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“Good!” said Snooks, and he entered the kitchen. Some weeks before he had met Nan Kilfillan. He was deeply in love with Nan, and Nan was a good girl, although Aunt Martha Turner did not approve of her, because she was “hired girl” to City Attorney Mullen. Before she had met Snooks Nan had done her best to “make something” of “Slippery” Williams, who was courting her then, but that task was beyond even Nan’s powers.

Snooks held a job on the “Eagle” as city reporter, with the dignified title of City Editor, and he was making good. He got the news. He seemed able to smell news. When there was big news in the air he would become uneasy and feel nervous.

“I got the twitches again,” he would say to the editor of the “Eagle.” “There’s some big item around. I’ve got to get it.” And he would get it.

“She’s gone out, has she?” said Snooks, when he had entered his aunt’s kitchen and asked Philo Gubb about Aunt Martha. “That’s good. I wanted to see you on a matter of business–detective business.”

He put his hand in his pocket and drew out a small roll of bills. He was not the usually neat Snooks. One eye was blackened and one side of his face was scratched. His clothes were badly torn and soiled. He looked as if some one had tried to murder him.

“There!” he said, holding the bills up to Philo Gubb after counting them. “There’s twenty-five dollars. You take that and find out what I have done, and what’s the matter with me, and all about it.”

“What do you want me to find out?” asked Mr. Gubb, fondling the bills.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t ask you,” said Snooks peevishly. “I don’t know what it is. I’d go and find out myself, but I’m in jail.”

“Where did you say you was?” asked Philo Gubb.

“In jail,” said Snooks. “I’m in jail, and I’m in bad. When the marshal put me in last night I gave him my word I’d stay in all day to-day, and it ain’t right for me to be here now.

“‘Dog-gone you, Snooks!’ he says, ‘you ain’t got no consideration for me at all. Here I figgered that there wouldn’t be no wave of crime strike town for some days, and I went and took the jail door down to the blacksmith to have a panel put in where the one rusted out, and my wife made me promise to drive out to the farm with her to-morrow, and now you come and spoil everything. I got to stay in town and watch you.’

“‘Go on,’ I says, ‘and take your drive. I’ll stay in jail. I got a strong imagination. I’ll imagine there’s a door.’

“‘Honor bright?’ he says.

“‘Yes, honor bright,’ I says.

“So he went,” said Snooks, “and he’s trusting me, and here I am. You can see it wouldn’t do for me to be running all over town when, by rights, I’m locked and barred and bolted in jail. I’m locked and barred and bolted in jail, and well started on my way to the penitentiary as a burglar.”

“As a burglar!” exclaimed Gubb.

“That’s it!” said Snooks. “I can’t see head or tail of it. You got to help me out, Gubb. See if you can make any sense of this:–

“Last night I went out for a walk with Nan. She’s my girl, you know, and she’s going to marry me. Maybe she won’t now, but she was going to. She works for Mullen. We got back to Mullen’s house about eleven o’clock, and Mrs. Mullen always locks the door at half-past ten, whether Nan is in or not. So, being late, we had to ring the doorbell, and Mr. Mullen came to the door to let Nan in, and when he saw I was with her he shook hands with me and asked me to come in and have a cigar, and sit awhile, but I told him I had to hustle up some news for to-day’s paper, and he let me go. That’s how pleasant he was. So I went downtown, and the first fellow I met was Sammy Wilmerton.”