_And His Visual Infirmity Cost Him $15,000 and His Reputation._
"I went down to New Orleans a couple of months ago to get a young fellow
who was pretty badly wanted in my town for a two-months' campaign of
highly successful check-kiting last summer," said a Pittsburg detective
who dropped into New York on a hunt last week. "I got him all right, and
he's now doing his three years. I found him to be a pretty decent sort
of a young geezer, although a born crook. I don't remember ever having
had such an entertaining traveling mate as he was on the trip up from
New Orleans. Before we started I asked him if he was going to be good or
if it would be necessary for me to put the bracelets on. He gave me an
on-the-level look and said:
"'No, I don't think it will. But I pass it up to you. I don't want to
throw you. All I ask is, don't give me too much of a chance if you keep
the irons off of me. I wouldn't be jay enough to try a window-jumping
stunt, but don't give me a show to make either one of the car doors. If
you do I may have to give you a run for it.'
"Well, I could see that he would be all right without the cuffs, and so
I didn't put 'em on him. He rode up with me in the sleeper all the way
from New Orleans to Pittsburg--I let him do the sleeping, though, of
course--and he had a drink when I did and played quarter ante when I
did, and none of the rest of the passengers were any the wiser. He was a
clinking good talker and he told me a lot of interesting stories of
queer propositions that he had been up against. For instance, when we
were running through the Blue Grass region of Kentucky, he turned to me
and asked me where the blue grass was. I told him that the term blue
grass was largely ornamental, and that, while the grass down there was
no doubt high-grade and the limit as fodder for thoroughbreds, I thought
it was mostly green, like the grass the world over.
"'Well, I'm blooming glad to hear you say that,' he replied. 'It proves
that I'm not color blind on the whole gamut of colors, anyhow. If you'd
said there really was blue grass in these fields we're running through,
I'd have given myself up as a bad job in the matter of distinguishing
colors. But as long as the grass is green like other grass--well,
there's some hope for me.'
"'Color-blind, eh?' I asked him.
"'Yes, I guess I am, more or less,' he replied. 'I never knew it,
though, until last spring, and it cost me $15,000 to find it out.'
"'Expensive information,' said I. 'How'd it happen?'
"'If you'll undertake to forget about it by the time we get to
Pittsburg, I'll tell you,' he said. 'I was fooling around one of the big
towns--one of the biggest towns on this side of the Mississippi--last
spring, when I met up with a couple of wiretappers that got me
interested. They were the real kind--not fake tappers who rope fellows
into giving up coin just by showing 'em phony instruments in shady
rooms, but professionals, who really knew how to tap the wires and pull
down the money. They had been working together for some time, and when I
happened to meet them they had just pulled off a swell hog-killing up in
Toronto and had two or three thousand each in their clothes. They had
only recently struck the big town, and, as they had never operated there
before, they didn't have to do any sleuth dodging. Neither did I,
although I was doing a bit of business in the check line occasionally,
and was about a thousand to the good when I met them. We hitched up
together, the three of us, for a drosky whirl, and then they told me
that, while they made it a rule not to let outsiders into their game,
they thought I was good enough to be admitted to a good thing that they
were about to pull off.
"'One of the largest and best patronized of the poolrooms of the town
was 'way on the outskirts of the city. The duck that runs it is worth
close on to a million, and the ticket writers have instructions never to
turn any man's money down, no matter how big the sum or how lead-pipey
the cinch he appears to have. Lumps of $20,000 and $30,000 have
frequently been taken out of that poolroom on single tickets, and it's
one of the few poolrooms where track odds are given.
"'My two new pals had sized up the layout, and when I met them they
already had things fixed to pull down a few comfortable wads. They had
rented a vacant frame cottage about 300 yards across a big vacant lot
from the poolroom, and, by a little night work--they were both practical
wiremen, as well as expert telegraphers--had got the wire into a room on
the second floor of the house all right. It was prairie land all around
and slimly frequented territory, and they had no trouble in rigging up
the wire paraphernalia, which they carried alongside a picket fence to
the porch of the cottage, and thence upstairs. They had the thing all
tested, and every dot and dash that reached the poolroom registered also
in the second floor of that cottage.
"'One of the fellows had formerly worked in a poolroom himself and he
had the race code down as pat as butter. They took me out to have a look
at the layout, not because they wanted a dollar out of me, for they were
on velvet, but simply because they both seemed to take a kind o' shine
to me, and it surely looked good. I spent two or three afternoons in the
second floor front room where the layout was fixed, and the chap who was
expert with the racing code broke the report direct from the track a
dozen times and sent it in himself, after having mastered the operator's
style at the track end of the line, and the poolroom operator was never
a bit the wiser. It was good, all right, that layout, and when they were
all ready to begin work I was in on the play.
"'We decided to make the first killing on the day the Belmont Stakes
were to be run for at Morris Park. I was against their starting it off
on such a big stake event, especially as the race looked to be such a
moral for Hamburg, but they said stake events were as good as selling
races in their business, and so we had a little rehearsal and stood by.
My end of the job was to happen in the poolroom. I was to locate there
by a dust-covered window that looked out of the poolroom across the big
vacant lot to the frame cottage where the layout was installed and wait
for the signal. The signal was to be made by means of a handkerchief
waved in the air by one of the fellows from the window. The color of the
handkerchief was to tell the name of the winner. For instance, if
Hamburg won a white handkerchief was to show at the second-story window;
if Bowling Brook captured the stakes a yellow handkerchief was to be the
signal, and so on. When I got the signal I was to put the money down on
the winner, the tapper was to hold the result from the pool operator for
five minutes to give me time to get the money down, and then I was just
to wait for the poolroom operator to announce the race. It was the
easiest thing in life, and it would have gone through with a rush, not
only on that race, but on a whole lot of other ones later on, if I
hadn't been color blind.
"'I was on hand in the poolroom on the afternoon that we were to do
business and I put a few dollars down on the first races at Morris Park,
just for the sake of getting the ticket writers used to my face and to
avert suspicion. I had a pretty fair line on the horses in training then
and I won two or three out of the bets that I played simply on form. The
fourth race on the card was for the Belmont Stakes, and after the third
race had been confirmed and the first line of betting came in on the
stake race I lounged over to the dust-colored window and looked
uninterested. But I had the tail of my eye on the window of that frame
cottage all the time, nevertheless. I had $2,000 of my pals' money in my
clothes and $1,000 of my own. I was a bit nervous, but I knew that I had
a pipe, and I also knew that the poolroom people had mighty little show
to get next. I had all kinds of a front on me then, and a $5,000 or even
larger bet was, as I say, not so unusual in that poolroom as to scare
'em or cause 'em to become suspicious.
"'Well, the second line of betting came in, with Hamburg the natural
favorite at 4 to 5 on in the betting, Bowling Brook 4 to 1 against and
the rest at write-your-own-ticket figures. The poolroom took in
thousands of dollars of Hamburg money, for nobody in the big crowd that
surged about the poolroom could figure any other horse in the race to
have a chance. I myself thought it was a sure thing for Hamburg, but I
wasn't playing thinks, but cinches, and so I just stood at that window
and waited for the signal. I was, I suppose, somewhat excited internally
when I thought of the possibilities of the game, but nobody knew it. The
poolroom operator announced, 'They're at the post at Morris Park,' and
then I knew that 'ud be the last direct communication he'd have with
Morris Park until after the running of the Belmont Stakes. I leaned
there on that window, with one hand resting on my chin comfortably,
waiting for the flutter of the handkerchief away across the vacant lot.
The sun shone brilliantly, and the window of the frame cottage was in
plain view, and I didn't figure it as among the possibilities that I
could make a mistake.
"'Well, when the whole crowd in the poolroom had become sort o' mute
with expectancy and the betting at the desk was almost over, I got the
signal. It was the quickest flash in the world, a white handkerchief, as
I was perfectly positive, nervously waved three times from the
second-story window of the frame cottage. I didn't see my pal waving the
handkerchief--only the flutter of the white handkerchief which announced
that Hamburg had won. So, without any apparent excitement, but in the
laziest kind of a way in the world, I just yawned, stretched my arms,
and remarked to a few fellows standing nearby:
"'"What's the use of doping over the race. It's a pipe for Hamburg. I'm
going up and put a couple of thousand on Hamburg."
"'So I walked up to the desk, passed over six $500 bills and said
"Hamburg." The ticket writer took the money without any visible emotion
and wrote me a ticket. Then I walked out among the crowd to hear the
calling off of the race, which I knew would happen within three or four
minutes.
"'"They're off for the Belmont," the operator shouted in about three
minutes, and then said I to myself, "What an exercise gallop for
Hamburg! What a dead easy way of picking up large pieces of money!"
"'I wasn't worried even a little bit when Bowling Brook was 'way in the
lead in the stretch.
"'Hamburg's just laying in a soft spot right there, third, and when it
comes to a drive, how cheap, he'll make a crab like Bowling Brook look!
"'Then the operator, after the ten seconds' delay following the
announcement of the horses' positions in the stretch, called out:
"'"Bowling Brook wins!"
"'Say, I'm not an excitable kind of a duck, nor dead easy to keel over,
but, on the level, my head went 'round and I had to grip hold of a chair
top when I heard that announcement. I couldn't make it out. It seemed
out of the question. I knew that my two pals hadn't dumped me, because
hadn't I played $2,000 of their money? At first I thought the operator
made a mistake, and I waited with a spark of hope for the confirmation
of the race. The confirmation came in. Bowling Brook had walked in, and
Hamburg had been disgracefully beaten.
"'An hour later I met my two pals downtown. They greeted me with grins,
and held out their hands for the thousands.
"'"Thing didn't go through, did it?" I said to them. "Where was the
mistake, anyhow? What was the white handkerchief--Hamburg's
signal--waved for?"
"'They looked at me savagely. They were positive that I had tricked
them--that I had really played Bowling Brook with the money and was
holding it out on them.
"'"White handkerchief be blowed!" said the man that had given the
signal, pulling a light yellow handkerchief from his pocket. "What color
do you call this?"
"'Well, then I saw how the mistake had been made, and that I had made
it. In the brilliant sunshine I had mistaken the light yellow
handkerchief for a white one, and it was up to me. They didn't give me a
chance to get in a word, though, for they believed, and believe yet, I
suppose, that I had thrown them, and they both hopped me at once. I had
to put up the fight of my life, but I downed them both finally with the
aid of a chair and a spittoon, and got away. That's how I lost
$15,000--counting the winnings we'd have made had I played Bowling Brook
that time--by being color blind.'"
"WHOOPING" A RACE-HORSE UNDER THE WIRE.
_A Novel Method of Treating Sulky Thoroughbreds That Often Works
Profitably._
"I see they hollered an old skate home and got him under the wire first
by three lengths out at the Newport merry-go-round the other day," said
an old-time trainer out at the Gravesend paddock. "Don't catch the
meaning of hollering a horse home? Well, it's scaring a sulker pretty
near out of his hide and hair and making him run by sheer force of
whoops let out altogether. This nag, Kriss Kringle, that was hollered
home at Newport a few days ago, is a sulker from the foot-hills. He was
sold as an N. G. last year for $25, and at the beginning of this season
he prances in and wins nine or ten straight races right off the reel at
the Western tracks, hopping over the best they've got out there. Then he
goes wrong, declines to crawl a yard, and is turned out. They yank him
into training again awhile back, put him up against the best a-running
on the other side of the Alleghanies, and he makes 'em look like
bull-pups one day and the next he can't beat a fat man. He comes near
getting his people ruled off for in-and-out kidding, and then, a couple
of weeks ago, or maybe a bit less, he goes out and chews up the track
record, and gets within a second of the world's record for the mile and
three-eighths, I believe it was.
"Then, Tuesday they have him in at a mile and a sixteenth, with a real
nippy field, as Western horses go. The right people, knowing full well
the old Springbok gelding's propensities, shove their big coin in on him
anyway, and take a chance on him being unable to keep up with a steam
roller after his swell race a while before, and the whole crowd fall
into line and bet on Kringle until the books give them the cold-storage
countenance and say, 'Nix, no more.' Then they get up into the stand and
around the finishing rail and they see the aged Kriss, who's a rank
favorite, begin like a land crab, when he usually goes out from the jump
and spread-eagles his bunch. They begin the hard-luck moan when they see
the sour son of Springbok trailing along third in a field of five, and
they look into each other's mugs and chew about being on a dead one.
Turning into the stretch, the old skate is a poor third, and stopping
every minute, a plain case of sulks, like he's put up so many times
before. The two in front of him have got it right between them, when
Kris comes along into the last sixteenth, still third by a little bit,
and then the gang let out in one whoop and holler that could be heard
four miles. It's 'Wowee! come on here, ye danged old buck-jumper!' and
'Whoop-la! you Kringle!' from nearly every one of the thousand leather
lungs in the stand and up against the rail, and the surly old rogue pins
his ears forward and hears the yelp. Then it's all off. The old $25
cast-off jumps out like a scared rabbit at the sixteenth-pole. The
nearer he gets to the stand the louder the yelping hits him and the
bigger he strides; and he collars the two in front of him as if they
were munching carrots in their stalls, and romps under the string three
lengths to the good. That's what hollering a horse home means. It's a
game that can only be worked on sulkers. The yelling scares the sulker
into running, whereas it's liable to make a good-dispositioned horse
stop as if sand-bagged.
"I've seen the holler-'em-in gag worked often at both the legitimate and
the outlaw tracks, and for big money. One of the biggest
hog-slaughterings that was ever made at the game was when an Iroquois
nag, a six-year-old gelding named McKeever, turned a rank outsider trick
at Alexander Island, Va., in 1895. The boys that knew what was going to
happen that time surely did buy it by the basketful for a long time
afterward. McKeever was worth about $2 in his latter career, and not a
whole lot more at any stage of the game, according to my way of sizing
'em. As a five and six-year-old, he couldn't even make the doped outlaws
think they were in a race, but his people kept him plugging away on the
chance that some day or other he might pick up some of the spirit of his
sire, the royal Iroquois, and pay for his oats and rubbing, anyhow. When
he was brought to Alexander Island in the spring of '95, and tried out
it was seen that he was just the same old truck-mule. One morning, after
he'd been beaten a number of times by several Philadelphia blocks, when
at 100 to 1 or so in the books, his owner had him out for a bit of a
canter around the ring, with a 140-pound stable boy on him. A lot of
stable boys and rail birds were scattered all around the infield,
assembled in groups at intervals of 100 feet or so, chewing grass and
watching the horses at their morning work. This old McKeever starts
around the course as if he's doing a sleep-walking stunt. The boy gives
him the goad and the bat, but it's no good. McKeever sticks to his
caterpillar gait, and his owner leans against the rail with a watch in
his mitt and mumbles unholy things about the skate. There's a laugh
among the stable boys and the rail birds as McKeever goes gallumphing
around. Then a stable lad that's got a bit of Indian in him leans over
the rail just as McKeever's coming down, and lets out a whoop that can
be heard across the Potomac. McKeever gives a jump, and away he goes
like the wind. It looks so funny to the rail birds along the line that
they all take up the yelp, and McKeever jumps out faster at every shout.
He gets to going like a real, sure-enough race horse by the time he has
made the circuit once, and he keeps right on. The owner gets next to it
that it's the shouting that's keeping the old plug on the go, and he
waves his arms and passes the word along for the boys to keep it up.
McKeever does six furlongs in 1:14 with the assistance of the hollering,
and the owner takes him off the track, gives him a look-over and some
extra attention, and smiles to himself.
"Then he pushes McKeever into a six-and-half furlong race on the
following day. He stations about twenty or twenty-five rail birds, all
of 'em stable boys out of a job, in the infield, and hands them out
their yelling instructions. McKeever is up against one of the best
fields of sprinters at the track, and he goes to the post at 30 to 1 and
sticks at that. His owner puts a large number of his pals next to what's
going to happen, and not a man of them plays the good thing at the
track. They have their coin telegraphed in bundles to the poolrooms all
over the country. McKeever gets out in front, and he hasn't made more
than a dozen jumps before one of the kids inside the rail throws a whoop
that makes the people in the stand put their hands to their ears.
McKeever gives a swerve and a side step, and away he goes like the
Empire State express. A hundred feet further, when he's four lengths in
the lead, and the others, including the even money shot, nowhere, a
couple more rail birds shoot out another double-jointed yell, and
McKeever jumps out again like an ice-yacht. He gets the holler at every
100 feet of his journey, the rail birds not taking any chances on his
stopping, although after the first furlong he is six lengths to the
good, and the result is that McKeever simply buck-jumps in, pulled
double, with eight lengths of open daylight between him and the even
money shot. The owner looks sad, like a man who hasn't put a dollar
down, and says real hard things to McKeever when the horse is being led
to his stable. When he gets him inside his stall, though, the hugs and
loaf sugar that fall McKeever's way are a heap. The old-time poolroom
people will tell you yet how they had to turn the box, a good many of
'em, the day that McKeever was hollered home at old Alexander Island.
"And, talking about Alexander Island, there were some funny ones yanked
off over there, sure enough, some of them almost as funny as a few that
happened over in New York at the legit tracks this passing season.
Without hurling out any names, I'll just tell you of how a plunger who
has been a good deal talked about this year, on account of his big
winnings, got the dump-and-the-ditch at the hands of a
poor-but-honest-not owner at Alexander Island in the same year of 1895.
This plunger wasn't such a calcined tamale in those days as he is now,
but he was some few, and he generally had enough up his sleeve in order
to keep him in cigarettes and peanuts; which is to say that he had a
winning way about him, and access to everything that was doing at that
outlaw track. He dealt in jockeys quite a lot, giving them their figure
with a slight scaling down, according to his own idea of what was coming
to them for being kind to him. He was wise and he was haughty, and
toward the wind-up of that Alexander Island season he fell into the
notion, apparently, that things had to be done his way or the kickers
fade out of the game.
"This poor owner that I'm talking about went on to Alexander Island with
an ordinary bunch of sprinters, all except one filly, that was real
good, but a bit high in flesh, and not ripe. It was a filly that could
as a matter of fact beat anything at the track, being right and on edge,
and she had the additional advantage of not being known all about. The
poor owner has his own boy along with him, and he's pretty hard up. He
sticks this filly in a six-furlong event, with the idea of really going
after the purse, which he requires for expenses. He knows that the filly
isn't right, but he dopes it that she can beat the lot pitted against
her, anyhow, and he really means her to win. He tells his boy to take
her right out in front and get as good a lead as he can, so that in case
her flesh stops her the rest'll never be able to get near her. That's
the arrangement right up until post time. The filly--well, suppose we
call her Juliet--is not very well known at Alexander Island, and she has
5 to 1 against her.
"Now, it happens that this plunger knows all about Juliet being, as I
say, a pretty fast proposition, but he doesn't think she can win in her
condition, and, anyhow, he has something doing on another one in the
race; he has so much doing in the race, in fact, that all the rest of
'em, except Juliet, are dead to the one he has picked to play. The
plunger digs up the owner of Juliet and says to him:
"'My son, your baby won't do to-day.'
"'She'll make a stab, though,' said the owner. 'I need the cush, being
several shy of paying my feed bills. The game has been throwing me
lately. She's going to try.'
"'You need the purse, hey?' said the plunger. 'That's not much money.
Only $200, ain't it? How'd $500 do?'
"'Spot coin?' asks the impecunious owner.
"'Spot coin after my weanling gets the money.'
"'You're on,' says the poor-but-honest-not owner. 'I'm not any more
phony than my neighbors, but it's a case of real dig with me just now.
Juliet'll finish in the ruck. Are you cinchy about the one you've got
turning the trick?'
"'It's like getting money in a letter,' says the plunger.
"'All right,' says the poor owner, 'you can walk around to my stall and
push me the five centuries after they're in.'
"The poor owner saw his boy, and Juliet's head was yanked off, with the
boy's toes tickling her ears. She could have won in a walk, short of
work as she was, but the boy had a biceps, and he held her down so that
the plunger's good thing went through all right.
"After the race the plunger, who had made a great big thing out of it,
hunted up the poor owner and beefed about the $500. He said that he
hadn't been able to get as much money on his good one as he had expected
and asked the poor owner to compromise for $300. The plunger's poor
mouth doesn't tickle the poor owner a little bit, but he is a pretty
foxy piece of work himself, and he takes the three hundred without
letting on a particle that he thinks it a cheap gag. The plunger goes
away thinking he has the poor owner on his staff for good, and the poor
owner makes sundry and divers resolutions within himself, to the general
effect that the next time he does business with that plunger he'll know
it.
"Well, the poor owner doesn't race his good filly again for a couple of
weeks, and all the time she's getting good. He gives her her work at
about 3 o'clock every morning, in the dreamy dawn, so that nobody gets
onto it just how good she is getting. He shoots her in about two weeks
after he has been dickered down by the plunger. He knows that she's
going to win, and with his other skates he has picked up nearly a
thousand wherewith to play the Juliet girl to win. On the day before the
race the plunger comes to him again.
"'I see you've got that nice little girl of yours in to-morrow,' he
says. 'How good is she?'
"'She's got a show for the big end of it,' says the poor owner.
"'Um,' says the plunger. 'Well, she'll only be at 5 to 1, whereas I've
got a cinch in that that'll be as good as 15 to 1. Do you think we can
do a little business?'
"'On a strictly pay-in-advance basis, yes,' says the poor owner, chewing
a straw. 'Maybe I'll be able to see my way to delivering the goods for a
thousand down. Otherwise I win.'
"The plunger made a terrific beef, and tried persuasiveness, oiliness,
bull-dozing the whole works, with the poor owner.
"'Why,' he says, 'I can buy all the Juliets from here to Kentucky and
back for a thousand.'
"'Yes,' says the poor owner, 'but you can't shove a 15 to 1 shot through
every day, either. Let's not talk about it any more. You've got my
terms. Thousand down, right now, and Juliet will also ran. No thousand,
Juliet walks, and I'll get the coin anyhow by betting on her.'
"He got the thousand two hours before the race was run. The poor owner
looked Juliet over, and called his boy into a dark corner of the stable.
"'Take her out in front, son,' he said, 'and tow-rope them. Don't let
'em get within a block of you. I'll send your mother a couple o' hundred
after you fetch her home.'
"'She'd win with a dummy on her,' says the kid.
"Then the poor-but-honest-not owner takes the thousand he already has in
his kick, and the thousand the beefing plunger has given him, and
spraddles it all over the United States on Juliet at from 5 to 7 to 1.
"Juliet wins by fourteen lengths, and the plunger, with his mouth
twitching, hunts up the owner of Juliet. All he gets is a line of chile
con carne conversation, and, finally, a puck in the eye.
"'Do others or they'll do you' isn't the way they used to teach it when
I went to Sunday-school," concluded the old-time trainer, "but there are
occasions when the rule just has to be twisted that way."