In January Dr Lanyon took to his bed, and in less than three weeks he was dead. Utterson opened the letter that his friend had left him and read it with growing horror. Lanyon had been called for at midnight, and had fetched a drawer of powders from Jekyll's laboratory. At his own house he was met by a small man in clothes far too large, a man who filled him with disgust. The stranger mixed the powders in a glass, drank the liquid at one gulp, and cried out. Then he seemed to swell; his face grew black; the features seemed to melt and alter — and Henry Jekyll stood before him. "What I heard that night I cannot bring myself to set down," Lanyon wrote. "My life is shaken to its roots. I shall die, and I shall die a doubter."