"Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stevenson Robert Louis)

what was the messenger like?" But Poole was positive nothing had
come except by post;" and only circulars by that," he added.
This news sent off the visitor with his fears renewed. Plainly the
letter had come by the laboratory door; possibly, indeed, it had
been
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written in the cabinet; and if that were so, it must be differently
judged, and handled with the more caution. The newsboys, as he went,
were crying themselves hoarse along the footways: "Special edition.
Shocking murder of an M. P." That was the funeral oration of one
friend and client; and he could not help a certain apprehension lest
the good name of another should be sucked down in the eddy of the
scandal. It was, at least, a ticklish decision that he had to make;
and self-reliant as he was by habit, he began to cherish a longing
for advice. It was not to be had directly; but perhaps, he thought,
it might be fished for.
Presently after, he sat on one side of his own hearth, with Mr.
Guest, his head clerk, upon the other, and midway between, at a
nicely calculated distance from the fire, a bottle of a particular
old wine that had long dwelt unsunned in the foundations of his
house. The fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city, where
the lamps glimmered like carbuncles; and through the muffle and
smother of these fallen clouds, the procession of the town's life
was still rolling in through the great arteries with a sound as of a
mighty wind. But the room was gay with firelight. In the bottle the
acids were long ago resolved; the imperial dye had softened with
time, As the colour grows richer in stained windows; and the glow of
hot autumn afternoons on hillside vineyards was ready to be set free
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and to disperse the fogs of London. Insensibly the lawyer melted.
There was no man from whom he kept fewer secrets than Mr. Guest;
and he was not always sure that he kept as many as he meant. Guest
had often been on business to the doctor's; he knew Poole; he could
scarce have failed to hear of Mr. Hyde's familiarity about the
house; he might draw conclusions: was it not as well, then, that he
should see a letter which put that mystery to rights? and above all
since Guest, being a great student and critic of handwriting, would
consider the step natural and obliging? The clerk, besides, was a
man of counsel; he would scarce read so strange a document without
dropping a remark; and by that remark Mr. Utterson might shape his
future course.
"This is a sad business about Sir Danvers," he said.
"Yes, sir, indeed. It has elicited a great deal of public feeling,"
returned Guest. "The man, of course, was mad."
"I should like to hear your views on that," replied Utterson. "I
have a document here in his handwriting; it is between ourselves,
for I scarce know what to do about it; it is an ugly business at
the best. But there it is; quite in your way a murderer's
autograph."
Guest's eyes brightened, and he sat down at once and studied it