“Ah, my dear Medhurst!” exclaimed the man, greeting me effusively. “How are you this evening?”
“I haven’t the pleasure of knowing you, sir,” I said indifferently.
“You don’t know Dr Beale? Come, come, this won’t do at all,” he said, smiling.
I assured him that I had never set eyes upon him before, and went on to explain how I had been travelling to Paris and suddenly struck insensible, only to regain consciousness and find myself in Africa—rich, married, and ten years older.
The doctor listened with grave attention, and subsequently we entered upon a long and rather heated discussion. All I wanted to discover was how I came to be there.
“Monomania, evidently,” observed the doctor in a low voice, when we had been talking for some time. “It develops frequently into the most violent form of madness. He will have to be kept in seclusion and watched.”
Again I resented the imputation that I was going insane, to which the medical luminary replied, “Very well, my dear fellow, very well. We will believe what you say. Calm yourself; for your wife is nervous and weak, remember.”
I turned away disgusted. All my efforts to explain the remarkable facts had only been met with incredulity by the idiotic, soft-spoken old doctor, who undoubtedly imagined I was mad.
In desperation I strode out of the house, and spent the night in wandering about the grounds, and walking aimlessly through unfamiliar roads, subsequently sitting down upon the fallen trunk of a tree, where I fell asleep.
When I retraced my footsteps, the bright morning sun was glinting through the foliage of the dense wood that seemed to almost surround the house.