The next day, came the news that the murder had been overlooked, that the guilt of Hyde was patent to the world, and that the victim was a man high in public estimation. It was not only a crime, it had been a tragic folly. I think I was glad to know it; I think I was glad to have my better impulses thus buttressed and guarded by the terrors of the scaffold. Jekyll was now my city of refuge; let but Hyde peep out an instant, and the hands of all men would be raised to take and slay him.

I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say with honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good. good You know yourself how earnestly in the last months of last year, I laboured to relieve suffering; you know that much was done for others, and that the days passed quietly, almost happily for myself. Nor can I truly say that I wearied of this beneficent and innocent life; I think instead that I daily enjoyed it more completely; but I was still cursed with my duality of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growl for licence. Not that I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde; the bare idea of that would startle me to frenzy: no, it was in my own person, that I was was once more tempted to trifle with my conscience; and it was as an ordinary secret sinner, that I at last fell before the assaults of temptation.

There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last; and this brief condescension to evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul. And yet I was not alarmed; the fall seemed natural, like a return to the old days before I had made discovery. It was a fine, clear, January day, wet under foot where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and the Regent’s Park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet with spring odours. I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of of memory; the spiritual side a little, drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin. After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that vain-glorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint; and then as in its turn the faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had been safe of all men’s respect, wealthy, beloved — the cloth laying for me in the dining-room at home; and now I was the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows.

My reason wavered, but it did not fail me utterly. I have more than once observed that, in my second character, my faculties seemed sharpened to a point and my spirits more tensely elastic; thus it came about that, where Jekyll perhaps might have succumbed, Hyde rose to the importance of the moment. My drugs were in one of the presses of my cabinet; how was was I to reach them? That was the problem that (crushing my temples in my hands) I set myself to solve. The laboratory door I had closed. If I sought to enter by the house, my own servants would consign me to the gallows. I saw I must employ another hand, and thought of Lanyon. How was he to be reached? how persuaded? Supposing that I escaped capture in the streets, how was I to make my way into his presence? and how should I, an unknown and displeasing visitor, prevail on the famous physician to rifle the study of his colleague, Dr. Jekyll? Then I remembered that of my original character, one part remained to me: I could write my own hand; and and once I had conceived that kindling spark, the way that I must follow became lighted up from end to end.

We also saw on our way the trunk of a tree barked in long strips and splintered deeply. Montgomery called my attention to this. “Not to claw bark of trees, that is the Law,” he said. “Much some of them care for it!” It was after this, I think, that we met the Satyr and the Ape-man. The Satyr was a gleam of classical memory on the part of Moreau, — his face ovine in expression, like the coarser Hebrew type; his voice a harsh bleat, his nether extremities Satanic. He was gnawing the husk of a pod-like fruit as he passed us. Both of them saluted Montgomery.

“Hail,” said they, “to the Other with the Whip!”

“There’s a Third with a Whip now,” said Montgomery. “So you’d better mind!”

“Was he not made?” said the Ape-man. “He said — he said he was made.”

The Satyr-man looked curiously at me. “The Third with the Whip, he that walks weeping into the sea, has a thin white face.”

“He has a thin long whip,” said Montgomery.

“Yesterday he bled and wept,” said the Satyr. “You never bleed nor weep. The Master does not bleed or weep.”

“Ollendorffian beggar!” said Montgomery, “you’ll bleed and weep if you don’t look out!”

“He has five fingers, he is a five-man like me,” said the Ape-man.

“Come along, Prendick,” said Montgomery, taking my arm; and I went on with him.

The Satyr and the Ape-man stood watching us and making other remarks to each other.

“He says nothing,” said the Satyr. “Men have voices.”

“Yesterday he asked me of things to eat,” said the Ape-man. “He did not know.”

Then they spoke inaudible things, and I heard the Satyr laughing.

It was on our way back that we came upon the dead rabbit. The red body of the wretched little beast was rent to pieces, many of the ribs stripped white, and the backbone indisputably gnawed.

At that Montgomery stopped. “Good God!” said he, stooping down, and picking up some of the crushed vertebrae to examine them more closely. “Good God!” he repeated, “what can this mean?”

“Some carnivore of yours has remembered its old habits,” I said after a pause. “This backbone has been bitten through.”

He stood staring, with his face white and his lip pulled askew. “I don’t like this,” he said slowly.

“I saw something of the same kind,” said I, “the first day I came here.”

“The devil you did! What was it?”

“A rabbit with its head twisted off.”

“The day you came here?”

“The day I came here. In the undergrowth at the back of the enclosure, when I went out in the evening. The head was completely wrung off.”

He gave a long, low whistle.

“And what is more, I have an idea which of your brutes did the thing. It’s only a suspicion, you know. Before I came on the rabbit I saw one of your monsters drinking in the stream.”