it gives me a nasty little sensation, a tightening of my muscles, when he comes near me. It’s a touch — of the diabolical, in fact.”
Montgomery had stopped eating while I told him this. “Rum!” he said. “I can’t see it.” He resumed his meal. “I had no idea of it,” he said, and masticated. “The crew of the schooner must have felt it the same. Made a dead set at the poor devil. You saw the captain?”
Suddenly the puma howled again, this time more painfully. Montgomery swore under his breath. I had half a mind to attack him about the men on the beach. Then the poor brute within gave vent to a series of short, sharp cries.