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There was no duel on those yellow sands after all.

Chapter IX. AFTERWARDS

The mysterious disappearance of the dazzling Duc de Septimominorelli created a profound impression throughout civilised Europe. The Donna Velvetina Peeleretta was inconsolable.

After a while she, too, went abroad.

Chapter X. THE SLEUTH-HOUND AGAIN

Many, many years flew past.

Solomon Smellie’s youngest son had been twice Lord Mayor of London, and all London had forgotten the Duc de Septimominorelli and the peerless Donna Velvetina Peeleretta.

All? No, there was one exception.

An aged man in a back room of the Mansion House sometimes produced a plaster cast from the recesses of his pocket, and muttered to himself–

“A time will come–aha!”

Chapter XI. THE DESERT JOURNEY

A lonely traveller traversed the sandy desert wastes of Central Africa. He was ill-accoutred for so trying a journey, having only a cane to protect himself from the wild beasts, and patent-leather shoes on his feet. No one knew his name; and what made him more mysterious was that, although he spoke English, he paid for everything in Spanish doubloons half a century old!

What could his errand be, amid the typhoons and siroccos of that desolate continent?

For six weeks he had not moistened his parched lips with so much as a drop of water! And his only food had been dried elephant!

Yet he kept his eyes fixed on the mountain range twelve hundred leagues ahead of him; and as each day brought him fifty miles nearer (for he was evidently a practised walker), he murmured to himself, “I come, Velvetina!” and thought nothing of the fatigue.

The man’s shoes were unequal to his spirit, and within a hundred miles of his goal he sunk crippled to the ground. The blinding sand swept over him in mountains, and the tropical sun made the end of the cane he carried red-hot.

Any other man in such a condition would have succumbed. Not so our mysterious traveller.

If he could not walk, he could roll. And he rolled.

Chapter XII. THREE CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON

On the summit of the topmost of those gigantic mountains, the peak of which is lost high in the depths of the cloudless sky, a female stands, and gazes southward.

Her fair form is mysteriously draped in white, and the parasol with which she shuts out the scorching sun from her face effectually conceals her features.

“He cometh–he cometh not,” says she, weeping.

At length, in the remote horizon of the limitless desert, there arises a little cloud of dust.

Is it a panther seeking its prey? or a newspaper buffeted by the wind? or the mirage of the desert?

It is the revolving form of a rolling body; and as she discovers it she trembles like an aspen leaf.

“He comes,” mutters she.

Another cloud of dust; not in the south, but in the east.

Can it be an optical delusion, or another revolving figure? Ever and anon the sun gleams on something bright, which looks like the end of a cane.

A sickening sensation comes over the watcher.

“They both come!” says she; and turns her eyes northward.

What! Is it another optical delusion, or is this yet one more cloud in the north, which, as it approaches, also takes the semblance of a revolving figure? Hot as the weather is, she shivers sensibly, and, closing her parasol, mutters, her lips as white as driven snow–

“They all come!”

Chapter XIII. THE WATCHER ON THE CAIRN

Twenty-four hours of agonising suspense, and then the revolving figures reach the base of the mountain, and commence simultaneously to roll up the side.

The female figure on the top gives a despairing glance around her, and drops senseless on the cairn.

At length, as the sun is setting in the only unoccupied horizon, she starts, rigid and stiff, and listens.

On either side of her approaches a dull grinding noise, mingled with heavy snorting, and the low muttering of voices.

She dares not look: it is terrible enough to hear!

So evenly do they approach, that at the same instant they reached the summit.