“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.