Disregarding the song of the birds, the waving green trees, and the smell of the flowers, Jimmy headed straight for a restaurant.  There he tasted the first sweet joys of liberty in the shape of a broiled chicken and a bottle of white wine—­followed by a cigar a grade better than the one the warden had given him.  From there he proceeded leisurely to the depot.  He tossed a quarter into the hat of a blind man sitting by the door, and boarded his train.  Three hours set him down in a little town near the state line.  He went to the cafe of one Mike Dolan and shook hands with Mike, who was alone behind the bar.

“Sorry we couldn’t make it sooner, Jimmy, me boy,” said Mike.  “But we had that protest from Springfield to buck against, and the governor nearly balked.  Feeling all right?”

“Fine,” said Jimmy.  “Got my key?”

He got his key and went upstairs, unlocking the door of a room at the rear.  Everything was just as he had left it.  There on the floor was still Ben Price’s collar-button that had been torn from that eminent detective’s shirt-band when they had overpowered Jimmy to arrest him.

Pulling out from the wall a folding-bed, Jimmy slid back a panel in the wall and dragged out a dust-covered suit-case.  He opened this and gazed fondly at the finest set of burglar’s tools in the East.  It was a complete set, made of specially tempered steel, the latest designs in drills, punches, braces and bits, jimmies, clamps, and augers, with two or three novelties, invented by Jimmy himself, in which he took pride.  Over nine hundred dollars they had cost him to have made at ——­, a place where they make such things for the profession.

In half an hour Jimmy went down stairs and through the cafe.  He was now dressed in tasteful and well-fitting clothes, and carried his dusted and cleaned suit-case in his hand.

“Got anything on?” asked Mike Dolan, genially.

“Me?” said Jimmy, in a puzzled tone.  “I don’t understand.  I’m representing the New York Amalgamated Short Snap Biscuit Cracker and Frazzled Wheat Company.”

This statement delighted Mike to such an extent that Jimmy had to take a seltzer-and-milk on the spot.  He never touched “hard” drinks.

A week after the release of Valentine, 9762, there was a neat job of safe-burglary done in Richmond, Indiana, with no clue to the author.  A scant eight hundred dollars was all that was secured.  Two weeks after that a patented, improved, burglar-proof safe in Logansport was opened like a cheese to the tune of fifteen hundred dollars, currency; securities and silver untouched.  That began to interest the rogue-catchers.  Then an old-fashioned bank-safe in Jefferson City became active and threw out of its crater an eruption of bank-notes amounting to five thousand dollars.  The losses were now high enough to bring the matter up into Ben Price’s class of work.  By comparing notes, a remarkable similarity in the methods of the burglaries was noticed.  Ben Price investigated the scenes of the robberies, and was heard to remark: