Danger in the Cards

EPILOGUE

Chapter 1

One of a Kind

PERMIT ME to introduce myself. I’m Mickey MacDougall, card detective. For fifteen years I’ve been hunting down one of the strangest human breeds on earth, the creatures known as the uppercrust of the underworld—polished, well-dressed, flowery-mannered men and women who cheat at cards, dice, roulette, and other comeons for suckers. Those criminals like to think of themselves as artists and aristocrats. To me, a cheat is a cheat, whether in fine feathers or rags.

In pursuit of one top-hat swindler, I found myself, a few months ago, alone in a hotel room in an eastern city. I was traveling incognito. With the exception of the vice-president of one of the city’s million-dollar clubs, no one knew I was in town, or so I thought.

I was adjusting a black tie at the mirror when I heard a sharp rapping at the door. Having sent for a bellboy, I called, Come on in. The door’s open.

Through the mirror, I watched the door swing back. The man who strode into the room was a tall, black-haired individual, with a fleshy, hard-cut face and an impish grin on thin lips. As I realized who he was, I whirled.

Hello, Tim. I kept my voice cool, matter-of-fact. Surprised to see you.

Yeah. Thought I’d stop in to pay my respects.

Three months before, I had been in this city to give a lecture. I had needed some of the crooked machines and material used in gambling dives in order to demonstrate to the audience how they were being cheated by professionals. I’d called a police captain and asked him if he had any of this paraphernalia. The captain didn’t have a thing—but would be glad to get whatever I needed. Within an hour, his men had raided five places and brought back more material than I could use in a whole lecture season.

It was Tim Murphy who ran most of the gambling dens in the city. Now he was sitting across from me in my hotel room, still grinning as he lighted a cigar.

In town on business, Mickey?

Casually, I turned back to the job of adjusting my necktie. How’d you know I was here, Tim?

Geeze, Mickey. We gotta keep tabs on who comes and who goes. Hell, somebody with real dough might slide in and out without our knowing. That wouldn’t be no good.

Shouldn’t think you’d care particularly about seeing me, though, I said evenly, after what I did to your business the last time I was here.

His answer was a roar of laughter. I looked at him in amazement. What’s so funny about having half of your joints raided?

That’s just it, Mickey. I owe you a debt of gratitude. You come to town with a lecture on how we’re cheating the public. Half our places are knocked off. So what happens? Two weeks later we get our machines back, and business is doubled. Ain’t it a howl?

A few of your boys ended up in prison, I reminded him.

He stared at his cigar ash. Yeah. I know.

Some of the places were shut down for permanent, I went on.

Sure. Fortunes of war. Sometimes you win, sometimes we win. Only this particular time, I think we got the better of the bargain. Way I figure it, you’re on one side of the fence and I’m on the other. Ain’t no reason we can’t be friends.

He stayed a while longer and we talked about old-timers we had both known. Men now dead or in prison or rotting away in some dusty corner of life. At last he stood up, brushed a bit of lint off his pearl-grey trousers, and started putting on his coat.

You know, Mickey, you’ve got a crazy racket. The craziest I ever heard of. How in hell did you ever get in it?

It’s a long story, Tim. Maybe some other time—

I suppose it’s the way he put it—a crazy racket. I’m the only one of my kind, anyway. Most of the time it’s been excitement and fun; but there have been occasions when I’ve run into trouble, when I’ve met up with customers who didn’t regard my endeavors as genially as did Tim Murphy.

After he was gone, I got to thinking back. I suppose, if you’re looking for what really began it, it was wanderlust. I wanted to see the world, to travel and ferret out strange sights and foreign lands. I wanted to look at this universe that had been handed to me. Maybe I wanted to make sure it wasn’t rigged like some of the crooked games I was just finding out about.

That was what made me run away from home at the age of fourteen with a traveling magician who needed an assistant. This was my university training—knocking all over the globe, learning to do every card trick in the books, mingling with the world of honky-tonk and carnival. Later, I traveled the circuits in vaudeville with an act of my own devoted largely to card tricks, which were my specialty.

It wasn’t the kind of life an educator would recommend for the average young man. But it gave me a special education. I knew the gamblers and how they worked. I knew that a professional didn’t take chances; he was always a sure winner from the start. It was here that I began to find my own career of helping honest people dig out the crooks and racketeers who were cheating them out of millions of dollars every year.

After Tim left that night, I finished dressing and started out. When I reached the club, I was ushered at once into the office of the vice-president, a hefty, bald-headed businessman with a florid complexion. Tonight, there was worry on his face.

Mr. MacDougall, he said, there’s one thing I’ve got to warn you about. We cannot have any scandal.

There won’t be any scandal, I assured him. Is he here?

Dr. Corinth? Sure. He’s playing now.

He took me upstairs to the cardroom. Blue-white tobacco smoke hung above the large mahogany table where a dozen men, all well-dressed, and obviously successful men of business and the professions, were playing poker.

That’s him, the vice-president said under his voice. At the end there, with the pipe.

Dr. Corinth had iron-grey hair and a long thin face, heavily lined, and he wore rimless glasses. I observed that he had a nervous habit of drumming with his fingers on the table top, whether he was winning or losing.

Most of the time he was losing. I stood by the table watching the play, but Dr. Corinth failed to notice me. At last came a special hand. It was stud, and Dr. Corinth was dealing. One of the men had an ace showing, and I was certain, from his expression, that the face-down card was an ace, also. Dr. Corinth had a pair of tens showing. The betting ran high—very high—as the deal progressed. The pot was the largest of the evening. At last all the players had dropped except Dr. Corinth and the man with the ace showing. On the last card, Dr. Corinth dealt himself a third ten which won.

The others had been watching in taut silence, and now there was a babble of talk. Winning that hand put Dr. Corinth out front by several hundred dollars.

That one was too much even for a kibitzer, I commented. I think I’ll be ambling along.

The vice-president walked back with me to my hotel. En route, I told him exactly how Dr. Corinth was mulcting his fellow club members. The official listened with great concern. What could he do? How could they get rid of Dr. Corinth without a lot of talk and turmoil?

It was much easier than he imagined. I’ve been in this business so long now, I’ve got it down to a routine.

Several nights later, I gave a lecture at the club. It was a small, intimate affair, for members only. My talk was about card playing in general, but, since poker was popular at the club, I concentrated on how the cardsharp cheats at poker. Among other tricks, I demonstrated the technique of the center deal.

The middle dealer starts his cheating while he is picking up the cards preparatory to shuffling them, I explained. He unobtrusively arranges the five bottom cards like this: an ace, a ten-spot, another ace, and two more tens, reading upward from the bottom. I fanned the pack so the audience could see that the cards were in the order described.

Then the cheat shuffles without disturbing the bottom five cards. When the deck is cut, the selected cards are brought to the center. The cardster, in picking up the deck, holds a slight break right where the five cards are located. Again I illustrated.

Now when the cheat starts dealing, he ‘center’ deals an ace to the player who is due for a trimming. To himself, he deals one of the tens. On the second round he does the same thing, which means that the victim has aces back to back while the swindler has two tens. I paused for a moment to let this sink in.

From then on the cheat raises and re-raises. Naturally, the player with aces backed, knowing he has the best hand, is only too willing to see the pot get bigger and bigger. On the final round, the manipulator administers the coup de grâce. He deals himself the third ten, giving him three of a kind against a pair of aces.

A murmur ran through the audience as some members recalled the healthy pot Dr. Corinth had won a few nights previously with three tens against a pair of aces.

Card cheats of this kind, I went on hurriedly, can always be recognized by the way they hold the cards—three fingers firmly grasping the side; index finger at the top; and the thumb at the upper, outer corner of the deck. Notice the barely perceptible break in the middle of the pack. The center dealer must hold the deck in this manner to carry out the manipulation without discovery.

I doubt if there was a single person in that room who did not remember that Dr. Corinth held the pack in that fashion. I glanced to where the gambler was sitting—saw the slow flush spreading over his face. I went on with my demonstration.

Although he only allows himself to win two or three times in an evening, these are almost always the large pots, so large that they make up for all his losses, and leave a handy profit besides.

Again, everyone in the room must have remembered that Dr. Corinth did make all his winnings on one or two hands during the evening.

Sometimes, I said, these players have nervous little habits which indicate subconsciously the strain they are under. For instance, a man might have a habit of drumming on a table, like this.

On a card table near me, I drummed my fingers in exact imitation of Dr. Corinth. The staccato sound echoed through the room.

That was all. Everyone knew what had happened. Everyone realized that Dr. Corinth had been cheating them. A few minutes later, the meeting broke up. There was no scandal. Dr. Corinth did not appear at his club again. Some weeks later, I learned he had been dropped for non-payment of dues.

Strange beings, card cheats. I’ve followed them around the world, from New York to Singapore to Suez. I sailed luxury liners in the days before the war. I’ve broken gangs of cutthroats, and occasionally paid for it with beatings and hospital bills. I’ve learned that the lovely lady with long fingers can play the game as cleverly as any mechanic—underworld slang for a card manipulator—in the business. I’ve learned it can be dangerous, fascinating, and sometimes full of tragedy. I’ve learned how smart a card cheat has to be to keep his head on his neck. And how dangerous it can be for the person who tries to catch him. But if I had it to do over, I’d stay for another rubber.

What are they like, these men who live by their wits and their skill in handling a pack of cards? What kind of people are they?

That is the story I want to tell, the story of my adventures with this incredible species, the men who live—and not infrequently die—on the turn of a card.

Chapter 2

Cheater’s Cruise

YOU REMEMBER those days when liners sailed the seven oceans for pleasure and commerce, when Americans were dolling themselves up for summer cruises. Those were days of peace and of pleasure, of deck chairs and shuffleboard, ships’ pools and all the rest of it.

If you’ve ever been on any of these cruises, you can bet a ration book you’ve met crooked gamblers. Cruises were the main run, the happy hunting ground, of the cheats. It was as a card detective on this main run that the technique I developed for spotting crooked gamblers really took shape.

At sea, the Captain is the law. His is the responsibility for seeing that nobody gets murdered or robbed. If the Captain suspects that crooked gamblers are operating on board, he will at once order signs posted throughout the ship: There are known card cheats on board. Please do not play with strangers.

That, to the professional card cheat, is the small-pox sign. He knows he has been spotted, and wisdom suggests he duck for cover.

Ordinarily such a procedure is sufficient to halt gambling for the duration of the voyage. If the cheats continue, or if the violations are flagrant, the Captain may radio ahead and have the crooks arrested at the next port of call. Should this happen, the culprit usually escapes with a small fine. It is, as I have often pointed out, most difficult to prove larceny with cards. Arrest has a nuisance value—but the sharp is usually back in action shortly thereafter.

In the years before the war, I accepted many engagements on sea-going palaces. Ordinarily, my procedure was similar to that I used on shore. For the first few days, I would kibitz the games. When I spotted the sharper, I would study him. Then, in a public demonstration I would reveal his technique without revealing his name. It sometimes made life a little difficult for the sea-going sharps—but it saved money for the passengers.

Sometimes it was not quite so simple. Sometimes it was touch-and-go, with my own skin in jeopardy.

One of my early investigations was aboard a ship bound for the West coast via the Panama Canal. I was one of the first on board. It was a habit of mine to come aboard early because I knew many of the cheats by sight and could sometimes spot trouble even before the ship left, thus saving money and time. On that particular trip, as I stood on deck near the gangplank watching passengers scurrying on board, I spotted no one who aroused my suspicions.

Just a few minutes before the ship was to sail, a taxicab rolled onto the pier and six attractive young women climbed out.

I watched them as they paid the fare. One of the girls I recognized, a lovely creature named Velyne Hague, well-known dancer on Broadway. Beside her stood another girl whose face was familiar; I finally remembered she was a tap dancer named Annette Star whom I had met several times in New York clubs.

Dancing girls; en route, I was certain, to work some cabaret in one of the Latin-American countries where our ship would touch port. If there were card cheats on board, these young women would probably be able to give me valuable help. Card cheats are human, too.

I spent the first day at sea getting acquainted. I chatted with the cigar manufacturer from New York; and the lady from Playersville who never had been to sea before; and the young honeymoon couple who caused all the surreptitious comment when they entered the dining-room. The typical group you would meet on a hundred cruise ships. All there for fun. All, that is, except a few, who had business.

I was in the bar that afternoon when the pert, little blond tap dancer came in, clinging to the arm of a portly gentleman, perhaps fifty years old. The two stood at the bar and ordered drinks. I watched them carefully, but they paid no attention to me. After a few moments, I saw the man nudge the girl and indicate, with a quick glance, a table where two men were seated sipping highballs. Blonde Annette Starr turned toward them, casually sauntered across the salon, and seated herself at the next table.

I remember thinking how similar it was to a scene in a play. I was an unseen—or perhaps I should say, unrecognized—audience. They were actors, playing a well-rehearsed script.

Meeting fellow passengers on shipboard was not difficult. Within a few minutes, Annette was in conversation with the two men. From the bantering tone and frequent laughter, I knew it was one of those light, frothy meetings full of the meaningless glamor of shipboard associations.

This, I figured, was the start of something. To be frank, however, I had no definite idea what it would be. I went out on the deck and hunted up Velyne Hague, invited her into the bar for a drink. Velyne was Annette’s girl friend. She could give me an opening lead.

I pointed to the portly gentleman who had come into the bar with Annette, Say, Velyne, I asked, you happen to know who that prosperous looking man at the end of the bar is, the one in the grey suit?

She shot a look at him. That’s Annette’s boy friend, Frank Holton. She told me he’s an actor or something. Retired.

I glanced at Annette and the two men at the table. Some boy friend, I said. She runs out on him for those two fellows.

Oh, you know Annette—

I have reason to believe, Velyne, I said suddenly, that Mr. Holton might be a cardsharp.

Velyne’s delicately-curved eyebrows lifted. Gee whiz! Then, after an instant, How do you know?

Things I’ve noticed. Little things. Velyne, if he is, if I’m right, would you help me trap him?

Would I? The girl’s eyes gleamed. Me, be a detective? You bet. What do you want me to do?

I think at the moment, I explained, that Mr. Holton, with your friend Annette’s innocent help, is arranging a party for tonight. Get yourself invited to that party. If I’m right, there is to be one. Then, you will take me along with you.

Velyne gazed down at the cocktail I had ordered for her. Watch me, she said, and gave me a bright smile. A few minutes later, she sauntered over to the table where the blonde was seated with her two new friends.

On my way back to the cabin, I stopped at the purser’s office. Frank Holton’s name was not on the regular list of passengers. He was on the supplemental list, which meant that he had purchased his ticket only a few hours before the ship sailed. (This is a favorite trick of ocean-going crooks, to keep their names off the regular list.)

I was right about the party. Velyne disclosed the plans out on deck, just before dinner. No mention of cards or gambling, she told me excitedly. It was to be just a small party in Holton’s suite.

We’re going, honey, I said. Me and my girl Friday.

We arrived a little late. Holton was there, and Annette and the two men she had been talking to, one of whom I learned was a stockbroker named Ronald Mayberry. The other was introduced as George Travers. There was another of the show girls, and, of course, Velyne and myself.

I didn’t like the set-up. I tried to be friendly and casual, but my mind was trying to figure the thing out. I wondered if Holton was working single-o—the term for a man playing a lone hand. But after the first round of drinks, a knock came at the door, and two men walked in. They were introduced as insurance men—Frank and George Davis—off on a pleasure trip.

With their entrance, the set-up became perfectly plain. After a few more drinks, someone would innocently suggest a card game. Holton, with the aid of his two henchmen, would proceed to take the others—Mayberry, Travers, and myself. The girls, having unwittingly served their purpose, would be excused by Holton himself from playing for any high stakes.

It wasn’t long before this pattern, well-known to cheats, began to unfold. A penny-ante game was begun. All parties participated with much laughter and bright chatter. As the stakes began to rise, the girls dropped out. Within an hour or so, we were playing draw poker, table stakes, and each man had several hundred dollars in front of him.

I confess I enjoyed those moments, sitting there, watching the cheats function with a smoothness which would have delighted the heart of a movie director. Holton, I discovered, was the mechanic who actually stacked the deck. He would stack the cards, then hand them to Frank Davis, who sat on his right, to be cut. Davis would false cut. When the cards were dealt, the sucker