The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-01-15
COLOR BLIND ON YELLOW.
A CROOk'S LOSS OF $4,000 AND HIS
REPUTATION.

/ OF the W ire IHppers EntIeO, the
/ Big Pool Room Wasn't swindled
and He Had the Fight of His Life
on His Hands, But Won 1t.
! From the New York Sun.
Washington.-"I went down TO New
| Orleans couple of months ago to get a
young fellow who was pretty badly want
ed in my town for a two months cam
paign of highly successful check-kitlng
last summer" said a Pittsburg detective
who dropped into Washington on a hunt
last week. Il got him all right and he's
now doing his three yearsA I found him to
be pretty decent sort of a young geezer,
although a born crook. don't remember
ever having had such an entertaining trav-
cling mate as he was on the trip up from
New OrleansA Before we started 1 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, don't think it will. But pass it
up to you, 1 don't want to throw you. All
ask is, don't give me 100 much of a
chance if you keep the irons off OF me-
|
jumping stunt, but don't give me show
to make either one of the car doors. If
you do may have to give you run for
| it,"
We'll, I could see that he would be all
right without the cuffs, and so l didn't put
EN- on him. He rode up with me in the
sleeper all the way from New Orleans TO
| Pittsburgh let him do the sleeping
| though, of course-and he had a drink
| when | did and played quarter ante when
did, and none of the rest of the passen-
| gers was any the wiser. He was a clink-
| ing good talker and he told me a lot of in
| Ieresting stories of queer propositions that
he had been up against. For instance when
| we We're running through the Blue Grass
region of Kentucky, he turned to me and
| asked me where the blue grass was.
| told him that the term blue grass was
| largely ornamental and that, while the
grass down there was no doubt hgh-grade
and the limit as fodder for thoroughbreds,
l thought it was mostly green like grass
| the world over.
We'll, Tins blooming glad to hear you
| say that, he replied. 1t 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 run
ming 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-weil, there's some hope
for me-"
Color blind, eh?' 1 asked him.
" Yes, 1 guess I am, more or less he
replied. I never knew it, though, until
| last spring. and it cost me $4,000 to find Ii
out
Expensive information" said L How'd
it happen?'
g" If you'll undertake to forget about it
by the time we get to Pttsburg, 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 met up with a couple of wire-tap-
pers that got me interested. They were
the real kind-nOt fake tappers who rope
fellows into giving up coin Just by show
ing EN- 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 l happened to meet them
they had just pulled off a swell hog-kill-
ing 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 lodging
Neither did I, although I was doing a bit
of business in the check line occasionally
met them. We hitched up together, the
| three of us, for drosky whirl, and then
they told me that, while they made il
rule not to let outsiders into their game
they thought 1 was good enough TO be ad-
mitted TO a good thing that they were
about to pull Off
zone of the largest and best patronized
of the poolrooms of the town was way
on the outskirts of the city. The duck
that runs it is worth close on to a mill
ion, and the ticket writers have instruc-
tions never 10 turn any mans money
down, no matter how big the sum or how
lead-pipey the cinch he appears to have.
Lumps of $4,000 and $4,000 have frequent
ly been taken out of that poolroom on
single tickets, and it's one of the few pool
rooms where track odds are given.
1" My two new pals had sized up this
layout, and when l met them they already
had things fixed to pull down a few com
Portable wads. They had rented vacant
frame cottage about 300 yards across a big
vacant lot from the poolroom, and, by a
little night work-they were both practi-
cal wiremen, as well as expert telegraph
ers-had got the wire into room on the
second floor of the house all right 1t was
prairie land all around and SHINY fire.
quented territory, and they had no trou-
BILE in rigging up the wire paraphernalia,
which they carried alongside a picket
thence upstairs. They had the thing all
tested, and every dot and dash that
reached the poolroom registered also in
the second floor of that cottage.
one of the fellows had formerly work |
ed in a pooroom himself, and he had the
race code down as pat as butter. They
took me out to have look at the lay
out not because they wanted a dollar out
of me for they were on velvet, but sim !
ply because they both seemed to take a
kind o. shine to me, and it surely looked |
good l spent two or three afternoons in |
the second floor front room where the lay |
out was fixed, and the chap who was ex-
pert with the racing code broke the report |
direct from the track a dozen times and |
sent it in himself, after having mastered
the operators style at the track end OF |
the line. and the poolroom operator was |
never bit the wiser. 1t was good all |
right that layout, and when they were |
Nal ready to begin work l was in on the |
play.
we decided to make the first killing on |
ct a has 70 h.,