The D’Arblay Mystery
Contents
CHAPTER I.
The Pool in the Wood
There are certain days in our lives which, as we recallthem, seem to detach themselves from the generalsequence as forming the starting-point of a new epoch.Doubtless, if we examined them critically, we should findthem to be but links in a connected chain. But in aretrospective glance their continuity with the past isunperceived, and we see them in relation to the eventswhich followed them rather than to those which wentbefore.
Such a day is that on which I look back through avista of some twenty years; for on that day I was,suddenly and without warning, plunged into the very heartof a drama so strange and incredible that in the recitalof its events I am conscious of a certain diffidence andhesitation.
The picture that rises before me as I write is very clearand vivid. I see myself, a youngster of twenty-five, theowner of a brand-new medical diploma, wending my waygaily down Wood-lane, Highgate, at about eight o’clockon a sunny morning in early autumn. I was taking aday’s holiday, the last I