Annabel's father is the owner of the local bank. He's kind of a big deal in the small Arkansas town of Elmore. Not surprisingly, that makes his daughter something of a catch, especially for a man like Jimmy Valentine, who desperately wants to put his life of crime behind him and settle down to a normal, respectable life.

So Jimmy courts Annabel, and the two are together when Annabel's father, Mr. Adams, proudly displays the shiny, new, state-of-the-art safe at his bank. Unfortunately, everyone's paying so much attention to the safe that they don't notice what the children are up to. A nine-year-old girl called May has playfully shut the door of the safe, locking her sister Agatha, Annabel's niece, inside.

As one can imagine, everyone's frantic when they find out what's happened. If Agatha isn't freed from the safe soon, then she'll die of suffocation. Thankfully, though, there's someone present for whom opening safes—even brand spanking new safes such as this one—is a piece of cake. That man is, of course, Jimmy Valentine—or Ralph Spencer as he now calls himself.

He draws upon all his many years of safe-cracking to open the safe and free little Agatha from what would've been a truly horrible fate. For once in his life, Jimmy has put his skills as a safe-cracker to good effect. By anyone's standards, this is a remarkable transformation indeed.