him that they "are on the trail of a great robbery." Back at the flophouse, Charlie is prevented from settling down by a loud, singing drunk (James T. Kelley) whom he eventually—and somewhat affectionately—dispatches with a champagne bottle. A thief (also Billy Armstrong) steals in during the night and robs the singing drunk, and although Charlie takes what he thinks are adequate precautions, he is also robbed. Charlie disguises himself under the blankets and manages to get his money back from the thief, but when the thief tries to stab him it wakes everyone up and a fight breaks among all of the men. Charlie manages to escape, dodging several cops on the way. However, he runs into the pickpocket on the street; recognizing him as an old friend, Charlie agrees to help him find a target, and leads him to the Nutt house. The cops are all still there; lying around, smoking, waiting for something to happen. Pandemonium breaks out when the pickpocket enters the house, and amid the chaos, Colonel Nutt's explosive device is detonated, blowing all of the cops skyward. In the aftermath, the pickpocket is buried in a heap of rubble and Charlie is seen poking his head out of the kitchen stove. History and background Chaplin's contract with Essanay ended at the beginning of 1916 when he went to Mutual. Police, released on May 27, was his last authorized title with the company. On April 9, 1916 Essanay issued a re-edited version of Chaplin's completed film Burlesque on Carmen but padded with additional material to bring it to a four-reel length. Chaplin filed suit on May 6, but to no avail, as on July 8 the court determined that Essanay had the right to reinvent the client work Chaplin had done for them in any way that they saw fit. This opened the door to a number of subsequent Essanay-Chaplin compilations and re-releases such as The Essanay-Chaplin Revue of 1916 and Chase Me Charlie (1918). According to publicity material that appeared at the time of its release in August 1918, Triple Trouble represented a new wrinkle in Essanay's strategy: "If you bought a piece of real estate and foresaw that its value would quadruple if you held it a certain length of time, what would you do? That's just what we did with Triple Trouble. [...] We knew there would come a time when it