ENTICED INTO THESE DENS?
Are they aware that night after night they are exposing the children of their old friends, perhaps their own boys, to the temptations provided by the proprietors of these soul-destroying caves of iniquity,—to the fascinations of the gaming table? Are they aware that many young men highly connected in Toronto, have not only blasted their reputations and their prospects, but have rendered themselves liable to a felon’s doom by robbing their employers to pay an “honorable” debt at cards,—a debt never really contracted excepting through the medium of marked cards or like devices? If they be not aware of these things let them study the police records, and should they not be successful in their search let them accompany a detective on night duty in his rambles through Toronto by Gas-light. The writer has done so on many occasions during the past ten years, and has witnessed such scenes of dissipation, such open cheating and deliberate robbery of inexperienced boys, and has heard so many expressions of remorse and despair that he cannot but feel surprised that the fathers and mothers who have wept tears of blood over their erring and deluded boys, that the merchants who have been robbed and the victims themselves do not rise up and demand the heads of the police department to suppress this gigantic evil at once. Perhaps they will when Major Draper, Chief of Police, gets tired of shooting alligators in Florida.
CHAPTER VI.
PLUCKING THE SUCKERS.
There are so many different devices resorted to by the professional gambler in order to secure the money of his victim without showing that he has been cheating, that it is almost an impossibility to recall them all from memory, but a few may be noted. The game of faro was so thoroughly described in the recent Mathieson-Kleiser Police court case that it is only necessary to show by a single illustration how the uninitiated can be cheated under his very nose without the slightest danger of the dealer being detected. In playing a brace game the dealer procures a deck known as “strippers,” which are made out of thin and elastic cards. The deck is first cut perfectly square, and then trimmed in such a manner as to resemble a wedge, being a trifle wider at one end than at the other, so trifling that no one out of the secret could notice it. It is then decided if the deck is to be arranged so as to play one end against the other; that is the ace, deuce, tray, king, queen, and jack against the four, five, six, ten, nine, eight. The first-named cards, with two of the sevens, are placed together, making one half of the deck; then the latter-named cards, with the other two sevens, which constitute the other half of the deck, are placed together, being still smooth and even on the edges. They are then divided equally, after which one half is turned round, and you have a deck of “strippers,” which the dealer can manipulate so successfully that it is impossible for a better to win. The “capper,” who plays in with the dealer, the screw box, sanding the cards, playing with fifty-three instead of fifty-two cards, and preparing the cards so that two can be drawn from the box at once, and still adhere to each other, at the will of the dealer, are a few of the difficulties a better has to overcome before he can win any money at faro.
The most popular game played in the city, however, is draw poker, and this game is not confined to the gambler’s den or the club room.