Chapter Fourteen.
All comes out.
It is time we went back to the scene on the cliff at Crocusville narrated in the opening chapter.
Peeler, the coastguardsman, after descending the cliff, resumed his ordinary avocations, and sent his daughter to a superior high school.
Hence her presence at the Duc’s ball and on the desert mountain.
The Duc de Septimominorelli (for such was the mysterious traveller) recoiled several hundred yards on finding himself confronted not only by the aged father of his now middle-aged Velvetina, but by the form of his old opponent the Marquis de Smellismelli.
“Aha!” said the latter, producing his plaster cast. “How do you find yourself, Sep, my boy?”
“Hot,” said Septimus, with characteristic coolness.
“Introduce me to the old gentleman,” said the detective.
“Peeler,” was the laconic reply.
It was Solomon’s turn to turn inquiringly to the lady.
She only bowed.
“I wish very much I had known this before. I have wasted fifty years over you,” said Solomon, in injured tones. “I must lose no more time if I am to detect anything. Good morning. Aha!
“Stay!” shouts Sep, in a voice of thunder. “It is I who have wasted fifty years running away from you. You owe me an apology, sirrah!”
The caitiff’s face underwent a kaleidoscopic change as these terrible words rant? in his ears. With the bound of of a wounded antelope he sprang to the summit of the nearest mountain, and stood there with arms erect against the sky, like a statue of Ajax.
“He don’t seem blooming, shiver my timbers if he do,” said old Peeler.
“We shall not meet again,” said Sep, grinding his teeth in his direction.
“Why should we be standing here in the sun?” said Velvetina. “Let us return to England.”
They returned the same evening.