Jane Cable, page 109 by George Barr McCutcheon
<< Return to Title Details & Download110
asy and cold.
The morning papers were full of the sensational robbery, the prominence of the victim and the viciousness of the attack. Elias Droom read the accounts eagerly as he breakfasted in the dingy little restaurant near his home, bright and early. He grinned appreciably over the share of glory that fell to him; and he actually cackled over the new developments in the great mystery.
He had observed with relief that the name of James Bansemer was not mentioned. The reports from the bedside of the robber's victim were most optimistic. She was delirious from the effects of the shock, but no serious results were expected. The great headlines on the first page of the paper he was reading set his mind temporarily at rest. There was no suggestion of truth in them.
The reader of this narrative, who knows the true facts in the case, is doubtless more interested in the movements and emotions of David Cable than in the surmises of others. It would be difficult, for a certainty, to ask one to put himself in Cable's place and to experience the sensations of that unhappy man as he fled along the dark shore of the lake. Perhaps much will be taken on faith if the writer simply says that the fugitive finally slunk from the weeds and refuse of what was then called "The District of Lake Michigan"--"Streeterville," in local parlance--to find himself panting and terror-struck in the bleak east end of Chicago Avenue. It was not until then that he secured control of his nerves and resorted to the stealth and cunning of the real criminal.
From that time until he stood shivering and white with dogged intention in a theatre foyer, bent upon establishing an alibi, his movements are scarcely worth the details. Between the acts he saw a dozen men whom he knew and he took drinks with several of them. His tremendous will power carried him through the ordeal in a way that could not have fallen to the good fortunes of the ordinary lawbreaker.
Every second of the time his thoughts were of the thing which w