After Dr Lanyon received a letter from Jekyll, he proceeded to go to Jekyll’s house and

follow the orders on the letter. Once inside Jekyll’s laboratory, he awaits the arrival of a
visitor (Hyde).

Twelve o’clock had scarce rung out over London, ere the knocker sounded very gently on
the door. I went myself at the summons, and found a small man crouching against the pillars
of the portico.

“Are you come from Dr. Jekyll?” I asked.

He told me “yes” by a constrained gesture; and when I had bidden him enter, he did not
obey me without a searching backward glance into the darkness of the square. There was a
policeman not far off, advancing with his bull’s eye open; and at the sight, I thought my
visitor started and made greater haste.

These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably; and as I followed him into the bright
light of the consulting room, I kept my hand ready on my weapon. Here, at last, I had a
chance of clearly seeing him. I had never set eyes on him before, so much was certain. […]

This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance, struck in me what I can
only describe as a disgustful curiosity) was dressed in a fashion that would have made an
ordinary person laughable; his clothes, that is to say, although they were of rich and sober
fabric, were enormously too large for him in every measurement—the trousers hanging on
his legs and rolled up to keep them from the ground, the waist of the coat below his
haunches, and the collar sprawling wide upon his shoulders. Strange to relate, this ludicrous
accoutrement was far from moving me to laughter. Rather, as there was something
abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature that now faced me—
something seizing, surprising and revolting—this fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with
and to reinforce it; so that to my interest in the man’s nature and character, there was
added a curiosity as to his origin, his life, his fortune and status in the world. […]

“Have you got it?” he cried. “Have you got it?” And so lively was his impatience that he even
laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shake me.

I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang along my blood. “Come, sir,” said
I. “You forget that I have not yet the pleasure of your acquaintance. Be seated, if you
please.” […]

“I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon,” he replied civilly enough. “What you say is very well
founded; and my impatience has shown its heels to my politeness. I come here at the
instance of your colleague, Dr. Henry Jekyll, on a piece of business of some moment; and I
understood...” He paused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite of his
collected manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches of the hysteria—“I
understood, a drawer...”

Hyde then proceeds to drink the potion given by Dr Lanyon.

He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red tincture and
added one of the powders. The mixture, which was at first of a reddish hue, began, in
proportion as the crystals melted, to brighten in colour, to effervesce audibly, and to throw
off small fumes of vapour. Suddenly and at the same moment, the ebullition ceased and the
compound changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly to a watery green. My
visitor, who had watched these metamorphoses with a keen eye, smiled, set down the glass
upon the table, and then turned and looked upon me with an air of scrutiny.

“And now,” said he, “to settle what remains. Will you be wise? will you be guided? will you
suffer me to take this glass in my hand and to go forth from your house without further
parley? or has the greed of curiosity too much command of you? Think before you answer,
for it shall be done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you were before, and
neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortal distress
may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new
province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here,
in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the
unbelief of Satan.”

“Sir,” said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from truly possessing, “you speak enigmas,
and you will perhaps not wonder that I hear you with no very strong impression of belief.
But I have gone too far in the way of inexplicable services to pause before I see the end.”

“It is well,” replied my visitor. “Lanyon, you remember your vows: what follows is under the
seal of our profession. And now, you who have so long been bound to the most narrow and
material views, you who have denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have
derided your superiors—behold!”

He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A cry followed; he reeled, staggered,
clutched at the table and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and
as I looked there came, I thought, a change—he seemed to swell—his face became suddenly
black and the features seemed to melt and alter—and the next moment, I had sprung to my
feet and leaped back against the wall, my arms raised to shield me from that prodigy, my
mind submerged in terror.

“O God!” I screamed, and “O God!” again and again; for there before my eyes—pale and
shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from
death—there stood Henry Jekyll!
Vocabulary:

• Farrago – a confused mixture

• Whetted - excite or stimulate (someone's desire, interest, or appetite)

• Impediment - a hindrance or obstruction in doing something

• Debility - physical weakness, especially as a result of illness

• Constitution - the composition of something

• Incipient - beginning to happen or develop.

• Rigour - the quality of being extremely thorough and careful.

• Idiosyncratic - peculiar or individual

• Accoutrement – equipment

• Ebullition - the action of bubbling or boiling.

• Derided - express contempt for; ridicule.