BUYERS SAMPLING GRAIN.
THE CLOCK.
An offshoot of the mania for gambling in stocks—yet one which is chargeable rather to the bucket shop than to the regular exchange—is known as the “clock.” Of all the multitudinous devices by which swindlers deceive dupes, this is, perhaps the most inherently and transparently absurd. I have fastened its parentage upon the bucket shop for the reason that it is undoubtedly the offspring of the fertile brain of some proprietor of one of these establishments, where rascals grow rich on the gullibility of fools.
The “clock” is a gambling device which can be likened to nothing so aptly as to a “brace” faro box. Both contain cards; in both these, cards are arranged according to the will of the manipulator; in both, the proprietor, or dealer, or other person operating the implement, can determine with tolerable accuracy, whether it is wisest to permit the victim to win or lose.
Yet there are minor points of difference. In the faro box the cards are drawn out through a slit; in the clock they are exposed to view by pulling a string which allows them to fall at the operator’s will. At faro, ordinary playing cards are used; in the case of the clock the cards employed contain the names of stocks—sometimes actual and sometimes fictitious—together with figures which purport to represent values of the stocks named, but which, as a matter of fact, sustain no more intimate relations to actual market quotations than would a map of China to the topography of the moon. The reader who will peruse the description given below will, if he has already had the patience to familiarize himself with the explanation of frauds at faro, recognize the fairness of the comparison above drawn.
The gambling “clock” consists of two parts: a contrivance in which the cards are kept and from which they are dropped, and a sort of dial in which they are exhibited to the interested gaze of the players. Its mechanism appears to be a triumph of the simplicity of invention. The operator sits either directly in front or at some convenient point where he may see the inscriptions on the cards as they fall. From time to time he pulls a string; the card exposed disappears from sight and is replaced by another.
The method of “speculating” (or, as it might more properly be called, betting) is as follows: The player notes the course of some stock—perhaps one called “Jem Dandy”—observing its “rise” or “fall,” as shown by the figures on the cards, and possibly keeping a record of its ostensible “fluctuations,” very much as a faro player records the issuance of cards from the dealing box. Perhaps one of them concludes that some particular “stock” having fallen, as shown by the cards during three or four consecutive exposures, he imagines that the chances are in favor of the next card of the same stock showing an “advance.” Accordingly, he concludes to back his judgment with his money. He does not bet directly, as a faro gamester, for instance, might place a stack of chips upon a queen. He “purchases” a certain number of “shares” of the “stock” in question, advancing the amount which he is willing to risk as a “margin,” precisely as he would were he buying stocks or grain in a bucket shop. His fate is sealed by the appearance of the next card inscribed with the same suit. If “Jem Dandy,” or whatever other stock he may have bought, “goes up” he wins; if it “falls” he loses.
The reader will have no difficulty in perceiving that, as has been intimated, the pretended “sale” was in reality no sale at all, the entire transaction being a wager, pure and simple, on the turn of a particular card. Nor is it difficult to comprehend that a professional gambler can manipulate pre-arranged cards by pulling a string as easily as by using his thumb and forefinger.
The rooms where the “clock” is used are not infrequently infested by confidence men of a peculiar sort. The verdant visitor who appears to be a “soft mark” is often approached by men who tell him that their “wives” are clairvoyants, or trance mediums, who can predict with infallible accuracy, the order in which these cards will leave the receptacle on the ensuing day. For a small consideration—e. g., five dollars—they will impart to him information through the possession of which he may certainly win hundreds, if not thousands. These persons, however, never explain why they should prefer to sacrifice, for such a paltry sum, the knowledge which would enable themselves to accumulate fortunes with a celerity which would cast completely into the shade the rapid mathematical computations of the “lightning calculator.”
It occasionally happens, however, that the proprietor of one of these “clocks” comes to grief through the wiles of a more adroit scoundrel than himself. Within a comparatively short period a manipulator of a machine of this kind in a great western metropolis found his attention diverted from his “clock,” with its attached string, by the progress of a fight in one corner of his room. There appeared to be no doubt as to the genuineness of the combatants’ hostility, the blows were heavy and blood flowed freely. The available force of the place was called into requisition to separate the combatants and restore order. Peace having once more settled down upon the establishment and the brawlers having been ejected, business was resumed. A quiet-looking gentleman, who had recently entered, became deeply interested in the market for “Jem Dandy;” he bought and sold with apparent recklessness, yet—mirabile dictu—he invariably won. He bet largely and won enormously. In consequence the proprietor concluded to abjure “speculation” for the day. In other words, he posted a placard to the effect that holders of contracts might cash their winnings at once, but that the house proposed to suspend further business until the next morning.