The Black Lion Inn

by Alfred Henry Lewis

This public theory of safety was necessary to success. In the then hectic conditions, and briskly in the rear of a stern suppression of resorts that had flourished for decades unshaken of the law, wanting this feeling of security there would have come not one dollar to take its hopeful chances at The Shotgun. As it was, however, the belief that I lived amply “protected” took prompt deep root. And the fact that The Shotgun opened in the face of storms which smote without pity upon others, was itself regarded as proof beyond dispute. No one would court such dangers unless his footing were as unshakable as Gibraltar. Thereupon folk with a heart for faro came blithely and stood four deep about my one table; vast was the business I accomplished and vast were the sums changed in. And behold! I widely prospered.

When I founded The Shotgun, I was richer of hope than of money; but fortune smiled and within a fortnight my treasure was told by thousands. Indeed, my patrons played as play those who are starved to gamble; that recess of faro enforced of the police had made them hawk-hungry. And my gains rolled in.

While I fostered the common thought that no interference of the law would occur and The Shotgun was sacred ground, I felt within my own breast a sense of much unsafety. Damocles with his sword—hung of a hair and shaken of a breeze—could have been no more eaten of unease. I knew that I was wooing disaster, challenging a deepest peril. The moment The Shotgun became a part of police knowledge, I was lost.

Still, I dealt on; the richness of my rewards the inducement and the optimism of the born gambler giving me courage to proceed. It fed my vanity, too, and hugely pleased my pride to be thus looked upon as eminent in my relations with the powers that ruled. They were proud, even though parlous days, those days when I ran The Shotgun.

While I walked the field of my enterprise like a conqueror, I was not without the prudence that taketh account in advance and prepareth for a fall. Aside from the table whereon dwelt the layout, box and check rack, and those half-dozen chairs which encircled it, the one lone piece of furniture which The Shotgun boasted was a rotund lounge. Those who now and then reposed themselves thereon noted and denounced its nard unfitness. There was neither softness nor spring to that lounge; to sit upon it was as though one sat upon a Saratoga trunk. But it was in a farthest corner and distant as much as might be from the game; and therefore there arose but few to try its indurated merits and complain.

That lounge of unsympathetic seat was my secret—my refuge—my last resort. I alone was aware of its construction; and that I might be thus alone, I had been to hidden and especial pains to bring it from New York myself. That lounge was no more, no less than a huge, capacious box. You might lift the seat and it would open like a trunk. Within was ample room for one to lie at length. Once in one could let down the cover and lock it on the inside; that done, there again it stood to the casual eye, a lounge, nothing save a lounge and neither hint nor token of the fugitive within.

My plan to save myself when the crash should come was plain and sure. There were but two lights—gas jets, both—in The Shotgun; these were immediately above the table, low hung and capped with green shades to save the eyes of players. The light was reflected upon the layout; all else was in the shadow. This lack of light was no drawback to my popularity. Your folk who gamble cavil not at shadows for themselves so long as cards and deal-box are kept strongly in the glare. In event of a raid, it was my programme to extinguish the two lights—a feat easily per-formable from the dealer’s chair—and seizing the money in the drawer, grope my way under cover of darkness for that excellent lounge and conceal myself. It would be the work of a moment; the folk would be huddled about the table and not about the lounge; the time lost by the police while breaking through those defences of bars and bolts would be more than enough.

By the time the lights were again turned on and the Goths in possession, I would have disappeared. No one would know how and none know where. When the blue enemy, despairing of my apprehension, had at last withdrawn with what prisoners had been made, I would be left alone. I might then uncover myself and take such subsequent flight as best became my liberty and its continuance.

Often I went over this plan in my thoughts—a fashion of mental rehearsal, as it were—and the more I considered the more certain I became that when the pinch arrived it would not fail. As I’ve stated, none shared with me my secret of that hinged and hollow couch; it was my insurance—my cave of retreat in any tornado of the law; and the knowledge thereof steadied me and aided my courage to compose those airs of cheerful confidence which taught others safety and gave countenance to the story of my unqualified and sure “protection!” Alas! for the hour that unmasked me; from that moment The Shotgun fell away; my stream of golden profits ran dry; from a spectacle of reverence and respect I became the nine-day byword of my tribe!

It was a crowded, thriving midnight at The Shotgun. I had been running an uninterrupted quartette of months; and having had good luck to the point of miracles, my finances were flourishing with five figures in their plethoric count. From a few poor hundreds, my “roll” when I snapped the rubber band about it and planted it deep within the safety of my pocket, held over fifty thousand dollars. Quite a fortune; and so I thought myself.