Rock Island Daily Argus

THE SAME OLD STORY. The Fate of a Traveler Who Blew Out the Gas. He Retires in Blissful Ignorance and Awakens in Eternity-Jacob Kleiner's Death at the St. James, Davenport.

There came up on the C., B. & Q. from St. Louis at 7:15 last evening, Jacob Kleiner, a young man twenty-five years of age, who boarded Conductor Cook's train at St. Louis and who on the arrival of the train here immediately crossed the river on the ferry to Davenport. He went at once to the St. James hotel where he registered as Jacob Kleiner, Highland, Ill. The town by the way, is a few miles east of St. Louis on the Vandalia line. Kleiner told the night clerk that he was on his way to Monticello, Iowa, and left a call for the 4:55 train. At 4 o'clock the clerk sent a bell boy to the door of Kleiner's room to awaken him. Not succeeding after a vigorous effort, the clerk went up and breaking open the transom he was confronted by something less than 10,000 cubic feet of gas from Kleiner's room. The door was forced open at once and Kleiner was in bed, dead. A physician was summoned and gave it as his opinion that Kleiner had been dead three hours. The gas burner was turned on for full flame. It had been blown out there was no doubt Kleiner appeared to be working man and had little money or valuables about him. The coroner is holding an inquest and the story of the tragedy has been communicated by telegraph to Highland, Ill.