The New York herald., 1921-05-01
Girls Are Quick to Learn
Crooked Ways to Win at Cards

How do they get the nerve? How do they
slip down to it morally? How do they find
an honest fence" to buy the Jewels they
sneak?
1t begins with bridge rather than with
baccarat. If you could see them play bridge
in the big hotels you would understand how
the most diverse are drawn together. The
rich, lonely and silly meet the broke, lively
and skilful. When it comes to skill 1t is not
impossible for a bright girl to become more
or less able to recognize squeezed" high
cards by the small lump in dealing them.
OF course, ii begins with signalling. Youne
ladies learn rapidly-when they take hutters
at roulette, boule and baccarat and need a
surer way to win stake or pay a hotel bill
The teachers are men. Not regularly young
men but fine old fellows with white mus
taches. ex-army officers with wooden legs OF
tired faced, melancholy chaps who look like
business men recuperating their health.
The girls learn, anyhow TO smear the
pack" 1t is a rough-and- ready trick suf-
ficent for the foolish rich ladies and the
honest men OF their families who are its
predestined victims II you take a card from
new pack, moisten your finger and draw IT
across the polished back the mark will re-
main, even if the cards are played with CON
tinuously for a week. 1t is imperceptible in
most lights, particularly after the pack has
eye which is looking for it.
These things are known. says Durot but
ii is another thing to prove them. What is
there to go on? How shall they accuse a
lady living in a palace hotel? Her money
comes in checks from Paris and London. Is
she all the time making acquaintances
with women possessing jewels? So do all
the other women in the palace hotels. They
the lonely rich. They cling to a smart
yIf fa
police suspect, they dare not act They
know that they will find nothing.
The advised Mouse wears gloves. Even
the lone lady knows that she had better not
leave finger prints. Only poor servants
Wallets and chambermaids-go leaving their
Bertillon autographs all over the furniture
to confuse any such evidence, IL any
Dr. Locard. head of the French police
school at Lyons, has made discovery the
most important since Bertilon established
crime detection by fngerprints. Not only
can person be traced by the prints of his
fingers, but, just as well, by similar prints
made by any part of his or her body. Any
of the pores o/the skin leave unmstakable
distinguishing marks: and Dr. Locard calls
the new science "poroscopy"
A crook in Paris for example in opening
the drawer of jewel safe rested his lef.
elbow on a marble table. or six suspects, all
wen known professionals the man whose
elbow pores corresponded to those left on
the marble table was convicted!
Here, one would say is chance to get
the Mice. Yes truly you can take pore
prints on glass topped dressing tables, mar
Bile topped ehiffoniers. against white enam-
eed woodwork, vanished furniture or even
we'll paper-wherevcr Mousie may have
leaned for an instant. listening, an ex-
cited, before pouncing on the emerald ring
and pearl drops.
But--wait why should II be Mousie?
Might not any of ten other women guests
have left those pore prints?
You1l say>no not IL they correspond with
Mousies dlmpled elbow!
All. not if, of course of coursel
If you have nerve, says Durot. to go ask
ing fifty ladies i'm a palace hotel to please
let you make prints Of their feet toes, el-
bows, knees and forearms. :.