THE GAMBLING DEBT
There was no time to be lost now. Down the steps again dashed Garrick,
after our expected failure both to get in peaceably and to pass the
ice-box door by force. This time Dillon emerged from the cab with him.
Together they were carrying the heavy apparatus up the steps.
They set it down close to the door and I scrutinized it carefully. It
looked, at first sight, like a short stubby piece of iron, about
eighteen inches high. It must have weighed fifty or sixty pounds. Along
one side was a handle, and on the opposite side an adjustable hook with
a sharp, wide prong.
Garrick bent down and managed to wedge the hook into the little space
between the sill and the bottom of the ice-box door. Then he began
pumping on the handle, up and down, up and down, as hard as he could.
Meanwhile the crowd that had begun to collect was getting larger.
Dillon went through the form of calling on them for aid, but the call
was met with laughter. A Tenderloin crowd has no use for raids, except
as a spectacle. Between us we held them back, while Garrick worked. The
crowd jeered.
It was the work of only a few seconds, however, before Garrick changed
the jeers to a hearty round of exclamations of surprise. The door
seemed to be lifted up, literally, until some of its bolts and hinges
actually bulged and cracked. It was being crushed, like the flimsy
outside door, before the unwonted attack.
Upwards, by fractions of an inch, by millimeters, the door was being
forced. There was such straining and stress of materials that I really
began to wonder whether the building itself would stand it.
"Scientific jimmying," gasped Garrick, as the door bulged more and more
and seemed almost to threaten to topple in at any moment.
I looked at the stubby little cylinder with its short stump of a lever.
Garrick had taken it out now and had wedged it horizontally between the
ice-box door and the outer stonework of the building itself. Then he
jammed some pieces of wood in to wedge it tighter and again began to
pump at the handle vigorously.
"What is it?" I asked, almost in awe at the titanic power of the
apparently insignificant little thing.
"My scientific sledgehammer," he panted, still working the lever more
vigorously than ever backward and forward. "In other words, a hydraulic
ram. There is no swinging of axes or wielding of crow-bars necessary
any more, Dillon, in breaking down a door like this. Such things are
obsolete. This little jimmy, if you want to call it that, has a power
of ten tons. I think that's about enough."
It seemed as if the door were buckling and being literally wrenched off
its hinges by the irresistible ten-ton punch of the hydraulic ram.
Garrick sprang back, grasping me by the arm and pulling me too. But
there was no need of caution. What was left of the door swung back on
its loosened hinges, seemed to tremble a moment, and then, with a dull
thud crashed down on the beautiful green marble of the reception hall,
reverberating.
We peered beyond. Inside all was darkness. At the very first sign of
trouble the lights had been switched out downstairs. It was deserted.
There was no answer to our shouts. It was as silent as a tomb.
The clang of bells woke the rapid echoes. The crowd parted. It was the
patrol wagons, come just in time, full of reserves, at Dillon's order.
They swarmed up the steps, for there was nothing to do now, in the
limelight of the public eye, except their duty. Besides Dillon was
there, too.
"Here," he ordered huskily, "four of you fellows jump into each of the
next door houses and run up to the roof. Four more men go through to
the rear of this house. The rest stay here and await orders," he
directed, detailing them off quickly, as he endeavoured to grasp the
strange situation.
On both sides of the street heads were out of windows. On other houses
the steps were full of spectators. Thousands of people must have
swarmed in the street. It was pandemonium.
Yet inside the house into which we had just broken it was all darkness
and silence.
The door had yielded to the scientific sledge-hammering where it would
have shattered, otherwise, all the axes in the department. What was
next?
Garrick jumped briskly over the wreckage into the building. Instead of
the lights and gayety which we had seen on the previous night, all was
black mystery. The robbers' cave yawned before us. I think we were all
prepared for some sort of gunplay, for we knew the crooks to be
desperate characters. As we followed Garrick closely we were surprised
to encounter not even physical force.
Someone struck a light. Garrick, groping about in the shadows, found
the switch, and one after another the lights in the various rooms
winked up.
I have seldom seen such confusion as greeted us as, with Dillon waiving
his "John Doe" warrant over his head, we hurried upstairs to the main
hall on the second floor, where the greater part of the gambling was
done. Furniture was overturned and broken, and there had been no time
to remove the heavier gambling apparatus. Playing cards, however,
chips, racing sheets from the afternoon, dice, everything portable and
tangible and small enough to be carried had disappeared.
But the greatest surprise of all was in store. Though we had seen no
one leave by any of the doors, nor by the doors of any of the houses on
the block, nor by the roofs, or even by the back yard, according to the
report of the police who had been sent in that direction, there was not
a living soul in the house from roof to cellar. Search as we did, we
could find not one of the scores of people whom I had seen enter in the
course of the evening while I was watching on the corner.
Dillon, ever mindful of some of the absurd rules of evidence in such
cases laid down by the courts, had had an official photographer
summoned and he was proceeding from room to room, snapping pictures of
apparatus that was left in place and preserving a film record of the
condition of things generally.
Garrick was standing ruefully beside the roulette wheel at which so
many fortunes had been dissipated.
"Get me an axe," he asked of one of Dillon's men who was passing.
With a well-directed blow he smashed the wheel.
"Look," he exclaimed, "this is what they were up against."
His forefinger indicated an ingenious but now twisted and tangled
series of minute wires and electro-magnets in the delicate mechanism
now broken open before us. Delicate brushes led the current into the
wheel.
With another blow of the axe, Garrick disclosed wires running down
through the leg of the table to the floor and under the carpet to
buttons operated by the man who ran the game.
"What does it mean?" I asked blankly.
"It means," he returned, "that they had little enough chance to win at
a straight game of roulette. But this wheel wasn't even straight with
all the odds in favor of the bank, as they are naturally. This game was
electrically controlled. Others are mechanically controlled by what are
called the 'mule's ear,' and other devices. You CAN'T win. These wires
and magnets can be made to attract the little ball into any pocket the
operator desires. Each one of the pockets contains an electro-magnet.
One set of electro-magnets in the red pockets is connected with one
button under the carpet and a set of batteries. The other series of
little magnets in the black pockets is connected with another button
and the batteries."
He had picked up the little ball. "This ball," he said as he examined
it, "is not really of ivory, but of a composition that looks like
ivory, coating a hollow, soft-iron ball inside. Soft iron is attracted
by an electro-magnet. Whichever set of magnets is energized attracts
the ball and by this simple method it is in the power of the operator
to let the ball go to red or black as he may wish. Other similar
arrangements control the odd or even, and other combinations, also from
push buttons. There isn't an honest gambling machine in the whole
place. The whole thing is crooked from start to finish,--the men, the
machines,----"
"Then a fellow never had a chance?" repeated Dillon.
"Not a chance," emphasized Garrick.
We gathered about and gazed at magnets and wires, the buttons and
switches. He did not need to say anything more to expose the character
of the place.
Amazing as we found everything about us in the palace of crooks,
nothing made so deep an impression on me as the fact that it was
deserted. It seemed as if the gamblers had disappeared as though in a
fairy tale. Search room after room as Dillon's men did they were unable
to find a living thing.
One of the men had discovered, back of the gambling rooms on the second
floor, a little office evidently used by those who ran the joint. It
was scantily furnished, as though its purpose might have been merely a
place where they could divide up the profits in private. A desk, a
cabinet and a safe, besides a couple of chairs, were all that the room
contained.
Someone, however, had done some quick work in the little office during
those minutes while Garrick was opening the great ice-box door with his
hydraulic ram, for on every side were scattered papers, the desk had
been rifled, and even from the safe practically everything of any value
had been removed. It was all part of the general scheme of things in
the gambling joint. Practically nothing that was evidential that could
be readily removed had been left. Whoever had planned the place must
have been a genius as far as laying out precautions against a raid were
concerned.
Garrick, Dillon and I ran hastily through some scattered correspondence
and other documents that spilled out from some letter files on the
floor, but as far as I could make out there was nothing of any great
importance that had been overlooked.
Dillon ordered the whole mass to be bundled up and taken off when the
other paraphernalia was removed so that it could be gone through at our
leisure, and the search continued.
From the "office" a staircase led down by a back way and we followed
it, looking carefully to see where it led.
A low exclamation from Garrick arrested our attention. In a curve
between landings he had kicked something and had bent down to pick it
up. An electric pocket flashlight which one of the men had picked up
disclosed under its rays a package of papers evidently dropped by
someone who was carrying away in haste an armful of stuff.
"Markers with the house," exclaimed Garrick as he ran over the contents
of the package hurriedly. "I. O. U.'s for various amounts and all
initialed--for several hundred thousands. Hello, here's a bunch with an
'F.' That must mean Forbes--thousands of dollars worth."
The markers were fastened together with a slip in order to separate
them from the others, evidently.
Garrick was hastily totalling them up and they seemed to amount to a
tidy sum.
"How can he ever pay?" I asked, amazed as the sum crept on upward in
the direction of six figures.
"Don't you see that they're cancelled?" interjected Garrick, still
adding.
I had not examined them closely, but as I now bent over to do so I saw
that each bore the words, "Paid by W."
Warrington himself had settled the gambling debts of his friend!
In still greater amazement I continued to look and found that they all
bore dates from several weeks before, down to within a few days. The
tale they told was eloquent. Forbes, his own fortune gone, had gambled
until rescued by his friend. Even that had not been sufficient to curb
his mania. He had kept right on, hoping insanely to recoup. And the
gamblers had been willing to take a chance with him, knowing that they
already had so much of his money that they could not possibly lose.
A horrid thought flashed over me. What if he had really planned to pay
his losses by marrying a girl with a fortune? Forbes was the sort who
would have gambled on even that slender prospect.
As we stood on the landing while Garrick went over the markers, I found
myself wondering, even, where Forbes had been that night after he
hurried away from us at the ladies' poolroom and Warrington had taken
the journey that had ended so disastrously for him. The more I learned
of what had been taking place, the more I saw that Warrington stood out
as a gentleman. Undoubtedly Violet Winslow had heard, had been informed
by some kind unknown of the slight lapses of Warrington. I felt sure
that the gross delinquencies of Forbes were concealed from her and from
her aunt, at least as far as Warrington had it in his power to shield
the man who was his friend--and rival.
The voice of Dillon recalled me from a train of pure speculation to the
more practical work in hand before us.
"Well, at any rate, we've got evidence enough to protect ourselves and
close the place, even if we didn't make any captures," congratulated
Dillon, as he rejoined us, after a momentary excursion from which he
returned still blinking from the effects of the flashlight powders
which his photographer had been using freely. "After we get all the
pictures of the place, I'll have the stuff here removed to
headquarters--and it won't be handed back on any order of the courts,
either, if I can help it!"
Garrick had shoved the markers into his pocket and now was leading the
way downstairs.
"Still, Dillon," he remarked, as we followed, "that doesn't shed any
light on the one remaining problem. How did they all manage to get out
so quickly?"
We had reached the basement which contained the kitchens for the buffet
and quarters for the servants. A hasty excursion into the littered back
yard under the guidance of Dillon's men who had been sent around that
way netted us nothing in the way of information. They had not made
their escape over the back fences. Such a number of people would
certainly have left some trail, and there was none.
We looked at Garrick, perplexed, and he remarked, with sudden energy,
"Let's take a look at the cellar."
As we groped down the final stairway into the cellar, it was only too
evident that at last he had guessed right. Down in the subterranean
depths we quickly discovered, at the rear, a sheet-iron door. Battering
it down was the work of but a moment for the little ram. Beyond it,
where we expected to see a yawning tunnel, we found nothing but a pile
of bricks and earth and timbers that had been used for shoring.
There had been a tunnel, but the last man who had gone through had
evidently exploded a small dynamite cartridge, and the walls had been
caved in. It was impossible to follow it until its course could be
carefully excavated with proper tools in the daylight.
We had captured the stronghold of gambling in New York, but the
gamblers had managed to slip out of our grasp, at least for the present.