keeper
a creature whom I knew well to be silent and unscrupulous. On the other
side, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I described)
was to have full liberty and power about my house in the square; and to
parry mishaps, I even called and made myself a familiar object, in
my second character. I next drew up that will to which you so much
objected; so that if anything befell me in the person of Dr. Jekyll,
I could enter on that of Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss. And thus
fortified, as I supposed, on every side, I began to profit by the
strange immunities of my position.

Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own
person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did
so for his pleasures. I was the first that could plod in the public eye
with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy,
strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty.
But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete. Think
of it--I did not even exist! Let me but escape into my laboratory door,
give me but a second or two to mix and swallow the draught that I had
always standing ready; and whatever he had done, Edward Hyde would pass
away like the stain of breath upon a mirror; and there in his stead,
quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his study, a man who
could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be Henry Jekyll.

The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as I have
said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But in the hands of
Edward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward the monstrous. When I would
come back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind of
wonder at my vicarious depravity. This familiar that I called out of
my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being
inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centered on
self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture
to another; relentless like a man of stone. Henry Jekyll stood at times
aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was apart from
ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was
Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse;
he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even
make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And
thus his conscience slumbered.