[THIS WIRETAPPER WAS COLOR-BLIND.]
And His Visual Infirmity Cost Him $15,000 and His Reputation.
"I went down to New Orleans a couple of months ago to get a young fellow who was pretty badly wanted in my town for a two-months' campaign of highly successful check-kiting last summer," said a Pittsburg detective who dropped into New York on a hunt last week. "I got him all right, and he's now doing his three years. I found him to be a pretty decent sort of a young geezer, although a born crook. I don't remember ever having had such an entertaining traveling mate as he was on the trip up from New Orleans. Before we started I asked him if he was going to be good or if it would be necessary for me to put the bracelets on. He gave me an on-the-level look and said:
"'No, I don't think it will. But I pass it up to you. I don't want to throw you. All I ask is, don't give me too much of a chance if you keep the irons off of me. I wouldn't be jay enough to try a window-jumping stunt, but don't give me a show to make either one of the car doors. If you do I may have to give you a run for it.'
"Well, I could see that he would be all right without the cuffs, and so I didn't put 'em on him. He rode up with me in the sleeper all the way from New Orleans to Pittsburg—I let him do the sleeping, though, of course—and he had a drink when I did and played quarter ante when I did, and none of the rest of the passengers were any the wiser. He was a clinking good talker and he told me a lot of interesting stories of queer propositions that he had been up against. For instance, when we were running through the Blue Grass region of Kentucky, he turned to me and asked me where the blue grass was. I told him that the term blue grass was largely ornamental, and that, while the grass down there was no doubt high-grade and the limit as fodder for thoroughbreds, I thought it was mostly green, like the grass the world over.
"'Well, I'm blooming glad to hear you say that,' he replied. 'It proves that I'm not color blind on the whole gamut of colors, anyhow. If you'd said there really was blue grass in these fields we're running through, I'd have given myself up as a bad job in the matter of distinguishing colors. But as long as the grass is green like other grass—well, there's some hope for me.'
"'Color-blind, eh?' I asked him.
"'Yes, I guess I am, more or less,' he replied. 'I never knew it, though, until last spring, and it cost me $15,000 to find it out.'
"'Expensive information,' said I. 'How'd it happen?'
"'If you'll undertake to forget about it by the time we get to Pittsburg, I'll tell you,' he said. 'I was fooling around one of the big towns—one of the biggest towns on this side of the Mississippi—last spring, when I met up with a couple of wiretappers that got me interested. They were the real kind—not fake tappers who rope fellows into giving up coin just by showing 'em phony instruments in shady rooms, but professionals, who really knew how to tap the wires and pull down the money. They had been working together for some time, and when I happened to meet them they had just pulled off a swell hog-killing up in Toronto and had two or three thousand each in their clothes. They had only recently struck the big town, and, as they had never operated there before, they didn't have to do any sleuth dodging. Neither did I, although I was doing a bit of business in the check line occasionally, and was about a thousand to the good when I met them. We hitched up together, the three of us, for a drosky whirl, and then they told me that, while they made it a rule not to let outsiders into their game, they thought I was good enough to be admitted to a good thing that they were about to pull off.