Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World

by Clifton R. Wooldridge

In the face of this statement, however, the innocent layman may be still further at sea when it is recalled by old habitues of the gaming table that nearly every gambling king of modern history has finished close to the poorhouse and the potter's field! How is it possible that the gambler with the insidious, certain 10 per cent which inevitably wrecks the man who goes often enough to the green table almost invariably dies in poverty?

Must Have Fortune to Invest.

Today it is the gambler king who at least has an ephemeral show to gain fleeting riches. But in order that these riches shall approach riches as they are measured in other businesses, the man who opens the gambling house must have a fortune for the investment. His outlawed business itself will make it certain that he pays the maximum rental or the highest price for the property which he chooses for occupancy. To sustain this he will need to seek out the wealthy patron who not only has money to lose, but who may have a certain influence which may tend toward immunity for keeper and player alike. The "establishment" will need to have the best cuisine and the best cellars, with palatial furnishings and a retinue of servants in full keeping.

And somewhere money will be necessary in blinding officials to the existence of an institution which is visible to the merest tyro in passing along the street.

A constitution of iron, the absence of a nervous system, the discrimination of a King Solomon and the tact of a diplomat are requisites for the successful gambling king. Considering the qualification of the man for such a place and the final ending of the gambling king's career, it might be a sociological study worth while to determine where, on a more worthy bent, such capacities in a man might land him.

In real life, however, it must be admitted that the gambler king is looked upon in exaggerated light. Almost without exception the big gambler is posing always. Conventionality has demanded it of him. But for more than this, in order to command the following which he desires, he must have a certain social side which is not too prominent, but which with tact and judgment he may bring out on dress parade. To the layman the gambler is the dark, sinister figure pictured in melodrama. He bears the same relation to gambling that Simon Legree bore to the institution of slavery of fifty years ago.

Story of One Gambler King.

One of the noted gamblers of his time in this country passed from laboring on the docks into the prize ring. When his ring work was ended the gambling house was an easy step onward in illegitimate fields. On the docks his reputation was not above a bit of "strong arm" work in separating a man from the money which the dock walloper wanted. Naturally, under the Queensberry rules, there were things in the ring which he could not do in overcoming an antagonist, and he learned to make concessions to fairness—which was education.

Opening a gambling house that was adapted to the wants of a rich clientele, it was a necessity that he preserve this educational regard for his patrons, and that he should add to it. Soon he was in a position where it was imperative that his reputation for fair dealing be kept intact. He became the "gentleman gambler" whose "word" carried all the accepted concomitants of his gentleman's business. In the course of events he attained a high legislative office under the government. But it may be said for those who knew the man as a man, not one ever ceased to regard him at heart as the dock walloper, with the inherent and unreconstructed disposition to regard other men as legitimate prey. Had other conditions and circumstances made a card sharp of him, he would have held to the promptings of his nature.

In the conduct of a gambling house of the first class, the gambling king needs for himself and for his patrons the assurance of uninterrupted play. Men of money and position will not go to a house where there is menace of a police raid. The small gambler may subsidize the policeman on the beat in which his house stands, but he cannot placate the whole Police Department. And even when it is thought that the gambler king is impregnable in his castle someone may break over the barriers and raid the place in the name of the law and order.