"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.