My discovery, though, was dangerous because now, I was growing old. I liked feeling young and free. Thus, I was increasingly tempted to drink the potion and drop the dull body of the aging Dr. Jekyll and become, instead, the lithe, young Edward Hyde. In fact, I liked Hyde so much that I furnished a house and hired a discreet but unscrupulous housekeeper for him. Then I announced to my servants that Mr. Hyde was to have free liberty and power in my house. It was a queer, perverse sort of joy to call at my own home in the body of Hyde and watch the reactions of the servants. My next task was to make Hyde my beneficiary in case anything should happen, accidentally, to Jekyll during one of the experiments.
Hyde was a rare luxury. Other men had to hire professional villains to carry out their crimes and also risk a bad conscience afterward, in addition to blackmail. I was safe. Edward Hyde could enjoy all my wicked pleasures and execute all of my angry, vengeful, irrational wishes — and he would be free from shame, for he was free from conscience. He was truly evil. I, Jekyll, however, did have a sense of objectivity, and often I was awed at the utter depravity of Hyde. Yet even if I was aghast at Hyde's sensual debauchery, his acts were beyond all "natural" laws, as was I. Thus, my conscience relaxed. It was Hyde, not I, who was guilty. Jekyll's good qualities remained fresh and intact each morning after Hyde had spent an entire night in drunken, bestial orgies of lust and violence. And then, finally, my own conscience — that is, Jekyll's — did not merely "relax"; it slept.
I will not go into the details of Hyde's depravity, except to mention that one night he accidentally ran headlong into a child, and the mishap drew a crowd. Coincidentally, Utterson, among the people who gathered was a kinsman of yours. For the first time, I feared for my life, and in order to pacify the child's family, I had no alternative but to open the door to the dissecting room, go inside, and write a check on Jekyll's account. Later, I prudently set up a separate checking account for Hyde and had him use a backhand script when necessary. I thought that I had taken sufficient precautions to furnish safety for Hyde, but some two months before Sir Danvers Carew was murdered, a terrifying thing occurred. I awoke and realized that I was not Jekyll. I thought that I had gone to bed in my own body in my own room, but I could not be sure, for I realized that I had awakened in the small, misshapen body of Hyde.
