欧亨利a retrieved reformation

A RETRIEVED REFORMATION

By O. HENRY

From

Roads of Destiny.

Copyright 1909, expired.

A guard came to the prison shoe-shop, where Jimmy Valentine was assiduously stitching

uppers, and escorted him to the front office. There the warden handed Jimmy his pardon,

which had been signed that morning by the governor. Jimmy took it in a tired kind of way.

He had served nearly ten months of a four-year sentence. He had expected to stay only

about three months, at the longest. When a man with as many friends on the outside as

Jimmy Valentine had is received in the

man of yourself. You're not a bad fellow at heart. Stop cracking safes, and live straight.

get sent up on that Springfield job? Was it because you wouldn't prove an alibi for fear of

compromising somebody in extremely high-toned society? Or was it simply a case of a

mean old jury that had it in for you? It's always one or the other with you innocent

victims.

life!

Unlock him at seven in the morning, and let him come to the bull-pen. Better think over

my advice, Valentine.

At a quarter past seven on the next morning Jimmy stood in the warden's outer office. He

had on a suit of the villainously fitting, ready-made clothes and a pair of the stiff, squeaky

shoes that the state furnishes to its discharged compulsory guests.

The clerk handed him a railroad ticket and the five-dollar bill with which the law expected

him to rehabilitate himself into good citizenship and prosperity. The warden gave him a

cigar, and shook hands. Valentine, 9762, was chronicled on the books

Governor,

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 winefollowed by a cigar a grade better

than the one the warden had given him. From there be 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 café

of one

Alike Dolan and shook hands with Mike, who was alone behind the bar.

from Springfield to buck against, and the governor nearly balked. Feeling all right?

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 design 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 caf6. He was now dressed in

tasteful and well- fitting clothes, and carried his dusted and cleaned suit-case in his hand.

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

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:

combination knob --jerked out as easy as pulling up a radish in wet weather. He's got the

only clamps that can do it. And look how clean those tumblers were punched out! Jimmy

never has to drill but one bole. Yes, I guess I want. Mr. Valentine. He'11 do his bit next

time without any short-time or clemency foolishness.

Ben Price knew Jimmy's habits. He had learned them while working up the Springfield

case. Long jumps, quick get-aways, no confederates, and a taste for good society these

ways bad helped Mr. Valentine to become noted as a successful dodger of retribution. It

was given out that Ben Price had taken up the trail of the elusive cracksman, and other

people with burglar-proof safes felt more at ease.

One afternoon Jimmy Valentine and his suit-case climbed out of the mail-hack in Elmore,

a little town five miles off the railroad down in the black-jack country of Arkansas. Jimmy,

looking like an athletic young senior just home from college, went down the board

side-walk toward the hotel.

A young lady crossed the street, passed him at the corner and entered a door over which

was the sign

was, and became another man. She lowered her eyes and colored slightly. Young men of

Jimmy's style and looks were scarce in Elmore.

Jimmy collared a boy that was loafing on the steps of the bank as if he were one of the

stockholders, and began to question him about the town, feeding him dimes at intervals.

By and by the young lady came out, looking royally unconscious of the young man with

the suit-case, and went her way.

Elmore for? Is that a gold watch-chain? I'm going to get a bulldog. Got any more dimes?