"She's alive!" exclaimed Droom. "Get these wet clothes off of
her--quick!"
The men stood grouped in the hallway while the women tore the wet
garments from the reviving victim and prepared a warm bed for her.
Elias Droom was edging towards the door, bent on escape, when the
awed, chattering voice of the young fellow who had assisted in
carrying her to the house arrested him. A great sense of relief
crept over him as he listened to the young man's story; his eyes
blinked with satisfaction. He was forgetting his own remark of a
minute ago that he was freezing and must get into some dry clothes
at once. The young man was saying:
"It happened right out there by the sea wall--where the big break
is. Harry and I were coming up the Drive and I called attention to
a man running south along the wall. Just then, this gentleman ran
over from this side of the street and, a minute or two later, we
saw him jump into the break over there. Suicide, I thought, but
he wasn't a minute coming up. There was the woman! He'd pulled her
out! By thunder, it was the bravest thing I ever saw! He---"
And then it was that everybody began to shower praise upon the man
who only had tried to do his duty by the one who hired him to do
ugly, not gallant, deeds.
"Did you watch which way the robber ran?" demanded Droom eagerly.
"Lost him in the dark. He ran like fury. You must have scared him
off," said the second young man. "I wish we could have seen his
face. Did you see it?"
"Not distinctly," answered Droom. "He struck me as being a slim young
fellow, that's all." Of one thing he was assured: the evidence of
these two men would prove that he had acted as a valiant protector
and not as a thug--a fear which had not left his mind until now.
They had seen the fleeing assailant, but there was only one person
who could identify him. That person was Frances Cable, the victim.
If it was not James Bansemer, then who could it have been?
The door opened and an agitated young woman came out.
"It is Mrs. Cable," she cried in trembling tones.
The physician arrived at that moment, and a few minutes later came
an officer who had been hailed from the doorway. While the policeman
was listening to the voluble young eye-witnesses, Droom stood aloof,
puzzling himself vainly in the effort to solve an inside mystery.
He had been ready, a few minutes before, to curse himself for pulling
the woman out of the water, but now, as the belief grew stronger
within him that her assailant was not James Bansemer, his viewpoint
changed. If such was the case, there would be no need to fear Mrs.
Cable's story if she revived sufficiently to tell it. On the other
hand, if it was Bansemer, he had rescued her to an ill purpose. He
was conscious finally that someone was speaking to him.
"What do you know of this?" demanded the policeman. Droom repeated
his brief story. "What is your name and where do you live?"
"My name is Elias Droom and I live over in Wells Street."
"Could you identify the man?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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