Ben Price is Jimmy's nemesis. Jimmy would have no problems in the world if it were not for Ben Price, the detective. Jimmy has become so successful at his profession as a safecracker, so adept, so notorious, that someone had to devote his attention to catching and convicting him. Price was the man responsible for sending Jimmy to the prison, where we first meet him. When Jimmy gets his release from the warden and returns to his rented room the next day
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.
It is because of his fear of Ben Price that Jimmy makes the fateful decision to move clear out of his present sphere of operations, assume a new identity as Ralph Spencer, and establish a shoe business in a small town as a "front." He has been made to realize that too many people in his present territory know too much about him. That is the price of success. And Ben Price may be thought of as Jimmy's price of success. Unfortunately, Jimmy has committed four serious crimes since his release from prison. This is already enough to put his nemesis back on his track.
Ben Price investigated the scenes of the robberies, and was heard to remark: “That's Dandy Jim Valentine's autograph. He's resumed business. Look at that 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 hole. Yes, I guess I want Mr. Valentine. He'll do his bit next time without any short-time or clemency foolishness.”
So Ben Price becomes an even worse antagonist. Jimmy falls in love, decides to become respectable, becomes a successful businessman in Elmore, Arkansas and one of the most popular men in that community. Now Ben could not only send him to prison but could destroy all his dreams of happiness. If Jimmy lost Annabel, nothing else would matter to him. And on the day the little girl gets accidentally locked in the bank vault, which only Jimmy has the skill and the tools to open, there stands Ben Price in the main room waiting to arrest him.
Jimmy shows his love for his fiancee and his strength of character by deciding to go ahead and crack the bank vault in spite of everything. He will be revealing his identity as a master safecracker, not only to Ben Price, but to Annabel and her entire family. He will be disgraced. He will be headed for a long stretch in prison--but it hardly matters if he has lost everything he had gained through his reformation. It turns out to his surprise that by cracking the vault he "retrieves" everything, whereas by not cracking the vault, and letting little Agatha perish, he would have lost everything and gone to prison. Ben Price is human, after all. He realizes that Jimmy is no long a threat but an asset to society, so he uses his own discretion to let him go.
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