Taking Chances Part 19

CARD-PLAYING ON OCEAN STEAMERS.

_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 steams.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+lling, 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 s.h.i.+ps. 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 fl.u.s.tered, 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 const.i.tutional 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 circ.u.mstances? 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 pa.s.sengers 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 steams.h.i.+ps, English and American, absolutely prohibiting British subjects from playing cards at all aboard s.h.i.+p."

"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 a.s.sert 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 s.h.i.+p.

"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 steams.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+ps for fifteen years, in spite of the efforts of the steams.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.e 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, flus.h.i.+ng 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 d.a.m.ned 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 fas.h.i.+on of sticking to a bad proposition; but I, for one, think it is pure vanity. Turner was kept off the s.h.i.+ps of all the lines after that, and I don't know what became of him.

"How they contrived to keep Turner off the s.h.i.+ps 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 steams.h.i.+p 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 steams.h.i.+p card sharpers, and all the steams.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sage,' 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 steams.h.i.+p company, you understand, is not the regulator of the habits of its steamers' pa.s.sengers. If the pa.s.sengers don't know any better than to play cards with sharpers, that is their own lookout. And a steams.h.i.+p company cannot decline to sell pa.s.sage 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 steams.h.i.+p people know that this is practically impossible, for no man who is done at cards by one of these men on an ocean steams.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 steams.h.i.+p 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?"

THIS DOG KNEW THE GAME OF POKER.

_That, at Least, is What the Dog's Owner Claimed, and the Dog's Owner Ought to Know._

"For a fox terrier, that dog don't seem to know a whole lot," said one of the men in the back room of an uptown cafe.

The old fox terrier was burying his gray muzzle in the lap of his master and wagging his stump of a tail foolishly. His master was a squat, thin-faced man of the all-aged cla.s.s; that is, he might have been anywhere from 30 to 55 years of age. Running away from the corners of his shrewd eyes were many tiny wrinkles. In his get-up he looked like ready money. He lapped the dog's clipped ears one over the other and looked reminiscent.