_Some of the Crafty Dodges Resorted to by the Professional Sharpers Who
"Work the Liners."_
An Englishman who travels a good deal was generalizing at one of the
clubs last night on the subject of the card sharpers who devote
themselves exclusively to the ocean steamers.
"It's a marvel to me," he said, "that the American steamship people, or
the police, or somebody, can't drive these sharpers off the American
steamers. It's nothing short of disgraceful. Must be something wrong
somewhere. Can't be collusion, I don't suppose, or"----
"Oh, come now, stow that, mate," said an American who does a bit of
traveling himself. "If they're not worse, and more of them, on the
English transatlantic steamers, I'll turn British subject, take the
Queen's shilling, put on a red coat, and fight all the naked blacks from
Dahomey to"----
"Humbug! We don't fight naked blacks. We only subdue them, that's all.
Punitive expeditions, you know. But about these card sharpers on the
American ships. Why, it's simply barbarous, you know, to permit them to
mingle with gentlemen as they do. And the worst of it is, the cads get
themselves up like gentlemen, so how's a man to know"----
"Must have been hit yourself last trip over, old man," put in the
American.
The Englishman got red and flustered, as Englishmen will when compelled
to admit that the universe is not entirely an open book to them.
"Well, yes, I did," he admitted gamely. "Not very hard, though. I think
twenty guineas would about cover it. But it wasn't the money so much. It
was the way the thing was done--positively beastly, I say. Man was
introduced to me on sailing day on the other side by an American I know
well. Good fellow, too. Man had been introduced to him by somebody else,
and so on, so that it would take a Scotland Yard man to trace how he
came to know and rob most of us coming across. Worst of it was, I myself
presented the chap to any number of fellows I knew on the ship, and all
of 'em got bit more or less, and all of 'em looked at me reproachfully
when it came out after we landed that the chap was a sharper, just as I
looked reproachfully at the man who"----
"Sort of endless chain, wasn't it?" put in the American.
"Well, if you want to put it that way," said the Englishman. "And worse
still, the man got my guineas at my own game. If it had been poker, now,
I wouldn't have minded so much, for I never could master that queer
game, and I don't believe there's anything in it, anyhow. But nap! Chap
beat me clean at nap, that I've been playing ever since I was at Harrow.
Odd, too, that I beat him easily at first and had all the luck, and was
probably fifty guineas ahead of him. Then suddenly the luck changed, you
see"----
The American smiled.
"What the deuce are you grinning at? The luck changed, as I say, and, by
Jove, the fellow positively couldn't lose. If my daughter hadn't become
ill on the fourth day out, I dare say I might have lost quite a bit of
money, and"----
"Unquestionably you would have," put in the American. "So that in one
respect your daughter's illness--which I trust was not serious--was
really a blessing to you. It's queer to me that no Englishman I have
ever met in ocean voyaging is able to perceive that when he is playing
at cards with a stranger who permits him to win easily and heavily at
first, it is time for him to make his devoirs, more or less respectful,
to the stranger, and proceed to take a constitutional on the main deck,
henceforth abjuring cards with said stranger. Now, an American is able
to see into that game right away. If he is playing with a friend, and
the friend is a winner from the go-off, as we say over here, all well
and good. The American voyager who is up to snuff puts his friend's
initial winnings down to the chances of the game. But when he gets into
a game with a stranger, and the stranger simply shoves money from the
outset over to his side of the table--well, do you know what the
American of to-day does under those circumstances? He simply awaits the
moment when the luck begins to change, and then he has an imperative
appointment with his wife in the cabin. He thus picks up quite a bit of
cigar money from a man who he instinctively knows is a sharper."
"Fancy now," said the Englishman. "If I had only known that"----
"But you didn't know, and, as I say, I never came across the Englishman
who did. Why, the ocean voyaging card sharpers have become so well aware
of this little shrewd habit of American passengers with whom they sit
down to a game that of late years they have altogether abandoned that
old, old trick of permitting their victims to win with ease at the
outset. They only work that trick nowadays on Englishmen. Fact is, I
think there ought to be a rule on all transatlantic steamships, English
and American, absolutely prohibiting British subjects from playing cards
at all aboard ship."
"Tommyrot!" said the Englishman.
"Not so much so as you might imagine," said the American. "Of course, I
don't mean that literally, and yet I don't know but what, after all, it
might be a good thing. I have watched the wake of a steamer on the trip
across the Atlantic fifty-two times--that is, I have made twenty-six
round voyages--and I suppose that on these voyages I have seen as many
as a thousand men plucked at cards. I will venture to assert that 80 per
cent. of them were Englishmen. So you will perceive there is some
justification for what I said about your countrymen playing cards aboard
ship.
"I've seen some clever men of your country badly done by the ocean-going
card sharpers, too. At the time your Lord Lonsdale came to the United
States--Violet Cameron incident, you know--he was a pretty young man,
even if he did at that period of his life stand in urgent need of a
guardian with a heavy club. Well, amid the newspaper uproar over his
landing in this country with the Cameron, the fact did not come out that
Lonsdale was plucked of $12,000 on the trip over by Ned Turner, one of
the most notable of the older clique of steamship sharpers. But it's a
fact, all the same. I was not only a board the steamer at the time, but
I was one of a number of men who endeavored to pound some sense into
young Lonsdale's head while the plucking was going on. But he was a
stubborn chap and would listen to no one, and even when he was quite
convinced that Turner was a sharper, at the end of the voyage he stood
for his big loss like a little man, and became genuinely angry at some
of his English friends aboard who recommended him to stop payment on the
checks he had given Turner to cover the greater portion of the plucking.
"I think Turner had it in mind to do Lonsdale when he got aboard at
Liverpool. Turner had been working the ships for fifteen years, in spite
of the efforts of the steamship companies to keep him off their vessels,
and at this time he was a man of 40 or thereabouts. Lonsdale was pretty
liberal in the use of wine at this time, and it was at the buffet that
Turner, who was a fine-looking insinuating and accomplished man, found
young Lonsdale on sailing day. The two men struck up a friendship from
the very first day of the voyage, and it was Lonsdale himself who first
suggested, as he afterward acknowledged--for he was a manly fellow--the
poker game. Lonsdale had only recently learned the hands in poker--which
is about all any man ever learns about it, if the truth were told--and
he had the poker initiate's enthusiasm for the game to an exaggerated
extent. Before going any further, I ought to say that Turner always
maintained afterward that in his play with Lonsdale he was perfectly on
the level.
"'The young fellow insisted on playing,' said Turner, 'and he couldn't
play any more than my aunt in Connecticut. I played with him, because
that's my business. But I didn't have to play crooked--and I don't admit
that I ever did play crooked, understand--to get his $12,000.'
"Well, at any rate young Lonsdale and Turner started the game on the
first day out, and kept it going almost until the steamer passed Fire
Island. Of course Turner beat him right along. He made no effort to let
Lonsdale win from him at first. He simply played poker and raked in the
young man's money and checks. A lot of us aboard knew Turner, and those
of us who had met Lonsdale in England got him aside on the second day
out and diplomatically put it to him that he was engaged in a pretty
difficult encounter--that, in brief, Turner was a professional player of
cards. For our pains we were told that we were too confoundedly
officious, that he was more than 7 years of age and knew what he was
about, and all the rest--you know the talk of a boy; and this boy was
flushed, too, you understand.
"At any rate, when the steamer was drawing near this shore Lonsdale
decided that he had had enough--not that he would not have gone on
playing for another seven days, had the voyage been protracted to that
extent, but he had to get ready to land. Several of us were in the
card-room when the last hand was played. Turner won the hand and
Lonsdale scribbled a check on his American banker for the amount the
hand represented. Then he looked up at Turner for a minute and said:
"'Some of my friends here estimate you a little unkindly, Mr. Turner.'
"'How's that?' inquired Turner, looking not a whit surprised.
"'Well,' said Lonsdale, 'they maintain that your skill at cards affords
you something better than a livelihood.'
"'I never denied that,' said Turner coolly.
"'In playing with me on this voyage you have employed skill alone?'
"'At your suggestion, I have played draw poker with you for seven days.
I understand draw poker, and I have $12,000 of your money. Do you want
it back?'
"You see, that was a magnificent bluff on Turner's part. The young chap,
he knew, would not welch.
"'Oh, if you choose to be insulting'----said Lonsdale, flushing hotly,
and he rose from the card-table and left the room.
"Well, a couple of elderly Englishmen aboard who knew Lonsdale and his
father before him went to him then and told him that it would be
perfectly proper and right for him to stop payment on the checks he had
given to Turner, who, they told him in so many words, was nothing short
of a swindler.
"'Mind your own damned business,' said Lonsdale. 'I'll do nothing of the
sort,' and that was the end of it. It must be confessed that you folks
over there have a wonderfully game fashion of sticking to a bad
proposition; but I, for one, think it is pure vanity. Turner was kept
off the ships of all the lines after that, and I don't know what became
of him.
"How they contrived to keep Turner off the ships unless he really wished
to remain off is something that I can't explain, for it is simply a
plain statement of fact to say that the steamship companies have always
found, and probably always will find, it impossible to prevent the card
sharpers from running on their boats. They have often tried it. They
tried it on one notable occasion, as I remember, with George McGarrahan,
in 1881. McGarrahan was the Nestor of the steamship card sharpers, and
all the steamship companies knew him. The president of one of the most
prominent transatlantic lines sent for McGarrahan--who, by the way, has
since died in New York--and told him that he would not be permitted to
travel henceforth on the vessels of the line.
"'The deuce you say!' replied McGarrahan. 'How are you going to stop
me?'
"'Refuse to give you passage,' answered the president.
"'You will, will you?' said McGarrahan. 'Well, if you do that, I'll get
enough damages out of your line to make it unnecessary for me ever to
touch a card again as long as I live.'
"His position was correct in law, as the president of this line found
out upon investigation. The steamship company, you understand, is not
the regulator of the habits of its steamers' passengers. If the
passengers don't know any better than to play cards with sharpers, that
is their own lookout. And a steamship company cannot decline to sell
passage to a man because it claims he is a short-card player. It
devolves upon the company to prove that the man is a card sharper, and
the steamship people know that this is practically impossible, for no
man who is done at cards by one of these men on an ocean steamship is
going to rise in his seat and make announcement of the fact to the
world.
"Observation tells me that there are not nearly so many of these men on
the ships now as formerly. The short-card players who make a business of
traveling have found the trains much more profitable, since the officers
of the steamers got into the habit of going quietly among the voyagers
of a card-playing turn and warning them of the danger of getting into
games with such and such men. That was the system, and a pretty
effectual one, too, adopted by the steamship companies to squelch the
ocean card sharpers. The result has been that the sharper can now only
make a general campaign of all the big steamers--and the big steamers
are the only steamers they consider worth working--before the officers
know them, and then their game is dead practically. So that they find it
more profitable to take to the swell trains on the swell runs, making
the same trip rarely, and thus preventing their countenances from
getting too familiar to the railroad people."
"How the deuce do you know all this?" inquired the Englishman.
"Well," replied the American, "you may be pretty certain that I haven't
dreamed it. Besides, I figured it that you required some consolation for
the loss of your twenty guineas. Didn't you?"