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He had gone across the river to gather up a loose end of the evidence accumulating against Chappy Morgan, king of the wireless wire-tappers. It was nearly midnight when he emerged from the ferryhouse. In sight was no surface car; so he set out afoot to walk across town to where he lived on the East Side.
No genuine attempt had ever been made to prosecute one of these gentry until the catastrophe which deprived Felix of his $50,000. The "wire-tappers" rolled in money.
Generally known as a loafer, suspected of boosting for so-called 'wire-tappers' operating on upper West Side last spring. Believed to have some connection with more than one blackmailing scheme details available. He figured in recent scandal concerning well-known financier and actress. Of late employed as steerer for Max Melcher's gambling-house, West Forty-sixth Street.
Among the Vallambrosa's roomers are stenographers, musicians, brokers, shop-girls, space-rate writers, art students, wire-tappers, and other people who lean far over the banister-rail when the door-bell rings. This treatise shall have to do with but two of the Vallambrosians though meaning no disrespect to the others.
With our friend Charles as their sponsor, there sprang into being herds of "sick engineers," fake "wire-tappers," "green-goods" swindlers, and confidence men of all sorts, who flourished safely under the protection of the decision of the Court of Appeals in McDuff's case.
Had he done so he would have found it empty five minutes after he had lost his money. The millionaires were already streaming hilariously into Sharkey's. "Gates" pledged "Belmont" and "Keene" pledged "Whitney." Each had earned five dollars by the sweat of his brow. The glorious army of wire-tappers had won another victory and their generals had consummated a campaign of months. Receipts, $50,000.
That whoop brought the two wire-tappers to their feet and after they both shook their fists eagerly in our direction they started in frenzied haste for the depot. As they scurried frantically out of our neighborhood Uncle Peter smiled blandly and murmured, "For lecturers, female reformers and all those who lead a sedentary life there's nothing like exercise!"
The tip went abroad that the city was "good graft" for everybody, and in the train of the "wire-tappers" thronged the "flimflammer," "confidence man," "booster," "capper" and every sort of affiliated crook, recalling Charles Reade's account in "The Cloister and the Hearth" of Gerard in Lorraine among their kin of another period: With them and all they had, 'twas lightly come and lightly go; and when we left them my master said to me, "This is thy first lesson, but to-night we shall be at Hansburgh.
The "wire-tappers," of whom "Larry" Summerfield was the Napoleon, the "gold-brick" and "green-goods" men, and the "sick engineers" flocked to New York, which, under the unwitting protection of the Court of Appeals, became a veritable Mecca for persons of their ilk.
One of these is an Irishman who makes a specialty of get-rich-quick men, oil and mining stock operators, wire-tappers and their kin, and who knows the antecedents and history of most of them better than any other man in the country. He is ready to take the part of either a "sucker" or a fellow crook, as the exigencies of the case may demand.
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