Taking Chances Part 1

TAKING CHANCES.

by Clarence L. Cullen.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

To the man who, at any period of his days, has been bitten by that ferocious and fever-producing insect colloquially known as the "horse bug," and likewise to the man whose nervous system has been racked by the depredations of the "poker microbe," these tales of the turf and of the green cloth are sympathetically dedicated. The thoroughbred running horse is a peculiar animal. While he is often beaten, the very wisest veterans of the turf have a favorite maxim to the effect that "The ponies can't be beat"-meaning the thoroughbred racers; which sounds paradoxical enough. Poker, too, is a mystifying affair, in that all men who play it appear, from their own statements, to lose at it persistently and perennially. There is surely something weird and uncanny about a game that numbers only losers among its devotees.

However, poker-players are addicted to persiflage. The genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, blown-in-the-bottle pokerist rarely acknowledges that he is ahead of the game-until the day after.

These stories, which were originally printed in the columns of the New York _Sun_, belong largely to the eminent domain of strict truthfulness.

If they do not serve to show that the "horse bug" and the "poker microbe" are good things to steer clear of, they will by no means have failed of their purpose; for the writer had nothing didactic in view in setting them down as he heard them.

_Clarence Louis Cullen_.

_New York_, _Sept. 1, 1900._

THIS WIRETAPPER WAS COLOR-BLIND.

_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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sengers 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 Gra.s.s region of Kentucky, he turned to me and asked me where the blue gra.s.s was. I told him that the term blue gra.s.s was largely ornamental, and that, while the gra.s.s down there was no doubt high-grade and the limit as fodder for thoroughbreds, I thought it was mostly green, like the gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s in these fields we're running through, I'd have given myself up as a bad job in the matter of distinguis.h.i.+ng colors. But as long as the gra.s.s is green like other gra.s.s-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 b.u.t.ter. 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' s.h.i.+ne 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 n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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, pa.s.sed 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 finis.h.i.+ng 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, a.s.sembled in groups at intervals of 100 feet or so, chewing gra.s.s 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 pa.s.ses the word along for the boys to keep it up.