CHAPTER X
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 theice-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. Itlooked, at first sight, like a short stubby piece of iron, abouteighteen inches high. It must have weighed fifty or sixty pounds. Alongone side was a handle, and on the opposite side an adjustable hook witha sharp, wide prong.
Garrick bent down and managed to wedge the hook into the little spacebetween the sill and the bottom of the ice-box door. Then he beganpumping 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 callwas met with laughter. A Tenderloin crowd has no use for raids, exceptas a spectacle. Between us we held them back, while Garrick worked. Thecrowd jeered.
It was the work of only a few seconds, however, before Garrick changedthe jeers to a hearty round of exclamations of surprise. The doorseemed to be lifted up, literally, until some of its bolts and hingesactually bulged and cracked. It was being crushed, like the flimsyoutside door, before the unwonted attack.
Upwards, by fractions of an inch, by millimeters, the door was beingforced. There was such straining and stress of materials that I reallybegan to wonder whether the building itself would stand it.
"Scientific jimmying," gasped Garrick, as the door bulged more and moreand 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 theice-box door and the outer stonework of the building itself. Then hejammed some pieces of wood in to wedge it tighter and again began topump at the handle vigorously.
"What is it?" I asked, almost in awe at the titanic power of theapparently insignificant little thing.
"My scientific sledgehammer," he panted, still working the lever morevigorously than ever backward and forward. "In other words, a hydraulicram. There is no swinging of axes or wielding of crow-bars necessaryany more, Dillon, in breaking down a door like this. Such things areobsolete. This little jimmy, if you want to call it that, has a powerof ten tons. I think that's about enough."
It seemed as if the door were buckling and being literally wrenched offits hinges by the irresistible ten-ton punch of the hydraulic ram.
Garrick sprang back, grasping me by the arm and pulling me too. Butthere was no need of caution. What was left of the door swung back onits loosened hinges, seemed to tremble a moment, and then, with a dullthud crashed down on the beautiful green marble of the reception hall,reverberating.
We peered beyond. Inside all was darkness. At the very first sign oftrouble 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 thepatrol 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 thelimelight of the public eye, except their duty. Besides Dillon wasthere, too.
"Here," he ordered huskily, "four of you fellows jump into each of thenext door houses and run up to the roof. Four more men go through tothe rear of this house. The rest stay here and await orders," hedirected, detailing them off quickly, as he endeavoured to grasp thestrange situation.
On both sides of the street heads were out of windows. On other housesthe steps were full of spectators. Thousands of people must haveswarmed in the street. It was pandemonium.
Yet inside the house into which we had just broken it was all darknessand silence.
The door had yielded to the scientific sledge-hammering where it wouldhave shattered, otherwise, all the axes in the department. What wasnext?
Garrick jumped briskly over the wreckage into the building. Instead ofthe lights and gayety which we had seen on the previous night, all wasblack mystery. The robbers' cave yawned before us. I think we were allprepared for some sort of gunplay, for we knew the crooks to bedesperate characters. As we followed Garrick closely we were surprisedto encounter not even physical force.
Someone struck a light. Garrick, groping about in the shadows, foundthe switch, and one after another the lights in the various roomswinked up.
I have seldom seen such confusion as greeted us as, with Dillon waivinghis "John Doe" warrant over his head, we hurried upstairs to the mainhall on the second floor, where the greater part of the gambling wasdone. Furniture was overturned and broken, and there had been no timeto remove the heavier gambling apparatus. Playing cards, however,chips, racing sheets from the afternoon, dice, everything portable andtangible and small enough to be carried had disappeared.
But the greatest surprise of all was in store. Though we had seen noone leave by any of the doors, nor by the doors of any of the houses onthe block, nor by the roofs, or even by the back yard, according to thereport of the police who had been sent in that direction, there was nota living soul in the house from roof to cellar. Search as we did, wecould find not one of the scores of people whom I had seen enter in thecourse of the evening while I was watching on the corner.
Dillon, ever mindful of some of the absurd rules of evidence in suchcases laid down by the courts, had had an official photographersummoned and he was proceeding from room to room, snapping pictures ofapparatus that was left in place and preserving a film record of thecondition of things generally.
Garrick was standing ruefully beside the roulette wheel at which somany 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 tangledseries of minute wires and electro-magnets in the delicate mechanismnow broken open before us. Delicate brushes led the current into thewheel.
With another blow of the axe, Garrick disclosed wires running downthrough the leg of the table to the floor and under the carpet tobuttons 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 ata straight game of roulette. But this wheel wasn't even straight withall the odds in favor of the bank, as they are naturally. This game waselectrically controlled. Others are mechanically controlled by what arecalled the 'mule's ear,' and other devices. You CAN'T win. These wiresand magnets can be made to attract the little ball into any pocket theoperator desires. Each one of the pockets contains an electro-magnet.One set of electro-magnets in the red pockets is connected with onebutton under the carpet and a set of batteries. The other series oflittle magnets in the black pockets is connected with another buttonand the batteries."
He had picked up the little ball. "This ball," he said as he examinedit, "is not really of ivory, but of a composition that looks likeivory, coating a hollow, soft-iron ball inside. Soft iron is attractedby an electro-magnet. Whichever set of magnets is energized attractsthe ball and by this simple method it is in the power of the operatorto let the ball go to red or black as he may wish. Other similararrangements control the odd or even, and other combinations, also frompush buttons. There isn't an honest gambling machine in the wholeplace. The whole thing is crooked from start to finish,--the men, themachines,----"
"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 andswitches. He did not need to say anything more to expose the characterof 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 wasdeserted. It seemed as if the gamblers had disappeared as though in afairy tale. Search room after room as Dillon's men did they were unableto find a living thing.
One of the men had discovered, back of the gambling rooms on the secondfloor, a little office evidently used by those who ran the joint. Itwas scantily furnished, as though its purpose might have been merely aplace where they could divide up the profits in private. A desk, acabinet and a safe, besides a couple of chairs, were all that the roomcontained.
Someone, however, had done some quick work in the little office duringthose minutes while Garrick was opening the great ice-box door with hishydraulic ram, for on every side were scattered papers, the desk hadbeen rifled, and even from the safe practically everything of any valuehad been removed. It was all part of the general scheme of things inthe gambling joint. Practically nothing that was evidential that couldbe readily removed had been left. Whoever had planned the place musthave been a genius as far as laying out precautions against a raid wereconcerned.
Garrick, Dillon and I ran hastily through some scattered correspondenceand other documents that spilled out from some letter files on thefloor, but as far as I could make out there was nothing of any greatimportance that had been overlooked.
Dillon ordered the whole mass to be bundled up and taken off when theother paraphernalia was removed so that it could be gone through at ourleisure, and the search continued.
From the "office" a staircase led down by a back way and we followedit, looking carefully to see where it led.
A low exclamation from Garrick arrested our attention. In a curvebetween landings he had kicked something and had bent down to pick itup. An electric pocket flashlight which one of the men had picked updisclosed under its rays a package of papers evidently dropped bysomeone who was carrying away in haste an armful of stuff.
"Markers with the house," exclaimed Garrick as he ran over the contentsof the package hurriedly. "I. O. U.'s for various amounts and allinitialed--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 separatethem from the others, evidently.
Garrick was hastily totalling them up and they seemed to amount to atidy sum.
"How can he ever pay?" I asked, amazed as the sum crept on upward inthe direction of six figures.
"Don't you see that they're cancelled?" interjected Garrick, stilladding.
I had not examined them closely, but as I now bent over to do so I sawthat 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 allbore dates from several weeks before, down to within a few days. Thetale they told was eloquent. Forbes, his own fortune gone, had gambleduntil rescued by his friend. Even that had not been sufficient to curbhis mania. He had kept right on, hoping insanely to recoup. And thegamblers had been willing to take a chance with him, knowing that theyalready 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 payhis losses by marrying a girl with a fortune? Forbes was the sort whowould have gambled on even that slender prospect.
As we stood on the landing while Garrick went over the markers, I foundmyself wondering, even, where Forbes had been that night after hehurried away from us at the ladies' poolroom and Warrington had takenthe journey that had ended so disastrously for him. The more I learnedof what had been taking place, the more I saw that Warrington stood outas a gentleman. Undoubtedly Violet Winslow had heard, had been informedby some kind unknown of the slight lapses of Warrington. I felt surethat the gross delinquencies of Forbes were concealed from her and fromher aunt, at least as far as Warrington had it in his power to shieldthe man who was his friend--and rival.
The voice of Dillon recalled me from a train of pure speculation to themore practical work in hand before us.
"Well, at any rate, we've got evidence enough to protect ourselves andclose the place, even if we didn't make any captures," congratulatedDillon, as he rejoined us, after a momentary excursion from which hereturned still blinking from the effects of the flashlight powderswhich his photographer had been using freely. "After we get all thepictures of the place, I'll have the stuff here removed toheadquarters--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 theway downstairs.
"Still, Dillon," he remarked, as we followed, "that doesn't shed anylight on the one remaining problem. How did they all manage to get outso quickly?"
We had reached the basement which contained the kitchens for the buffetand quarters for the servants. A hasty excursion into the littered backyard under the guidance of Dillon's men who had been sent around thatway netted us nothing in the way of information. They had not madetheir escape over the back fences. Such a number of people wouldcertainly 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 tooevident that at last he had guessed right. Down in the subterraneandepths we quickly discovered, at the rear, a sheet-iron door. Batteringit 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 pileof bricks and earth and timbers that had been used for shoring.
There had been a tunnel, but the last man who had gone through hadevidently exploded a small dynamite cartridge, and the walls had beencaved in. It was impossible to follow it until its course could becarefully excavated with proper tools in the daylight.
We had captured the stronghold of gambling in New York, but thegamblers had managed to slip out of our grasp, at least for the present.