Gaslight note: Mr Hall died more than twenty years before this version of his story was published. We have not seen "My Steamship Poker Game" (1896-nov) [Poker Chips, vol 01, no 06], but it is easy to believe that this is his old story with some modern retouches.

IT was my ill and also good fortune some time ago to fall into the clutches of three Western crooks while voyaging to Liverpool on a Cunarder with old Captain Haines. A fellow passenger with me was a banking promoter and prospector, resident in London, who had been visiting Colorado and Nevada mines on a business tour, since the great war in Europe was ended. He and I had adjacent seats at the dining table and in the course of conversation the card games came up as a topic. A really distinguished-looking passenger — a cross in dress, appearance, and action, between a well-to-do clergyman and a judge — who sat near joined in our after-dinner talk, and admitted that he was an amateur player and would be glad some time to join us in a game, but only with a considerable limit.

      Wherefore, it came to pass, that one morning in the smoking-room on deck, my banker friend, seeing this clerical-judicial gentleman near by, suggested that a game might be had, if we could find a fourth. At that moment another passenger, who had been standing at the deck door, lazily gazing out upon the ocean, turned around and pleasantly said: "Is it poker you are about to indulge in? If you want another hand and can make allowances for an indifferent player, I will join you."

      Our dinner-table friend looked a bit askance at the suggestion, and whispered something to my banker friend, which the new spokesman observing, added, "Oh, but I must introduce myself," and taking out a very handsome tortoise cardcase, produced three bits of pasteboard for us, on which was embossed "Arthur Brandon, 19 Tchoupitoulas street, New Orleans," and adding: "It is unnecessary for you to need introduction, for every one on board has already, through the passenger list and inquiry, made the saloon identification of so widely known a Londoner and so popular a journalist," bowing to each of us. Whereupon, our other table acquaintance rejoined: "But I am too modest a man to be favored by publicity — I am Mortimer Hendricks of St. Louis," and looking at the cards, "If I am not much mistaken, my firm has had the honor of business correspondence with Mr. Brandon."

      Both the new-comers had insisted upon a light limit of a sovereign, or five dollars, and agreed with me and my friend that a card game was only worth playing for its exciting interest and not for mere winnings.

      One of them played really well, but the other seemed amateurish with his questions, which tended to disarm any possible suspicions we might have had.

      Our first jack-pot amounted to only fifteen dollars which we pocketed. Again came a second, third and fourth game with only equally slight winnings on our side. Interrupted by the luncheon bell our antagonists hoped that in the evening they might take revenge.

      There ensued at that time another game at which a foreign-looking passenger made his appearance and chipped into some of the by-play remarks of our party in a very offhand, witty manner, but he seemed to be very peripatetic in his walking around the small apartment seemingly listlessly smoking his cigar. On this second occasion our luck began to change, and my friend and I finally went to our berths joint losers in about twenty pounds' worth of chips.

      On the next day luck alternated slightly in our favor, but on the third morning, perhaps somewhat exhilarated by some wine of which the player from New Orleans insisted upon our partaking, we acceded to passing the original limit, so that play rapidly rose into the scores of pounds, and in the main we became very heavy losers. Our antagonists had worked into the lucky fashion of often holding three of a kind, and their supply of mutually elastic aces was not infrequent, and I left the smoking saloon a hundred pounds out, with my friend losing nearly as much. However, our antagonists were regretfully suave, and indeed proved to be considerate and agreeable in intercourse, the St. Louis passenger being indeed particularly witty with narrative of Western manners and life.

      Captain Haines on the following day met me on deck. He inquired how our poker party was getting along, and grew very interested when I referred to the elastic manner in which a poor player had suddenly become a seeming expert and how luck had rapidly changed against us, and what lucky hands our antagonists held. Then he asked: "Is there in the smoking-room any passenger, not a player, who seems apparently interested in the game, and who frequently crosses it towards the saloon door?" And I immediately mentioned the foreigner.

      "I'm afraid that the three are of the card-sharping gang that has given our steamers an awful lot of bother; but I shall have a watch. Go on with your game in the morning, and the second steward, who is a clever card player himself and a born detective also, can easily move about the smoking saloon, or in its vicinity, so as to watch your antagonists."

      That succeeding game proved equally disastrous to us, and the good cards of our antagonists, ever lucky in the draw, so we again heavily lost. I began to believe in Captain Haines' warning, and s personally watched for symptoms of foul play, and especially kept guard on the peripatetic foreigner.

      In the afternoon the captain said to me: "I was right; the steward's report is that you have been systematically victimized. As captain I could, of course, explode them and even put them under confinement; but I don't care to have a row. I suggest that you fight fire with fire, and use against them their own ammunition of unfairness. To-morrow let your London friend feign indisposition and not care to play, while you alone tackle the other two. I shall manage, when you begin the game, to get away the foreigner, who is very sweet upon one of the lady passengers, that I shall make his temporary decoy. Then have your London acquaintance take up the rôle of walking delegate while the game proceeds; arrange signals with him, through his handling his cigar, as to the hands each opponent has, and as he walks about he will be able to catch glimpses of their cards as the foreigner did, and as correspondingly telegraph you whether to draw, or call, or bet, and lead them to agree to pass the limit. I hear from the purser that both are well provided with the stuff. I should be the last man in the world to abet in a skin game, but these fellows can only be fought and punished with their own ammunition. But, above all, it is the suggestion of my steward that on some pretext you change the position of your opponents from the broadside of the table to its long side, so that their feet cannot possibly meet under it. These sharps, my steward claims, have arranged toe and heel signals as to their respective holdings — such a pressure signifying one hand, and another pressure still another holding of pairs, and so on."

      My London friend fell readily into the recriminatory scheme, and we ourselves arranged signals through methods in which he would hold his cigar or blow its smoke upward, downward or sidewise, in order to acquaint me with their cards, while he, like the foreigner, would apparently innocently walk about.

      At the next game the captain's scheme worked admirably. They became willing to drop my indisposed but walking delegate as player for the time, and accept me as sole antagonist. Making an excuse as to the plunging of the vessel, I separated them at the table from their (not under-handed exactly, but under-footed) intercourse, and soon pretending vexation at my previous losses, urged higher play, which they readily acceded to, although apparently deprecating it — and perhaps sincerely, since they had lost the foreign sentinel, whom, as I afterwards discovered, had been nicely waylaid by the captain and his innocent feminine ally. Moreover, they had also lost the chance of toe-and-heel signaling.

      At first they were allowed to have the best of me, until after a while I succeeded in our obtaining a five-hundred-pound jack-pot, which, by the aid of the cigar smoke signals, I was able to finally capture and pocket, thus recovering all my previous losses and those of my sign-giving partner in our recoupment methods, and a handsome surplus of winnings besides. They were very effusive in their congratulations at my luck, and rather chaffed my late London partner at his having the temporary indisposition which had debarred him from being sharer in my luck.

      But we parted with the expectation of renewing the contest on the following day, when they promised themselves revenge. That, however, did not occur, because I really became ill, and was compelled to keep my state-room, where the ship's surgeon demanded my absolute rest. We were then already in St. George's Channel steaming for the Mersey.

      After squaring with my London friend, I took the precaution of lodging my winnings with the purser. After our reimbursement it was our intention to leave the surplus in the purser's hands, to be turned over to the usual charity into which are awarded the proceeds of the saloon entertainments, always given by passengers in the closing hours of a voyage.

      Passenger Brandon of Tchoupitoulas street, New Orleans, happened to be in the purser's office, into which, when ascending the Mersey, I had gone to draw my funds and settle the bill for wine and extras. Brandon pleasantly rallied me again upon my luck, but his words were very much at variance with the scowl upon his face as he saw me placing in my portemonnaie the roll of Bank of England notes.

      Having booked in Liverpool on arrival for the night at the well-known North Western Hotel, adjacent to the railway station, I was about retiring, when passing through the office I chanced to look at the register and there saw the name of the St. Louis player just inscribed in bold letters — Mortimer Hendricks. Usually upon retiring at any hotel, where a bolt is missing upon the bedroom door, I withdraw the key after locking, so as to avoid any use of nippers which hotel thieves carry, and with which they can grasp the ball of the key and turn it from the outside. But, as subsequently appeared, this method left me exposed to the operation of a skeleton key.

      Only he who has slept a week in the berth of an ocean steamer fairly and fully realizes the luxury of repose after it upon a wide spring mattress on shore. I was in the enjoyment of that luxury when something awoke me. Awoke me to see moving about the bedroom a figure. The chamber was in the rear of the hotel looking out upon the platforms of the railway station, into which a train was just on the point of entry, and its bull's-eye light sufficiently shone into the room to enable me to distinguish the back of a man engaged, to quote police vernacular — "in going through my garments." To do that he had laid a revolver on the chair. Mine was not a suicidal folding bed, nor yet a creaking wooden one, but a firm brass and iron bed, which made no noise as I silently moved out of it, and noiselessly crept up to the intruder and with a first instinct grasped the pistol. At that moment he turned, just as a gleam of the locomotive headlight outside struck his face. It was that of Mortimer Hendricks, the St. Louis card sharper, and now evidently posing as a hotel thief intent upon the money I had won.

      I remember the eyes of the elder Booth, when in boyhood I saw them at the footlights, while he had, as Richard the Third, arisen from his dream and recited, "Oh, coward conscience, how the lights burn blue," and I have seen white faces upon a scaffold, but no eyes were more horror-stricken, and no face whiter than were now turned to mine, only to confront the muzzle of his own pistol. He dropped my coat, that he was holding in his hand — the money was under my pillow — and looked appalled.

      Still pointing the pistol, I said: "Good-morning, Mr. Hendricks of St. Louis — take a seat, and let us talk this matter over."

      "Yes, I was after your roll of notes. I am stranded. For some reason I am refused passage back with moneys to be paid on my arrival, and I was driven to this by necessities."

      He spoke abjectly; all such creatures do when cornered, just as the rat squeals shrillest when also cornered by the terrier.

      I answered: "You are in my power, but I shall not only (pistol still at his head, and he made no attempt to grapple it) let you go, but give you money to pay your passage back, if in the interest of poker players you will, before you leave this room, tell me how you do it."

      "No one knows better than I when I am taken dead to rights, but of all the eccentric Americans I have ever met, you are miles ahead. D'ye mean what you say?"

      My head and the pistol nodded together.

      "Yer look as if you meant it, and you can prove it by handing me a hundred and fifty of the notes I saw you have in the purser's office. That will take me back to the States, and as you and the captain have somehow spoiled my ocean games, for the future I'll go back to the Western rivers for my profession. You need not think I shall give it up. It pays," and he drew a deep sigh, but whether of satisfaction or regret was doubtful. I was impressed with his sang-froid; and seeing that he had placed himself in the confessional box, I had only to keep silent like a priest and to listen.

      "You want to know how we fleece our countrymen and the Britishers? Is it that you want to improve on your own methods and take up with the skin profesh?" — and his tone made a feeble attempt at the sarcastic.

      "Bless your innocence, it's an easy explanation, and lies in a nutshell. One pressure of toe upon toe between me and partner means one pair; another kind of pressure of toe against heel means something else of telltale as to our hand; so does a mere rubbing of shoe against shoe; then cards held in a certain pose make sign manual for other indications; all arranged and understood beforehand like the magician and his pal; and then when we have a sentinel to lounge around the table and telegraph similarly by the pointing of a finger on the face or a wave of cigar or its smoke, what more is wanted? If you know the hands of cards that are opposed to you in any game, except perhaps faro, isn't the game always in your own keeps?"

      I gave him the money and he quitted the room with a mock bow, and I could hear his stealthy steps as he strode away. We met next morning in the breakfast room and the assurance of his manner was a triumph to his ability as an actor.

      Time passed and I was again in New York, where having occasion to look at Superintendent Byrnes' book I turned its latest pages when almost the latest photo was unmistakably that of my St. Louis card sharp.

      "What has he been doing?" I asked the police chief, pointing to the picture.

      "Doubtless you know him. Caught red-handed at the Victoria Hotel thieving from a lodger at night — he posing as a wealthy English tourist and disarming suspicion. But we know as yet nothing of his antecedents."

      "Then I can enlighten you," I added, and I told my adventures with him.

      "Write it out," sententiously remarked the chief, "and print it. The publication may put many an ocean traveler on his guard and be of public service. There is a lot of card-sharping still done on steamers, although of late captains are wary, and they and stewards become amateur detectives and warn passengers. But usually I send one of my men down on every steamship to return with the pilot, and meanwhile suspicious passengers are sure to come out of their cabins and are likely to get spotted and quietly exposed to the officers who are afterwards put on guard. Regarding the spotting of crooks, I and some of my men have acquired the remarkable intuition of women. Even the greenhorn and fresh crook has a curious self-consciousness about him that gives him away to us."

      I have taken his advice.