He went after little Jennie, not in the way of “free lovers,” but in the way of a man alone in the house with a girl of seventeen, and wishing to seduce her.  He vowed that he loved her with an overwhelming and eternal love.  He vowed that he would get a job and take care of her.  And then he let her discover that he was suffering torments; he could not live without her.  He played upon her sympathy, he played upon her childish innocence, he played upon that pitiful, weak sentimentality which caused her to believe in pacifism and altruism and socialism and all the other “isms” that were jumbled up in her head.

And so in a couple of weeks Peter had succeeded in his purpose of carrying little Jennie by storm.  And then, how enraptured he was!  Peter, with his first girl, decided that being a detective was the job for him!  Peter knew that he was a real detective now, using the real inside methods, and on the trail of the real secrets of the Goober case!

And sure enough, he began at once to get them.  Jennie was in love; Jennie was, as you might say, “drunk with love,” and so she fulfilled both the conditions which Guffey had laid down.  So Jennie told the truth!  Sitting on Peter’s knee, with her arms clasped about him, and talking about her girlhood, the happy days before her mother and father had been killed in the factory where they worked, little Jennie mentioned the name of a young man, Ibbetts.

“Ibbetts?” said Peter.  It was a peculiar name, and sounded familiar.

“A cousin of ours,” said Jennie.

“Have I met him?” asked Peter, groping in his mind.

“No, he hasn’t been here.”

“Ibbetts?” he repeated, still groping; and suddenly he remembered.  “Isn’t his name Jack?”

Jennie did not answer for a moment.  He looked at her, and their eyes met, and he saw that she was frightened.  “Oh, Peter!” she whispered.  “I wasn’t to tell!  I wasn’t to tell a soul!”

Inside Peter, something was shouting with delight.  To hide his emotion he had to bury his face in the soft white throat.  “Sweetheart!” he whispered.  “Darling!”

“Uh, Peter!” she cried.  “You know—­don’t you?”

“Of course!” he laughed.  “But I won’t tell.  You needn’t mind trusting me.”

“Oh, but Mr. Andrews was so insistent!” said Jennie, “He made Sadie and me swear that we wouldn’t breathe it to a soul.”

“Well, you didn’t tell,” said Peter.  “I found it out by accident.  Don’t mention it, and nobody will be any the wiser.  If they should find out that I know, they wouldn’t blame you; they’d understand that I know Jack Ibbetts—­me being in jail so long.”

So Jennie forgot all about the matter, and Peter went on with the kisses, making her happy, as a means of concealing his own exultation.  He had done the job for which Guffey had sent him!  He had solved the first great mystery of the Goober case!  The spy in the jail of American City, who was carrying out news to the Defense Committee, was Jack Ibbetts, one of the keepers in the jail, and a cousin of the Todd sisters!