A Retrieved Reformation

Jimmy Valentine sat in the prison shoe-shop, patiently stitching, when a guard came to fetch him to the warden's office. There Jimmy was handed his pardon, signed that morning by the governor. He took it without much joy. He had served nearly ten months of a four-year sentence — though he had expected to stay no more than three, given how many powerful friends a man like Jimmy Valentine had on the outside.

"Now, Valentine," said the warden, "you'll go out in the morning. Brace up, and make a man of yourself. You're not a bad fellow at heart. Stop cracking safes, and live straight." But Jimmy only looked mildly surprised. He had never, he said, cracked a safe in his life. The warden laughed. Everyone knew Jimmy Valentine was the finest safe-burglar in the country — they had simply never been able to prove a single job against him.

The next morning Jimmy walked free. He went straight to a good restaurant and enjoyed the first honest pleasures of liberty: a fine meal, a cigar, a walk in the open air. Then he took a train to a small town, went up to his old room, and pulled from a hidden panel a beautiful, dust-free set of burglar's tools — the finest ever made, which he had designed himself. Within a week, a fresh string of daring safe robberies had puzzled the police in three different states.

A detective named Ben Price took an interest in the robberies. Price knew Jimmy's methods well — the neat drilling, the cool nerve, the clean escape — and he had studied them for years. Quietly, he began to gather what he needed to catch Jimmy at last. Somewhere out there, Price was patiently on the trail.

But Jimmy, stepping off a train in the little town of Elmore, Arkansas, had walked straight into something he had never planned for. A young woman had crossed the street towards the bank, and their eyes had met. In that instant, the Jimmy Valentine who cracked safes seemed to vanish. He became, on the spot, another man. He learned that she was Annabel Adams, and that her father owned the town bank. Jimmy took a new name — Ralph D. Spencer — invented a story about coming to town to start a shoe business, and settled down.

The reformation was complete, and it was genuine. Mr. Ralph Spencer's shoe shop prospered. He won the respect of the town, made many friends, and — best of all — grew close to Annabel and won her love. Within a year he was engaged to be married, trusted by her father, and folded warmly into the Adams family. The old life had died; he had become the respectable man he had once only pretended to be. He wrote one last letter to an old friend, saying he was giving away his precious tools for good: he would never need them again.

One day the whole Adams family, with Jimmy, went to the bank, where Mr. Adams was proudly showing off a fine new vault — a small room with a heavy time-lock door. Jimmy had brought his old tool-case along, meaning to take it away and give it up that very day. As the grown-ups admired the shining new door, two little girls were playing nearby. In a careless moment, one child, Agatha, shut the other, May, inside the vault — and the heavy door swung to and locked. The time-lock had not yet been set, but the bolts had shot home. The child was sealed in, in the dark, with only a few minutes of air. She could not be reached, and there was no one who could open that door.

Annabel turned to the man she loved. "Ralph — can't you do something? Try, won't you?" He looked at her with a strange, soft smile. In that moment Ralph Spencer knew that saving the child would mean destroying Ralph Spencer forever. Ben Price, it happened, had just walked quietly into the bank and was leaning against the rail, watching. Jimmy said, "Get away from the door, all of you." He set his tool-case on the table, and — for the first time in the man's honest new life — Jimmy Valentine returned. Faster than anyone had ever seen it done, he drilled into the door of the vault. In ten minutes he had beaten his own record; the bolts drew back, and he pulled the door open. May, faint but safe, was gathered into her mother's arms.

Jimmy Valentine put on his coat and walked towards the front of the bank. He thought he heard a far-off voice call "Ralph!" but he did not pause. At the door stood Ben Price. "Hello, Ben," said Jimmy, still with that quiet smile. "Got around at last, have you? Well, let's go. It doesn't make much difference now." And then the strange thing happened. Ben Price behaved rather oddly. "Guess you're mistaken, Mr. Spencer," he said. "Don't believe I recognise you. Your buggy's waiting for you, isn't it?" And Ben Price turned and walked away down the street.