Droom was frugal. He was, in truth, a miser. If anyone had asked him what he expected to do with the money he was putting away in the bank, he could not have answered, calculating as he was by nature. He had no relative to whom he would leave it and he had no inclination to give up the habit of active employment. His salary was small, but he managed to save more than half of it—for a "rainy day," as he said. He did his reading and experimenting by kerosene light, and went to bed by candle light, saving a few pennies a week in that way. The windows in his apartment were washed not oftener than once a year. He was seldom obliged to look through them during the day, and their only duty at night was to provide ventilation—and even that was characteristically meagre.
He was a man of habit—not habits. A pipe at night was his only form of dissipation. It was not too far for him to walk home from the office of evenings, and he invariably did so unless the weather was extremely unpleasant. So methodical was he that he never had walked over any other bridge than the one in Wells Street, coming and going.
Past sixty-five years of age. Broom's hair still was black and snaky; his teeth were as yellow and jagged as they were in the seventies, and his eyes were as blue and ugly as ever. He had not aged with James Bansemer. In truth, he looked but little older then when we made his acquaintance. The outside world knew no more of Droom's private transactions than it knew of Bansemer's. Up in the horrid little apartment in Wells Street the queer old man could do as he willed, unobserved and unannoyed. He could pursue his experiments with strange chemicals, he could construct odd devices with his kit of tools, and he could let off an endless amount of inventive energy that no one knew he possessed.
When he left Graydon Bansemer on the sidewalk in front of the office building, he swung off with his long strides towards the Wells Street bridge. His brain had laid aside everything that had occupied its attention during office hours and had given itself over to the project that hastened his steps homeward. His supper that night was a small one and hurriedly eaten in order that he might get to work on his new device. Droom grinned and cackled to himself all alone up there in the lamplight, for he was perfecting an "invention" by which the honest citizen could successfully put to rout the "hold-up" man that has made Chicago famous.
Elias Droom's inventive genius unfailingly led him toward devices that could inflict pain and discomfiture. His plan to get the better of the wretched, hard-working hold-up man was unique, if not entirely practical. He was constructing the models for two little bulbs, made of rubber and lined with a material that would resist the effects of an acid, no matter how powerful. On one end of each bulb, which was capable of holding at least an ounce of liquid, there was a thin syringe attachment, also proof against acids. These little bulbs were made so that they could be held in the palm of the hand. By squeezing them suddenly a liquid could be shot from the tube with considerable force.
The bulbs were to contain vitriol.
When the hold-up man gave the command to "hold up your hands," the victim had only to squeeze the bulb as the hands went up, and, if accurately aimed, the miscreant would get the stream of the deadly vitriolic fluid in his eyes and—here endeth the first lesson. Experience alone could do the rest.
Young Bansemer hurried to their apartments on the North Side. He found his father dressed and ready to go out to dinner.
"Well, how was everything to-day?" asked James Bansemer from his easy chair in the library. Graydon threw his hat and gloves on the table.
"Terribly dull market, governor," he said. "It's been that way for a week. How are you feeling?"