9 Jekyll And Hyde Read By Stephanie Poppins

Welcome to Sleep Stories with Steph,

Your go-to podcast that guarantees you a calm and relaxing transition into a great night's sleep.

Today's story is called Dr.

Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde.

First published in 1886,

This story explores the duality of human nature and suggests that within each and every one of us lies both good and evil.

But before we begin,

Let's take a moment to focus on where we are now.

It is time to relax and fully let go.

There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.

Take a deep breath in through your nose.

Then let it out on a long sigh.

Chapter Nine Dr.

Lanyon's Narrative On the 9th of January,

Now four days ago,

I received by the evening delivery a registered envelope addressed in the hand of my colleague and old school companion,

Henry Jekyll.

I was a good deal surprised by this,

For we were by no means in the habit of correspondence.

I had seen the man,

Dined with him indeed the night before,

And I could imagine nothing in our intercourse that should justify the formality of registration.

The contents increased my wonder,

For this is how the letter ran.

10th of December Dear Lanyon,

You are one of my oldest friends and although we may have differed at times on scientific questions,

I cannot remember,

At least on my side,

Any break in our affection.

There was never a day when,

If you had said to me,

Jekyll,

My life,

My honour,

My reason depend upon you,

I would not have sacrificed my fortune or my left hand to help you.

Lanyon,

My life,

My honour,

My reason are all at your mercy.

If you fail me tonight I am lost.

You might suppose,

After this preface,

I am going to ask you for something dishonourable to grant.

Judge for yourself.

I want you to postpone all other engagements for tonight.

I,

If you were summoned to the bedside of an emperor,

To take a cab,

Unless your carriage should be actually at the door,

And with this letter in your hand for consultation,

To drive straight to my house.

Paul,

My butler,

Has his orders.

You will find him waiting your arrival with a locksmith.

The door of my cabinet is then to be forced,

And you are to go in alone,

To open the glazed press on the left,

Breaking the lock as if to be shut,

And to draw out,

With all its contents as they stand,

The fourth drawer from the top,

Or the third from the bottom.

In my extreme distress of mind,

I have morbid fear of misdirecting you,

But even if I am in error,

You may know the right drawer by its contents.

Some powders,

A file,

And a paper book.

This drawer,

I beg of you,

Is to be carried back with you to Cavendish Square,

Exactly as it stands.

That is the first part of the service.

Now for the second.

You should be back if you set out at once on the receipt of this,

Long before midnight,

But I will leave you that amount of margin.

Not only in the fear of one of those obstacles that can neither be prevented nor foreseen,

But because an hour,

When your servants are in bed,

Is to be preferred for what will then remain to do.

At midnight,

Then,

I have to ask you to be alone in your consulting room,

To admit with your own hand into the house a man who will present himself in my name,

And to place in his hands the drawer you will have brought with you from my cabinet.

Then you will have played your part and earned my gratitude completely.

Five minutes afterwards,

If you insist upon an explanation,

You will have understood these arrangements are of capital importance,

And that by the neglect of one of them,

Fantastic as they must appear,

You might have charged your conscience with my death or the shipwreck of my reason.

Confident that I am,

You will not trifle with,

Sir Peele.

My heart sinks and my hand trembles at the bare thought of such a possibility.

Think of me at this hour,

In a strange place,

Labouring under a blackness of distress that no fancy can exaggerate,

And yet well aware that if you will but punctually serve me,

My troubles will roll away like a story that is told.

Serve me,

My dear Lanyon,

And save your friend,

Henry Jekyll.

P.

S.

I had already sealed this up when a fresh terror struck upon my soul.

It is possible the office,

The post office,

May now fail me,

And this letter may not come into your hands until tomorrow morning.

In that case,

Dear Lanyon,

Do my errand when it shall be the most convenient for you in the course of the day,

And once more expect my messenger at midnight.

It may then already be too late,

And if that night passes without event,

You will know you have seen the last of Henry Jekyll.

Upon the reading of this letter,

I made sure my colleague was insane.

But till that was proved beyond the possibility of doubt,

I felt bound to do as he requested.

The less I understood of this farrago,

The less I was in a position to judge of its importance,

And an appeal so worded could not be set aside without a grave responsibility.

I rose accordingly from the table,

Got into a handsome,

And rose straight to Jekyll's house.

The butler was awaiting my arrival.

He had received by the same post as mine a registered letter of instruction,

And had sent it once for a locksmith and a carpenter.

The tradesman came while we were yet speaking,

And we moved in a body to old Dr.

Denman's Surgical Theatre,

From which,

As you are doubtless aware,

Jekyll's private cabinet is most conveniently entered.

The door was very strong,

The lock was excellent.

The carpenter avowed he would have great trouble,

And have to do much damage if force were to be used.

But this last was a handy fellow,

And after two hours' work,

The door stood open.

The press marked E was unlocked,

And I took out the drawer,

Had it filled up with straw and tied in a sheet and returned with it to Cavendish Square.

Here I proceeded to examine its contents.

The powders were neatly enough made up,

But not with the nicety of the dispensing chemist,

So it was plain they were of Jekyll's private manufacture.

When I opened one of the wrappers,

I found what seemed to me to be a simple crystalline salt of white colour.

The vial to which I turned my attention might have been about half full of a blood-red liquor,

Which was highly pungent to the sense of smell and seemed to me to contain phosphorus and some volatile ether.

At the other ingredients,

I could make no guess.

The book was an ordinary version book and contained little but a series of dates.

These covered a period of many years,

But I observed the entries ceased nearly a year ago and quite abruptly.

Here and there,

A brief remark was appended to a date,

Usually no more than a single word.

All this,

Though,

It whetted my curiosity and told me little that was definite.

Here were a vial of some tincture,

A paper of some salt and the record of a series of experiments that had led,

Like too many of Jekyll's investigations,

To no end of practical usefulness.

How could the presence of these articles in my house affect either the honour,

The sanity or the life of my flighty colleague?

If his messenger could go one place,

Why could he not go to another?

And even granting some impediment,

Why was this gentleman to be received by me in secret?

The more I reflected,

The more convinced I grew I was dealing with a case of cerebral disease.

And although I dismissed my servants to bed,

I loaded an old revolver that I might be found in some posture of self-defence.

Twelve o'clock had scarce run 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 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.

I followed him into the bright light of the consulting room and kept my hand ready on my weapon.

Here at last I had the chance of clearly seeing him.

I had never set eyes on him before,

So much was certain.

He was small,

As I have said.

I was struck besides with the shocking expression of his face.

With his remarkable combination of great muscular activity,

And great apparent debility of constitution.

This person 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,

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 his status in the world.

These observations,

Though they have taken so great a space to be set down in,

Were yet the work of a few seconds.

"'Have you got it?

' the visitor cried.

So lively was his impatience he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shake me.

But I put him back,

Conscious of his touch of a certain icy pang along my blood.

"'You forget,

Sir,

I have not yet the pleasure of your acquaintance.

Be seated,

If you please.

' And then I showed him an example and sat down myself in my customary seat and with as fair an imitation of my ordinary manner to a patient as the lateness of the hour,

The nature of my preoccupations and the horror I had of my visitor,

Would suffer me to master.