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[Editorial] by-the-bye -> by the by
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acabal committed Aug 28, 2021
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<p>The doctor seemed seized with a qualm of faintness; he shut his mouth tight and nodded.</p>
<p>“I knew it,” said Utterson. “He meant to murder you. You had a fine escape.”</p>
<p>“I have had what is far more to the purpose,” returned the doctor solemnly: “I have had a lesson⁠—O God, Utterson, what a lesson I have had!” And he covered his face for a moment with his hands.</p>
<p>On his way out, the lawyer stopped and had a word or two with Poole. “By the bye,” said he, “there was a letter handed in today: what was the messenger like?” But Poole was positive nothing had come except by post; “and only circulars by that,” he added.</p>
<p>On his way out, the lawyer stopped and had a word or two with Poole. “By the by,” said he, “there was a letter handed in today: what was the messenger like?” But Poole was positive nothing had come except by post; “and only circulars by that,” he added.</p>
<p>This news sent off the visitor with his fears renewed. Plainly the letter had come by the laboratory door; possibly, indeed, it had been 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 <abbr class="eoc" epub:type="z3998:initialism">M.P.</abbr>” 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.</p>
<p>Presently after, he sat on one side of his own hearth, with <abbr>Mr.</abbr> 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 and to disperse the fogs of London. Insensibly the lawyer melted. There was no man from whom he kept fewer secrets than <abbr>Mr.</abbr> 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 <abbr>Mr.</abbr> 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 right? 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 could scarce read so strange a document without dropping a remark; and by that remark <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Utterson might shape his future course.</p>
<p>“This is a sad business about Sir Danvers,” he said.</p>
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