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COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

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PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Crooks of many varieties and shades try to prey
upon the wealthy patrons in all the leading hotels.
"Crooks of the Waldorf" is the story of Joe
Smith, master detective, and of his successful
career in protecting the fastidious guests of America's most famous and fashionable hotel from cunning criminals. It turns up new criminological
information and new information on modern expert methods of crime detection. But it also helps
to explain how the Waldorf maintained an enviable prestige and reputation.
Like Oscar of the Waldorf, Joe Smith is a
leader in his profession, but his work was done
secretly and consequently was little known. Yet
here is the evidence that he guarded property and
security with the same vigilance and quiet efficiency as the hotel devoted to the accommodation
and comfort of its guests.







FOREWORD

Naturally, I am interested in every criminological book that appears, but when I heard that
Joe Smith's story was being told, I waited with an
impatience quite unprofessional, to see the script.
For Joe Smith has become a tradition in our
world. He is, we agree, the nearly perfect detective, and very different from the common conception of him. I was eager to see what opinions he
had to express on matters important to all of us
and how his astonishing life and still more astonishing personality has been presented.
Therefore I must pay Horace Smith a compliment. His book presents the Joe Smith we know,
and tells Joe Smith's story the way we know it,
with the quiet effectiveness that always characterized his own work, and thrilled us.
For that, I am sure, many thousands of readers
will thank Mr. Horace Smith. The old truth must
be repeated. This true story of Joe Smith is so
V




CONTENTS
I JOE SMITH OF THE WALDORF          7
II A CLEVER RACING SWINDLE          37
III THE GUEST IS ALWAYS RIGHT       61
IV WALLS HAVE EYES AND EARS         82
V THE FEMALE PROWLER               105
VI THEY ALL COME BACK              140
VII PLAYING A HUNCH                 156
VIII THE HOTEL ANNEX: A TRAVELING
SPEAKEASY                     174
IX THE COME-ON GIRL AND THE MASHER  194
X  THIEVES BY CIRCUMSTANCE         225
XI PAYING THIEVES                  259
XII CROOKS, OLD STYLE AND NEW       275
XIII PROTECTING ROYALTY              298







CROOKS OF THE WALDORF







CHAPTER I

JOE SMITH OF THE WALDORF
SEVERAL rooms at the Waldorf had been robbed
in quick succession by an unusually clever and daring thief. In every instance there had been such a
lapse of time between his visit and the discovery
of it that he made a clean getaway.
The management of the hotel was greatly concerned and its secret service, which had often been
commended for its efficiency, was by the ears.
Joe Smith, the Chief House Detective, was filled
with righteous indignation. His whole nature was
outraged. The Waldorf was his church and any
violation of its sanctity was a desecration. Several
of them, following closely on each other's heels,
amounted to sacrilege, an affront to all of his gods.
He assigned to himself the task of capturing, redhanded if possible-he did not know how redhanded it would be!-the violator of his holy of
holies.




8

Crooks of the Waldorf

All of the ransacked rooms had been entered
through a window. That stamped the burglar as
one of those skilled specialists who always work
from fire escapes and ledges in the wall and are
never known to enter a hotel through a door.
Therefore, even with a good description of him,
it would be a waste of time to look for him in the
lobby or through the corridors.
From the condition in which the robbed rooms
had been left, through certain little signs that are
evidence only to the trained eye, Joe believed they
had been visited by Senfor Jose Hermidez, known
as "The Mexican," a desperate and dangerous
hotel thief whom he had caught in the act of burglarizing a guest's room only a year before. As a
gentle punishment for that offense, and with the
idealistic idea of encouraging him in his professed
desire to return to the straight and narrow path,
from which he claimed he had only started to
stray, Jose had been sent to the Elmira Reformatory for one year.
Basing his opinion on an experience of more
than thirty years as a hotel detective, during'
which time he had brought about the successful




Joe Smith of the Waldorf            9
prosecution of some hundreds of crooks, Joe
Smith was convinced that the only effect of a
term in the State Reformatory, as it is optimistically known, was to make men worse instead of
better; and here, he thought, was a case in point.
Upon inquiry he learned that Hermidez had been
released only a short while before the first of the
recent room robberies, on his assurance that his
reform was complete. He had promised to "go
straight" so the State had patted him on the back
and turned him loose.
It was one of Joe's firm beliefs that "They always come back" after a successful robbery.
Knowing "The Mexican" was at large, and being
familiar with his technique, Joe felt certain of the
identity of the thief. With that established, the
House Detective prepared to welcome him on his
next visit. Because of the Mexican's shrewdness
and his readiness witha gun or any other weapon
that was handy when he was in danger of arrest,
Joe was unwilling to assign any of his subordinates to the case. He preferred to match wits himself with Hermidez and take all of the chances to
which the man who was on his trail would be ex




I0

Crooks of. the Waldorf

posed. He had a certain admiration for the nerve
and cunning of the Mexican. At the same time he
knew he was a very ugly customer.
One evening while Joe was carefully examining
all of the fire escapes, the House Detective, found
a ladder leaning against a pillar on the Astor
Court side of the building, where it had been left
by workmen who were making some alterations
in the rear wall. That side of the hotel faces a
narrow private street and is not so well lighted
nor so much exposed to view as the three other
fronts. From the top of the ladder it was easy to
reach the bottom of a fire escape which opened the
way to numerous ledges running around the outer
wall.
This pointed to the manner in which the thief
had entered and left the hotel on his previous
visits and it was a natural deduction that, crooks
being what they are, he would use the same avenue
when he came back. Evidently the ladder had been
carelessly placed in a similarly inviting position
on the nights on which the robberies had occurred.
The House Detective instructed the man in charge
of the work to leave the ladder in about the same




Joe Smith of the Waldorf          II
position every evening. Then he took up his vigil
on a coping two feet wide on the fifth floor. This
coping was only a step from the fire escape, and
the windows of many rooms opened upon it.
Every night for six long weeks Joe Smith
watched there from darkness until dawn. Whether
the Mexican was waiting until he thought the
hotel detectives had abandoned the hunt for him,
or whether the ladder, left so long in about the
same place, made him suspicious of a trap, he deferred his return visit for an extraordinarily long
period. But finally his greed overcame his apprehension. He selected a night when the sky was
overcast and Astor Court was darker than usual.
Shortly before dawn, Joe Smith's straining ear
caught a slight sound in the direction of the fire
escape. Seeing nothing, but feeling that someone
was approaching, he drew his gun and noiselessly
shifted himself into a position where he could use
it quickly. In a few moments he distinguished the
form of a man on his hands and knees moving
slowly toward him on the ledge. The intruder saw
Joe at the same time and growled:
"If you move I'll blow your damned head off."




12      Crooks of the Waldorf

The fleeting metallic glitter of what seemed to be
a gun backed up the threat.
In one quick movement, Joe raised his arm and
fired, shooting to maim rather than to kill. The
Mexican howled with pain, cursed, and squirmed
around on the narrow ledge, moving backward, in
the hope of escape, with the detective after him,
scornful of the gun he supposed the thief carried.
The thief's knees slipped over the edge of the coping; he almost lost his grip and fell, when Joe
seized him by the collar of his coat and pulled him
back to safety. At the same time the robber
grasped the detective around the legs and attempted to throw him from the ledge. The men
fought and struggled on the knife-edge battlefield
for several minutes. Only Joe's strength and agility saved one or both of them from a fall that
would have been fatal. He finally wriggled one of
his legs free and got his foot through an open window, dragging his enemy with him. Then he
switched on the light.
"I thought it was you," said Joe, "and that's
the way I wanted to get you."
The detective's bullet, aimed at the hand that




Joe Smith of the Waldorf

13

appeared to be holding a gun, had gone through
the Mexican's shoulder and blood was dripping
from his right hand. He had no weapon, it developed, but he carried a searchlight and it was a
glint from that which had caught Joe's eye. Hermidez was sent first to a hospital and then back to
prison, to which, when his term expired, he was
soon afterward returned for robbing a department store. His encounter with Joe Smith caused
him to change his line of attack but not his habits.
The window-ledge encounter with Jose Hermidez was one of the cases that add variety to
the life of a hotel detective and keep it from getting tiresome.
Properly speaking, the principal actor in the
foregoing episode is Joseph Edward Smith, Assistant Manager of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel,
New York City, and Captain in the U. S. Army
Reserve Corps, which rank was given him for
tricking and trapping enemy spies during the
World War, but it is as plain Joe Smith that he
has made himself the most widely known man in
his profession.
Wherever there are crowds there are bound




14

Crooks of the Waldorf

to be crooks, and at many hours of the day and
night there are few places more crowded than the
lobby and lounging rooms of a large hotel. The
modern metropolitan hotel is a city in itself, with
ten thousand or more people under its roof every
day in the year, including its registered guests and
its employees. Many of them are there only to call
on friends, or as patrons of the restaurants, or to
keep appointments on a popular meeting ground,
or merely to buy a cigar, but so long as they are
within its doors the hotel management considers
them entitled to its protection.
Every large hotel now has its own detective
force, operating under its own Chief of Police,
who is known as the House Detective. This secret
service functions so quietly and smoothly that its
existence, though  surmised, is not generally
known, so far as its actual workings are concerned. It is the business of the hotel detectives
to keep a watchful eye on the swindlers, blackmailers, thieves, beats and tricksters of all kinds
who are attracted by the throngs of prosperous
people and the enforced intimacy of modern hotel
life, and to head off the full-fledged or the budding




Joe Smith of the Waldorf

15

criminals before they reach their prospective prey
and keep the corridors clear of them. Their success is reflected in the popularity and prosperity
of the hotel.
Unlike the city police, the plainclothes men of
the hotel are never on parade. They must see
everything without being seen; they must be careful not to attract more than a casual glance. With
some of the cleverest crooks in the world constantly matching wits with theni in the endless
effort to worm their way through the barrier that
protects the plunder, they must be shrewd in their
judgments of both men and women, and unfailing
in memory. They must be certain in judgment as
well, for ejecting an honest man or a good woman
as undesirable would be quickly followed by a
suit for damages, with publicity of the kind that
every hotel is most anxious to avoid. So it is that
the hotel detectives always work quietly-so very
quietly that little is known about them, the cases
they handle, or their methods of handling them.
The greatest of these silent sleuths is Joe Smith.
He received his early training with Scotland Yard
-the most famous of all crime detecting organiza




16       Crooks of the Waldorf
tions, with headquarters in London and arms that
extend to every part of the world-where he aided
in the solution of some sensational cases. For more
than thirty years he has been House Detective at
the Waldorf. He has held many other positions
as well, including that of Night Manager, which
he considers the most exacting of all, but he has
never ceased to be the head of the detective force,
which is the place for which he was born. In the
course of long and lively years he has made more
than six hundred arrests, and in every case he
secured a conviction. Save for some little "inside
jobs"-involving petty thievery, in which it was
considered that the ends of justice were satisfied
by the discharge of the pilferer-no one has ever
robbed the Waldorf or one of its guests and gone
unpunished.
Often it took weeks or months to fix the responsibility for a crime and then locate and capture the offender. But sooner or later-and generally sooner-they were all caught and sent to
prison, from which they came out more crooked
than when they went in. That, however, is another
story. Because of this certainty of detection and




Joe Smith of the Waldorf

17

conviction, the underworld grew cautious. There
have been periods when Captain Smith's well
guarded province was free from invasion for
many months on end. But his watchfulness is unceasing. Even when there is no actual trouble he
is busy getting acquainted with new schemes that
are constantly being developed by the crooks.
Always quietly, usually without scenes of any
kind, Joe has ejected thousands of men and women
who were planning to take money away from
guests of the hotel by some dishonest device. Some
of them, who were well aware that Joe knew all
about them, went willingly enough when they felt
the significant pinch on the arm that is the sign
by which officers of the law make themselves
known; but many who were close to the line that
divides respectability from suspicion and who
were, perhaps, just stepping over the border, became indignant and threatened the kind of litigation from which every hotel wishes to keep clear.
But Joe's judgment is keen; he has never been
sued for damages because of the removal of an
undesirable guest or lounger, nor has the hotel.
You might drop in at the Waldorf twenty times




18     Crooks of the Waldorf

but, unless you were looking for Joe Smith and
he had been described to you, you would never pick
him out as the Chief Detective. If you noticed him
at all you probably would regard him as a guest
from out of town; perhaps a successful business
man from some western city. But you can be very
sure he would see you, and look you over in one
swift appraising glance that told him all he wanted
to know about you. If you happened in again a
month or two later and engaged him in conversation he could, if he thought it wise, tell you about
when you were there before and where he noticed
you. That is the way his memory works.
There is nothing at all of the detective of fiction
about him, in either his appearance or his actions.
He is a quiet, well educated man, a lover of art
and of life in the. country, far from Peacock Alley
and the jostling throngs of the Gilded Canyon.
He spends all of his time when he is off duty in
his attractive farm house in the Ramapo Mountains near Suffern, forty miles from the city.
There he delights in entertaining his friends with
hospitality of the old-fashioned kind.
He is five feet and nine inches tall, vwith the




Joe Smith of the Waldorf

19

build of an athlete, and he keeps himself in athletic trim. Ordinarily deliberate and dignified in
his movements, he can be as quick as a cat and as
lithe as a panther. His hair is graying and thinning but there are few lines in his clean shaven
face and he has an agreeable smile that is easily
aroused. His blue eyes shoot fire when he is on
the trail of a crook. The eyes miss nothing and the
mind never forgets a face or an incident that is
worth remembering.
It has been said of Joe Smith that "he would
charge hell with a bucket of water." Unquestionably he would, if there was anybody in hell he
wanted to get-and he probably wouldn't bother
about the bucket, at that. If he has any nerves at
all they are never in evidence. Nothing ever disturbs him. He is as unmoved in the presence of
death, or the sudden prospect of it, as he is when
viewing the weather.
With nothing at all in the way of mercy for
habitual criminals, Joe Smith has gone to great
lengths-even to the extent of putting his personal guarantee back of them-to get another
chance for first offenders when he was convinced




20

Crooks of the Waldorf

that they were naturally honest and wished to live
within the law.
How old he\ is, in calendar years, nobody knows.
Joe himself professes not to know, nor care. When
questioned he mentions the fact that he has had
t twenty-nine candles on his birthday cake at every
anniversary for quite some time. He declares he
will never have any more. So since nothing can
persuade him to take a calendar seriously, save
as an aid to the fixing of some day and date in
which he is at the moment interested, that appears
to end it. Assuredly, so far as his soul and his
spirit are concerned he is still young.
Captain Smith was born in the famous old Tam
o'Shanter hotel in Liverpool, then owned and managed by his father. There his destiny was shaped.
His mother came from Ireland. His father, who
was born in Brazil, was a man of the world and
knew his way around; a good mixer and a shrewd
observer. He had close and cordial relations with
the heads of the Liverpool police, whose headquarters were close by, and also with many of the
Inspectors from Scotland Yard, who came over
from London frequently on important cases. The




Joe Smith of the Waldorf          21
advice and assistance of the elder Smith were
sought after and the Tam o'Shanter was, in effect,
an unofficial police headquarters and the scene of
all of the Police Department banquets and other
festivities.
It was in this atmosphere that young Joe grew
up, and it was as seductive to him as it would have
been to any normal boy. Uniforms and authority
always carry a strong appeal for small boys and
young women, and they had all of that effect on
the child Joseph. He enjoyed youthful comradeship with many detectives, but his greatest heroes
were the big men from "The Yard," as Scotland
Yard is known the world over. They trotted him
on their knees from the time he could toddle
around and told him delightful stories. As he grew
older they told him detective stories, perhaps embellished a bit to give the thrills he demanded.
He was fascinated by the cases which they discussed with his father while they worked on them.
It was not long until, when he was not in school
or busy with his studies, he was deeply engaged in
solving mysterious crimes, real and imaginary..
"It was in this way," says Joe, "that I got my




22

Crooks of the Waldorf

early training-and early is the right word, for
it really started before I could talk plainly. In this
way, too, I learned that it is a sin to be garrulous;
I was early cautioned that I must never repeat
anything I heard or was told concerning police
affairs. And I never did. After my friends from
The Yard had satisfied themselves that I used
my eyes and my mind more than my tongue they
began to use my feet to run around and pick up
bits of information for them, at first in little
things and then in more important matters. There
were things a boy could do and places he could go,
apparently through idle curiosity, without attracting any attention, whereas a strange man would
instantly have aroused suspicion. Without being
noticed in any serious way I followed many men
for hours at a time and was able to give the Inspectors information about their habits and haunts
which they said was helpful."
At first Joe's reports were checked up by older
men; but they were always verified and it was not'
long before the men from Scotland Yard were
calling him "The Boy Detective"-at first humorously and then in earnest. While still a youth he




Joe Smith of the Waldorf

23

had his first real taste of blood in connection with
the murder of a school master named Fluke, who
was found dead in his home only a block away
from where Joe lived. The detectives stationed him
behind a pillar of a house in the rear of the scene
of the crime and he spent long hours there watching for some suspicious sign. Nothing developed,
but his keen and intelligent interest, and the artfulness with which he kept himself under cover,
aroused the admiration of the officers in charge of
the case.
The Fluke murder was one mystery that the
British police never solved but the investigation
lasted long enough for the seed that had been
planted in young Joe's breast to germinate and
produce deep roots and a sturdy growth. Though
still only a volunteer, and without any official connection with the Police Department, the men from
The Yard were pleased to avail themselves of his
assistance in the famous case of Mrs. Florence
Maybrick, an American woman who was charged
with the murder of her husband, Dr. James Maybrick, a wealthy resident of Liverpool. Her trial
developed into a national sensation and her con




24

Crooks of the Waldorf

viction produced a great deal of international comment. Sir Charles Russell, one of the most brilliant criminal lawyers in England, conducted the
defense.
It was contended by the prosecution that Mrs.
Maybrick killed her husband in a most cold-blooded way by mixing arsenic with his food and literally watching him die. She obtained the arsenic, it
was alleged, by extracting it from a poisonous
paper that was then in use for killing flies. Against
the urgent advice of her counsel Mrs. Maybrick
insisted on addressing the jury. She claimed her
husband was addicted to the use of arsenic and
admitted that she had innocently given him an
overdose of the poison in response to his insistent
pleading for it. The jury was unconvinced. She
was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Some of the evidence against her had been
circumstantial. There were so many public protests against hanging a woman that within a few
weeks her sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. She was released in 1905, after having served sixteen years in prison, and returned
to the United States. Her case came into the pub




Joe Smith of the Waldorf

25

lic eye again in November, 1928, when it was reported in a press dispatch from Paris that she
had been left $750,000 under the will of Walter
Thomas Burrell, an Englishman who lived in
France. It was said that Mrs. Maybrick was then
living in Florida and that she proposed to use
some of her fortune in presenting to the British
government some new facts connected with the
murder case.
Though he was not called as a witness against
her, Joe Smith gave the Scotland Yard men valuable aid in building up their case against Mrs.
Maybrick. Later on he attended the sale of the
Maybrick effects at their mansion in an exclusive
suburb of Liverpool, adjoining the estate of Sir
Andrew Barclay Walker, one of the richest brewers in England. Dr. Maybrick had one of the largest and finest wine cellars in the country and it had
been expected that there would be some lively bidding for its choicest contents. However, there
had been so much talk about arsenic at the murder
trial that the staid Britishers would have none of
it at any price. The seals on the bottles were intact
but the prospective purchasers were taking no




28       Crooks of the Waldorf
ton. The real Lord Arthur Clinton had died some
years before, but his death had been forgotten;
there were so many Lords in England that one
more or less did not make much difference, unless
he managed to build up a reputation for himself.
Under her assumed name and character, Miss
de Furneaux maintained an apartment in an exclusive section in London and moved in the highest circles, where she was warmly welcomed. She
was about five feet and ten inches tall, with black
hair and eyes, and she dressed the part as perfectly as she played it. Though she was a consummate
actor in her male role, there was always something effeminate about her. But as the general run
of her men companions had the same appearance
this defect escaped attention. On several occasions
she was invited to affairs given by the Prince of
Wales, later King Edward VII. She associated
only with the nobility and people of prominence
and wealth. She made amorous advances to women
indiscriminately and many were the jealousies she
created in high circles with her flashing eyes and
her insouciant manner. She was a clever conversationalist and a talented musician. She was a bril




Joe Smith of the Waldorf

29

liant figure at every function she attended, and
was much sought after as a guest who would add
life and gayety to any party.
The bogus Lord Clinton, with her small hands
and the natural light touch of a woman, which
she had perfected until it was no heavier than a
breath of air, was an extremely artful thief in addition to possessing her singular aptitude at forging signatures that spelled much money. Where
she had acquired her proficiency in wily ways was
never learned, but she had been well schooled. Her
campaign was planned and executed with all of the
skill of a rarely gifted crook.
She did not make a dishonest move until her
position had been established beyond question with
the aristocrats among whom she moved. Then women guests began to miss valuable jewels which
had been removed from their necks or arms or
corsages so lightly that often their disappearance
was not noticed for hours. Similarly, diamondstudded watches and cigarette cases and well-filled
wallets were unaccountably missed from male
pockets. In many cases it was at first supposed the
valuables had simply been lost but the most careful




30

Crooks of the Waldorf

search failed to bring them to light. Some of her
wealthy men friends, with whose signature Frederica had become familiar during her long period
of preparation, began to find forged checks for
large amounts in their monthly bank statements.
Most of the victims carried such large balances,
and the forgeries were so cleverly executed, that
they escaped detection for a long time.
The continued disappearance of jewels and
other valuables finally convinced the losers that a
remarkably smart thief was operating in England's smartest society. At last4the successive robberies became a scandal, but a purely private one
-for in those days the aristocrats of London did
not mourn on the housetops over their losses and
until the case finally was cleared up there was no
publicity about it.
From time to time many wholly innocent men,
and some of the women, fell under suspicion. But
for a long while there was never so much as a
sidelong glance at the much-admired Lord Clinton, whose gay spirits were dampened only when
his fine sensibilities were outraged by the latest
of the series of thefts. In order to keep pace with




Joe Smith of the Waldorf

31

events, and set himself still further apart from
those who might be candidates for suspicion, he
had his own wallet stolen one evening. His concern over his own loss was trifling as compared
with his distress over the jewels, worth many
times as much, that were stolen from his lady
friends.
Frederica was all nerve, and surpassingly smart.
Her cheerful unconcern was a mask for a mind
that worked with methodical precision in all
things. She neglected none of the little details that
often are overlooked by ordinary, or even highclass crooks, and result in their detection. She
never committed more than one robbery at one
party, so there could be no comparing of notes,
which might have brought disaster; and many
functions passed off without anything of value being missed. And she never bothered with wallflowers: the women whose jewels she lifted were
always among the most popular of the guests and
were in the arms of many men during the evening,
in dancing and otherwise.
In the apartments with which she was most
familiar, and in which she was most at home, she




32

Crooks of the Waldorf

had secret hiding places. Here she deposited her
loot at the first opportunity after it came into her
hands, and recovered it just before leaving. For
other contingencies she had cunningly devised hidden pockets in her clothes, at points where the lines
of her feminine figure contributed to their concealment to an extent that made their discovery
practically impossible. Consequently, when some
guest rather hysterically announced that she, or
he, had been robbed, Frederica was one of the first
to offer to submit to a search, if she did not herself suggest a general search of all of those present, as she sometimes did.
These intermittent but never ending robberies
continued for more than a year and the value of
the stolen jewels and forged checks ran far up into
thousands of pounds before the finger of suspicion
was pointed, ever so gingerly at first, in the right
direction. Scotland Yard had some of its shrewdest detectives working on the case for months but
they were unable to make any progress. Finally
one of the Chief Inspectors, who had known Joe
Smith from his boyhood and was familiar with the
workings of his keenly analytical mind, asked him




Joe Smith of the Waldorf

33

to take a hand in the investigation, which was
being conducted with the utmost secrecy on account of the social and political prominence of the
people involved.
Following the rule to which he always has adhered, Joe studied the case calmly and coldly from
every angle before making a move. He figured
that the stolen jewels probably were being pawned,
as such an artistic and aristocratic thief would
not do business with a professional "fence"-there
are very few "fences" in England, anyway, on
account of the close police surveillance, and they
deal only with thieves who are well known to
them, from whom they exact a heavy toll. They
would not be disposed of in London, where all of
the pawnshops were constantly under close observation, so why not Liverpool?
Joe went to work on that theory, and after
weeks of patient watching, he found some of the
missing jewels in a Liverpool pawnshop. They had
been pledged by a tall young woman, with black
hair and eyes, named Mrs. George Robinson and
living at such and such an address, which was in
a part of the city remote from where Frederica




34       Crooks of the Waldorf
resided. There was no Mrs. Robinson nor anyone
answering her description at the address she had
given the pawnbroker, who reported that she was
expensively dressed and had all of the appearance
of being a lady. She had recited a plausible hardluck story as her reason for pawning the jewels.
This gave Captain Smith his first intimation
that the thief might be a woman posing as a man;
or else the jewels were pawned by the wife or
sweetheart of the thief. But, without being able
to explain why, he inclined toward the male impersonator idea. That was one of his uncanny
hunches. So he set himself to watch the night
trains from Liverpool to London. After another
long wait he finally spotted a tall, rather slender,
effeminate looking young man who corresponded
with the mental picture he had formed of the person he was after. Joe rode on the same train with
the imitation young man to London, followed him
to his apartment, found that he moved in the exclusive circles in which the robberies were being
committed, and in due course trailed him back to
Liverpool and to his home, where he discovered
that the supposed he was really a she.




Joe Smith of the Waldorf          35
Satisfied that he was on the right track, Joe
reported to Scotland Yard and thereafter Frederica de Furneaux in Liverpool and Lord Arthur
Clinton in London was under ceaseless observation. She was shadowed for weeks before an arrest was made, for the case was too important to
permit any possible chance of a mistake. Other
robberies were committed, and the detectives followed Frederica when she pawned the jewels.
They were close at her heels when she cashed
checks she had forged. Then, with the case against
her complete in every detail, she was taken into
custody. Her arrest caused a great sensation, as
did her trial, on account of the startlingly novel
ways in which she had worked and the prominence
of her victims. Captain Smith was one of the chief
witnesses for the prosecution.
It happened that on the same day when he testified against her he was a witness in another court
in another case involving stolen jewels, on which
he had worked after pointing the way to the detection of Miss de Furneaux. The owner of a hotel
near the Everton Coffee House had died suddenly
and had been attended by a man who claimed to




36

Crooks of the Waldorf

be a physician. Gaining the confidence of the family in this way, the bogus doctor seduced the
widow's daughter and then induced her to steal
her mother's jewelry and run away with him. Captain Smith was largely instrumental in running
him down.
Both Frederica and the seducer were convicted
and each was sent to prison for twenty years.
The remarkable detective ability displayed by
Captain Smith in these cases won high praise from
"The Yard" and brought about his prompt assignment to another unusually puzzling case, in which
two "mobs" of brilliant scoundrels were playing
the races on a sure-thing basis and throwing many
bookmakers into bankruptcy.




CHAPTER II

A CLEVER RACING SWINDLE
THE "sport of kings" has long been popular
with the British and betting on the races is their
favorite form of speculation. In the famous annual turf classics that have been run for generations the winning horse carries a fortune to the
holder of the ticket bearing his number in the
sweepstakes. Even on the ordinary day to day
events with overnight entries, which are of little
consequence as compared with the Derby or the
Suburban, for instance, the wagers run into very
large amounts. More money is won and lost on the
English race tracks than is ever played in the stock
market by the general public.
The British have no laws against public betting such as have been passed in many parts of the
United States. The bookmakers, or professional
bettors on the races, are recognized as men who
are engaged in a legitimate business and are there37




38

Crooks of the Waldorf

fore entitled to police protection. So it was that Joe
Smith was set to work on two cases that demanded
all of his shrewdness and kept him thrillingly occupied for many months. In the end he uncovered one of the cleverest swindles ever perpetrated
in England.
For a long time the bookmakers had been sustaining heavy losses. It was not unusual for them
to lose. some money on one race, or on several in
close succession under exceptional conditions, but
their losses were persistent and continually increasing in size. Their winnings on many races
were wiped out and large holes made in their bankrolls by their losses on a few, in which, as it was
finally brought out, they had no chance to win. In
widely scattered places thousands of pounds would
be wagered on a winning horse only a few moments before the result was announced. This gave
the layers no time to round out their books by
lengthening the odds on the other horses in the
race and they were forced to take their losses.
Many bookmakers were compelled to retire from
the field by the steady drain and only the richest
and strongest survived. They were sure they were




A  Clever Racing Swindle         39
being tricked but were wholly in the dark as to
the method.
Scotland Yard was appealed to and some of its
best detectives spent worrisome weeks on the case
without discovering a single clue that might point
the way to a possible solution of the problem.
Their failure made the mystery more puzzling and
added to the dismay of the bookmakers, who concluded that they were dealing with a remarkably
adroit and resourceful gang of swindlers. They
all saw ruin staring them in the face if the operations of the raiders were continued long enough.
The "Yard," too, was chagrined over its inability
to unearth anything on which to hang a definite
suspicion.
Joe Smith had the advantage of being a newcomer, whereas the older Scotland Yard men were
either known to the crooks, or tipped themselves
off by their professional manner. Given a free
hand, Joe went about the matter in his most
thorough and methodical fashion. He first acquainted himself with all of the facts and studied
the case from every angle. Then he cut himself off
entirely from all communication with the Yard,




A  Clever Racing Swindle          41
ready story to suit the occasion, and his explanations invariably checked up and satisfied inquisitive minds.
Some days he would attend the races, watch
the betting and make bets himself. That was done
largely to acquire familiarity with the horses and
surround himself with the right atmosphere, for
it was not at the tracks that the robberies were
being committed, though the information came
from there. Most of his afternoons were spent in
the poolrooms and sporting clubs in which the
bookmakers were being mulcted. In these places
he would send his bodyguard to make his bets
while he studied the bettors. He was always the
gentleman of leisure; never hurried but every minute alert and watchful without seeming to be more
than casually concerned in what was going on
around him. He appeared to make no effort to
form new acquaintances, though he was easily
engaged in conversation.
During weeks of observation he succeeded in
creating the impression that he knew what he was
about at all times, but he attended to his own business and expected other people to do -the same.




42       Crooks of the Waldorf
Giving no sign that he was greatly interested in
them, he was particularly watchful of men who
made large bets after the horses had gone to the
post. These he studied carefully for weeks, until
he had spotted a few who never put down a wager
until just before the race was run.
These men did not buy tickets on every race, but
when they did bet there was a smoothness and
rapidity about their movements noticeable to an
eye trained to observe off-guard gestures. They always watched the ticker tape on which the names
of the horses and riders were sent out just before
each race was run. When the list was complete,
they either turned away from it with a complete
lack of interest or immediately put down a large
wager. This created in Joe Smith's mind the first
vague idea that the ticker tape might be carrying
some information that only the initiated could understand. This impression gradually became a conviction, and he went to work on this line.
He carelessly tore off strips of the tape, absentmindedly stuck them in his pocket when no one
was looking and pored over them in the privacy
of his room. For a long while he found nothing




A  Clever Racing Swindle         43
he could interpret, or to which he could attach
any hidden meaning, but he patiently continued
his studies and eventually the light dawned on
him. He discovered the key to the ingenious code
and knew just how the most profitable of the two
sure-thing games was being worked. However, he
did not make an immediate report of his success.,
In his opinion the bookmakers could much better
afford to sustain some additional losses, which
would not be long continued, than to have him
leave the case unfinished, with the end definitely
in sight. And to have let anyone else know what
he had found would have upset his whole plan.
With his work more than half done, he then
turned his attention to the other swindle and was
in a fair way to work that out when he came into
possession of all the information he was after, as
a duly accredited member of the gang. His solution of the ticker tape code opened the way to his
admission into the crooked circle much sooner than
would have been possible without this convincing
evidence of his shrewdness. He grew friendly
with some of the leaders, and told them that he
knew how they were working the tape: He con




A  Clever Racing Swindle         45
moving its enemies-for no living man could be
trusted with their secret who was not one of them.
Joe took the long chance, in the belief that they
would end by accepting him. The thought of another murder did not disturb them, but in this case
they saw that such a crime would deprive them of
an exceedingly clever ally, whose keen brain could
be used to their mutual advantage. So they declared the detective a full-fledged member of the
gang and gave him their complete confidence.
After that the rest was easy for Joe. Being fully
informed in the technical points of the swindle,
he needed only to learn some of the details in the
minor sure-thing game, identify the leaders and
their subordinates and his report to Scotland Yard
would be complete. They could make a wholesale
clean-up.
To the ordinary observer there was nothing to
arouse suspicion in either the manner or the actions of these men whom Joe met around the poolrooms. They appeared to be men of wealth and
considerable culture and made no show of themselves. They worked in twos and threes and were
continually moving around. One pair or trio would




46

Crooks of the Waldorf

be in one club or poolroom one day and in another
one the next afternoon. They were so adroit in
their operations that the only man who gave them
more than passing notice was Joe Smith. He
adopted their plan of circulating around and
found the same men playing the races in the same
way in many different places. This required many
weeks of close observation, but he had a distinct
feeling that he was on the right track and believed he was making headway.
From the moment of his first suspicion, to the
end, the details of his procedure were interesting.
Without appearing to watch them, he began to
cultivate the men he was watching. Convinced of
their real shrewdness, and knowing they looked
askance at anyone who tried to engage them in
prolonged conversation, he was obliged to be most
discreet. His whole manner was ingenuous and
friendly without being at all forward. He first
found occasion to exchange a few passing remarks with three or four of them and established
a nodding acquaintance. For a time he did nothing more.
Gradually their casual comments became a little




A  Clever Racing Swindle         47
more extended and finally, without any apparent
effort to force himself on them, he began to joke
with them about their winnings and his own losses.
The suspects were disposed to be offish at first
but slowly they developed something of a liking
for the quiet, good-natured stranger who laughed
over his bad selections, was always ready to take
another chance with the ponies and never asked
any prying questions. His frank and open ways
disarmed them.
Pleased with the progress he was making,
Smith was much too smart to rush things. Their
acquaintance grew closer in a perfectly natural
way. He waited a long while before he found an
opening through which to develop it on a more intimate basis. Then he met two of the men he knew
best one afternoon in a poolroom not far from
where he lived. While they were chatting after
the last race had been run, Joe suggested that they
step around to his apartment for dinner. It seemed
to be an entirely spontaneous invitation as if the
thought had occurred to him while they were
talking over the day's events; though it was pre




48

Crooks of the Waldorf

cisely the situation Smith had been trying to create in just that way for weeks.
The invitation was accepted as pleasantly as it
had been offered; the two sharpers had no idea
they were opening the way to their own downfall.
They found that their host lived like the gentleman he appeared to be; he knew how a good dinner should be served. During the evening they
chatted about many things, with enough talk about
the horses to convince the guests that their host
was quite wise in the ways of race tracks and past
performances. He showed no concern at their persistent winnings and did not make even a jovial
reference to them.
They talked about the Aintree track at Liverpool, the scene of the Grand National, which is
the most famous steeplechase in the world, and of
the charms of the Chester racing park, beautifully
situated on the River Dee, not far from where
Smith was born and brought up. Vague hints
dropped here and there accounted for his frequent
visits to Liverpool, where he spent many days
pursuing one end of his investigation, and he intimated that he did not prolong his stays there




A Clever Racing Swindle

49

because his relations with the police were none
too friendly. He left the cause to the imagination
of his new acquaintances. They shrewdly attached
much importance to the fact that he knew all about
the inner workings of Vine's Hotel, which was the
largest gambling house and poolroom in Liverpool, covering a whole city block.
The courtesy of this little dinner party was soon
returned by one of Joe Smith's guests and he was
introduced to several additional members of the
gang whom he had seen many times in different
poolrooms. Other similar social affairs followed
and the circle of cronies was gradually extended.
They all lived well, with their own valets and
servants, dressed always in the height of fashion
and spent money freely.
In public they were suave gentlemen; but behind their own doors, and with the veneer stripped
off as acquaintance progressed, they showed themselves to be cold-blooded and ruthless bandits.
Many of the leaders were members of good families who had been disowned by their parents when
they persisted in the path of dishonesty. Their
subordinates came from a much lower grade of




50

Crooks of the Waldorf

society and were desperate men who would hesitate at no crime that promised a rich return. After
he had been admitted to membership Joe trailed
around with them until he was thoroughly familiar with their workings and knew all of the men
of any consequence in the organization. If he had
ever been suspected even slightly, his life would
not have been worth a farthing, but he played his
part so well that even after the gang had been
broken up the members of it did not know who
was responsible for their exposure.
"There really were two gangs," said Captain
Smith, "the Liverpool Mob and the London Mob,
but they were closely allied and worked together
much of the time. The Liverpool Mob worked
chiefly in Liverpool, and preyed on the bookmakers through their district runners. The big bookmakers divided the city into districts and had
agents, known as 'runners' who covered the fields
to which they were assigned, taking bets from
people who had not time or did not find it convenient to visit the poolrooms.
"These runners operated something like the
collectors for our industrial life insurance com




A  Clever Racing Swindle         51
panies. Each one had his own circuit of public
houses, or saloons, stores and houses. They went
over their beats frequently and were well known.
Many of their clients stopped them in the street
and handed them their bets. In big races like the
Derby, the City and Suburban Handicap, the Gold
Cup or the Lincoln Handicap, where there would
be betting for days and weeks in advance, the runners carried sheets showing the odds on the different horses, which often were changed from
day to day, but on the ordinary races of the day,
wagers were made with the understanding that
they would be settled at the 'starting price' at the
track, or the opening price as we would call it.
"The Liverpool Mob worked with two very different inks, which were brand new at the time.
One of them, clear and distinct to start with,
faded out quickly and so completely that it left
no trace. The other was invisible when it was written but came out a brilliant black when exposed
to a little heat.
"After the first race had been run and the winner was known, one of the Mob would hand a
bookmaker's runner a five or ten pound note, cor




52

Crooks of the Waldorf

responding to $25 or $50 in our money, with a slip
of paper on which was written his name and, we
will say, 'Queen-S. P.' Queen was entered in the
third race, which had not yet been run. 'S. P.'
stood for starting price. This was written in the
ink that faded. On the same slip 'Bully-S. P.'
had been written in the invisible ink. Bully had
already won his race, of course.
"The runner would look at the slip to verify
the name of the horse and the race and the
amount of the bet, stuff the piece of paper in one
pocket and the money in another and go on his
way. The heat of his body brought out the name
of the horse that had been written with the invisible ink and the other disappeared.
"Simple enough when you know how it was
done, but the scheme was so novel and the secret
was so religiously guarded that it took a long time
to dig it out. The runners did not go over all of
the slips of paper they had collected. during the
day until the races were over and then they had
so many of them that they did not notice that
some of them had undergone a change. Nor was
there any way of detecting it. The bookmakers




A Clever Racing Swindle

53

shifted their odds about in all sorts of ways but
they continued to lose money heavily. They believed they were up against some kind of a brace
game but were completely in the dark as to how
it was being worked. There was nothing for them
to do but pay off on the winning tickets or go out
of business. It was impossible to distinguish the
phony tickets from the good ones, and bookmakers
who 'welshed' were beaten up by the gang on dark
nights and thrown in the river to drown. Some
good men disappeared in that manner while others
went broke and quit the game.
"The Mob did not confine themselves to Liverpool though they had their headquarters there.
They also operated in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Newmarket and Chester, all of which
cities had racing and plenty of facilities for betting. Two or three men would work in each district and they would often put down their surething bets after the first and second races and
sometimes, if they were very greedy, after the
third as well.
"All of the gangsters paid a goodly part of their
winnings, or robberies, to the leaders, who sup




54

Crooks of the Waldorf

plied them with the inks they used and assigned
them to the territory they were to work. They
were constantly shifted around from one district
to another to avoid suspicion. The whole game was
well systematized and the organization was managed with an efficiency that would have made a
success of any business. Any members of the gang
who failed to obey orders, or were strongly suspected of holding out on the bosses, met the same
fate as the bookmakers who did not pay their
losses.
"The London Mob had a much more elaborate system for beating the races," Joe Smith
went on, "and let me say right here that it is possible to beat them only through trickery of some
kind. This mob was made up of men of much better blood, though no higher principles, than the
other gang. It was headed by Fred Sadler, as
clever and unscrupulous a crook as England has
ever produced but quite the gentleman in manner.
"In those days the racing news was sent out over
a ticker system which was operated from a central
station at the track. The reports were printed on
a narrow strip of paper, after the style of the




A  Clever Racing Swindle          55
stock quotation ticker used in this country, though
the instruments then in service did not operate
nearly so rapidly. There were tickers in every
sporting club and poolroom, of which there were
a great many in London and Liverpool, with some
of the other large cities well represented, and in
many public houses. Some of the sporting clubs
were very exclusive but in most of them membership was open to any man of good appearance who
could pay the entrance fee. The Mob had many
of its members scattered through these sporting
clubs.
"Last minute scratches were frequent and for
the information of bookmakers and bettors the
rules required that a list of the horses in every
race, and their riders, be sent out just before the
horses went to the post. They were transmitted
over the tape in this manner:
"RUNNERS, 3RD RACE: LORD JIM, Werner; MADCAP, Jones; HOT TIP, Wilkins; and
so on through the list.
"Out of this perfectly innocent situation, which
seemed proof against dishonesty, Fred Sadler's
keen mind evolved an exceedingly clever con




56

Crooks of the Waldorf

spiracy that netted him and his fellows millions
of dollars. His principal partner was the man at
the track who sent out the reports over the ticker.
"With a large field of horses and a quick start,
it frequently happened that the race had been run
by the time the name of the last horse and jockey
appeared on the tape. In such a situation, if the
winner was the fourth horse in the list the man
who was operating the ticker would print 'RUNS'
on the tape immediately after the names of the
last horse and rider. If the fifth horse won he
would print 'RUNRS.' If the winner was the
sixth horse he would add 'RUNNRS' and if the
seventh horse was first under the wire 'RUNNERS' would be spelled out in full.
"There was no need for this additional word,
whether in full or in contracted form, but it attracted no attention, outside of the conspirators,
as it was assumed the operator was simply killing time and emphasizing the conclusion of the
list of racers. When the final word was contracted
it was supposed the horses had started before he
finished it. Then would follow a brief description of the race, with the positions of the con




A  Clever Racing Swindle          57
tenders at the start and at the quarters, and,
finally, the name of the winner.
"This gave the members of the Mob time to get
their bets down after the name of the winner
had been tipped off to them by the number of letters in the added word. Thus, whenever a race
was won by the fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh
horse, in the order in which they appeared on the
tape, and when the race was finished in time for
the flash to be sent out at the conclusion of the
list, the Sadlerites made their sure-thing bets.
Their loot was continuous and enormous, as they
had men working in all of the big sporting clubs
and poolrooms.
"They were smart enough not to overplay their
hand. They did not have to, for their percentage
was heavy enough to suit any crook. The man who
operated the ticker was, of course, in full view of
the track. He knew all of the horses and did not
have to wait until the winner had been officially
announced before sending out the flash. When the
conditions were favorable, or could be made so
without attracting attention, he would delay the
sending out of the list of racers until the horses




58

Crooks of the Waldorf

were on their way to the post. Then, with a quick
getaway, the situation was made to order for him,
as he could dawdle over sending out the list or
speed it up, as the occasion demanded.
"With the methods and members of the two
Mobs established it was easy to put an end to their
robberies. But there were no arrests, no prosecutions and not a word of publicity about it. Betting
on the races had become so widespread that it was
being much talked about as a national evil, with
many prominent people agitating for laws against
it. The bookmakers were fearful of adding fuel
to what was becoming a flame by calling attention to their enormous losses. They knew that if
the facts became known a great many people
would feel that any business that could stand such
a tremendous drain must have been operating at
an excessive profit on the basis of unfair odds to
the public. So the bookmakers were well satisfied
to plug the holes through which their wealth had
been running away and let it go at that.
"Unfortunately, any serious thought of punishment for the murders that had been committed
by the gang was out of the quesion. I knew who




A  Clever Racing Swindle          59
the murderers were, either from their admissions
to me, or through statements made by other members of the Mobs, but it would have been impossible to establish their guilt in court. If they had
been arrested and tried, those who had boasted
to me of their crimes would have repudiated their
informal confessions, and in the cases where I had
only hearsay evidence, however clear and convincing to me, my informants would have denied
everything. It would have been my word against
the sworn testimony of a lot of professional perjurers, with no chance of proving their perjury.
So those crimes were necessarily added to the
short list of mysterious murders that Scotland
Yard has never solved publicly, though, as usual,
the Yard knew all of the guilty parties. However,
as most of the murdered men were traitorous
members of the gang there was no great loss to
society.
"Strangely enough," continued Joe Smith, "one
of the biggest of the bookmakers was a man
named Fry, whom I knew well. When I was a boy
he and a man named Ellings had a linen store opposite the Tam o'Shanter hotel, in Liverpool. Ell




60

Crooks of the Waldorf

ings died and Fry took up the racing game and
became one of the richest bookmakers in England.
Though I often saw him and talked with him during the months I was working on the case, he
never suspected that I was interested in it or that
I had any hand in saving him from bankruptcy.
"Fred Sadler, who really was the brains behind both Mobs, and their directing genius, devoted his brilliantly distorted mind to other dishonest lines, after his gang was broken up. He
was often in trouble with the police, for he was
closely watched after that. The last report I had
about him said that he had become angry with a
waiter and stuck a knife through him. The man
did not die, but Sadler was sent to prison and I
think he died there."




CHAPTER III

THE GUEST IS ALWAYS RIGHT
JOE SMITH'S elder brother had come to New
York while Joe was working on the Frederica de
Furneaux case and the reports he sent back of
the new world appealed strongly to Joe's vivid
imagination. So, with peace and prosperity restored to the bookmakers, he gave up his connection with Scotland Yard, despite the protests of
the Inspectors with whom he had worked, and
joined his brother.
The first thing he did on his arrival in New
York, after looking the city over and pronouncing
it good, was to apply for American citizenship,
which he secured in the shortest possible time. His
next step, naturally,. was to get acquainted with the
police. That was easy, as his brother was a neighbor and friend of John Flood, then Chief Inspector of the New York Police Department. His
brother had told Flood of Joe's connection with
6i




62       Crooks of the Waldorf
Scotland Yard and something of his remarkable
experiences and the unusual ability and courage he
had displayed in the work. Naturally, the story
lost nothing in a proud brother's telling, but in essentials it was not exaggerated. The Chief Inspector, who was himself a relentless manhunter and
always on the lookout for capable operatives, gave
young Smith a warm welcome.
They had many talks about British criminals
and the methods of Scotland Yard as compared
with American ways of dealing with crooks. After
fully satisfying himself as to Joe's character and
resourcefulness, Flood took him to his office and
introduced him to Charlie Heidelberg, Detective
Sergeant at Police Headquarters. The Inspector
told the Sergeant enough about Smith's record
with Scotland Yard, and his own estimate of him,
to give him a good start. The result was that almost before he knew his way around in New York
Joe was chasing lawbreakers under the direction
of Heidelberg, and his work was so successful that
the two soon became fast friends.
Joe sent to England for his wife and bought a
home in Flushing, Long Island. As that suburb




The Guest is Always Right          63
was not then, as it is now, a part of Greater New
York, he was made a special Deputy Sheriff in
Queens County, to give him what authority he
might need.
In Joe Smith's first important case in New York
City he proved his genius for simplifying mysteries, and took another step toward fame. A big
department store on Sixth Avenue near 23rd
Street, in what was then the heart of the retail
shopping district, reported that costly objects of
art had been disappearing for months, until the
loss became something to worry about. The thief
took only the most valuable things, indicating that
he was a good judge of art as well as an expert
shoplifter.
For a long while the regular store detective had
devoted most of his time to watching the department that was being robbed, but without discovering a clue. The Police Department was then
called on for help. Charlie Heidelberg, Detective
Sergeant at Police Headquarters, assigned Joe
Smith to the case.
When he first visited the store to look over the
ground, Joe Smith was told at once that the one




64

Crooks of the Waldorf

man, aside from the owners, about whom he need
give himself no concern was the manager of the
department that was being looted. This man, the
management told him, had been with them for
years and had their complete confidence. But every
other employee of the store might be regarded as a
possible thief.
Joe observed things quietly for a day or two,
and noticed that the manager who was considered above suspicion allowed all of his clerks to
go to lunch at the same time and was alone in his
department during the noon hour. The trustful
management explained that business was so slack
at that time, the manager could handle it himself,
and he preferred to go to lunch when the restaurant was less crowded than it was during the rush
hour.
"That did not look so good to me," said Joe.
"The fact that the owners of the store believed
this man to be far above any shadow of suspicion
had the effect of attracting my attention to him.
I felt that he might stand a good bit of watching.
His exalted standing with the management made
no difference to me. I went into the case with a




The Guest is Always Right          65
perfectly open mind, and I soon found myself
especially interested in this particular man. I
formed a theory about him and proceeded to try
it out, without giving any hint of my idea or intention to the management.
"On the third day I packed a bag, ran into the
store and rushed up to the art department during
the lunch hour. The manager was alone, as usual.
I explained that I was in a great hurry, as I was
leaving on a ship that was sailing for England
that afternoon, and had almost forgotten a present
I wished to take with me. I was on my way to the
pier and had only a few minutes in which to make
a selection. With the help of the manager I picked
out an article that was priced at $9.50, handed him
a $Io bill, told him to give the change to one of
his clerks, as I had not time to wait for it, and
rushed out.
"Pretty soon I was back again, but the suspected man did not see me. I found he had not
reported the sale he had made to me. I was not surprised. As he was leaving the store that evening,
and after he was on the sidewalk, I tapped him
on the shoulder and asked him to return. I took




66

Crooks of the Waldorf

him into a private office and searched him, in spite
of his indignant protests. In one of his pockets I
found the ten dollar bill I had given him, which,
of course, I had marked. We had an argument
that was quite heated on his part but at the end
of it he confessed that he was the thief. He took
me to his apartment where he had about $0o,ooo
worth of art objects he had stolen. This represented only a part of his stealings, for he had
been selling expensive things to dealers for months
at his home, and he had also failed to turn in a
great deal of money that he received for sales
when he was alone in the department.
"The owners of the store were glad enough to
have the systematic robberies stopped, but they
were so annoyed over having them pinned on the
man they had trusted that they kicked about paying my expense account, amounting to something
like thirteen dollars for three days' work. They
showed their resentment in that way, and by refusing to prosecute the thief. Human nature
works like that, sometimes-and human nature is
a factor that you must know something about if




The Guest is Always Right           67
you expect to have any success in dealing with
criminals."
Soon after this case had been cleared up, Police
Headquarters was requested to assign a detective
to the Waldorf-Astoria, then the newest and
largest hotel in New York. A systematic series of
robberies had occurred recently, and the management was much concerned. The cigar humidors
and wine cellars of the Waldorf were famous in
those days, for this was long before prohibition
was dreamed of, even by Wayne B. Wheeler. They
were the largest and most valuable in the city.
Both of them were being steadily depleted. The
most expensive cigars, and choicest wines, were
constantly disappearing, despite the most careful
watchfulness of their rightful owners. They appeared to vanish into thin air. The losses were
running into many thousands of dollars, and the
thieves left no clue. Furthermore, there were many
complaints from guests that their baggage was
being plundered. These latter complaints caused
the greatest anxiety of all, for the management
realized that they could not go on without seri




68

Crooks of the Waldorf

ously damaging the reputation of the hotel before
it was well started.
Here was a task that would suit Joe Smith to
perfection, and Charlie Heidelberg recommended
him for the job. Smith called at the Waldorf, in
response to an invitation, and met the late George
C. Boldt, the proprietor, and Thomas Hilliard,
manager. They took him into a private office and
gave him all of the details connected with the troubles they were having.
"The whole case is in your hands," said Mr.
Boldt, at the end of the interview. "We give you
carte blanche, with no limit as to either time or
expenses."
It did not take Joe a great while to discover
that the wines and cigars were being stolen by
the men in charge of the humidors and wine cellars. Supervision over the hotel's stores was then
not nearly so strict as it soon afterward became;
there were many loose ends that the new House
Detective gathered together and tied securely in
square knots. Aided by outside confederates who
shared in the loot, the two men in charge of the
humidors and wine cellars found it easy to smug




The Guest is Always Right          69
gle out the choicest of the goods in boxes and
barrels of waste, well covered with rubbish. Sometimes they sent out their loot concealed in garbage
cans from the kitchen. They did not send out any
large quantity at a time, but the drain was continuous and the loss to the hotel was heavy. The
pilfered goods were sold to foreigners who conducted well-known restaurants in the lower part
of the city and on the west side of town. They
knew they were buying stolen goods, as Joe Smith
proved; they paid a good price for them, as their
profits were high. The dishonest employees were
discharged and that ended the matter, as the Waldorf wanted no publicity about it.
Next came the baggage thefts, and this was a
harder case. Joe investigated every complaint
thoroughly and took nothing for granted. Every
piece of baggage was watched from the time it
reached the hotel until, it was delivered to the
guest's room. Then the rooms were watched. Joe
was soon convinced that the robberies were not
being committed in the hotel. He found there were
no complaints of thefts from hand bags. They
were all from expensive bags and suit cases which




70

Crooks of the Waldorf

had been checked through from some distant point
by people who had spent at least one night on a
train. Most of the robberies were reported by
guests who came in on trains arriving in New
York in the morning, from either the west or the
south. Joe also learned that similar complaints
were being made by guests at other hotels, the
managers of which were equally disturbed and
equally mystified.
Joe proceeded to investigate the railroads. He
had decoy baggage checked to New York from
Chicago, Boston, Washington and Richmond,
with the contents packed in such a way that any
disarrangement would be apparent. In some of
the bags he placed cheap jewelry which would look
like the real thing in the dim light of a baggage
car. Many of the bags were opened in transit and
apparently valuable articles abstracted from them.
The contents of others showed plainly that they
had been searched. It was made clear that most
of the train baggagemen were faithful and honest
but that some of them were not. The dishonest
ones carried long strings of keys that would open
almost any lock, and spent a good part of their




The Guest is Always Right           71
time going through all of the promising looking
baggage that was in their care. On long night
runs, with few stops, they had both the time and
the opportunity for extensive thievery. Only bags
with peculiarly intricate locks, which were not numerous, escaped ransacking.
Joe Smith continued his investigation until he
was satisfied that he had found the thieves, though
he might have had trouble to convict them in court.
He took the railroad detectives into his confidence,
told them all that he had discovered and turned
the matter over to them. Following the method
he had used, but on a larger scale, with all of the
clues in their hands, they made short work of it.
Complete cases of robbery were soon established
against all of the baggagemen that were on
Smith's list of suspects, and the thieves were discharged in disgrace. There were no prosecutions,
for no railroad cared to advertise the fact that
the baggage of its passengers had been burglarized by its own employees. The important thing, so
far as Captain Smith was concerned, was that
the robberies ceased, and the guests of the Waldorf received their baggage safely.




72

Crooks of the Waldorf

The management of the hotel was particularly
pleased by the tact he had shown in dealing with
the guests who had been victimized by the train
thieves. These guests were all so positive that
their bags had been robbed after they reached
the Waldorf that at first they would listen to no
argument. They were indignant and many of them
resented the searching questions it was necessary
to ask them. When Mr. Boldt opened the doors
of the Waldorf he laid down one inflexible rule:
"The guest is always right." This made a delicate
situation, for it required the greatest diplomacy
to conduct an inquiry on an opposing theory without giving offense. Smith proved himself a great
diplomat. He gently smoothed the ruffled tempers
and gained the confidence and good-will of the
complaining guests even before he had fairly begun to work. And as a consequence of this success
he was offered a position as Chief House Detective of the Waldorf.
"You are here for as long as you want to stay,"
said Mr. Boldt. "We hope that will be a long
while. You know what we want and how we want




The Guest is Always Right          73
it done. You will have a free hand and we will
back you to the limit."
That was more than thirty-one years ago, and
Joe Smith has rarely been off duty since then.
Soon after, a case occurred that tested all his
shrewdness.
While she was out of town, ten thousand dollars worth of jewelry belonging to Mrs. Jones, a
friend of Mr. Hilliard, had been stolen from a
wall safe in her apartment on Riverside Drive.
The Police Department and a private detective
agency had had some of their best men working
on the case but they had fallen down completely.
The servants, who had been with Mrs. Jones for
so long that she trusted them implicitly were examined and cross examined without results. Every
lead the detectives followed ended in mystery.
They finally admitted they were beaten and pronounced it a hopeless case. Mr. Hilliard sent for
Joe, told him what he knew of the affair, and
asked him to take the case.
"I'll probably find myself blocked at every
turn," replied Joe, "for whoever did the job has




74

Crooks of the Waldorf

had plenty of time to cover his tracks, but I'll take
it."
"No matter how simple any case may seem, one
wrong move can spoil it," says Captain Smith.
So first he studied the ground quietly in his painstaking way. His suspicions were directed at an
electrician named Robinson, who had done some
work for Mrs. Jones and had been in her apartment shortly before she went to the country.
Through discreet inquiries he found that Robinson was clever at opening locks, though his record
for honesty was clear. Joe sent for a woman then
in New York who had worked with him when he
was with Scotland Yard. He put her to work on
the case.
"As a rule I am opposed to women detectives,"
says Joe. "Not because they are not as clever as
men but because they don't think as men do-and
most of the crooks are men. The old notion that
women understand men better than men know
themselves is all bosh. Women understand women
better than men do and men understand men better than women do. Women are governed largely
by what they call intuition while men reason




The Guest is Always Right         75
things out dispassionately-and chasing crooks
takes logic. The so-called intuition of women detectives is often simply another name for sudden
prejudice. They are apt to dislike a man because
of the color of his tie or the way he walks or the
cut of his clothes or his manner of speech. They
call this intuition and pursue him while the guilty
man escapes. Or they will develop a liking for an
attractive man, even when they know he is guilty.
Then they sympathize with him, and he gets away.
That is how a woman's tender heart works. And
no detective can afford a tender heart until the
offender has been caught, at any rate. Then is
the time to decide whether he is entitled to sympathy.
"I am speaking of women generally," continued
Joe. "The woman I employed in this case was one
of the exceptions to the rule. She had a coldly
logical mind that gave no favors when she was on
a case. She was one of those rare exceptions who
understood women perfectly but thought as a man
thinks. And she was afraid of nothing, as I well
knew.
"The Robinsons lived in a two-family house in




76       Crooks of the Waldorf
Harlem. She went up there and rented a room
from them. She explained that she worked down
town during the day. She always came home early
enough in the afternoon to'chat with Mrs. Robinson before dinner. Her manner was cheerful and
pleasant and shortly she was on friendly terms
with the Robinsons. In the evening she would send
out for a pitcher of beer andc they would all sit together on the porch and talk. Every time she saw
an account of a robbery in a newspaper she would
make it the text for a dissertation on thievery.
"She told them she believed that most robberies
were the result of a sudden temptation, in a moment of weakness, to which the thief would not
have yielded if he had thought of the imprisonment and disgrace that were certain to follow; or,
if he escaped at the time, the fear of arrest by
which he would be continually haunted. She felt
deeply on the subject because, as she confided to
them, a member of her own family had once given
way to a sudden temptation to steal, when he
thought there was no chance of being caught. But
his conscience pricked him so that he secretly returned the stolen goods while the police were




The Guest is Always Right          77
working on the case. Instead of censuring him,
she had always felt a great deal of sympathy for
him. She believed that, given time to consider
the matter, with the practical certainty of arrest
and conviction, every man who was not a professional crook would either refrain from committing
a theft or return what he had stolen, to satisfy his
conscience, as her relative had done.
"When she judged that the time was ripe she
offered, one evening, to tell their fortunes with
cards, which was one of her best tricks. By then
she had learned enough about them from her talks
with them and with their neighbors, so that she
was able to make a great impression on both of
them with her card trick. In telling Robinson's
fortune she professed to be considerably puzzled
and agitated. There seemed to be gloomy days
ahead for him, in contrast with the happy life he
had enjoyed up to that time. There was so much
confusion in the cards that she could not read them
clearly, she explained, but there was a picture of
a lot of buildings surrounded by a high stone
wall, behind which he was laboring, unwillingly.
For once she could not see the future distinctly,




The Guest is Always Right          79
move, instead of resorting to spectacular methods.
It is a sound theory. He does not throw his net
until he has all of the evidence he needs, and when
he throws it there is no escape from it. If he had
tried to rush things in this jewel robbery Mrs.
Jones would never have recovered her diamonds
and Robinson, encouraged by his first success,
might have become a professional crook; for that
is one way thieves are made.
Joe's patience brought success of a different
kind in another case that occurred soon afterward. Relatives of Mr. Boldt, who lived in an
English basement house on Park Avenue, went
away for the summer. The house contained a
great deal of silver and many other valuables.
There was no watchman. The front door, which
was back from the sidewalk and in a shadow at
night, contained many small colored windows,
about four inches square.
The policeman on the beat noticed that one of
the little windows was cracked, and so reported
to Mr. Boldt. Joe was asked to look into the matter, though it was apart from his regular duties.
Figuring that a thief was planning a robbery and




The Guest is Always Right

81

visits, which convinced him that there were no
servants in the house.
Soon afterwards he paid his final call. Without
bothering to ring the bell he thrust his hand
through the window, with a rag wrapped around
it as a protection against the broken glass, threw
the lock with the skill of an expert, and pushed
the door open. That constituted burglary, and was
just what Joe had been waiting for. He seized the
intruding wrist with one hand and, with his revolver in the other, stepped into the doorway. The
burglar met him with a heavy iron bar raised in
his right hand, but before he could bring it down
he felt Joe's gun pressing against his chest, so he
heeded the quiet command to drop his weapon.
The man proved to be an ex-waiter at the Waldorf
who had often served the occupants of the house,
and knew they were all out of the city for the summer. He pleaded guilty to a charge of burglary
and was sent to prison for five years.
Meanwhile Joe Smith was busy building up an
excellent secret service organization at the Waldorf.




CHAPTER IV

WALLS HAVE EYES AND EARS
JOE SMITH'S appointment as Chief Detective at
the Waldorf was a decided departure from old
ideas. The organization he built up for the protection of the hotel and its guests was created
along entirely new lines. The principles he established and the rules he laid down have since become standard in good hotels throughout the
world.
Up to that time all of the large hotels, in which
the bars were centers of attraction, had employed
special policemen who were known, by courtesy,
as House Officers. As a rule they were all of the
old "bouncer" type. They were selected for their
brawn rather than for their brains. Most of them
were ex-prizefighters and their conversation ran
largely to "dese an' dem an' dose t'ings". So far
as detective ability was concerned, they could not
have caught the smallpox or tracked an elephant
82




84       Crooks of the Waldorf
real money; but when a guest was robbed the loss
was likely to run into a substantial amount, in
money or valuables. Also, when such cases were
reported to the city police and made public the
robbery was often magnified, and there was publicity of a kind that was not wanted.
In Joe Smith Mr. Boldt found a man after his
own mind. He aimed chiefly to prevent crime
rather than to pursue criminals. His whole organization was created and trained with that end in
view. He established a close working arrangement
with the Police Department and with the Pinkertons. He exchanged information with them on
professional crooks, particularly on hotel crooks.
This cordial cooperation has existed ever since.
Captain Smith modestly attributes much of his
success to it, though the advantages have been
mutual.
The Waldorf has four regular detectives, one
is always on duty, and two are employed during
the busy hours of the lafternoon and evening.
Sixteen watchmen in uniform traverse the halls
throughout the day and night, with their eyes
and ears wide open for anything that sounds or




Walls Have Eyes and Ears            85
looks suspicious. The housekeepers and their assistants, the elevator men and the bellboys, the
chamber-maids and the scrubwomen, are all a
part of the well organized force, with instructions
to report at once anything of a suspicious nature.
The-clerks in charge of the room keys on every
floor are also enlisted. They have been carefully
trained and they all take their detective duties
seriously. They are alert and watchful and anything they do not see is not worth seeing. When
the detectives are looking for a man who is likely
to show up at the hotel, a typewritten description of him is given to every member of the organization. Instantly all of their eyes are searching for him. The employees have assisted in many
important captures, and have been the first to
direct the suspicion in a great many cases.
Every guest is appraised by shrewd eyes when
he signs the register. His manner and his baggage
are noted sharply. After he has been shown to
his room,, if he is a stranger, his signature is
studied to see who he is and where he comes
from, whether he is using a name or alias that
appears on the list of hotel swindlers, which each




86

Crooks of the Waldorf

detective carries and which is always kept up to
date. If he goes about his business quietly and
conducts himself generally as a gentleman should,
no further attention is paid to him. But if he
seems to answer the description of one of the
known hotel crooks, or if there is anything at all
suspicious in his looks or actions, the word is
quietly passed along to watch him.
If the bag of a new arrival is light enough to
seem empty, the bellhop who shows him to his
room promptly reports "light baggage". That is
the signal for the detective force to get busy, for
it is the surest indication of a man who is planning
either to beat the hotel or rob some of the rooms
and make a quick getaway. A chambermaid is
sent to his room on the jump, pretending to see
that it is in order but actually to open his baggage, if possible, and see what it contains. If it
is locked and the shaking of it reveals nothing
substantial, or if it is found to be empty, the owner
is at once subjected to close observation. The same
is true of any stranger who loafs around the lobby
during business hours and seeks to engage other
guests in conversation, especially if he seeks to




Walls Have Eyes and Ears

89

have him in prison than at large. He is so closely
watched from the time he comes under suspicion
that escape is practically impossible after he has
violated the law. However, under the strict espionage system maintained by Captain Smith and his
force, hotel thieves and swindlers have been operating with steadily diminishing success, though the
number of crooks has largely increased in recent
years and their methods have become more varied
and more tricky.
"The old time hotel thieves were very different
from those of today," said Captain Smith, "both
in their general makeup and in the way they
worked. The old timers possessed more physical
courage than the modern ones but they were not
so dangerous, so far as human life is concerned,
for few of them were dope fiends. They were
largely made up of specialists, and each of them
stuck pretty closely to his own line. There was one
class who never entered a hotel except through
a window, from a fire escape or window ledge.
Not one of those boys was ever seen around the
lobby. They could go through a room about as
quickly as a blast furnace would consume a lace




90       Crooks of the Waldorf
curtain. But they all had their own little tricks of
the trade and as a rule they left pretty plain trails
behind them. In those days it was possible to look
at a room that had been burglarized, before anything had been moved, and tell, in nine cases out
of ten, who had robbed it.
"The cleverest of them all, and the one who
added the most individualistic touch to his work,
was a chap named Moran. He had all of the neatness of the model housewife. He never overlooked
anything of value, but he was scrupulously careful
about putting things back exactly as he found
them. There was an advantage in this method that
his less gifted fellows did not appreciate. In many
cases there would be a delay of long hours, and
sometimes a day or two, before stolen articleg
would be missed and the robbery reported. This
gave Moran time to make his getaway, and often
enabled him to build up a fairly good alibi, as it
was difficult to fix the exact time of the robbery.
"Others took a fiendish delight in maliciously
destroying clothing, expensive underwear and
even bags, when they found nothing of much
value. There were others, with a sardonic sense




Walls Have Eyes and Ears          91
of humor, who would leave a jewel case, which
had been hidden carefully away, exposed on the
dresser, with the cover removed, as though they
were leaving their card. All of the veterans had
their own way of adding a personal touch to their
operations. That made it easy to fix the responsibility for robberies and arrest the thieves, for
we knew their haunts and where to find them, but
it was not so easy to convict them, unless we could
discover where they had sold or pawned the stolen
stuff.
"Then there was the gentlemanly appearing fellow who would hang around the lobby, close to
the desk, as though he was waiting for someone.
A guest would come down, toss the key to his room
on the desk and go out. If the clerk was engaged
at the moment, Mr. Thief would step up to the
counter, take his hat off and place it carelessly
over the key, and ask the clerk if there was any
mail in such and such a box, which he had previously noted was empty. While the clerk turned to
look in the box, the man would pick up the key
and conceal it in his hat, which he carried in his
hand. Then he would walk away, with his hat still




92

Crooks of the Waldorf

in his hand, until he could transfer the key to his
pocket unnoticed. Then he would go up to the room
for which he had the key and go through it.
"These fellows required constant watching and
caused us a lot of trouble. They were easily described and could be identified quickly enough,
but they moved around fast, from one city to another and from one hotel to another. They would
clean up all of the big hotels in one city in a day or
two, and they did clean up, for a while. Before
word could get around to all of the hotels that a
gentleman thief of this type was at work he would
be through and gone. But we kept after them until
we stamped them out. Most of them were caught
in the act of burglarizing a room and sent to jail.
An improvement in office methods helped, too, in
the elimination of that evil. Nowadays you will
never see a room key lying on the desk in any wellmanaged hotel; you will find a clerk reaching for
it before it is put down, or picking it up immediately.
"Another variation of that type, who worked
along similar lines, would sit in the lobby until
he saw a prosperous looking guest register. On




Walls Have Eyes and Ears           93
the pretense of expecting the arrival of a friend,
he would look over the register and note the number of the room to which his intended victim
had been assigned. Then he would sit around
until the new arrival came down, deposited his
room key in its box and went out. As a general
thing he did not have long to wait, for most men
stay in their room only a short time when they
first reach a hotel. The thief would follow the
man out, close behind him, and often make some
casual remark to him as they walked toward the
door, to create the impression, in case they were
noticed by any of the office force, that the new
arrival was the friend for whom he had been
waiting.
"Pretty soon the thief would come hurrying
back, step briskly up to the desk and call for the
key to the roomnwhose number he had fixed in his
mind. In most cases his assurance enabled him to
get away with it. The crook had made sure, when
the man registered, that he was a stranger to the
clerk, and to the hotel, as there had been no sign
of recognition on either side. If the clerk asked
any questions, he would say, without glancing at




94

Crooks of the Waldorf

the register, that he was Mr. Blank from Podunk,
giving the name and address of the man who had
the room. Sometimes a particularly observant
clerk, of the kind that are born to the business
and cannot be made, would tell him bluntly that
he was not the man whose name he gave. The
thief was prepared for that with a glib explanation that he was a friend of Mr. Blank, for whom
he had been waiting, and that Mr. Blank was tied
up in a meeting down town and had asked him to
return to his room for some papers he had neglected to take with him.
"In such cases as this the crook would not get
the key, and would leave in an apparent huff, as
there was nothing for which we could arrest him.
But in the majority of instances of this kind the
thief was handed the key, and went through the
room at his leisure. Of all of the crooks with whom
we have ever had to deal, these fellows were the
smartest. They were, always well dressed and
looked, acted and talked like gentlemen of means
and substance. Their manners were perfectly
adapted to the r6les they played, and their nerve
was superb. That was one thing about them I




Walls Have Eyes and Ears         95
never have ceased to admire. Even when we trailed
them and caught them in the very act of robbing
the baggage of a guest whose room key they had
claimed as their own, they never lost their debonair manner. They took their arrest with the
same smiling unconcern with which they had
bunkoed the clerk. They had played the game and
lost-that was all.
"The trouble was that they won much oftener
than they lost, for a long enough time to give us
a lot of trouble. They lost in the end, of course.
They knew that would come, as well as we did.
But they were good sports, and, in addition to
their loot, which was rich enough while the going
was good, they seemed to get a lot of fun from
matching wits with us. It was easy to get good
descriptions of them and we finally got rid of
them, by sending them to nice, small rooms that
contained nothing worth stealing and the keys to
which are carried by wardens. So far as I have
heard, from Sing Sing and other hotels maintained
by the State, they never have succeeded in persuading a warden to give them even the key to




96

Crooks of the Waldorf

their own room. But I wouldn't be surprised if
some of them have tried to do that.
"Hotel thieves today are largely restricted to
what we call 'prowlers'. They will rent a room
and prowl through the halls late at night and
early in the morning, seeking access to rooms
through unlocked doors or with the aid of skeleton keys. The number of guests who retire with
their doors unlocked, leaving the keys outside, is
surprising. I have seen the time when I could
walk through the Waldorf at midnight and fill a
basket with keys projecting from unlocked doors.
It isn't so bad now as it used to be, but it is still
bad enough. And an equally strange thing is the
fact that so many guests resent having our watchmen call their attention to their unlocked doors,
with the keys sticking out in the hall as an invitation to robbery. Many of them become angry
over what they appear to consider an intrusion in
their private affairs, whereas our only purpose
is to protect them. Which seems to me a bit
ungrateful!
"The modern hotel thief lacks the courage and
initiative of the old-timer and is not nearly so




Walls Have Eyes and Ears

97

dangerous, so far as loss to the hotel and its
guests is concerned, but more dangerous in another way, for he is generally a dope fiend. When
he is full of his favorite drug, which is about the
only time he has nerve enough to attempt a robbery, he is quite likely to shoot anyone who interferes with him. The old-time thief seldom went
armed, while most of the prowlers of today carry
guns. This breed keep us up on our toes all of
the time and require constant watchfulness, but
they really do little damage. The losses of guests
through room robberies are very infrequent and
not of great consequence, as a rule.
"The really smart crooks are not all dead yet,
nor are they all in prison. They are the boys for
whom we are always on the lookout, for they
are forever thinking up new ways of beating
a hotel. Not long ago they worked a new trick
on a large New York hotel that shows the skill
and thoroughness with which they arrange their
swindling schemes and the lengths to which they
will go. The hotel received a letter from a Chicago firm saying that Mr. Brown, we will call
him, their Vice President, would arrive there in




98

Crooks of the Waldorf

a few days and would be a guest for some time.
The purpose of his visit, the letter stated, was to
open an eastern branch; as he was unacquainted
in New York and had no financial connections
here, it was requested that he be extended any
financial courtesies that he might require. A list
of references was enclosed, which included the
Chicago River National Bank.
"The hotel wrote the bank and several of the
other references, inquiring about Mr. Brown.
Promptly a reply came back from the bank stating that Mr. Brown was one of their most valued
customers; that he had carried a balance running
well into five figures with them for years; that
he always kept his commitments and that they
had loaned him large sums of money from time
to time on his unsecured note. The replies from
the other concerns were equally flattering-just
a little too flattering, I think it would have seemed
to me," added Joe. "However, everything seemed
in order to the hotel people and a credit card was
forwarded to Mr. Brown.
"In due course Mr. Brown arrived at the hotel.
His manner and personality were in line with




Walls Have Eyes and Ears

99

the reports that had been received concerning him.
He appeared to be a fine type of the conservative,
successful western business man. It was late in
the day, after banking hours, when he reached
the hotel. After registering, he identified himself
by presenting his credit card to the cashier and
gave him a check for $I,ooo, on the Chicago River
National Bank, which amount was to be credited
to his account. The next morning, when a different cashier was on duty, he presented a check
for $500, drawn on the same bank, for which he
was given the currency. Later in the day, after
there had been another shift in the cashier's cage,
he displayed a telegram from his office in Chicago
directing him to go to Boston immediately on
an important matter that had just developed, and
requested his bill. With the amount of his bill
deducted he drew down the balance remaining to
his credit from his first check for $I,ooo.
"Then Mr. Brown went away and lost himself.
Both checks came back, with the information that
the Chicago River National Bank was unknown
in Chicago. The other references, whose letters
had been written on expensive and impressive en




Walls Have Eyes and Ears IoI
simply smiled, and made it good out of his own
pocket.
"The man I have spoken of as Mr. Brown probably worked the same trick in Boston that he
turned so neatly here, and in other cities, too, for
he had the stage all set for an extensive campaign.
What we ought to have is an association of hotel
detectives so that we could advise each other
promptly of the new tricks of the crooks. Some
years ago I got all of the New York City hotel
detectives together for this purpose. Mr. Boldt
was in full sympathy with the plan and gave us
a room in which we could meet every week and
compare notes. But the attendance soon began to
fall off and finally the organization died through
lack of interest. The other hotel detectives said
they could not spare the time to attend the meetings. I think they made a great mistake, for I believe we could accomplish more and get quicker
results through close cooperation than by working independently, but that was their business.
From the first I have enjoyed the privilege of
attending the daily lineup of criminals and suspects at Police Headquarters, when all of those




102

Crooks of the Waldorf

arrested during the preceding twenty-four hours
who have police records or are regarded as dangerous crooks are looked over by masked detectives, and this has been a great help to me in my
work, and some help, I think, to the Police Department.
"People who live in hotels today have much
more confidence in the house detective than they
had years ago," continued Captain Smith. "That
is because the character of the men has been
greatly improved. I have been careful to select
only men of education and refinement, who could
meet the guests on an equal footing. This applies
not only to our regular officers but also to the
extra men we use from time to time. When we are
entertaining royalty or other distinguished guests,
whom the public always cranes its necks to see, or
in connection with conventions and large banquets,
there will be anywhere from half a dozen to a
score or more of special officers on duty, as a protection to the people within our doors, besides our
regular force. I have held a license from the State
as a private detective for twenty-five years and
this enables me to employ the best men available




Io04

Crooks of the Waldorf

and descriptions of hotel thieves that is said to be
the largest and most complete in the world. Perhaps it is, but I am preserving it chiefly as a curiosity. It has very little, if any, value, for I know
all of the old crooks. Most of them are dead or in
jail, anyway. It is the new ones with whom we are
concerned; the ones with whom we haven't yet
struck up an acquaintance. And there are enough
of them coming along all of the time, with enough
new tricks, to keep us from going to sleep when
we are supposed to have our eyes open.
"The American crook is the smartest in the
world," concluded Captain Smith, with a far-away
look in his eyes that suggested memories of many
interesting meetings, "and the American woman
crook is the smartest of them all."




CHAPTER V

THE FEMALE PROWLER
"DURING the course of a year, the hotel detective is compelled to give more of his attention to
men, both guests and crooks, than he does to women of either class, principally because the latter
are less numerous. But women make up in quality
for what they lack in quantity. For the woman
guest is more careless of her valuables than men,
and the female rogue is far ahead of the male in
shrewdness. The average female crook gives us
more trouble than the average male crook and
requires more careful watching. She will outsmart
any man in nine cases out of ten, unless he knows
something about her tricks and has all of his wits
about him all of the time."
So said Joe Smith out of his long experience.
"As I have said," continued Captain Smith,
"our chief annoyance is the hotel prowler, who
registers as a guest and goes sneaking through
the halls at night hunting for unlocked doors or
105




Io6

Crooks of the Waldorf

ones that can be easily opened with skeleton keys.
Here again the female of the species is much more
deadly than the male. She is the cleverest of all
prowlers; she does not prowl, literally, though she
belongs in that category. She is open and brazen
about it, while the men are furtive and sneaky.
Her very daring often disarms suspicion and
makes it easy for her to get away with a robbery
that a mere man would not have nerve enough
even to attempt.
"The female prowler is always smartly dressed,
but is neyer conspicuous; she is prepossessing in
appearance and pleasant in manner. She is a finished artist in the use of the 'baby stare,' which
she is always ready to flash in reply to any suspicious look or question.
"This lady generally carries two bags, to give
her a more substantial appearance and prevent her
from being regarded as a 'fly-by-nighter'. She
registers at the hotel and is assigned to a room.
The first day she usually spends much time in her
room, with the door open, apparently reading or
busy with her things. Actually she is watching the
other guests on her floor and picking out the most




The Female Prowler

107

promising looking ones and locating their rooms.
Most hotel guests go out soon after breakfast.
The men go about their business and their wives
go shopping. This gives the female prowler her
opportunity, while the maids are busy putting the
rooms in order.
"She will walk through the hall, with her key
in her hand, as though she had just come up from
breakfast and was on her way to her room. She
saunters along slowly with an unconcerned air
but she is sizing things up very carefully. When
she comes to a room in which the maid is at work,
with the door open, if it happens to be one of those
she had previously spotted as being occupied by
promising victims, or if she likes the general appearance of it, she will enter it as if it were her
own room. She apologizes nicely to the maid for
interfering with her duties and asks if she may
have the room to herself for just a few minutes
while shechanges her clothes. Her easy assurance
and the display of her key satisfy the maid that
the lady is an occupant of the room, so she
promptly obliges by stepping out into the corridor.
Then Miss Prowler deftly frisks all of the baggage




Io8

Crooks of the Waldorf

she can get into, being careful to leave everything
just as the owner left it. If she finds nothing of
value, she gets out and tries a room on another
floor, leaving an unsuspecting maid behind and no
trace of her visit. If she makes a good haul she
will pay her bill and leave the hotel at once. But
if the results of her first robbery are not satisfactory, she is likely to try her luck in two or
three more rooms, on different floors, before making her getaway.
"The Waldorf system, which Mr. Boldt introduced, with a clerk on every floor makes it more
difficult for these thieves to operate successfully
here than in hotels that are not conducted on a
similar plan. There is always the fear in their
minds that a suspicious maid will ask the floor
clerk if the occupant of room so and so corresponds with the description of the woman who
asked her to vacate it for a few minutes. But they
are full of unholy ambition and forever trying to
get away with something. However, their robberies rarely run into large amounts.
"So far as the hotel is concerned, these prowlers are the most dangerous female crooks with




The Female Prowler

o109

whom we have to deal. To the guests, or at least
to the male guests, the woman blackmailer is the
most dangerous. Fortunately, women of this type
have never had any luck at all around here. We
know them all, know their confederates and know
how they work. When they get a man in their
clutches they weave a web around him from which
there is seldom any way out except by paying
through the nose. And when he once starts to pay
he is lost.
"The Waldorf has always been a great meeting place. Almost anybody of respectable appearance can meet anyone in our lobbies, without being
looked at twice or questioned once. Anybody, in
fact, save crooks, grafters and especially blackmailers. The latter are chased away the minute
they appear, with even less ceremony than is
shown the others-and we are never long on ceremony when thieves are concerned. If a guest is
picked up by a blackmailer outside of the hotel
and led willingly into her den, that is his business
and not ours. Whenever we see a guest in company with a blackmailer we warn him. After that
his blood is on his own head."




IIO      Crooks of the Waldorf
In the course of his career Captain Smith has
had many narrow escapes from a sudden and violent end. One of the closest calls he has ever had,
and one that still gives him something of a thrill
when he thinks of it, though it happened a number
of years ago, was at the hands of a woman-and
one of the last women in the world he would have
picked out as a possible murderess.
One day a lady registered at the Waldorf as
Mrs. Maignen, of Philadelphia, and was assigned
to an expensive apartment. She was dressed in
good taste, and wore expensive jewelry without
flaunting it. She was very attractive, with a manner and bearing that reflected education and refinement. She was perhaps a little more than thirty
years old and spoke perfect English with just a
trace of a French accent.
After she had been at the hotel for two or three
days, during which time she was the object of
much quiet admiration, she went shopping among
the Fifth Avenue jewelers. With the skill of an
expert she selected $4o,ooo worth of diamonds
at one of the best known establishments and
$6o,ooo worth of jewels at another large store,




The Female Prowler

Ill

In both cases she ordered her purchases sent to
her hotel, saying that if she was not in her room
when they were delivered they would be paid for
at the desk. The jewelers saw nothing strange in
this, on account of the atmosphere of wealth with
which their customer surrounded herself and the
care with which she made her selections.
The jewels were delivered promptly enough,
but Mrs. Maignen was not in and there was no
money at the desk to pay for them. After he recovered from his surprise the cashier professed
entire ignorance in the matter. Anyway, paying
out $Ioo,ooo in cash and charging it to the room
of a guest unknown to the management is something that is not done in any well regulated hotel.
The half-completed transaction was far enough
out of the ordinary to require an investigation.
The jewelers were anxious to make delivery of
the gems, which had been returned to them by
their messengers, and receive their money. So,
when Mrs. Maignen returned to the hotel later in
the afternoon, Joe Smith went up to her rooms
to ask her a few questions.
She seemed to have been expecting his visit, for




II2

Crooks of the Waldorf

she opened the door quickly in response to his gentle knock and politely invited him to come in. As
he stepped inside she closed the door and locked it,
putting the key in a pocket in her dress. Stepping
far enough away to be out of arm's reach but
close enough to be sure of her aim, she swung
around and faced him, with an automatic revolver
in each hand. Both weapons were pointed at his
chest and her hands were as steady as those of any
gunman.
"You wretch," she exclaimed, in low, tense
tones, with her teeth clenched together, "why do
you insist on pursuing me?"
Never having seen the lady before she appeared
at the hotel, and having noticed her only a few
times around the lobby and lounging rooms, but
without speaking to her, Joe was so completely
taken by surprise that he was speechless. Before
he could frame a reply she continued:
"You have persecuted me long enough-too
long. I am going to put a stop to it. When I count
three I will kill you."
Her dark eyes, which were quiet when he entered the room, were now ablaze with the fire of




The Female Prowler            113
insanity and Joe realized that he was dealing with
a maniac.
"One," she said, with extreme deliberation,
lingering over the word, after waiting a moment
for her threat to sink in. She watched him with
cruel enjoyment in her glittering mad eyes, and
appeared to be looking for some sign of fear that
would add zest to the drama.
Joe watched her as closely as she watched him,
looking for some sign of nervousness which would
give him a chance to make a quick jump and disarm her. But she was immovable as a statue,
and almost as cold and impassive. Joe was just as
quiet, for he realized that any movement on his
part would be fatal.
"I was a bit nervous about it after it was all
over," said Captain Smith in telling about the affair, "but I wasn't at all frightened at the time. I
don't think any man who is used to taking chances
is ever frightened at the crisis. He is too busy
thinking about some way to protect himself, to be
scared. Her two guns looked much larger than
their real size, and I knew she would start them
going if I moved. And at such close range she




114      Crooks of the Waldorf
couldn't very well have missed me. So I tried to talk
her out of it, the only thing I could do. I told her
I never had spoken to her before and had seen her
only a few times around the hotel; that it was
not I but another man who looked like me who
had been pursuing her. I said I had seen this
double of mine in the lobby just a few minutes before, and suggested that we go downstairs together and get him. I used my most diplomatic
manner and language and thought I was making
a convincing argument, but it made no impression
at all."
"Two," said the mad woman, her eyes aflame
with hate. Her only reply to Joe's courteous proposal was a contemptuous sneer. Convinced, then,
that nothing he could say would divert her from
her murderous purpose, Joe stood perfectly quiet,
waiting for the unaccountable influence he calls
his Luck to intervene. In a most surprising way
his faith was rewarded.
Just as the lady with her mind set on murder
was opening her lips to pronounce the fatal
"Three" the catch on a roller in one of the windows behind her worked loose and the shade flew




The Female Prowler

115

up with a clatter which, in that hair-raising atmosphere, sounded like a succession of pistol shots.
The unexpected racket, which suggested an attack
from the rear, startled the woman and distracted
her attention. She half turned around and drew
her eyes away from the detective for just an instant. But that fraction of time was all Joe needed
to seize her and wrest her guns away from her.
The detective's main purpose then was to get
her to the insane ward at Bellevue Hospital without creating a scene in the hotel. Relieved of her
weapons, she quieted down a little and consented
to accompany Captain Smith to the main floor,
supposedly in search of the mythical man who had
been pursuing her. On the pretense of bringing
this party to her, she was induced to enter a private office, from which a door opened directly on
34th street. With the assistance of a porter she
was taken, protestingly, through this door and
placed in a taxicab and started for Bellevue.
She was carrying a handbag which she had
picked up just before leaving her room. On the
way to the hospital Joe noticed her fussing with it,
in a way that was intended to be secretive, and




II6

Crooks of the Waldorf

snatched it away from her just as she had it open.
From it he extracted a third revolver, fully loaded,
as were the others.
"I intended to kill you with that," she said, very
quietly, in a matter of fact way. There was a mixture of relief and indulgence in the detective's
answering smile but the husky porter, who was
unaccustomed to such scenes, almost fell out of
the taxicab when he saw the gun and realized
that he, too, had had a narrow escape. The woman
continued to display her bitter hatred of Joe to
the end. While waiting in the office at Bellevue
she quickly picked up a paper knife from a desk
and attempted to drive it into his face. But by that
time he was watching her every movement and
easily avoided the blow.
She was placed in the psychopathic ward at the
hospital and two powerful matrons took charge
of her. She became violent when she realized her
position and was subdued only after a hard fight.
When the matrons searched her they found a
dozen little pockets on the inside of her skirt that
were filled with bits of colored glass, mixed with
which were some real jewels. If all of the pieces of




The Female Prowler

II7

white, green, blue and red glass had been real
gems, as she believed them to be, she could have
opened a Tiffany's of her own.
It developed that the woman belonged to an
excellent and wealthy family in Philadelphia. Her
people took charge of her as soon as they learned
of her predicament and were understood to have
had her placed in a private sanitarium.
Captain Smith's experience with Mrs. Guesselli
Jack was of another sort. Wholly lacking in the
excitement of his encounter with Mrs. Maignen,
it was even more distressing in some ways than
the violent insanity so suddenly developed by the
Philadelphia lady.
Mrs. Jack was a beautiful and cultured Roumanian who had attained considerable fame in her
homeland as a singer. But her earnings there were
small as compared with the fabulous salaries that
were paid to opera singers in New York. Believing she could make a name for herself here, as
well as a fortune, she packed up all of her belongings and came to New York hoping to enter the
Metropolitan Opera Company. Here she found
that all of the enticing tales she had heard were




Crooks of the Waldorf

only partly true. They had not told of the long
and weary road that singers must travel in this
country before they reach the heights, with only
enough rare exceptions to prove the rule; of the
time and trouble and expense that are required
to secure recognition, or of the extent to which
friends and influence play a part in securing engagements.
She could sing, and sing well, it was readily conceded by all of the agencies to which she applied,
but not well enough to win a high place in the
Metropolitan overnight. And when it came to concert work, she would have to wait-there were
so many others ahead of her with established
reputations or who had the advantage of powerful
friends. At last her capital, not large to begin with,
was exhausted. She could not accept a menial position and she was too proud to beg. Her jewels and
all of her expensive gowns were sold or pawned,
with only one exception. With her last two dollars
she rented a mean little room under the eaves in a
lodging house on the lower west side, and paid
for it in advance.
For three days she went without a mouthful to




The Female Prowler

lI9

eat. Then, arraying herself in the last gay remnant of her wardrobe, she went to the Waldorf
and ordered a meal that ran from one end of the
menu to the other. When the waiter brought the
check she shocked him with the declaration that she
had no money. Captain Smith was sent for. He
asked her if she had money at home, and, to avoid
a scene, as she later confessed, she said she had.
"So I went with her," said Joe, "to her poor
little hall room. And there, sitting on the edge of
a cot that served as a bed, she told me her whole
story, sobbing her heart out. She hadn't a cent
in the world and was actually starving when she
ordered the food she could not pay for. I never
have been quite as sorry for anyone as I was for
that unfortunate little lady. I would gladly have
paid her check out of my own pocket, but that
would have been a violation of our rules-and if
I expect my men to obey our regulations I must
live up to them myself. There was nothing for me
to do but take her to court, where she was fined $5.
She could not pay it, of course, so she was sent to
Blackwell's Island prison for five days, to add to
the tragedy. I don't know what became of her




120

Crooks of the Waldorf

after that, but I hope she continued to hold her
head up."
While they were out (of the ordinary run of
things, the cases of Mrs. Maignen and Mrs. Jack
are evidences of the widely diverse activities of a
hotel detective. But the one unending source of
trouble for him is the Careless Woman. And her
name is legion. Hardly a day passes on which she
does not leave a bag, perhaps containing valuable
securities, in a taxicab when she alights at the
hotel; or walk away and leave her pocketbook or
fur coat in a chair next to the one in which she
has been sitting. All of Captain Smith's secret
service force have instructions to keep their eyes
open for such articles and most of them are recovered and ready to be returned to their owners by
the time they have discovered their loss. But in
some cases they are picked up by dishonest women,
who are sitting around waiting for just such opportunities.
It is the ladies' rest room on the mezzanine
floor, which is used by women having luncheon
or dinner at the hotel as well as by the regular
guests, in which most of the valuables are lost,




The Female Prowler            121
or stolen. Captain Smith figures that one woman
out of three removes her rings when washing her
hands and at least one in twenty goes away and
forgets them. Here, too, in most cases they are
either recovered by an attendant or picked up by
some honest woman, who turns them in at the
desk. But this does not always happen, for clever
female thieves are forever hanging around to gain
an easy livelihood through the carelessness of
their own sex.
These crooks always work in pairs. They are
expensively dressed and have a well bred air to
the casual observer. They sit in the adjacent
lounging room and when some promising looking
woman enters the rest room they follow her.
If the lady removes her rings and places them on
the stand while washing her hands, and if the
rings are valuable, one of the two thieves will
jostle her apparently by accident. In the following confusion, while the offender is apologizing,
her confederate will pick up the jewels, with her
partner forming a screen for her, and disappear.
By the time the jostler has finished her explanation and her apology and the lady has discovered




The Female Prowler

I23

laid her little package on the stand while washing
her hands, and walked out without it. In a few
minutes she was back again, but her handkerchief
and its contents had disappeared.
She reported her loss immediately to Captain
Smith. He asked her to walk through the corridors
with him and see if she could recognize any woman
who had been in the washroom at the same time
that she was there. In the lobby on the 33rd Street
side of the hotel she pointed out a woman who
had stood beside her while she was washing her
hands. This woman was looking in another direction and did not notice the detective and his companion.
"All right," said Joe. "You run along and keep
out of sight." He sent a boy for his hat and stick
and a newspaper and took a seat near the suspected woman. In a short time she was joined by
a man, for whom she appeared to have been waiting, and they started to leave the hotel. Joe Smith
was close behind them. Just before they reached
the door Joe heard her say to the man beside her:
"I don't know what's in it, but I've got it in my
bag."




124      Crooks of the Waldorf
"Pardon me," said Joe, as he stepped around in
front of her, "but did I understand you to say you
had found something? I am connected with the
hotel."
"Oh, yes," she replied, nervously and with reddening cheeks, as she opened her bag, "here is a
little package that I found in the ladies' room. I
was just going to return it."
Joe could have told her she was walking directly away from the office instead of towards it
but he was well satisfied to recover the chamois
bag, which contained $15,000 worth of diamonds.
After the owner had been summoned, and had
joyfully reported that her collection of jewels was
intact, the greatly agitated finder was permitted
to depart, though she did not go in peace.
"Ingenious female crooks are continually setting up new hurdles for us to jump over," said
Captain Smith. "Their latest trick was developed
by a well-dressed lady who specialized in stealing
the vending machines that are placed in the ladies'
rest rooms. In exchange for a dime that is dropped
in a slot they dispense any one of a varied assortment of toilet articles. This smart lady had




The Female Prowler

125

a special jimmy made for her use, with a rightangled crook at one end with which to tear these
machines from the wall. She would stay a day or
two at a hotel and pay frequent visits to the rest
room until she found an opportunity to rip off the
machine and slip it under her coat. Then she vanished, after paying her bill-though she did not
pay it in dimes.
"Every machine contained from $25 to $50 in
dimes, so she was living on the fat of the land
and more than paying all of her expenses. She
robbed nearly forty New York hotels in three
months without being detected. I had a hunch it
was about time for her to show up here so I set
a trap for her in our rest room. On the third day
we caught her right in the act of tearing a machine from the wall. There was nothing for her
to do but plead guilty and she was sent away. She
was profuse in her promises to turn over a new
leaf when she had served her sentence.
"Maybe she will, for 'Chicago May' has reformed, and after that anything is possible. May
was the most notorious woman thief in the world
for many years and she well deserved her reputa




126

Crooks of the Waldorf

tion for she was the smartest and the most dangerous of all of the female crooks I have ever
known, barring only Frederica de Furneaux. She
had one of the keenest minds I have ever encountered and it never slipped a cog. With it she had
good looks, a pleasing personality and the manners
of a gentlewoman. She never lost her poise, and
her nerve was superb. She was very clever in making up for the part she played and had a dozen
wigs of as many different colors. She would be
a blonde one night and a brunette or a red-head
the next.
"She and her partner, who was known as 'Little Cleo," preyed on our guests for a long time.
They never attempted to enter the hotel for they
knew if they tried it they would be thrown out
and so attract attention to themselves. They were
too smart for that. Their game was to walk along
34th Street late at night and strike up flirtations
with guests who were returning to the hotel. They
preferred those whose gait or manner indicated
that they had had something to drink during the
evening but they had an enticing smile for any
man who looked prosperous and pleasant.




The Female Prowler

127

"If their new acquaintance was in a mellow
condition that made him ripe for the picking they
would lure him into a convenient doorway and go
through him with neatness and dispatch. While
the man was embracing one of the pair-and it
made no difference which one, for they had both
taken post-graduate courses in pocket-picking and
every other form of thievery-she was busily
engaged in relieving him of everything of value
he had on him.
"While this performance was going on, the
other member of the team stood out on the sidewalk, acting as lookout. As soon as the object of
the easy mark's amorous advances had completed
her part of the job and transferred his wallet and
watch to her own pockets, along with anything
else he had that was worth taking, she would give
a little cough. That was the signal to her partner
who exclaimed, excitedly: 'Look out. Here comes
a cop.' Then she would walk rapidly away, as
though to avoid arrest, and the other girl would
run after her, leaving the man in a confused state
of mind and a generally upset condition. By the
time he regained the use of his faculties and dis




128

Crooks of the Waldorf

covered he had been robbed, both women were out
of sight.
"If the man who responded to their introductory wink was too sober or too smart to stand for
this trick, they would induce him to accompany
them to some retreat where they would get him
drunk, on liquor doped with knockout drops, and
then rob him. They knew how to attract men and
how to hold their interest, and of all of those who
stopped to talk with them there were very few
who did not have a sad story to relate when they
finally reached the hotel, with aching heads and
empty pockets. The total of their robberies was
enormous.
"Early one morning a young German visitor
came down from his room on the run and rushed
into my office with his hair standing on end. He
spoke no English and I had to move fast to find an
interpreter before he exploded. He complained
that he had been robbed of $500 during the night.
Through the interpreter I asked him if he was
sure his door was locked. He was. What had he
done the previous evening? He went to the theatre.
How did he go? In a taxicab. How did he return?




The Female Prowler

129

He walked-and with that he seized the interpreter and myself by our arms and rushed us out into
34th Street and down toward Broadway. He
stopped in front of a doorway that formed a dark
recess at night. It was right there he had met two
women and lingered with them for a while. And
it was right there that he had lost his money, as
he finally confessed.
"The German sailed for home the next day
but I had May and Cleo picked up by the police
on general principles, though there was no chance
of establishing a case against them in the absence
of the complaining witness. They were taken to
the old Tenderloin police station and there May
was 'mugged' or photographed, and her description entered in the criminal records, for the first
time. When her case was called I had her remanded for twenty-four hours. The next day I
secured another similar delay, but when she came
up the third time there was nothing to do but turn
her loose.
"'That was a nice little touch you made from
that German,' I said to her, after she had been




I30

Crooks of the Waldorf

released from custody. 'If you can pick up $500
every night you will be doing well.'
" 'The Dutchman fooled you,' replied May,
laughingly and with a malicious twinkle in her
eye. 'We took $5,ooo from him, in good American
money.'
"I had May arrested many times after that but
only in the hope of frightening her away from our
neighborhood. It was out of the question to convict her for no man who had fallen a victim to her
witching ways would consent to appear in court
against her, no matter how much he had lost. That
tied our hands, so far as putting her out of business was concerned. All we were able to do was
to make as much trouble for her as we could and
warn every guest who looked or acted as though
he might be drawn into her trap.
"But through all of her successive arrests and
dismissals May retained her sense of humor and
never grew vindictive. She was always pleasant
and friendly and talked freely about the details of
her robberies-after her dismissal had been formally entered on the court records. I once wanted
some information about a dangerous crook. I knew




The Female Prowler

I3i

May could give it to me, if she would, better than
anyone else, so through a city detective I made an
appointment to meet her up in the Bronx, far from
her usual stamping ground. She was waiting for
me when I got there and told me everything I
wanted to know. She never lied to me. If she
could not tell the truth she would say nothing.
The way she retains her youth is one of the most
remarkable things about her. The last time I saw
her, which was only a few years ago, she looked
like a girl of twenty-eight, though her real age
must have been twice that.
"In every talk I had with her I urged her to quit
the crooked trail and take the straight track. I argued that with her brains and general attractiveness she could make all of the money she needed
honestly and be in a position to thumb her nose at
the police, if she wanted to, instead of being
hounded by them wherever she went. Her answer
always was that she enjoyed the excitement of the
life she was leading and that it would be time
enough to talk about turning over a new leaf when
she grew old and decrepit and her hands lost their
cunning.




132

Crooks of the Waldorf

"Chicago May is that rare type of woman who
never grows old, so her conscience must have
pricked her, at last. Evidently her reformation is
complete for she has written a story of her life
in which she confesses to a great many interesting
facts that the police would have been very glad
to have had in their hands at the time the offenses
were committed. The fact that she has reformed is
another bit of evidence that honesty is becoming
more popular, around hotels and everywhere else."
Another duty of the hotel detective is to keep
an eye out for unmarried couples registered as
husband and wife, and to eject them when evidence
is found against them. The management of the
Waldorf was horrified when it was brought out
in a sensational murder trial that Judd Gray and
Mrs. Ruth Snyder, who subsequently went to the
electric chair for killing Mrs. Snyder's husband
with a sashweight, had registered there many
times as Mr. and Mrs. Gray.
"Those people fooled us completely," said Captain Smith when he was reminded of this case.
"They would have fooled anybody. They were so
open about it that no one had the slightest sus




134

Crooks of the Waldorf

using his name. In any event the matter demanded
investigation, so I went up to inquire into it.
"The man I know opened the door, and smiled
broadly as soon as he saw me. 'Hello, Smith,' he
said, "come on in. I want you to meet my wife.'
In introducing me to his wife he told her why I
was there, whereupon she laughed, too. 'I am glad
to see that you watch your guests so closely,' she
said to me, and turning to her husband she added,
smilingly: 'Don't you ever stop at any hotel but
the Waldorf when you are in New York. If you
do I will get suspicious.' Even if I hadn't been
well acquainted with the man, the woman's attitude would have been all that was needed to convince me that she was his wife. If she hadn't been,
she would have assumed an indignant air and
cussed me out. She was visiting some of her relatives over in New Jersey and had run into the city
to spend the evening with her husband. And he
had neglected to notify the office that he was expecting her, probably thinking he was so well
known to all of us that that was unnecessary.
That may have been all right from his point of
view, but when it comes to a question of morality




The Female Prowler

135

we don't play any favorites and have no friends.
"We keep a little book in which certain names
and descriptions are entered. Every other properly
managed hotel has the same kind of a confidential
record. Any guests who have done anything to
make us suspicious of them in any way are never
allowed to stay here again. We may have no definite proof against them but we are taking no
chances. No matter how many rooms we may have
vacant, we are always full when they come in.
Our reputation means much more to us than the
rent of a room for a day or two, and that is true
of every good hotel.
"Try to imagine what would happen," continued Captain Smith, "if we asked every couple
who register as man and wife to produce their
marriage certificate. It can't be done. Nor can a.
couple be told to give up their room on mere suspicion, though that is reason enough for not allowing them to get in again after they are once out.
In the absence of clear and conclusive evidence
that a man and woman occupying the same room
are not what they.pretend to be, their ejection is
very dangerous, for two reasons. In the first place,




136

Crooks of the Waldorf

and quite apart from any financial question involved, no matter how strongly suspicion may
point to them, there is always a chance that they
may be properly married. If that is the fact, and
they are asked to leave, a grave injustice is done
to innocent people. All of their fine sensibilities
are outraged and a stigma is put on them that may
follow them for years and do them a great deal
of harm among people who do not know them well.
Also, the hotel exposes itself to a suit for damages,
which it cannot defend.
"But with respectable people it is not legal action of this kind that we are afraid of, for they
are not primarily after our cash; it is the damage
suits of crooks whose sole purpose is to mulct us,
on the grounds that we have greatly damaged
their reputations or their feelings. They are always setting traps for us. A clever crook and his
equally crooked wife will take a room at a good
hotel and then deliberately conduct themselves in
a manner to create a strong suspicion that they
are not married, in the hope that they will be
thrown out so that they can institute a damage
suit, and force a substantial settlement. But the




The Female Prowler

137

smartest of these swindlers have a new game
which is an improvement on the old one. It works
like this:
"A prosperous looking man, with expensive
baggage, registers and is assigned to a room. We
will call him Mr. Spence. He is of the cordial and
breezy type, without overdoing it. He exchanges a
few pleasantries with the clerk when he registers
and shows himself a good fellow. When he comes
down from his room he hands the clerk a cigar
and engages him in further conversation. In the
course of the day they have several more little
chats and get fairly well acquainted. The next day,
at a prearranged time, while the friendly clerk is
on duty and Mr. Spence is talking with him, a
man and woman come in and approach the desk.
After a casual glance at them, Spence looks them
over more closely with surprise written all over
his face and then steps aside. The newcomers
register as Mr. and Mrs. Haines, we will say.
Before they have reached their room Mr. Spence
is back at the desk and looking at the register.
"'Well, what do you know about that?' he
asks the clerk as he registers amazement. 'That




138      Crooks of the Waldorf
bird comes from my home town. He has a beautiful wife out there who thinks he is the only man
in the world. I know them both well. That is why
I moved away when I saw them coming, for the
woman who is with him isn't his wife. What do
you think of a man with a lovely wife at home who
will run around with a dame like that?'
"That puts it right up to the clerk. If he is
smart he will appear to take it all in and quietly
notify the house detective. But in many cases, with
full confidence in his new friend, he will at once
notify Mr. Haines that he and his lady must give
up their room as they are not married. Mr. Haines
is a good actor, of course, and when this message
is delivered to him he assumes what passes for a
guilty look. He puts up no vigorous fight but he
does enter a dignified protest. This is promptly
overruled and he and his lady leave the hotel, their
last word being a threatened suit for the humiliation to which they have been subjected.
"When the clerk looks around for Mr. Spence,
to secure the needed evidence in case Haines really
should enter suit, he finds that he has paid.his bill
and disappeared. No trace of him can be secured




CHAPTER VI

THEY ALL COME BACK
"THEY always come back," says Joe Smith.
This maxim has been proved accurate, especially
in the case of the hotel thief, who is notoriously
egotistical. When he robs a room and makes a
safe getaway he congratulates himself on being
smarter than the hotel detective. Having found it
such a simple matter, he returns, full of confidence, to pick up some more easy money. Then he
encounters the supposedly sleepy sleuth, who is
wide awake and waiting for him. The smart thief
overplays his hand through professional pride,
and is caught. Sometimes Joe Smith has had to
wait for weeks, and in some cases for months, for
the return of the overconfident thief; and a few
of the cleverer thieves have been lucky enough to
commit more than one robbery before they were
apprehended. But the end was invariably the same.
One of those who came back to his sorrow was
140




142

Crooks of the Waldorf

He had aroused several guests while he was robbing their rooms and, though he had always escaped, they were able to furnish a good description of him. So he, too, was being waited for.
About two o'clock one morning Captain Smith
had a call from a suite on one of the upper floors,
in which a lady had been aroused by a suspicious
noise. Switching on the lights, she saw a man who
had just climbed through the window and was
now making for the bureau on which about $8,000
worth of diamonds were in plain sight. The lady
called to her husband, who was sleeping soundly,
and yelled, whereupon the intruder went out
through the window by which he had just entered.
Joe Smith quickly got a description of the man
and set out after him. None of the 33rd Street
entrances was open at that hour of the morning
so Joe hurried around to that side of the hotel,
knowing it would be selected by the thief for his
getaway. He saw a man walking south on Fifth
Avenue, a block away, keeping in the shadows.
Joe ran after him, caught him and took him back
to the hotel, where he was identified by the lady
he had so rudely disturbed. An overcoat which




They All Come Back            143
was found on the narrow ledge outside the violated
window fitted him perfectly.
The police were delighted to get their hands on
him for, as it then developed, McCray had been
making monkeys of them in a way that did not
appeal to their sense of humor. Five weeks before
he had been caught robbing a room in the Herald
Square Hotel, only a block away. While the detectives were talking with him he jumped through
a window and scrambled down a rear wall in less
time than it took the deserted sleuths to descend by
the stairs. They recaptured him only after a long
search through the backyards, where he had been
unable to find a way out. He was taken to the 3oth
Street Police Station where he promptly disappeared through another window, in a detention
room from which it was thought there was no way
of escape, and made a clean getaway. The disgusted detectives had been looking for him ever
since, but with no luck until Joe Smith put his
quietly efficient hands on him.
For some reason, with this record confronting
him and despite the further fact that he had served
time in Canada for burglary, the General Sessions




144

Crooks of the Waldorf

Court accepted a plea of guilty to burglary in the
third degree and "The Human Fly" was sent
away for only fifteen months. The police fully expected he. would soon scale the prison walls, which
would have been child's-play for him, and make
another getaway but he was so carefully watched
by the guards that he failed to accomplish that
added feat.
On a certain occasion when a thief "came
back," Captain Smith was able to turn a double
trick: pick up the man he was after and also prove
conclusively to the satisfaction of the New York
police department the value of finger prints in the
identification of criminals. The Bertillon system,
which had been in use in France and England for
some time, had been adopted by the New York
Police Department shortly before this striking
demonstration but it was still considered to be in
the experimental stage. There were many arguments about it and a number of high police officials
were openly skeptical as to its usefulness. Knowing the-thoroughness of Scotland Yard, Joe Smith
was not one of the doubters, and it remained for




They All Come Back

I45

him to justify his faith in the famous organization where he had served his apprenticeship.
Walking through the corridors one afternoon,
Joe noticed a man lounging in an easy chair near
a private apartment on the ninth floor who answered the description of a hotel thief for whom
he was on the lookout. In answer to an inquiry as
to what he was doing the man gave the old reply
that he was "waiting for a friend."
"You'll never find him here," said Joe. "Come
with me and we will see if we can find him." Lifting the man's hat from his head he saw that he
was "very bald" which was one of the identifying
marks of the man he wanted.
Taking the stranger to his office, Joe searched
him in a hunt for incriminating evidence. He
found only a cheap stickpin, worth about $I.5o,
but that was sufficient to connect him with a recent robbery in the hotel. After persistent questioning the man admitted two other room robberies in which jewelry of some value had been taken.
He steadfastly refused to tell what he had done
with the stolen property as he said it would cause
the arrest of an innocent woman.




146

Crooks of the Waldorf

"There is said to be 'honor among thieves,' "
says Joe, "but in fact there is very little of it. That
poor devil was one of the very few who had it."
The man was conspicuously English in dress,
manner and speech-he had been in this country
only three months and had lost none of his native
mannerisms-and it was his fate to be taken before Judge Goff, in. General Sessions Court, where
he pleaded guilty to burglary. There never has
been a more earnest advocate of the freedom of
Ireland than Judge Goff. He came of the Irish
stock that knows no compromise. In his early
years he was said to have been a Fenian. His
hatred of the English and all their works was
freely and fluently expressed. So Judge Goff with
great willingness remanded the prisoner for sentence until his record could be looked into.
With the consent of the Police Department,
Captain Smith had the man's finger prints sent to
Scotland Yard with a request for all of the information they had concerning him. No name or
description was given nor was there any enlightening information as to the offense for which the
man had been arrested. The reply from Scotland




They All Come Back

147

Yard was prompt and complete. It said the man
was Henry Johnston, whose picture and description were enclosed, that he was a notorious hotel
thief in England and that he had recently completed a prison term of twelve years.
Confronted with this evidence, Johnston admitted his identity and added that if he had been
armed at the time of his capture Joe Smith would
never have taken him in. When he was brought
up for sentence Judge Goff sent him to the penitentiary for seven and a half years.
"That was one man I was really sorry for,"
says Captain Smith. "It was a travesty on justice
to impose such a heavy penalty in that case when
men like 'The Mexican' and 'The Human Fly'
were sent away for only a few months. I am half
Irish myself, but the Irish blood that is in me
makes me sympathize with the under dog and believe in fair play. Yes, I know he said he would
have killed me if he had had a gun when I arrested
him, but they all say that. Some of them mean it,
but I doubt that Johnston did. Anyway he
wouldn't have killed me; I'm too lucky.
"We would have more trouble with thieves,"




148

Crooks of the Waldorf

continued Captain Smith in talking about those
who come back, "if they had more sense. Of
course, if they had enough more sense they
wouldn't be thieves, for in the long run they always lose out. They are smart in some ways but
foolish in their reasoning; or rather in their lack
of reason. They are cunning rather than clever.
They have some maxims of their own in which
they put great faith but they entirely disregard
the old adage about the fate of the pitcher that
goes too often to the well; and that is where they
make their great mistake.
"You would think that when a hotel thief had
robbed a room and made a clean getaway he would
give that place a wide berth, for a while at least,
and try his hand somewhere else. That would be
the smart thing for them to do. But they never
do it. One success makes them overly confident
and they always come back for more. Then they
are caught. They overlook or sneer at the fact that
we will be watching for them. We try to be alert
and vigilant all of the time but after a robbery
has been reported we are even more keenly on the
lookout. We always know the type of man we are




They All Come Back             149
waiting for and often we have a description of
him, in a general way if nothing more. That makes
it easier for us and harder for the thief, so he is
out of luck both ways. In the long run the best he
can get is the worst of it, but he keeps coming
back just the same.
"The hotel thief has an advantage over the ordinary burglar because he can carry his outfit in his
vest pocket. The house or loft burglar requires a
rather extensive set of tools, including jimmies,
'can-openers' and the like. They make up a bundle that is not easily concealed and which will instantly arouse suspicion on the part of anyone who
is familiar with their use. The hotel thief's kit
consists of what is known as a 'handy tool' which
can be bought in any hardware store. It is a small
wooden handle with a screw top and contains a
gimlet, screwdriver, nail-puller and six or eight
other small but strong tools, all of which are exactly suited to his purpose. These are taken out
as required and fitted into the small end of the
handle. This well-named instrument and perhaps
a little bottle of chloroform or knockout drops constitute the hotel thief's whole equipment, and they




I50

Crooks of the Waldorf

are not large enough to make a bulge in his
pockets.
"Once a hotel thief always a hotel thief, it
seems, for they never mend their ways, no matter
how often they are caught. I got a call at my home
early one morning and hurried down to the hotel
to find that two rooms on the same floor had been
robbed during the night. One of the guests had
been staying with us for years while the other was
a casual. Both had turned in with their doors unlocked and the keys on the outside, which was
equal to a 'Welcome' sign for prowlers. Both
rooms had been stripped of everything of value,
including even the shoes of the old-time guest.
"I went after the pawnshops and the next day
I arrested the thief in the act of pledging some of
his loot. Incidentally I recovered all of the stolen
property, which was worth about $I,ooo in each
case, though it had been pawned for only a small
part of its value. I have always made it a rule to
refund to pawnbrokers whatever they have loaned
on articles stolen from the hotel or its guests and
in this way I have secured their friendly cooperation. Legitimate pawnbrokers, of course, will not




They All Come Back

151

lend money on goods if they have any reason to
suspect they were stolen but they cannot help being victimized now and then. I have played fair
with them in protecting them against loss when
they made honest mistakes and they have been
square with me and have aided me in recovering
much stolen property.
"In this case it developed that the thief had
robbed every other hotel in the city. With this long
record of continued crime against him he had the
nerve to pull the customary hard-luck story, and
he did it so well that he got away with it. A softhearted judge sent him to the Elmira Reformatory, to give him 'another chance' for which he
begged. Two years later the police of the Tenderloin precinct telephoned me and asked me to call
at the station to look over a man who had been
arrested on suspicion of having robbed another
hotel. He was protesting his innocence so strongly
that they were dubious about their case against
him.
"The moment he saw me he said: 'I give up.
There's the man who had me before.' It was the
same chap who had robbed our two rooms. He




152

Crooks of the Waldorf

had returned to his old tricks as soon as he was
released from the State Reformatory. With his
glib promise of reform, he was sent back there
again for a short term, instead of being sent to
the penitentiary for a long term, which he should
have had. So far as any reformation is concerned
there is no choice between the two institutions but
if he had been properly sentenced his activities
would have been interrupted for a much longer
period.
"There are some hotel guests who seem bent on
making it easy for thieves to come back. They extend an invitation to thieves by going to bed with
their doors unlocked. And no matter how much
we may caution them they will insist on running
around with undesirable acquaintances and spending much of their time in night clubs and speakeasies. That is their idea of the 'good time' which
they think they must have when they come to New
York. Not long ago we had a guest from a western city who wore a number of diamonds almost
as big as your thumbnail. As proof that he came
from 'the great open spaces' he carried a big.45
calibre revolver until I took it away from him for




154

Crooks of the Waldorf

'friends' of the night before. In an old umbrella
standing in a corner of their room we found all of
the missing jewelry. If we had arrived a few
hours later it wouldn't have been there; we got
to them before they had time to dispose of it.
After their arrest it developed that both of them
had police records and they were sent back to the
Elmira Reformatory, where they had been before. There, no doubt, they received further instruction in the commission of crime from the
other inmates, though they really had no need of
any more lessons.
"There are times when I really get impatient,
having to keep a watchful eye on people who consider themselves so smart that they require no
protection from anyone. Some hotel guests, as a
matter of fact, in their mental processes are much
like the thieves who 'come back' and are caught.
No matter how many warnings they are given
they will insist on exposing themselves to robbery
until finally they are robbed. Then the hotel detective is taken seriously and becomes a much wiser
and more important person than he was when he
was cautioning them about their associates and the




They All Come Back           155
resorts they were frequenting. Human nature is
a funny thing when you sit down quietly and study
it And I imagine the hotel detective sees more of
it, in all of its quirks and angles, than anyone
else."




CHAPTER VII

PLAYING A HUNCH
"I'M JUST lucky, that's all," is the way Joe
Smith explains his unbroken success in the prevention of crime and the detection of criminals.
But if it had been mere good fortune there would
have been a break in his record long ago.
For Joe Smith has considerably more than luck
on his side. His success is usually the rational result of his methodical thoroughness. But there are
times when his shrewdness appears almost uncanny.
Thousands of men and women who, for various good reasons, were regarded as undesirable
company, have been escorted to an exit by Captain
Smith and told to keep away from the hotel. Many
of them he knew to be crooks and swindlers but
many of them he did not know and some of them
he never had seen before. There was something
156




158

Crooks of the Waldorf

catch, and the man has shown up and been arrested before Joe had his chair well warmed. Sixshooters- have often been leveled at him in situations from which it seemed impossible for him to
escape-but always the gun jammed when the
trigger was pressed for the fatal shot or there was
an intervention of some sort: this strengthened
the belief of the underworld that Joe Smith is
destined to die from old age and that it is a waste
of time, and dangerous business besides, to attempt to hasten his end.
"Why?" and "how come?" are questions that
wait for an answer.
"I'm just lucky, I tell you," insists Joe, a bit
annoyed at the persistent inquiry. If he himself
does not understand this gift, or power, how can
anyone else be expected to explain it? Yet there
must be a reasonable explanation, without attempting exactly to define "luck" which is one of
the most loosely used words in the English language.
Mussolini, the Italian dictator, says: "There is
a science of luck. It is simply to place yourself in
a position to take advantage of it oftener than tlhe




Playing A    Hunch           159
next man." It would be easy to dismiss the subject by suggesting that Captain Smith did that,
or by saying that his olfactory nerves are so highly
sensitized that he can smell out crooks, after the
manner of a bloodhound, and even classify them
according to their distinctive odors.
It is more probable that Joe Smith, unknown to
himself, and through the working of his subconscious mind, which never sleeps, has actually developed a sort of sixth sense that enables him to
distinguish crooks from honest men.
The exceptional growth of this so-called intuitive faculty--which though considered strange in
this era, may in another generation be regarded
as a commonplace-began, presumably, in his
early boyhood, when his mind was most receptive
and most retentive, as a natural result of the police atmosphere in which he was born and raised.
Nurtured by his surroundings and his activities,
its development continued until it reached a point
of perfection. His mind is wholly normal, though
exceptionally shrewd and penetrating; but his
sureness in the detection of criminals has at times
an uncanny precision.




I6o      Crooks of the Waldorf
His strange experience with Joe Dolan, in
which he considers his Luck was particularly kind
to him, is submitted in support of the theory that
has just been set forth, along with some other remarkable cases.
In all of his years of service Captain Smith has
been off duty through sickness only once. That
was a few years ago when he worked himself
nearly to death. He had been on duty day and
night during a big convention when he suddenly
collapsed one evening in the lobby. He was carried to his room where they found he was suffering with pneumonia. He stayed there for a month,
with two doctors and a corps of nurses looking
after him. Then he was sent to Lakewood for a
month to complete his recovery. From there he
went to "Oscar's" farm, up the Hudson near New
Paltz, to recuperate. He had been there only a few
days when he overheard a conversation in which
it was stated that two rooms at the Waldorf had
been robbed. That was the tonic he needed to
restore all of his strength. Heedless of his doctor's
orders he took the first train for New York.
Less than two hours after he reported for duty




Playing A   Hunch           161
a man he. never had seen before came in through
the 34th Street door. He appeared to be a gentleman and his manner suggested that he was a guest
at the hotel. So far as anyone else could see there
was nothing about him to attract attention or
arouse suspicion, but as he passed close to Captain Smith, on his way to an elevator, the detective
turned quickly and studied him, in his rapid-fire
way.
"I don't know what it was," says Joe, "but there
was something about him I did not like. I got the
hunch just as he passed me."
The man got on the elevator, without looking
back or giving any sign of nervousness, and left
it at the floor on which the two recent robberies
had occurred. Captain Smith followed him on the
next car and alighted at the same floor. He found
the man walking aimlessly through the hall and
watched him for some time without exposing himself. The man's actions could have been considered
suspicious but he made no attempt to enter a room.
Apparently conscious that he was being watched,
he finally made a quick connection with a descending car and returned to the main floor. Joe caught




Playing A Hunch

163

base the suspicion that was aroused as soon as
he saw him. Dolan was convicted easily enough
and sent to the penitentiary for seven and a half
years.
"Now you know that was just luck," argues
Captain Smith in defending his theory of fortune.
'I hadn't been back two hours before that fellow
showed up."
"And what made you think he was the man
you wanted?" he was asked.
"Well, there was something about him that
I didn't like. Anyway, he was the right man,
wasn't he?"
And there the matter ended.
"Two nights later," continued Joe, "I was
standing near the desk when one of our old guests
came in and registered. Turning to me he spoke
of Dolan's arrest and said: 'I wonder if he is the
man who robbed me the last time I was in the
city. You were full here so I went to another hotel,
and while I was down town the next day my room
was completely cleaned out. I lost some valuable
things, including some sable skins that were worth
a lot of money.'




164      Crooks of the Waldorf
"I went over the keys that Dolan had in his
possession and one of them corresponded with
the room our guest had temporarily occupied in the
other hotel. Dolan then confessed to me that he
had robbed this room and said he had sold the
sables to a 'fence' in Newark, whose name and
address he gave me. I went over to Newark and
recovered the skins and some of the other valuables that had been stolen. So in the end everybody was happy; everybody, that is, except
Dolan."
That "lucky" bit of detective work was much
talked about among hotel thieves and it threw
such a scare into them that for three years thereafter not a single attempt was made to rob a room
at the Waldorf. Whereupon Joe Smith won another world's record, along with a heightened
reputation for uncanniness which the crooks were
wholly unable to fathom or explain.
Alonzo Whiteman was one of the most notorious forgers in the country some years ago. He had
been the prosperous and respected president of a
bank in a western city but some kink developed
in his brain and he turned crook. His experience




Playing A    Hunch          165
had made him familiar with banking methods and
given him great skill in reproducing signatures.
That and his dignified and impressive manner
made him a dangerous character. He passed his
forged checks on banks and business houses, as a
rule, rather than on hotels. He never had tried
to cash one at the Waldorf, so Captain Smith had
no particular interest in him. But the New York
police were looking for him and they asked him
for his assistance, which he willingly gave.
One evening when everything around the hotel
was peaceful and quiet, with nothing demanding
Joe's attention, he picked up the impression, somehow, that Whiteman would soon show up in the
billiard room. So there he went and seated himself, apparently reading a newspaper but actually
watching everyone who entered. Sitting there, his
"hunch" became so strong that he sent word to a
headquarters detective to join him as quickly as
possible as he expected Whiteman would be there
before long. He could not have told why he expected him but he was sure he would come. The
city detective responded promptly, and was a bit
surprised to learn that his confrere had no in




I66

Crooks of the Waldorf

formation on which to base his expectation of a
visit from the man they wanted. However, knowing something of Captain Smith's weird way of
pulling good clues out of the air, he accepted the
situation with a smile of good-humored skepticism.
"I hope you're right," he remarked, as he took
a vacant chair beside Captain Smith.
"I know I'm right," replied Joe, with perfect
confidence.
The two detectives had not been sitting together
more than ten minutes before Whiteman walked
in, and was promptly arrested. Then it came out,
greatly to Joe's surprise and considerably to his
chagrin, that he was a guest at the Waldorf,
wherefore he was obliged to stand some chaffing
from his partner. He had arrived that day and
had registered under an alias. Joe was off duty
at the time and he had not been recognized by the
detective on watch. He had kept clear of the lobby
but, as Joe explained and as the other detective
well knew, he would soon have been seen and apprehended, so his arrest at that time was merely
moved ahead a short while.




Playing A Hunch

167

Whiteman was taken to his room and while the
detectives were going through his bags they saw
'him slip something in his mouth. Throwing him
-on the bed, they forced his jaws apart and recovered a wad of paper which proved to be a forged
check for $I,8oo that he had planned to pass the
next day on a down town bank.
Snarling and cursing, Whiteman backed away
a few feet as soon as his captors released him,
jerked a little two-shot.44 calibre Derringer from
his vest pocket and viciously pulled the trigger,
with the weapon pointed full at Captain Smith's
chest and -only an arm's length away. Perhaps as
a result of his haste and excitement, something
went wrong with the double-action mechanism and
it refused to work. Before Whiteman could raise
the hammer with his thumb, the two detectives
were on top of him and he was disarmed before
he could do any damage.
Whiteman had been "frisked" in the billiard
room, when he was placed under arrest, but only
casually as he never had been- known to use a
gun and the miniature pistol he carried had been
overlooked. It was so small that it could be hid




168

Crooks of the Waldorf

den in one's hand but it was as deadly as a fullgrown six-shooter at short range. It had two barrels, one above the other, and the firing pin on
the hammer revolved every time the trigger was
pulled.
After Whiteman had been locked up, the detectives went down into the basement of the police
station to try out the little pistol, which was something of a novelty to them. It worked perfectly,
each of the large cartridges exploding with a loud
roar when the trigger was pulled. The city detective gasped when the first one went off.
"My God!" exclaimed the city detective, who
was so overcome by the thought of what might
have happened that he almost dropped the smoking gun. "You are damned lucky, Joe, that it
didn't do that when Whiteman had hold of it."
"'Lucky' is the right word," assented Joe, who
was quite unmoved. "I've told you before that
I'm always lucky."
Captain Smith and two city detectives were
standing in the lobby gossiping one evening when
a middle-aged man dressed in ministerial garb
and carrying a small black traveling bag came in




Playing A    Hunch          169
and registered. He had a mild-mannered look, in
keeping with his apparent calling, and outwardly
was the epitome of respectability. Joe glanced at
him out of the corner of his eye, at first casually
and then intently.
"That fellow looks like a crook to me," he said,
after studying him for a minute, after he had
signed the register and was waiting to be assigned
to a room.
"Shucks, Joe, can't you see he's a minister?"
replied one of the detectives. "He's a parson all
over."
"He's dressed like one but something tells me
he's phony," said Joe.
The second city detective agreed with his partner and assured Captain Smith that he was unduly
concerned. "You'll get in a jam some day if you
keep on backing your hand with your hunches,"
he added.
"Maybe," replied Joe. With his suspicions increased rather than diminished by the short argument, he stepped over to the desk, at the same
time motioning the approaching bellboy away
from the bag of the newly arrived guest. He saw




170      Crooks of the Waldorf
that the seeming clergyman had registered from
Worcester, Mass. Professing to know much more
about Worcester and its churches than he actually
did know, Joe engaged him in conversation. His
answers did not come as readily as might have
been expected from a minister replying to inquiries about his home town and the kindly expression
in his eyes became shrewd and cunning and then
changed again to a steely hardness.
"Would you mind stepping into my office a minute?" suggested Joe, who by that time was quite
sure there was nothing at all reverend about the
stranger, who reluctantly accompanied  him.
There Joe told him the bag he was carrying looked
exactly like one that had been stolen from the
hotel a short time before and said he would like
to see what it contained. The man professed to
be outraged by the accusation and said the bag
belonged to him and held only his personal effects.
He protested stoutly against any inspection of its
contents; protested so violently that Joe insisted
on opening it, at the same time placing himself
between the man and the door. Inside of it under




Playing A Hunch

173

where he thought there would be a wider scope
for his expert activities with less chance of detection. But before he could even get started he
ran afoul of Joe Smith, and one of his insistent
hunches.
"Some parson, that chap was," remarked Captain Smith, reflectively. "He had one of the finest
set of burglar's tools I have ever seen, and the
police investigation made it clear that he knew
how to use them. He had served several terms in
jail out west and should have served more."
"What was there about him that first made you
think he was a crook?" Joe was asked.
"I'm blessed if I know, exactly. But I hadn't
been talking with him long before I knew he was
all wrong."
"But what caused you to suspect him before
you began to question him?"
"Luck. That's what I'm telling you. I'm just
lucky."




CHAPTER VIII

THE HOTEL ANNEX: A TRAVELING SPEAKEASY
"WHAT about prohibition?" repeated Captain
Smith. "You want to know what effect it has had
on hotels and on the criminal classes and what I
think of the way it is working out?"
His ready smile went into eclipse and his customary good humor deserted him. His face
clouded and hardened, his manner became severe
and judicial. He spoke slowly and selected his
words carefully.
"Well," he continued, after a few thoughtful
moments, "I think I am qualified to say something
on that subject. I have observed the operation of
the Volstead law at close quarters and have studied
its results. I have had many conversations, some
of them confidential, with our guests from all
parts of the country, including government agents
and police officials. From the day it went into effect, that law has been rigidly enforced here.
174




A Traveling" Speakeasy

175

"I have seen and learned some things about the
general effect of this law. One thing I am sure of:
if the present system keeps on, it will not be long
until this country is ruled absolutely by the bootleggers, for they will have all of the money and
all of the power. They are growing richer and
more powerful every day and the end is easy to
see. The big fellows are killing off the little fellows-not figuratively but literally, with machine
guns-or crowding them out of the game with
threats of murder, conveyed in a way that leaves
no room for doubt or argument. They are creating an oligarchy that will dictate policies to the
highest officials in our government in the same
brazen way that they are now giving orders to
the lesser officials who are charged with the enforcement of the law. The bribes that give them
immunity from the law, and place them in a privileged class such as we never have known before,
are being carried into higher and higher places.
Why, then, should they stop at the gates of the
White House? They are drawing closer to them
all of the time, and if some way is not found to
put them out of business the day is coming when




176

Crooks of the Waldorf

the gates will be thrown open to them by a man
they have selected to occupy the greatest executive mansion in the world.
"I am speaking, mind you, not as a drinking
man or as a defender of the saloon but as an officer of the law who has been in close contact with
the prohibition law from the day it was passed;
and, moreover, one who has enforced it to the
letter. I have always believed in and advocated
temperance. I could almost be called a total abstainer for in all my life I have taken less than
half a dozen drinks of liquor, and they were so
small that all of them put together would not fill
an ordinary whiskey glass. In the old days Mr.
Boldt always gave each of us a bottle of his choicest stock at Christmas. Out of courtesy to the man
we all loved I would take a little sip of it, and
then give the bottle away. That was the extent of
my drinking.
"It would have been all right if the Anti-Saloon
League had stuck to the purpose for which it was
established and had done away with the saloon.
At the same time it could have helped to work out
a plan by which the sale of liquor would have been




A Traveling Speakeasy

177

placed in the hands of the state governments. This
system was established in Canada when prohibition was abandoned over there, with much less
reason than exists for its abandonment in this
country, incidentally. This would have given the
League the support and cooperation of the whole
country, I believe. I have been told by men who
were directing the affairs of the League that
this is just what they wanted to do, and because
they were shrewd men who understood public sentiment I believe this was the fact. But in the
exultation of success and with public interest
focused on the World War, the situation got out
of their conservative hands. Control of the organization passed to a very active crowd of fanatics who proceeded to fasten the prohibitory Constitutional Amendment on the country and after
that the Volstead law, by levying moral blackmail
on Congressmen and through other tricky methods
that alienated a great deal of the more intelligent
public sentiment. When they did that they set in
motion a train of evils that make the old corner
saloon, with all of its filth and all of the suffering
it caused, look almost like a Sunday-school.




178      Crooks of the Waldorf
"So far as hotels are concerned, the effect of the
Volstead law has been to transfer the consumption
of liquor from the open bar, where it could be controlled, to the guest rooms, in which it cannot
be so easily supervised. A guest's room in a hotel
is his home, whether permanently or temporarily,
and we are in the same position as are the police
with regard to individual homes: so long as there
is no disturbance that causes annoyance to the
neighbors we have no right to intrude. It is the
same with guests who bring liquor into the hotel.
We see men, and women too, carrying in packages
that we are certain contain bottles of liquor, from
their size and shape and the care with which they
are handled, but we have no right to demand that
they open their bundles and show us what is in
them. That would be unlawful and cause no end
of trouble.
"Where they get all of the liquor they bring in
I do not know, though there are plenty of places
in which it is sold openly, heaven knows. In some
hotels that I have heard of the bellboys and porters are practically in the liquor business. They
either sell it themselves or direct thirsty guests




A Traveling Speakeasy

179

to places where it is to be had, with identifying
cards that insure them a commission on all sales.
That is not true of this hotel. Any employee who
gave a guest the location of a speakeasy, or helped
him in any way to secure liquor, would be discharged as quickly as he would be for any other
violation of our rules. We will not allow ourselves to be made a party to any violation of the
law, but we must keep within the law ourselves.
"Drinking in the rooms is a great and constant
source of annoyance. Every day we have -many
requests from men to be permitted to entertain
ladies in their rooms. In most cases we know very
well they are going to serve cocktails, but as long,
as they leave their doors open and create no disturbance, there is nothing we can do about it, except to watch them without any intrusion. If a
door is closed, or if there is any complaint from
guests in adjoining rooms, they hear from us
promptly, but otherwise we leave them alone.
"With men it is different. A male guest can take
another man to his room at any time without
asking any questions or making any explanations.
In the old days a man would meet a friend in the




I80

Crooks of the Waldorf

lobby and they would have a drink, or maybe two,
at the bar and go on their way, to dinner or elsewhere. Now the same two men will go to the
guest's room and empty a bottle. It is one of the
strange psychological effects of prohibition that
two or three men cannot sit down quietly together,
even in the privacy of a room, and have just two
or three drinks, as they used to do before the war.
They must open a fresh bottle and empty it at one
sitting. Then they lose their senses completely, in
most cases.
"In my time I have handled many drunks and
I know something about the effects of liquor. I
don't know what it is they are putting in the
liquor that is being sold nowadays to give it a kick
-I suppose it is ether, though it might be nitroglycerine-but it is something that drives men
crazy. We don't have as many drunks to handle
as we had before prohibition but those we do have
give us a lot more trouble than the old ones. They
are obstreperous-where they used to be jovialand full of fight, with no sense at all. It is nothing
unusual for a man to wander into the office late
at night and ask when the next train leaves for




A  Traveling Speakeasy        181
Philadelphia. He thinks the Waldorf is the Pennsylvania Station. When it is explained to him that
the place he is looking for is two blocks west he
wants to fight. The liquor that was sold in the old
days never produced any effect like that.
"The club and fraternity dances that are held in
the private ballrooms have to be watched carefully
to guard against any open violation of the law on
account of the large number of young college boys
who attend them. They give us more trouble than
any other class. Practically all of them are 'hiptoters' and proud of it. At all such affairs we
assume the right to search any of the members
of the party who show signs of intoxication and
their pocket flasks are taken away from them, on
the theory that the contents are being consumed
in public.
"At one recent party of that kind I learned of a
new way of breaking the law. We had taken one
flask, and in some cases two, from nearly every
young man who was present but in spite of that
the party continued to grow more and more hilarious. Then I noticed that two or three couples
would go downstairs together and come back in a




182

Crooks of the Waldorf

short time feeling more cheerful than when they
had left. When we searched them on their return
we found nothing and they gave us the laugh. I
knew they could not get any liquor in the hotel,
but I also knew they were getting it somewhere,
so I had one of my men follow one of the outgoing
parties. He discovered that they were patronizing
a private speakeasy of their own which had been
established in a big limousine that was parked on
the 33rd Street side of the hotel, where all kinds
of drinks were being served by the glass. Expecting to have their supply of liquor cut off at the
bung they had arranged to have it furnished
through the spigot. So now, in addition to watching the parties indoors we are obliged also to keep
an eye on the side streets for traveling speakeasies.
"That system is also being worked in connection
with one of the largest and best known hotels in
the country, located in a western city. There the
doorman conducts a speakeasy in a limousine that
is always parked on the opposite side of the street
from the main entrance and in plain sight of it.
The guest with a thirst is directed to it with a




A Traveling Speakeasy

183

wave of the hand; which gesture serves to introduce the prospective purchaser to the man in the
car. There the liquor is preferably sold by the bottle, but if a guest wants just one drink he can get
it.
"Crooks use more dope and carry more guns
than before prohibition. This is true of those with
whom we come in contact, and I believe it holds
good all through the list. That may be because
they prefer good dope to bad liquor or because the
bad liquor affected their brains until they resorted
to dope as a palliative for liquor. Whatever the
reason, it is a fact that they are more dangerous
and require more watching than they did in the
old days. Under the influence of their favorite
drug they will run risks, with a great show of
bravado, that they would never have thought of
assuming before and when they find themselves
caught in a jam they shoot their way out, without
caring where the bullets go. The number of murders they have committed, while doped, probably
would equal the number of people who have been
unjustifiably killed by revenue agents.
"It would be interesting to know how many




184

Crooks of the Waldorf

dope fiends have been created through the prohibition law. Undoubtedly the total would run well up
into the thousands. The smuggling of dope, on a
large scale, began with the smuggling of liquor
and its wholesale introduction was effected, by the
peddlers of it, in speakeasies and other drinking
dens that were frequented by young people. These
resorts were secure from police supervision, as a
matter of course, and there was no way of keeping
any kind of a check on them. So the use of dope
quickly spread in all directions, and it continues to
spread, with the supply constantly increasing to
meet the enlarging demand.
"There is much less corruption among the government agents assigned to prevent the illegal
importation of narcotics than among those who
are supposed to be arrayed against rum smuggling. One reason for that is that the anti-narcotic
force, as a rule, is composed of men of a higher
class who take a great pride in their work, instead
of using it as a means to get rich quick. As an
offhand guess I would say that almost any one of
the narcotic agents has more honesty and more
bravery than would be found in two dozen pro




A  Traveling Speakeasy         185
hibition agents-perhaps more than would be
found in fifty of them.
"Another reason for the great differences between the two forces is that drugs take up so much
less space than liquor of equal value. A few small
packages of morphine or heroin can be carried in
the pockets without attracting attention or arousing any suspicion. The danger of detection is so
remote that there is no occasion for paying any
graft to get them in. Yet they represent a larger
profit to the smuggler than he could make on a
good many cases of liquor. Many of the sailors on
most of the ships arriving from Europe are regularly bringing in as many of these poison packages
as they can handle without risk of being apprehended. They come in a constant stream and the
river is ever widening.
"There are much larger operations, of course;
in some of these it is natural to suppose that the
government agents collect at regular rates, in
much the same way that the revenue agents levy
tribute on liquor that is smuggled in. I have less
information about the smuggling of drugs than
the handling of liquor, but it is safe to assume




I86    Crooks of the Waldorf

that when many members of one branch of the
government adopt graft as their chief motive, an
allied one will follow suit, if there is no interference from the outside.
"Drugs are much more destructive of morals
than whiskey, according to the best authorities,
and their use is increasing with greater rapidity,
and has been ever since the prohibition law went
into effect. Yet Congress is very niggardly in the
funds it sets aside to prevent the unlawful importation of narcotics, as compared with its generous
appropriations for the enforcement of the Volstead Act. Again one might ask: Why? The obvious answer is that there is no active lobby of professional reformers in charge of an anti-narcotic
movement. There should be, for here is a chance
for a real reform. If I had a boy who was inclined
to either, I would vastly rather have him drink
liquor than use drugs.
"The prohibition agents know that in this hotel
the law is strictly enforced, every day in the year
and every hour in the day. They also know we
will not stand for any foolishness from anyone,
including themselves, so they don't bother us




I88

Crooks of the Waldorf

most of all is that they are so brazen in their dishonesty.
"There are many among them who will pay
several visits to a speakeasy or to a restaurant in
which liquor is served to people who are known,
to size the place up and get a line on the business
it is doing. Then they will fix a price for their protection and suggest to the proprietor that he 'come
across' with the stipulated amount every month.
If he agrees, they tip him off when he is to be
raided; but if he refuses to do business with them
a real raid is made on his place and he is closed
up. Then he usually makes terms with them and
opens up somewhere else, or the embargo on his
place is lifted.
"In the greed for money developed by their
easy graft they go even farther than that and
promote violations of the law for their own profit.
They will go themselves, or send an intermediary,
to some man who is running a nice, attractive restaurant but not doing an extensive business because he chooses to conduct it lawfully, and suggest to him that he can greatly increase his receipts by serving drinks and ask him why he




A Traveling Speakeasy

189

doesn't. The question is propounded in such a way
that its purpose is easily understood. If he tells
them, point blank, that he is not open to any proposition of that kind they laugh it off, but if he
inclines a listening ear they tell him they 'know a
party' through whom it can all be arranged, without any trouble or danger and to their mutual
profit. If he is interested they then get down to a
question of terms. Honor not merely placed on the
auction block but actually hawked around!
"I don't suppose there is a city or town in the
country where a man who wants a drink can
not stand up to a bar and get it, with very little
trouble. That means that in states which have enforcement laws in line with the prohibition amendment, as nearly all of them have, the contamination of the revenue agents has spread to the local
police. New York has no such law, so it is not up
to the police in this state to prevent the sale of
liquor, unless they are called on for assistance by
the federal agents. In New York City the police
are kept busy enough with their regular duties;
they cover more ground and with a smaller number of men than is the rule in large European




190      Crooks of the Waldorf
cities in which there is less crime. The prohibition
agents, and not the cops, are primarily and directly responsible for the speakeasies that are running
wide open all over the city, as well as for the flagrant violations of the law in the unspeakable night
clubs. They all spell Graft in the only language
the bootlegger knows.
"I don't think anyone familiar with American
history and the American character would have
believed, ten years ago, that corruption could ever
be as widespread as it has already become-and
it is steadily growing worse-or run into such
enormous volume, or that the public conscience
could ever be so dulled to iniquity. Nothing in
this country has ever developed so rapidly or
shown such tremendous profits as the bootlegging game. It is a rank growth and an evil
growth. It befouls every man it touches at the
same time that it enriches him. It leaves a trail
of dishonor and debauchery wherever it goes.
"The bootleggers are making money so fast
and in such great sums that they can well afford
to pay rich bribes, and they do-in amounts that
were unheard of up to a few years ago. Prohibi




192      Crooks of the Waldorf
and honest as any man could be. They would
have knocked down any man who tried to bribe
them. Now they can only be classed as crooks,
and they know it. But they are making more
money in a month than they earned in a year as
policemen, and making it more easily. What can
you expect of ordinary men in cases like that?
I am not excusing them, or defending them, but
I must confess that I do feel something very
much like sympathy for them, and for others of
the men down the line though I have none at all
for the officials higher up. Their authority and
responsibility are greater, their station in life is
higher, they are paid better salaries and they
should be above even so much as a faint suspicion
of crookedness.
"But it all gets back to the bootTegger, who
is at the root of the evil. And the most disheartening part of it all is that the people generally
laugh over it and joke about the profits of the
bootlegger, with no apparent appreciation of
either their size or their cost in dishonored lives
and murdered victims of their greed. There are
times when it seems as though the whole nation




A  Traveling Speakeasy        193
had become mentally diseased through association with the bootleggers and their aides. If the
people don't take a more serious view of things
and find some rational, and enforceable, way of
controlling the liquor traffic, they will wake up
some March morning and find a bootlegger occupying the White House!"




CHAPTER IX

THE COME-ON GIRL AND THE MASHER
WE were talking about what are technically
known as "hotel pests"-those seemingly respectable people who, with much less courage than the
professional thieves but with ingratiating ways
and more assurance, are unceasing in their efforts to use hotel lobbies as hunting grounds in
their grafting games. So far as the hotel is concerned they are a nuisance rather than a danger.
But they are numerous and play their parts so
well that they require more careful watching by
the house detectives than the less gifted but more
daring professionals who are known, or who
arouse suspicion as soon as they are seen.
They are the jackals of Crookdom-not its
wolves or tigers-and they have to be driven
away, for no well managed hotel can afford to
have its corridors cluttered up with prepossessing
tricksters who seek to prey on its guests. Most
194




The Come-On Girl

195

of their schemes for securing easy money are
worked in a way that keeps them within the written law and they are careful to do nothing while
in the hotel that would furnish a legal reason for
their arrest. So there is nothing left for the house
detective to do except to kick them out, and keep
them out.
"There are a good many in that class," said
Captain Smith, "and again I must give first place
to the women-even at the risk of being called a
woman hater, which I decidedly am not.
"Our worst pests used to be men but now they
are women. And the worst of the lot is the woman who comes in and sits around in the lobby
waiting to be picked up by some flirtatious but
innocent and confiding guest who will take her
out to dinner and give her a chance to rob him.
She is looking for a good dinner, but she prefers
one with wine, which means that they will have
to go somewhere away from the hotel-and she
always knows a 'good place.' That is all a part
of the 'come-on' stuff, of course; what she is
really interested in are the money and jewelry.of the man who picks her up.




196      Crooks of the Waldorf
"But how are we to know she belongs to that
class? A few years ago that type carried her
card on her face, but the way they dress nowadays, with short skirts and rouge and lipstick
and plucked eyebrows, and permanent waves, it
is almost impossible to tell a good woman from
a bad one. I think I am pretty good at reading
faces and so are my assistants, but they have us
doing a lot of guessing. The trouble is that you
can't see their real faces; everything you see is
artificial-everything except their legs, and legs,
unfortunately, are not a good indication of character. If they were it would be the easiest thing
in the world to separate the sheep from the
goats. Women might pick them out more quickly
than men, but I will not employ women detectives even in such cases. They are too likely to
make mistakes, as I have said before, and we
cannot afford to make any mistakes.
"We can tell them only by looking them over
very carefully, and frequently we have to watch
them for a long while. They are as cunning as
rats. They generally come in, late in the afternoon, through one of the 33rd Street entrances,




The Come-On Girl             197
on the opposite side of the house from the office.
In that way they figure they are less likely to
come under our immediate attention. The smartest of them will take an elevator on the 33rd
Street side and go to one of the upper floors.
Then they cross over and come right down in a
car on the 34th Street side, to create the impression that they are staying in the hotel.
"They sit down in one of the corridors or
lounging rooms, after a look at the clock or their
watch, as if they were keeping an appointment.
That gives them a reason for looking at all of
the men who pass and sizing them up, assaying
their value in ready money. They are always expensively and often stunningly dressed with a
display of jewels that is never out of form. Their
whole get-up suggests wealth and luxury and
there is nothing about their attire or their manner to set them apart from other women who
are seated all around them. In face and figure
they are as attractive as any of them. They are
shrewd judges of men and they are as discreet as
they are discriminating.
"The man who draws the first fleeting smile




The Come-On Girl

199

tabs on them until we are positive we are right.
Then we politely invite them into my office and
ask them their business. They are always 'waiting for a friend'-the old gag. We advise them
that we do not care to have our corridors used
as a meeting place by ladies who have so many
friends and tell them to go away and stay away.
To make their prompt departure certain we show
them to the door. If they come back again, which
they rarely do, they don't even get a chance to
sit down if we see them first.
"We have never yet made a mistake and I
hope we never will; for I would rather have a
dozen of those women sitting around waiting for
company for weeks than insult one good woman.
There is nothing objectionable about them in
their appearance or actions but we will not have
the hotel used for their purposes. It isn't good
business to have men going around over the country telling how they were robbed by a woman they
picked up in the Waldorf lobby. We don't want
that kind of advertising or that kind of reputation.
"There are a lot of male mashers, too, but they




200

Crooks of the Waldorf

are more easily handled. They are altogether obnoxious brutes and much more offensive than the
female mashers, for their whole aim in life is to
prey on women. It may be that women have become as strong as men and are as well able to support men as, in the old days, men were able to support them, but there are still some of us old-fashioned folks who regard women as the weaker sex.
And I hate to see them bled by human leeches.
"They used to be known as 'lounge lizards' and
then as 'sheiks'. My name for them can't be printed-and I don't swear much, at that. But I sometimes treat myself to a little profanity when I talk
of these dogs. They are always perfectly dressed
and well-groomed, and they spend their afternoons, and their evenings if they have had no success during the day, looking for some woman who
will spend money on them. If they find one who
is rich enough to maintain them in luxurious idleness in return for their society at such times as
she requires it, they have attained their supreme
ambition. They think this is a good place to look
for wealthy women so they persist in trying to
spread their nets around here.




202      Crooks of the Waldorf
"We try to get young women from the stage,
who know something about acting and how to'
wear good clothes as though they were accustomed
to them. They enter right into the spirit of the
game. It gives them some extra money and they
look on it as great sport. They are expensively
gowned and wear costly jewels, which are rented
for the occasion when necessary. They are surrounded with the aura of a large income and a fat
bank account. They have instructions to make no
advances of any kind, and they always play the
game fairly. All they have to do is to sit around
and wait for some man to approach them and try
to strike up an acquaintance. As a rule they do
not have long to wait.
"They are wise enough to know, from the preliminary conversation, whether the man who
smiled so nicely and tipped his hat so politely is a
guest of the house or some other decent man who
is simply out for a flirtation with a beautiful woman or whether he is one of the despised class we
are after. If he is a guest of the house she gives
a signal to one of the detectives who are observing
operations and the man is quietly called aside and




The Come-On Girl

203

told that we will not have our guests annoyed in
that manner and he must do his flirting somewhere
else. We can tell, from the way he accepts this
warning, whether or not the decoy was right in
her appraisal of him.
"But if the man who makes the advance shows
himself to be one of the leeches, or if there is any
suspicion that he may be, the process is different.
In that case, after he has shown his hand sufficiently, or enough to make her suspect him, the
young lady engages him in gay conversation and,
on the pretense of looking for a friend, parades
him through the corridors and lounges so that he
may be seen by all of the house detectives-for the
whole force is on the job while the decoys are at
work-and by all of the office and floor employees
who are on duty at the time. This makes it certain
that he will be recognized by someone if he ever
comes around again. Then, after we have all
looked him over, if he is unable to give a good
account of himself, he is shown out and told if he
ever comes back he will be thrown out. And the
young lady powders her nose and proceeds to set
another trap. When we reach the point where we




204

Crooks of the Waldorf

are making no more catches the game is closed
and the decoys discharged.
"In this way we manage to keep the place pretty
free from both male, in a manner of speaking, and
female parasites. They move on to another hotel,
or to another city if they have worked all of the
big New York hotels, for they never change their
ways, except for the worse. Of course, some new
faces are showing up all of the time but they are
soon turned to the wall.
"There is much less gambling now than there
was some years ago and that has done away with
some little annoyances. If that can be credited to
the closing of the bar, then Mr. Volstead has
something coming on the right side of the ledger,
though it would come far from balancing the account. But I don't believe prohibition had much,
if anything, to do with it. Habits change just as
fashions do and gambling in hotels or other public
places has simply gone out of style. Guests used
to pester us with requests to be directed to some
square gambling house. I knew of such places,
and so did my men, but we never told any man
where to find them or how to get in. The games




The Come-On Girl            205
were perfectly honest, in the sense that there was
no cheating, but there was always better than an
even chance that the guest would lose his money.
If he did he would hold the hotel responsible, in
a way, if we had recommended the place or directed him to it. There has been a general feeling,
I know, that hotel detectives profited in some way
from directing guests to gambling and sporting
houses, but that is not true and never was; we
would never think of such a thing.
"In the old days it was different. When John
W. (Bet-you-a-million) Gates and his son Charley and John Drake lived here there were some
famous games nearly every night, but they were
always played in private apartments and there
was no disturbance so they were nobody's affair,
When those men sat down around a poker table
with Phil Dwyer and Andrew Miller, two well
known horsemen, and Foxhall Keene, it was nothing unusual for two or three hundred thousand
dollars to change hands before the game closed,
which might be some time the next day, or the day
after. I have seen John Gates bet $o1,ooo on two




206

Crooks of the Waldorf

flies walking up a windowpane. And he would
give you your pick of the flies.
"Lured by the size of the stakes, professional
gamblers were always trying to get into these
games. This was particularly true of the cardsharps that travel on ocean liners, who are the
greatest artists in their line and accustomed to
playing for large amounts. They all had pleasing
personalities and it was their plan of campaign
to get into the hotel as guests and then establish
acquaintances which, they hoped, would secure
them an invitation to Mr. Gates's private apartment, in which the big games generally were
played. So they would leave one of the big ships
with the other passengers and come up here and
try to get in with the crowd. But I knew them all,
fortunately, and though they would get past the
register now and then none of them ever succeeded
in being assigned to a room. They were a pest,
right enough, and I had to stick around every time
a big liner came in, to see that they were given the
gate.
"But not all of the pests come from the outside.
Occasionally we find them among our own guests.




The Come-On Girl

207

Careless women who walk calmly away leaving
bundles of bonds or valuable furs or bags full of
jewelry lying on a table or in a chair are a never
ending source of trouble. Those cases, though,
are a part of our job. But that does not always
apply. Not long ago a lady reported that she had
lost a bag containing $30,000 worth of diamonds
while out shopping. She was a guest here, it is
true, but the hotel was in no way responsible for
her loss. She was greatly upset about it, naturally,
and pestered me until I finally told her I would
try to recover them. She wanted to advertise a
reward of $500 for their return, but I advised
against that until I had seen what I could do.
"I spent a whole day on the case and finally
found that the bag had been picked up by a floorwalker in one of the big department stores and
turned in at their lost and found department. The
lady was so delighted to regain possession of her
jewels that she gave the floor-walker one hundred
and fifty dollars and then offered me ten, with a
very grand air. I carefully explained to her that
my salary covered all of my needs and that I did
not accept tips. We have a lost and found depart




208

Crooks of the Waldorf

ment here and most of the valuables that careless,
women leave behind them, to be picked up by anybody, are turned in there before we are notified of
the loss and start a search. When women recover
property worth thousands of dollars, as many of
them do, you would think they would give some reward to the bellhop or porter or maid who saw
them first and promptly turned them in, wouldn't
you? Well, you would be wrong in about ninetynine cases out of a hundred. Women are funny,
that way. As a rule I don't believe it is because they
mean to be small but they are so overjoyed when
the lost is found, and so overcome with a sense
of their own carelessness, that they just don't
think of the little niceties that occur naturally to
the mind of the average man.
"But not all of what you might call the inside
'nuisances are members of the sex which I will
keep on speaking of as the weaker one. There are
as many men who bother us beyond any reasonable bounds as there are women. Some of them
require more attention than spoiled babies, to keep
them from being victimized, and then blaming the
hotel even after we had done everything we could




The Come-On Girl

211

comer was worried. He had just lost $5,000 in a
poker game, which was $3,500 more than he had
with him in cash. He had paid $1,500 and given
his I. 0. U. for the balance. And he must take
that up the next day or his folks would hear about
it and he would be disgraced, somehow. He had
a diamond ring, worth $5,000, which he displayed,
that he would sell for $3,500, if he could get the
cash quickly. The ring looked good to our clever
guest, as it was, and he jumped at the chance to
make a profitable trade. So it was arranged that
the three were to meet the next day, away from
the hotel, which they did.
"Carrying out the agreement, they went to a
jewelry store on Fifth Avenue, at which the guest
was known, and had the ring appraised. The jeweler examined the diamond and told our guest
quietly, as he handed the ring back to the crook,
that he would pay him $4,000 for it any time he
wished to sell it. The swindler started to put the
ring back in his vest pocket-and he actually did
put it back, through a sleight of hand performance
that the guest missed. Then he asked for a clean
piece of tissue paper in which to wrap it up. The




212

Crooks of the Waldorf

jeweler handed him the paper, and he wrapped up
a ring that was an exact duplicate of the one with
the real diamond but which was set with an imitation stone instead, of the same size, and handed
it to our guest. That was one of the first tricks
Noah heard about when he climbed down out of
the Ark.
"With the ring safely in his pocket, our guest
took his new friends to a bank in which one of the
officers was an old friend, cashed his check for
$3,500 and handed over the purchase price. And
the chief crook hurried away to take up his I. O.
U., his friend accompanying him. I was in the
office that evening when the guest came in and
asked that his bargain be locked up in the safe.
"'Isn't that a beauty?' he inquired of the clerk,
unwrapping the ring and proudly displaying it.
'It's worth $5,000 and I bought it for $3,500.' "
"The clerk examined it, at first admiringly and
then more critically. He scented something wrong,
for there wasn't a bellhop in the house who
couldn't have told it was bogus.
" 'I don't know,' said the clerk. 'Mr. Smith over




The Come-On Girl

213

there knows more about diamonds than I do,
You'd better ask him about it.'
"I was called over and introduced as the house
detective. The man displayed his first sign of nervousness, and showed me the ring. One look at
it was all any man with two good eyes would need.
I asked him where he got it, and he explained
the whole transaction.
"'That's a nice piece of glass,' I told him, 'but
it's not worth more than five dollars at the most,
and you might have trouble getting that for it.'
"The bright guest exploded. His first reaction
was to blame the hotel, as is generally the case.
" 'Why didn't you warn me?' he demanded,
petulantly. 'You saw that fellow around here with
me.'
"'I didn't see you,' I told him. 'But one of my
assistants did, last evening. He took the trouble
to summon you from dinner to tell you the man
with you looked like a crook and advised you to
watch your step. And you told him to go to
blazes for his pains.'
" 'That's right,' he admitted. 'He was right and
I was wrong. And it cost me $3,495, or maybe




214

Crooks of the Waldorf

more. Oh, well, what can you expect in New
York?'
"Just like that. Blaming the whole city instead
of himself. Fortunately he was rich enough so
that the loss did not mean a great deal to himi.
And it didn't even seem to hurt his vanity, much.
"One pest who has never bothered us-and I
have often wondered why-is the pickpocket.
They have annoyed other hotels, which seem to
me to be much less favorably situated for their
operations than we are but they have always let
us alone. For instance, with a big parade passing
up Fifth Avenue, and all of the windows on that
side of the house crowded with spectators intent
on the show, it would seem that a good 'dip' would
find it very hard to resist the temptation to enter
the hotel from one side and work his way through
the mob to the other, lifting wallets as he went.
It looks as though it would be easy, yet I never
have had a report of a case of pocket-picking in
all of the years I have been here. They must be
superstitious about this hotel, or something.
"But we are constantly annoyed by thefts of a
nature allied to pocket-picking, in the pay wash




The Come-On Girl

215

rooms. When a man who looks prosperous, but
does not appear to be exactly up on his toes mentally, goes into one of them he is likely to be interrupted in a moment or two by a well-dressed
young man, who drops a nickel in the slot and
opens the door in a great hurry. Seeing the room
occupied he registers surprise and some embarrassment.
" 'Oh, I beg your pardon,' he says. 'I didn't
know anyone was in here. I think I dropped my
pocketbook in here a few minutes ago, for I have
lost it.'
"He starts to look around on the floor, with
apparent excitement. The occupant of the room
joins in the search and while he is so engaged the
intruder quickly extracts his wallet from his coat,
which is hanging on the hook. Then he suggests,
apologetically, that it may have been another room
he was in, and goes away, and out of the hotel on
the jump.
"The fellows who pull that trick are mostly
young Italians, and they probably are in with the
bootblacks at the stand in the outside room. It




The Come-On Girl

217

their credentials had been looked up and found
to be minus quantities.
Others who have departed in like manner are
the coin-matchers, the oily-tongued peddlers of
worthless mining stocks, tipsters with "good
things" on the stock market acquired through absolutely inside information, and fake cartoonists.
The house detectives wore out much shoe leather
up to a few years ago on a gang called "We Boys."
The "illustrators" would display original drawings of men of note, which had never appeared in
any publication. This, of course, was kept secret.
They would offer, as a special favor, to make a
friendly cartoon and have it published in almost
any newspaper for $500, or even $200, or whatever the traffic would bear. They collected much
money from the gullible, but none of their handiwork ever appeared in the newspapers.
The "We Boys" were the smartest and most
energetic of the lot, as well as the most unscrupulous and the most successful, and they were the
last to go. They were full of enthusiasm and appealing conversation. Most of them had done
some newspaper work, sometime, somewhere, be




218

Crooks of the Waldorf

fore they were discharged for grafting, and could
"talk shop" with almost anybody. They represented themselves as doing "special work" for
whatever New York newspaper suited their fancy
at the moment. None of their victims ever thought
of calling up the city editor of the paper named
to inquire whether they actually were employed
on it, so they got away with murder, arson, mayhem and physical assault for a long time.
The worst of them were plain blackmailers.
They would hear a bit of scandalous personal
gossip about some prominent man from out of
town who was staying at the hotel-scandal of the
kind that is easily picked up, but which no newspaper would ever dare to print, even if it were
true-and proceed to "shake him down" with a
highly artistic touch. One of them would go to the
man involved, take him off into a corner, tell him
he had been assigned to cover the story for the
World, or some other paper, and ask him for the
facts.
"My God!" the man would exclaim. "That story
mustn't be printed."
"Why not? It's true, isn't it?"




The Come-On Girl

219

"Some parts of it, maybe, but no decent newspaper ought to publish stuff like that."
"That is the sort of stuff people like to read,
and we have to give them what they want."
"But if that got out it would raise the old Nick.
My wife would sue me for divorce and it would
play hob with my business."
"That's tough on you, but you should have
thought of that before."
"I've met Mr. Pulitzer," (or the publisher or
editor of whatever paper was named). "I'll call
him up and ask him to stop it."
"That"-just a trifle scornfully-"would be the
best way I know of to accomplish just what you
want to prevent. If the big boss heard of the
story and it wasn't printed, he would think I was
paid for keeping it out and I would lose my job."
"How can it be kept out, then?"
"I don't know that it can be kept out at all.;
I doubt that it can. I would be willing to suppress
it as a favor to you, if you will do me a good turn
sometime, but if the other fellows print it I'll have
to. They might keep it out if they were paid
enough, but it would cost you a lot of money, for




222

Crooks of the Waldorf

across-to a fund that was to be used for the endowment of certain beds in a certain hospital
which were to be exclusively reserved for sick or
injured newspaper men.
Or, if that proposal did not ring the bell, they
would be glad to accept a contribution to add to
the furnishing of their club room-and they actually did have a club room, for a while, not far
from the Waldorf, on 33rd Street, on which they
expended a little of their graft and in which promising prospects were suitably entertained, by
"some of the best newspaper men in town." By
these two methods they took a great many tens of
thousands of dollars away from hotel guests before they were finally broken up and scattered.
"I'll say those 'We Boys' were smart," commented Joe Smith. "They had the best grafting
game I have ever run across, and the only one I
have ever fallen for. Before I got onto them I
gave them an oil painting worth at least $500 for
their club room, and I have wished many times I
had it back. But I had good company. Arthur
Woods, afterwards Police Commissioner of New
York City, whom no one would ever think of call




The Come-On Girl

223

ing a sucker, was a member of their club at one
time. So were some other smart men. The last
of the 'We Boys' that I saw around here had a
check for $200 that a guest had just given him,
to help endow a bed. I took the check away from
him and kicked him into the street."
The wireless wiretappers, who stood next to
the "We Boys" in shrewdness but outranked them
in the extent of their loot when they were at the
height of their operations, are also fast disappearing, along with their fake poolrooms. A few of
them are still working, now and then, very quietly,
but they are on their way out, with none to mourn
their passing, and least of all the hotel detectives.
"Yes, those fellows are about through, too,"
said Captain Smith, "but they bob up occasionally.
Not so very long ago a gentleman from up state
stayed here for some time. He talked with me a
good deal. One night he volunteered the information that he was just about to make a pile of easy
money and that he intended to declare me in. That
made me suspicious, not of him but of what he was
being dragged into. I investigated and found that
he was up against two of the smartest wireless




224

Crooks of the Waldorf

men in the country. I tried to warn him that they
were not good company, but he became insulted
and told me to mind my own affairs, as is the
way with most of them. He was a keen business
man, ordinarily; in fact he rather prided himself
on his acumen. It is that kind that falls most easily
for sure-thing games, and not the so-called hayseed. The farmer is generally quick to get suspicious of any get-rich-in-a-hurry proposition.
"Our guest met his wireless friends away from
the hotel, of course. They did not dare to show
their faces around here as they knew they would
be recognized and thrown out. Not many days
after I had warned him of the company he was
keeping the man who had proposed to cut me in
with his easy money came to me crying. He had
been swindled out of $50,000 by men he thought
were his friends-by the same pair about whom I
had cautioned him.
'What can you do with men like that?f" inquired Joe Smith, with much fervency. "We ought
to have a corps of nurses around here for some
of them. But there are not a great many of them,
or we would be driven crazy in a short time."




CHAPTER X

THIEVES BY CIRCUMSTANCE
"WHAT makes a thief?" someone asked Joe
Smith.
"Opportunity, in  most cases," he replied
promptly.
"Of course there are some people who are born
with a kink in their brain that makes it impossible
for them to think straight, just as some children
are born with crossed eyes which prevent them
from seeing straight. But there are comparatively
few cases of that kind, for nature does not make
many mistakes.
"Modern surgery has found a way of correcting crossed eyes and the twists in most, if not all,
of the crooked brains could be straightened out
in a similar way if they were taken hold of in time.
Some day, the public will get tired of the waste
and worry involved in filling insane asylums and
prisons with non-producers and taking care of the
225




226

Crooks of the Waldorf

families they leave on the outside. Then the scientific treatment of distorted mentalities will be made
compulsory, as will the proper handling of criminals, with an intelligently directed purpose of reforming them. We can then hope for a marked
falling off in thievery and general skullduggery.
"There are a few people, too, usually of weak
character to begin with, who seem to have dishonesty forced on them by conditions apparently
beyond their control and for which they are not
responsible. I will tell you of one remarkable instance of that kind before we are through. But
these cases are few. As a rule these mental obliquities are only temporary. They will generally correct themselves from within when the man comes'
to his senses and takes a fresh grip on himself,
or they can be corrected from without in proper
surroundings.
"Environment and early training have something to do with it, but there the influence is largely one of degree. The average youth--whether a
boy or a girl-is not made dishonest by his surroundings; he may be made more dishonest than
he was when he began to go out into the world,




Thieves by Circumstance

227

especially if his home life does not tend to raise
the standards he encounters outside of it. Taking
the other view of it, the boy who labors under
the disadvantage of a home in which there are
bad influences and nothing of love, may be improved by his surroundings away from it, if he
finds the right kind of playmates and companions.
They will not make him honest if his natural tendency toward dishonesty is very pronounced, but
they are likely to effect a great improvement in
him.
"It is easy to say that a man is either honest
or dishonest, but that is not a complete statement
of fact. It isn't true, literally. I never have taken
anything that did not belong to me and have no
idea that I ever will. I believe I am as honest as
the next man, but if my wife and family were
starving and if I had no money and couldn't get
a job of any kind, though I had worn out my last
pair of shoes trying to find one, what would I
do? Frankly, I don't know. I might stick up the
first man I met, if I believed I needed his money
more than he did-with a mental promise to myself to return it as soon as I could-or I might




228

Crooks of the Waldorf

get down on my knees and beg for charity, which
is a hard thing for any real man to do.
"I don't want to be confronted by that situation,
and I am glad that I never have been. But there
are men, with clean lives behind them, who have
been forced to face it. And some have fallen, and
regained their footing and their self-respect with
the passing of the emergency. But some-the
weaker ones-kept on going down hill after their
first fall until they became habitual criminals.
They are crooks, while those who fell in the same
way but caught themselves before it was too late
are respected members of the community.
"Then, too, there are men who have been convicted of crimes that they knew nothing about
and in which they had no hand. Subjected only to
injustice and dishonesty in places where we are
supposed to find nothing but probity and fairness,
can you blame them for raising their hands against
society and taking the crooked path? It takes a
character that is mighty strong and fine to come
through that sort of a blazing furnace without
being badly burned.
"Stripped of all sentimentality and flubdub,




Thieves by Circumstance

231

trustful owner out of a nickel or a dime, but who
would be unable to resist the temptation of unwatched currency. Or, if the one dollar bill had
been allowed to remain indefinitely, how long a
ten or a twenty dollar bill would have stayed
there.
"For it is the opportunity that makes the thief,
whether he be a big one or only a little one. The
opportunity to take something that does not belong to you, with only a remote chance of being
detected and punished, or perhaps with not so
much as a possibility of punishment, creates the
temptation and then a man either falls or rises
above it. Many a man who is scrupulously honest
in all ordinary affairs, and who would as soon
shake hands with a leper as to appropriate money
on which he had no rightful claim so long as
it was in tens or hundreds or thousands, may be
tempted beyond his strength when he finds a
chance to steal a million dollars, or even a hundred
thousand. If there is a weak spot in his character
a temptation of that size will bring it out, and
he is likely to figure that even if he is caught a
term in prison will be worth what it costs, pro




232

Crooks of the Waldorf

vided he can get safely away with the money. He
knows, too, that in such cases the big thieves
always get off more lightly than the little ones.
"Every minute of the day there are many men
who are in a position to steal money in large or
small amounts. The chances of detection vary.
And the fact that so little of it is stolen is proof
of the soundness of American character. It often
happens that men who are thoroughly honest in
their natures are overcome by a sudden temptation,
to which they would not ordinarily give way. They
need money, the opportunity presents itself and
they steal, forgetting momentarily the consequences. Then their consciences get to work and
they repent. They find remorse a heavy burden
and are anxious to make restitution and return
to the straight way. And they generally do so, if
they are given understanding sympathy and encouragement, which every naturally decent man
deserves.
"It is because there are many lapses of this
kind and because the great majority of men are
honest at bottom, that I believe every first offender
should be given another chance, provided his rec




Thieves by Circumstance

235

He made no plea for mercy on his wife's account, though he admitted that in her weakened
condition the shock of his arrest and conviction
would certainly have a serious effect on her.
Though he could see no possibility of getting it,
in the frame of mind he was in, with a clear case
against him, he would like another chance on his
own account, to enable him to go straight. Of
course he would make the firm's loss good, as
quickly as he could, if he were given the opportunity.
Though he did not tell him so at the time, the
boy's story, simply and straightforwardly told,
aroused all of Joe Smith's sympathy. He was
studying him as he talked, and was convinced he
had the young man sized up correctly. He turned
him over to the police without any comment, as
he thought it would do no harm to let the boy
sweat a little more blood to drive home the lesson
-but on the side he asked the officer to whom he
surrendered him to hold him at the station until
he heard further from him and to book no formal
charge against him, with the idea of saving him




236

Crooks of the Waldorf

from the disgrace of a police record, if he could
do it.
Then Captain Smith dropped the affairs of the
Waldorf for the time and hurried away to interview the jewelers. He told them the boy's story,
as he had heard it, and asked them to give him
another chance. They refused, positively and frigidly. He had proved himself to be one of their
best salesmen, and on that account they were sorry
to see him go wrong, buit he had also shown himself to be a thief and he must be punished; otherwise none of their valuables would be safe. Joe
argued, but in vain, and it was not until he had
given his personal guarantee that the $300 they
had paid out to get the ring out of pawn would
be repaid to them that they consented to withdraw
the complaint against the clerk. But they would
not consider employing him again.
So the boy was free to go home that evening as
usual, feeling keenly his disgrace, but not dishonored. The next day Joe got busy again. He
made no secret of what had happened, but he had
sufficient influence to secure a position for the
young man with another jewelry firm on the Ave




Thieves by Circumstance

237

nue, not far from the store in which he had committed his first and only crime. But it was not
until Joe had again given his personal guarantee
that if the boy repeated his offense he would make
good any loss that they consented to employ him.
Joe watched over him until he had made good the
$300 loss to his old firm, just as he had promised.
Later his new employers reported to him that
they were so pleased with his work and so fully
convinced of his honesty that they released him
from the guarantee he had given them when they
took the boy on. Then he forgot the case, as he
has forgotten many others similar to it.
"Not long ago," continued Joe, "I was riding in
the subway when a man rushed up and threw his
arms around me and almost kissed me. I had to
look at him twice before I recognized the young
man of the jewelry stores. I hadn't seen him for
years. He explained that he had not had time to
get in to see me because he had gone into business for himself and had been busy building it up.
He rode all of the way over to Jersey with me
and told me all about himself and his family.
He has a nice store of his own uptown-not a jew




238

Crooks of the Waldorf

elry store-and he is making money. And he will
continue to prosper, for he has the right stuff in
him. Where would he be now, do you think, if he
had been sent to prison for his first offense? Isn't
that kind of boy worth saving from damnation?
I think he is, and I'll do anything I can to help to
pull one of them out of a hole whenever I get the
chance."
Joe told another story, about the cashier of a
bank that was one of the most important in the
financial district until it was swallowed up through
consolidation with a still larger one. These facts
have never been published, even in disguised form,
and are known to but few men.
This man had been with the bank from boyhood
and had climbed up step by step. He was a model
of efficiency and exactitude. He was never late,
worked long hours, was never away from his desk
except when on vacation and there never had been
a mistake in his records. He was always ready
with a helping hand for the junior employees
and was the best-liked man in the institution. He
lived quietly up along the Hudson in an attractive
home overlooking the river. He took an unobtru




240

Crooks of the Waldorf

Not at all, feeling fine. Well, when was he coming
down to the bank? He wasn't coming down any
more. Why not?-in great surprise. Well, if they
would check up their cash they might find the reason. But he suggested that they make no fuss
about anything they discovered. That would be
bad for the bank.
"I'll be right here whenever you want me," he
said. "Call me again, if you like, after you have
looked things over."
There was a hurried counting of cash. Then
it was the President who called him.
"You're half a million dollars short," he
shouted.
"No, I'm not; the bank is," came a much more
cheerful voice from the other end of the wire.
"Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"Nothing. What are you going to do about it?"
The President sputtered incoherently. "There is
no need to get excited," interrupted the cashier,
quietly, "and no need for any scandal, if you wish
to avoid it. Before you do anything rash I suggest that you and the members of the finance
committee come up here and talk things over with




Thieves by Circumstance

243

strictly against the law and the rest were violations of all rules of sound banking. All of them, in
theory if not in fact, had been approved by the
President. His reading concluded, the cashier
tossed the dynamic document'on the table, for detailed inspection, and delivered his ultimatum.
"For reasons that you all very well understand,
that summary may not correspond with the records of the bank in some cases; but, as you also
well know, everything stated in that record is a
fact that can be established in court. I have the
proof in my own hands or know where it is to be
had. Through the use of funds that were illegally
given you, you have made more money than I
have appropriated-a great deal more, no doubt,
but it may not be necessary to go into that. If I
go to prison for what I have done, some of you
and perhaps all of you, will go with me for what
you have done-and quite a number of reputations untarnished up to this time will be ruined.
"I have a proposition to make to you. I took
twice as much as I need. You saw fit to refuse my
request for an increase in salary, to which I believe I was fairly entitled. Half of what I have




246

Crooks of the Waldorf

you to break your word and you know I do not
break mine. Please come with me."
Picking up a waiting spade that was leaning
against the steps, the cashier led the little party
down to the river bank. There he dug in the sand
until he came to a chain. Pulling it up and hauling
in on it he dragged a small iron safe out of the
water. He opened it up and turned over $250,000
in the original packages just as he had taken them
from the bank vault. In exchange for it the President handed him his testimonial, and the transaction was closed.
"There was a case where the motive and the
opportunity were both out of the ordinary," added
Captain Smith, "though they followed the rule.
But just what would you call that man, anyway?
He was a thief, of course, but what about the
others? The man with the iron nerve is still alive,
unless he has died very recently, and still highly
respected."
"One of the most interesting men I have ever
known," continued Joe Smith-still in a reminiscent mood, with his mind turned on unusual experiences-"and one for whom I had in a way




Thieves by Circumstance

247

great respect and great admiration, was the biggest thief I have ever known. I respected his
honesty and I could not but admire his criminal
cunning, for he was the smartest and most successful bank burglar of his day and one of the
greatest of all time. That statement sounds paradoxical, I know, but that is because he truly lived
a double life. Rather he lived two separate and
distinct lives, and they were as far apart as the
poles. He started right and he ended right, but in
between he left a wide swathe of wrecked banks
and empty vaults, and a trail of corruption that
was world famous.
"That was George M. White, and if ever a
man had an excuse-I do not say a reason-for
declaring war on society, he was that man. I
have heard of men who were converted into
crooks by being unjustly convicted and railroaded
to prison, but never of such a criminal abuse of
the law as that which victimized him. He used to
come in and talk with me by the hour, after he
reformed. It wasn't that he wanted sympathy, for
he would have resented that, but he was lonely
and he wanted understanding companionship.




248

Crooks of the Waldorf

"He was born in Vermont and he came of good
old Yankee stock. In his youth he went to work in
Stoneham, Mass. He was smart and a hard
worker and before he was thirty years old he
owned a hotel and livery stable, a large grocery
store, and had an interest in a wine house. He had
a small fortune and was rapidly increasing it.
That was about the time the war between the
States was drawing to a close. One day two men
stopped at his hotel. One of them, for whom
White developed a liking, posed as a Deputy
United States Marshal. His companion was supposedly a government agent. They really were
Mark Shinburn and James Cummings, and their
specialty was robbing country banks, but White
had no way of knowing that and did not suspect
it. On the pretense of having important official
business they prevailed upon White to drive them
around to several neighboring towns on several
occasions, some weeks apart. They paid him well
and he was glad to accommodate them because he
liked Shinburn. Their 'important business' was
looking for banks that could be easily looted.
"The bank at Walpole, N. H., was robbed and




Thieves by Circumstance

249

the crime was traced to Shinburn and Cummings.
White had no knowledge of it but because he had
been seen driving the two prisoners around the
country several times, he, too, was arrested, at
the instance of a large stockholder in the wrecked
bank, named Bellows, who had a good deal of
political power. Bellows hoped that White, to
avoid prosecution, would turn over all of his
money to him, to make good his own loss. White
was amazed when he found Shinburn waiting for
him in the jail at Walpole and learned that he was
a bank burglar instead of the law officer he had
believed him to be.
"Through a deal between Bellows and the prosecuting attorney, Cummings, one of the actual robbers, was turned loose, after he had surrendered
his share of the loot. That was a second outrage
on White's sense of justice. The judge, under the
influence of Bellows, held that Shinburn and
White must be tried together. Shinburn was convicted but the jury disagreed about White. A few
days later White saw Shinburn walk out of jail,
after having bribed the jailer. He was pursued
but got away. In the meantime, Bellows had seized




250      Crooks of the Waldorf
all of White's property at Stoneham, under a
court order, and bought it in at forced sale.
"Following the disagreement of the jury
White's lawyers moved that he be admitted to
bail. The judge fixed his bond at $20,000. When
the lawyers protested at the amount the judge
made it $40,000, instead. 'And,' he added, 'if
that is offered I will make it $8o,000,' with an
intimation that he would keep on doubling it, if
necessary. So White stayed in jail, and took the
law into his own hands. Some of his friends smuggled saws in to him and he and a young burglar
cut their way to freedom.
"White came to New York and got a job as
clerk in A. T. Stewart's store-now Wanamaker's. He knew a reward of $I,ooo had been ofered for his capture but thought he was safe. In
a short time he was recognized by a man from
Boston who visited the store. The Boston man assured him that he would not betray him, but White
doubted him and quit his job that night. And it
was well for him that he did, for detectives were
at the store the next day looking for him.
"White remembered having heard Shinburn




Thieves by Circumstance         251
speak of a Billy Matthews, of 681 Broadway, as
a friend of his. White looked him up, to find that
the address was that of a notorious gambling
house run by Harvey Young, in which Matthews
was a faro dealer. By that time White was ripe
for anything. Matthews introduced him to George
Wilson, a partner of Shinburn's, who was then
organizing a prospecting party of bank burglars
that was going west in search of lootable banks.
Through the influence of Matthews, White was
included in the party. There were four other
skilled safe-crackers besides Wilson.
"Their first job was the robbery of a rich little
bank at Cadiz, Ohio. White played only a small
part but he was given a full share of the loot.
That amounted to something over $40,000, which,
by some streak of fate, was just about the amount
of which he himself had been robbed by the New
Hampshire court. In the pursuit that followed the
robbery all of the thieves except White and one
other were captured. White returned to New York
a full-fledged criminal. He developed a genius for
bank burglary that was highly suggestive of a
dual personality and with it a genius for organ




Thieves by Circumstance

253

daring in the formation and execution of his plans.
He overlooked none of the little details that, when
neglected, result in failure, and under his attacks
banks crumbled in all directions. As a cover for
his operations he bought the stables of the Brevoort Hotel, which his wife managed for several
years.
"He not only made bank burglary a fine art but
he established it as a business. 'Boss' Tweed was
then at the height of his power as the Dictator of
New York. White became friendly with him and
secured his approval of a close working arrangement with the police. Through the 'Boss,' White
named his own Captain of Detectives and established what became widely known as the 'Bank
Ring,' composed of White and a few of his lieutenants and the most useful men in the Detective
Bureau. He did this so cleverly, and he was so
wise in his selection of the men with whom he did
business that when the exposure of Tweed's
gigantic grafting organization finally was brought
about, the 'Bank Ring' was the one and only department of it into which the investigators were
unable to probe with any satisfaction. There was




254

Crooks of the Waldorf

much speculation about it, but none of the facts
were known until White revealed them himself,
after his reformation,
"Under the terms of the 'Bank Ring' agreement, the burglars paid ten per cent of all of their
robberies to the police, in return for protection.
And they got protection, make no mistake about
that. When a New York bank was to be robbed
it was surrounded by detectives and patrolmen
who were in with the play and who, if an alarm
was sounded, led the chase in an opposite direction from that taken by the burglars. When an
out-of-town bank was robbed and the thieves were
traced to New York, the pursuing officers naturally called on the Police Department for assistance. They were given every cooperation, on the
surface, but on the side the detectives tipped the
burglars off to stay under cover and then steered
their pursuers away until the scent was lost. If,
by chance, one of them was caught who was
wanted in other states, White would go to Albany, with the Tweed influence at his back, and
make representations that prevented his extradition. When some of White's gang were ar




Thieves by Circumstance

255

rested in other states, on a suspicion that was
likely to be confirmed, the New York Police Department would promptly lay claim to them on a
more serious charge, on which they would say
conviction was certain, and secure their extradition to this city. Then in a few days the crooks
would be turned loose.
"It was the most shameless state of affairs that
has ever existed anywhere, but from the criminal
viewpoint it was a perfect arrangement, and it
worked perfectly. In their greed, the detectives
who were in the Ring tipped White off to bank
watchmen who could be bribed and recommended
thieves to him for employment. They even suggested that he rob the United States Sub-Treasury, at Broad and Wall streets, and urged him to
do it. White looked it over carefully, at their solicitation, but decided that it was impossible to rob
it. There were always six or seven watchmen on
duty at night, and that was too many for him to
handle. He would never stand for murder or even
great violence; no watchman was ever injured in
any of his bank raids.
"Vaults and safes were easy for him but he




Thieves by Circumstance

257

ooo in currency, as though it had been dropped
in the haste of leaving. The detectives squealed
loudly over that, for it cut them out of $20,000.
"The loot consisted of $125,000 in cash,
$1,475,000 in government bonds, which were then
above par, $Ioo,ooo in other marketable bonds
and $850,000 in western railroad bonds which
were unsalable and were subsequently mysteriously returned. The head of the Detective Bureau
and six other detectives were paid $17,000 each
as their share, with smaller amounts to some other
officers. The clerk of the Jefferson Market Police
Court, who was one of White's handy men, was
paid $1o,ooo and $275,000 was handed to the
confederate in the bank. White and Shinburn
gave their assistants $25,000 and divided $1,225,ooo between themselves.
"The Bank Ring was so well organized that it
managed to survive the collapse of Tweed's regime
and his conviction, though in somewhat dilapidated form, and it was not until Tom Byrnes was
appointed Chief of the Detective Bureau that it
went completely to smash. According to White,
Byrnes was absolutely incorruptible. He would




Paying Thieves              261
quietly drop what they believed to be silver spoons
in their pockets, as souvenirs of their visit to the
metropolis. On leaving they would gather up all
of the towels and soap in sight and pack them
away in their bags or trunks, along with sheets
and blankets from the bed. If a counterpane or
the pillow-cases particularly appealed to their
artistic natures, they took them. That, of course,
was plain and simple thievery, but the departing
guests never thought of that. If they thought of
it at all, they considered that their bills, which
they always paid, covered the cost of their entire
entertainment. In cases where the robberies were
discovered in time, their bills actually did include
the cost of everything they had stolen, to their
chagrin but seldom to their discomfiture. But in
many instances the discovery did not come in time
and the hotel was forced to stand the loss.
"No," said Captain Joe Smith, following a talk
about the wholesale thieveries by guests over a
long period of time, "we don't have nearly as
much trouble of that kind as we used to. It may
be that it is because we kept after them so closely
and caught so many of them at it, but I think it




262

Crooks of the Waldorf

is rather an indication that people generally have
become more honest. I prefer to think that, anyway, for I would hate to believe that the percentage of dishonesty among well-to-do and supposedly high-minded folks has continued to be as
high as was indicated in the number of our rooms
looted by departing guests.
"Very few of them were thieves at heart. They
seemed to regard a hotel as something impersonal
from which it was quite all right to steal as much
as they could conveniently carry away. That was
an altogether illogical manner of reasoning, but
it is the only explanation I could ever find for that
kind of robbery. A department store is an impersonal proposition, too, but otherwise honest people do not pick up valuables in shops and walk off
with them.
"Whatever their mental processes may have
been, these people certainly kept us busy for a
long while. They caused us more trouble than professional thieves, and it was not so easy to protect
ourselves from  them, for they could not be
watched in the same way. If it had reached the
point where we were obliged to look upon every




Paying Thieves             263
guest as a potential thief we would have had to
have a corps of detectives on every floor. Most
of them were never that, of course, but there were
plenty of them who appeared to leave their consciences behind when they entered our doors.
"At one time, thefts of linen and towels were
common; we rather expected them. But some of
the guests went farther than that. They would
take pictures off the wall and pieces of bric-a-brac
and pack them away in their trunks. They would
even steal the Bibles that are placed in hotel rooms
by the Gideons. Imagine that! In the old days it
was not an unusual thing for us to go through the
trunks of people whom we suspected, and find
them half-filled with pictures and linen that had
been stripped from the beds; and about everything
else that was movable and not too large. When
they were caught most of them laughed as if it
were a good joke. When it was discovered that
things belonging to the hotel were missing from
a room after the occupants had taken their baggage out but before they had paid their bill, the
value of the missing articles was added to their
account, and written plainly on the statement to




Paying Thieves             265
are now so few of them, and those few are so
small, they are hardly worth noticing. A towel or
two and a couple of cakes of soap stuffed in the
bag of a departing guest at the last moment are
about all, and there are not enough of these to give
us any concern. Pens and ash trays are continually disappearing, and will continue to disappear
as long as mankind remains on earth, probably,
but those are trifles about which we never have
worried. We buy them in the same way that they
are carried off-in wholesale quantities.
"Even though there are many signs that honesty is becoming more popular than it used to be,
we have not relaxed our vigilance. Human nature
is always developing, and it is always possible
that some day it may take a downward turn again
instead of continuing upward. Every room is examined as soon as it is vacated, and anything missing is charged on the bill if possible, before the
guest reaches the cashier's desk. Otherwise there
is an unimportant addition to the profit and loss
account. Yes, we do 'keep a little book' in which
the names of guests who carry things off are en




266

Crooks of the Waldorf

tered. But it is now a little book in fact, and it
does not contain many notations.
"The souvenir spoon fad of some years ago was
a curse to hotels. It must have been a nuisance
also to the people who collected so many spoons
they did not know what to do with them. Souvenir
hunting is a mild form of insanity and it may be
excusable on that ground, though it is none the
less reprehensible. It is not as serious as kleptomania but it was a much more contagious disease
while it was running its course.
"The stealing habit spread with the rapidity of
a plague, until it included everything in the way
of silverware that could be slipped in a pocket
or concealed in a handbag. It was chiefly the small
after-dinner coffee spoons that were stolen, and
most of them disappeared at banqtiets that were
attended by people of wealth and refinement. And,
strangely enough, the greatest percentage of
thievery occurred at social affairs where it might
be least expected. The biggest thieves were not
people from the 'Sticks,' but residents of New
York City, whose position would have caused one




Paying Thieves

267

to believe they might be the last persons in the
world to steal anything.
"We had to instruct all of our waiters to keep
close tabs on all silverware, and on demi-tasse
spoons in particular. When any article disappeared the waiter would make a search for it, continuing until it became obvious to everybody
nearby. If it did not come to light he would call a
captain or the head waiter and report the matter
to him, lowering his voice somewhat but not
enough to prevent the suspected guest from hearing. The captain would make a quiet reply, in
which 'detective' would be about the only word
that could be heard at the table, and walk briskly
away. The waiter would go on with his work,
finding an excuse to move a short distance away.
When he returned to his post the article he had
missed was generally back on the table. The guilty
conscience had worked the trick. As a matter of
fact we were never notified of such cases, unless
they were out of the ordinary. The only purpose
of the waiter's talk with the captain was to throw
a scare into the thief, and it generally accomplished the desired end.




268

Crooks of the Waldorf

"This system-along with the altered attitude
of the public toward such things-has about
stamped out that form of robbery. It continues
but only in a small way, as it probably always will.,
Our losses in silverware are somewhat annoying at times, perhaps, but they are no longer a
serious matter.
"'All that glitters is not gold' and it is equally
true that everything that shines is not silver,
around a hotel. When I speak of 'silverware' I
mean white metal, for all of our so-called silver
is merely that. If it were real silver we should
have had to double our rates long ago or go out
of business. The white metal looks like silver,
cleans more easily, lasts longer and is much less
costly. Still, it is expensive enough and we do not
want to lose it. All of it bears the 'W-A' monogram, but that can be quickly removed by an
emery wheel.
"In the matter of our supplies, however, we
have always suffered more from the slick hands
of our own help than from the smooth hands of
our guests. The chief offenders are kitchen employees and extra waiters who have to be called in




Paying Thieves            269
from time to time. They are made up mostly of
Frenchmen and Italians, and the young Italians
are the worst of the lot. In the belief that our silverware was the real thing they would carry it
away until they had enough to fill a trunk. Then
they would ship the trunk back to Italy, expecting
to follow it and retire to a life of ease on the fortune the sale of its contents produced. They were
profoundly shocked when they learned that their
trustful natures had been imposed on in such a
rude way. So they remained at work and tried to
continue their stealings. But they did not always
succeed.
"There was one case of an old Frenchman who
ran a big boarding house down on Houston street.
I received a tip that he was using some of our
stuff and sent one of my men to the place to become a boarder. After getting his report I went
down one evening to have dinner with him. He
had told them I was a man of some importance
and quite an elaborate spread had been arranged
in my honor. Everything on the table in the way
of linen and silver was from the Waldorf and still
bore our monogram, and I am by no means sure




270

Crooks of the Waldorf

that some of the food had not been stolen from
us, as well. I searched the house and found great
quantities of linen and silver that belonged to us
and from which there had been no attempt to
obliterate our mark.
"I arrested the proprietor and had him locked
up. He claimed to have purchased all of the stuff
from a man who had disappeared. This man, in
turn, had told him he had bought it from the hotel,
and on that plea he was discharged. Under the law
governing thefts of hotel property the exact date
on which it was stolen must be established in
court, along with evidence pointing to the guilt
of the defendant. That used to make it a difficult
matter to prove a case, no matter how strong the
circumstantial evidence might be. Now we take
an inventory of all of our silver, and linen every
night, so that when anything is missed we are the
better able to trace it, or fix the responsibility for
the theft, and guard against a repetition of it.
"Before this system was established I would
frequently find as many as one or two hundred
pieces of our silver or linen, all bearing our monogram, in pawnshops of the lower grade. The




Paying Thieves             271
pawnbrokers always insisted they had accepted the
stuff from people who claimed to have bought it,
though it was well known that the Waldorf never
sold anything of that kind. They supervise their
pawnshops more carefully in England. Over there
the proprietors are all as honest as the best of
those in this country and give the police the same
cooperation; if they don't, they lose their licenses.
Over there the applicant for a loan goes into a
little box of a room, in which there is a window
opening on the counter, and closes the door behind him. Everything that is offered in pawn is
closely examined and compared with lists sent out
by the police of lost and stolen articles. If there
is anything wrong or suspicious looking about it
the man behind the counter simply presses a button and sends for the police. The pressing of the
button locks the door of the little room and holds
the occupant a prisoner until the police arrive. If
that system were in use in New York we would
have sent a lot of people to jail.
"Boarding houses also profited in another way
at our expense, though in this case we were the
victims of credulity and kindly intentions rather




272      Crooks of the Waldorf
than downright dishonesty. For a long time we
used to save up stale bread and scraps of food,
including bones to which a good deal of meat was
still attached, and give them away to the poor.
The stuff was well taken care of and it was all
edible and nutritious. Tons of it were distributed
on two nights a week, when from one to two hundred men, women and children would form in line
in Astor Court awaiting their turn. The old
women and the youngsters were always attended
to first. After that the rule was 'first come, first
served.'
"I became suspicious, in time, of some of the
men who came early and often and were always
as close to the head of the line as they could get.
The size of their baskets grew more rapidly than
the laws of nature would permit their families to
increase. They did not appear to be suffering from
lack of nourishment and I did not particularly
like their looks. So I had them followed, and it
developed that many of them were selling the food
we were giving away to boarding houses and cheap
restaurants. They were doing a fine business, for
it was all good stuff. That ended our philanthropy




Paying Thieves            273
in that line. Now we sell all of our left-overs to
concerns that convert them into useful productsbut not food products.
"Following up that lead I found a large boarding house on Seventh Avenue, run by an Italian,
that, besides buying our food, was full of our linen
and silver. With hash and bread pudding as regular items on the menu, the overhead of that place
must have been very small. We located several
places of this kind and a lot of stuff that had been
stolen from the hotel was found in a number of
cheap restaurants.
"Our regular employees require little attention..
They are carefully investigated before they are
put to work, in any capacity, and they are generally honest. But there are always a lot of extra men
in the kitchen and among the waiters, taking the
places of men who are having their day off, and
they have to be watched. If we didn't keep our
eyes on them, some of them would steal everything in sight. We go through the kitchen, bakery
and laundry at least once every day and two or
three times on some days. They never know when
to expect us, and the fact that we are always pok




274      Crooks of the Waldorf
ing around, without any warning, has a corrective
influence on those who are disposed to slip things
into their pockets or under their shirts. If we have
reason to become suspicious of any of them they
are frisked as they are leaving. Some of them
don't like that, but neither do we like to be robbed.
If they don't come back it is a good sign that they
needed to be searched, and there are plenty of
others to take their jobs."




CHAPTER XII

CROOKS, OLD STYLE AND NEW
THE old time criminal, whatever his line, no
matter how desperate his nature or the lengths
to which he would go in his violation of the law,
was a gentleman and a scholar in comparison with
the modern crook.
One reason for the change is the high percentage of dope fiends among the crooks of today.
Prohibition is largely responsible for this, as it is
for the gangs of gunmen who are all professional
murderers. Another reason, and an equally important one, is that the reform institutions to
which lawbreakers are sent are essentially nothing better than universities in crime. The inmates
come out worse than when they went in, after
having been treated as honored guests rather than
criminals undergoing punishment.
That is the belief of Joe Smith.
"I have been studying crooks all of my life,"
275




276      Crooks of the Waldorf
says Captain Joe, "but there are times when I
think I know less about them now than I did when
I began. That is because so many of them now use
dope. That drives them crazy, while they are under its effect, and there is no way of telling what
an insane man will do.
"Even though their mentalities were distorted,
there were some of the old crooks whom I respected, for their better qualities, and others I
admired for their smartness. They were smart in
a crooked way, of course, but they were undeniably clever, just the same. They were always ready
to match wits with us, and they did it cheerfully,
as a rule-even gaily and always optimistically,
and never with murder in their hearts.
"That was fair enough. To beat crooks at their
own game is a part of our job. I am not at all
puffed up over having caught so many of them
nor do I claim any great credit for it. Any honest
man, if he is reasonably intelligent, can outwit
the smartest crook in the world, provided he knows
the other fellow is a crook, or even if he regards
him with suspicion, however slight. One thinks
in straight lines while the other thinks in crooked




Crooks, Old Style and New 277
lines, and any schoolboy will tell you that a
straight line is the shortest distance between two
points, whether mentally or otherwise. That is
why any ordinarily intelligent honest man can outsmart the smartest crook, no matter how clever
he may be in his crooked way.
"It is usually a man who is himself dishonest at
bottom who is victimized by some sure-thing
swindle. He is looking for some 'easy money' in
exactly the same way that the crook is after it,
and with no more conscience. The only difference
between them is that the crook has the more nerve;
he is willing to take a chance, as a part of the
game, while the other man is not. The victim considers that the crook runs all of the risk of going
to jail, though as a matter of fact the crook's
knowledge of human nature is sufficiently keen,
and he understands enough about the workings
of an avaricious mind, so that he rarely places
himself in any great danger of arrest; when he
does, he has all of his arrangements made for a
quick getaway. Though I have protected many of
them from being robbed themselves instead of
robbing others, as they were complacently plan




278

Crooks of the Waldorf

ning to do, I never have had much sympathy with
people who fall for dishonest proposals from
crooks and are ready to join them in their swindles, staying carefully under cover while the job
is being pulled off. No tears need be shed for them
when their own purses are emptied.
"The old-time crooks were on one side of the
fence and we were on the other. They were trying
to get in and we tried to keep them out. They
played the game as decently as they could according to their lights. They were always looking for
the best of it, of course, and took it unhesitatingly when they could get it, but they were satisfied with an even break. They were moral cowards
/  inevitably, for any man who is naturally dishonest is bound to be that, but of physical courage
they had plenty. If they were detected they lost
no time in taking it on the run, hoping to be quick
enough to escape imprisonment but when they
were cornered they would fight with everything
they had. In extreme cases the worst of them
would kill an officer if there was no other way of
avoiding arrest and if that added crime appeared
to open the way to freedom, but murder did not




Crooks, Old Style and New 279
enter into their plans, generally speaking, and they
always tried to keep clear of it. When they were
caught they made a clean breast of it, frequently
confessing offenses of which they were not even
suspected. They had lost and they cleaned the
slate.
"For the crooks of today I have only contempt
and loathing. They are not merely thieves; they
are cowards and sneaks and liars and degenerates
of the lowest type. Practically all of them are dope
fiends. Without their dope they are moral and
physical cowards of such a low grade that they
would be afraid to face a husky fifteen-year-old
boy in a fair fist fight, but when they are drugged
they are chock-a-block with false bravery. They
will tackle jobs that no sane crook would ever attempt and then, when they find themselves cornered, they will shoot their way out, without caring whom they kill or how many.
"The crooks of the old days were divided into
classes, according to their specialty. There were
house burglars; second-story men, a technical
division of the burglar class; safe-men; 'stick-up'
men; pickpockets; office thieves; and sneak thieves..




280       Crooks of the Waldorf
The hotel thieves constituted a separate and distinct class, with several minor subdivisions, but
we came in contact with all of them. Each crowd
considered itself a little higher grade than the
others and they did not mix. The members of
each class had their own haunts and hangouts and
they rarely fraternized with the others. Incidentally, I think the Police Department was more
efficient when it had squads of detectives assigned
to cover the different classes of crooks. The detectives knew about where to put their hands on
any man who was wanted and through their stoolpigeons they could keep in fairly close touch with
the operations of the class to which they were assigned. In my judgment it was a mistake to break
up those squads.
"Of the old crooks the burglars and the stickup men were the only ones who habitually carried
guns. The stick-ups used them only as a bluff and
that was generally true of the burglars, for even
the most daring and desperate of them wanted
no blood on their hands if they could avoid it.
Except for the hotel thieves, who are in a class
by themselves, there are no longer many special




Crooks, Old Style and New 283
to persuade him to go out and commit his first
robbery. If he succeeds the loot is, of course, divided with his mentors. If there is still enough
manhood left in him for remorse after the drug
wears off, and he talks about leaving his new
friends and going straight, he is told plainly that
if he continues in that frame of mind he will be
'turned up' to the police for the crime he has just
committed. He is threatened with death if he
'peaches' on the gang, and they let him know they
mean it.
"With this threat hanging over him, frequently
repeated, he is forced to continue a life of crime
until he is as bad as the worst of his associates.
Many men who were naturally honest and decent
but who were temporarily down on their luck
when they fell into the hands of the debauchers
have been dragged down and ruined in this way.
Some of the strongest characters among them
have been so overcome by self-condemnation,
through consciences that would not be stilled, they
have made full confessions to the police, and then
committed suicide before the gang could get to
them.




284      Crooks of the Waldorf
"In studying crooks I have attended eight electrocutions, not through idle curiosity but because
I wanted to see how men would die who never gave
their victims a chance for their lives, nor even
time to say a prayer. They all died like the dogs
they were-cowards to the last. Among those
whose executions I witnessed were the murderers
of Herman Rosenthal, the gambler, who was assassinated in 43rd Street by a gang of gunmen
under command of Lieut. Becker, a few hours before Rosenthal was to meet the District Attorney and tell him his story of graft and corruption.
I saw all of them put to death except Becker; I
had known him well and did not wish to see him
go. All of the witnesses are pledged to secrecy as
to what goes on in the death house at, Sing Sing
but at this late day it may not be amiss to say that
Whitey Lewis was the only one who spoke. After
he had been strapped in the chair and just before
the cap was placed over his head he blurted out:
"'They said I was there with a gun. They perjured themselves. I never carried a gun.'
"That statement was literally true, as far as it
went, but it was one of those half-truths that are




286

Crooks of the Waldorf

and tries to impress them with stories of his
crimes and his plans. His nature makes it impossible for him to be loyal to any woman for any
length of time-he is constantly seeking to make
new conquests. The result is that in a great many
cases it is women who tip the police off to crooks,
through either fear or jealousy, but most often
the latter."
"But what can you expect," continued Captain
Smith, with rising indignation, "when the institutions to which these youngsters are sent on conviction of crime, and which are supposed to be
either reformatory or punitive in their effect, are
neither one nor the other, in fact, but simply
breeding places for criminals? These young
crooks are bad enough to begin with, for most of
them are potential murderers. I have arrested or
helped to arrest many of them who had guns in
their pockets that they were prepared to use,
though they were engaged only in sneak thievery
and would be officially classed as minor offenders.
The only reason they did not use their weapons
and perhaps kill somebody, who was quite as likely




288

Crooks of the Waldorf

bringing out the better side of their natures in
wholesome surroundings. Young men between the
ages of sixteen and thirty are, sent there under
indeterminate sentences, the length of which is
supposed to be governed by their good behavior
and their return to a respectable mode of life.
They are released when the State Parole Board is
convinced that they have abandoned their evil
habits.
"With all of its high-sounding aims, the Reformatory has been transformed into a training
school for crooks. It is filled with young scoundrels who know quite as much about crime in all
of its branches as the older men who are sent to
the penitentiary and are more evil in their habits.
Practically all of them are moral and physical
degenerates and dope fiends. To send a young
first offender, who might really be reformed if
he were subjected to the right influences in good
surroundings, into that filthy place is simply sending him to hell. He becomes a part of the malignant mass, either voluntarily or through physical
violence; if he insists on holding his head up and
acting the man, he is maltreated and abused until




Crooks, Old Style and New 289
his spirit is broken and he is forced into submission. So he falls in with the system and becomes
a part of it.
"All sorts of false pleas and lying protestations
of reform are accepted in good faith by the overly
trustful Parole Board and young men are turned
loose from Elmira who ought to be kept in prison
for the rest of their lives. Most of them are back
again in a short time, with their demoralizing influence increased by the fact that they have been
there before and know the ropes. The same situation exists in the New York Reform School, which
is intended for younger boys. And what is true of
those institutions, both of which sadly belie their
names, is equally true of the state prisons.
"The evil influences that are at work in the penitentiaries are no worse than those in the reform
schools but they are more firmly established on
account of the greater age of the inmates. Many
of them are criminals who would sneer at any
suggestion of reform. Those who are not in that
class to begin with and who may not wish to enter
it, are driven into it by their environment and the
poison injected into them by their associates. The




294      Crooks of the Waldorf
"Wife beating is the only crime of violence that
I would not have punished with the whip. In those
cases a vindictive woman, through false testimony, might bring shame and degradation on a
man who did not really deserve it. But every other
serious offense should be punished in that way,
and imprisonment should be made a severe ordeal
instead of a petting party.
"Respect for the law has been going down hill
in this country for years and it will continue to
decrease until we abandon the present methods
of its attempted enforcement. The lax enforcement of the prohibition law, and the manner in
which violations of it are bought and paid for
and winked at, is partly responsible for the situation, but not altogether. It is due rather to the lax
enforcement of the whole penal code. Make the
law the terror to evildoers that it is intended to
be and should be and there will be a marked falling
off in the criminal population and much greater
respect for the law among all classes."
Captain Smith's strictures on the reformative
and penal institutions named are corroborated by
the records of the Special and General Sessions




296

Crooks of the Waldorf

that has entered into it is dispassionately studied.
At the end of the investigation a confidential
memorandum is presented to- the Judge that covers
every aspect of the case. It gives the prisoner's
previous court record; states the charge for which
he is to be sentenced, with the attitude of the complainant and any aggravating or mitigating circumstances; tells of his environment and his family relations and the neighborhood in which
he was raised; shows his industrial history,
analyzes his personality, with regard to his physical condition, his mental capacities and his character and conduct; and describes his habits, his
associates, the resorts he frequents and his religious observances.
The record is clear and complete in every detail,
and it usually concludes with a recommendation
from the investigating officer. The Judge has this
history of the case before him when the prisoner
comes up for sentence. The attorneys for the
prosecution and the defense may argue as much as
they please-and they generally do-but in his
final disposition of the case the Judge listens to
their arguments but is guided by the facts he has




Crooks, Old Style and New 297
in his hands. In every instance where there appears to be a reasonable prospect that the prisoner
can be reformed, either of his own volition or
through influences that can be exerted on him, he
is released on parole, under a suspended sentence,
with instructions to report to the Chief Probation
Officer at stated intervals. One out of every five
cases are disposed of in this way, and the records
show that only about seven per cent of the prisoners violate their parole and return to the manner
of life that caused their arrest.,
All of which, as far as it goes, agrees with
Captain's Smith statement of facts and supports
his arguments,




CHAPTER XIII

PROTECTING ROYALTY
IF, WITHOUT warning, the Emperor of Abyssinia should suddenly drop in at the WaldorfAstoria, the management would dig down into
its flag locker, and have the national emblem of
his country flaunting gaily from the central staff
on the Fifth Avenue front of the building before
the Emperor was comfortably settled in the royal
suite. The hotel pays this compliment to visiting
royalty and great diplomats.
Many strange flags, some of which few New
Yorkers had ever seen before, have fluttered
proudly over the Avenue after having been hidden away for years. Every time a new republic is
established or a new dynasty set up, the hotel orders a replica of its flag. For a time, following the
World War, it had the flag-makers so busy that
they got little sleep until after the last rush order
had been filled. The doctrine of preparedness was
298




Protecting Royalty

301

held and the Waldorf Apartments, a private
suite on the 33rd Street side with a separate entrance and its own elevator service, in which are
held the receptions to favored guests preceding
important and imposing functions in the grand
ballroom, with its tiers of boxes rising above the
main floor on three sides.
The great ballroom and the Waldorf Apartments are separated only by the wall that divides
the Waldorf from the Astoria. Hanging from the
ceiling of the ballroom at the south end are heavy
curtains that reach to the floor and at all formal
banquets the speakers' table, with the guest of
honor in the center, is placed just in front of these
hangings. Behind the curtains, and directly back
of the center of the table, is a door leading from
the Waldorf Apartments, through which only a
favored few have ever passed.
This arrangement restricts the most important
of the social activities of any notable function to
the second floor and simplifies the whole procedure. While the thousands of general guests are
massed around the main entrance to the grand
ballroom on the 34th Street side, the President or




Protecting Royalty           303
close beside him. Captain Smith has all of his own
force of twenty detectives and watchmen on duty,
with the addition of as many extra men as are
needed to cover every point of possible danger.
Plainclothes men from the Police Department are
also in attendance to lend their active cooperation.
If the visiting dignitary is a member of a royal
family or the representative of some other nation,
his bodyguard of government agents is much
smaller. He is considered the guest of the city
rather than of the whole country and it is more
the city's business to watch over him, in his general movements. As a rule he is provided with a
personal aide by the State Department and one or
two Secret Service men are assigned to accompany
him wherever he goes, as a diplomatic courtesy.
They are ordinarily enforced by from two to four
city detectives delegated by the Police Department,
with a squad of uniformed officers, including
motorcycle policemen, always close at hand. All
of these men go with him in his trips around the
city.
But when the guest enters the hotel, and until
he leaves it again, the responsibility for his safety




Protecting Royalty

305

that connect all of the floors. On state occasions
there is a guard at each of these private passages
-one at the foot of the stairs leading up from
the main floor and another at the top of the steps
running down from the third floor-and no one
gets by without a pass and satisfactory identification. Mr. Boldt himself was stopped one day, as
he started to take a short cut through one of the
private passages.
"I am Mr. Boldt," he explained, in surprise, to
the officer who barred his progress.
"I don't care who you are. Joe Smith said to
let no one through here, and that goes."
"But I own the hotel," protested Mr. Boldt.
"I don't care if you do. I take orders from nobody but Captain Smith. If you want to get
through here you'll have to get an order from
him."
Whatever business it was that Mr. Boldt had in
hand at that moment was put aside long enough
to permit him to hunt up his House Detective
and compliment him on his choice of men.
The public stairways are doubly guarded, with
officers at both the top and bottom. On the out




306

Crooks of the Waldorf

side men are assigned to watch the fire escapes and
ledges in the walls. All of the hallways leading
to the rooms occupied by the distinguished guest
and his suite are watched at their entrances and
patrolled throughout their length, with additional
detectives stationed close to all of the doors
through which the protected apartments can be
reached. No one who cannot establish his identity
to the satisfaction of the officer in charge is allowed to approach the guarded precincts unless
he has a pass, and even then, unless he is known,
he must furnish evidence that the pass is properly
in his possession. These rules permit of no exceptions.
On evenings when banquets or receptions are
held, the watchers at the elevators and public stairways are doubled or trebled, while from a dozen
to a score or more of detectives, in evening dress
and with nothing about them to advertise their
calling, mingle with the guests in the lobbies and
accompany them into' the grand ballroom, where
they scatter around so they will miss nothing.
Some of them go up into the tiers of boxes and
rove around as though they were looking for




308      Crooks of the Waldorf
est them. Captain Smith himself has no regular
station. He is here, there and everywhere, seeing
that all of his force are properly attentive and that
nothing is being neglected.
Only once during the past thirty-five years has
an attempt been made to approach improperly a
chief executive of the United States when he was
being entertained at the Waldorf, and that was so
quickly squelched by the smooth-working Smith
machine that it created not the slightest disturbance. It occurred when Woodrow Wilson was
President, during the World War. He was attending a Liberty Alight dinner given him by the
Mayor's Committee of Two Hundred. The ballroom was filled with prominent people and the
main floor was thronged with thousands more
who were bubbling over with patriotism and curiosity.
Early in the evening Captain Smith noticed a
man writing at a table in one of the lounging
rooms. Joe had been watching him before that,
to see that he did not reach the ballroom floor.
He was neatly dressed but there was something
in his manner that suggested the crank. When he




Protecting Royalty           309
had finished his letter, which was written on Waldorf stationery and addressed to the President,
though he slipped it in his pocket before that could
be seen, Captain Smith asked him what he was
doing in the hotel. His explanation was unsatisfactory and he was quietly ushered to the 34th
Street exit and told to stay away.
This injunction was disregarded and the man
returned through another entrance and lost himself, for a time, in the crowd. An hour later
Captain Smith detected him near the top of the
marble stairway leading to the grand ballroom.
In the dense throng he had escaped the vigilance
of the detectives stationed at the foot of the stairway, but he did not get much farther. Captain
Smith and one of his men seized the crank by
the arms and hustled him into a private office on
the main floor. He expostulated but offered no
violent resistance, and he was handled so expertly
that the incident attracted little attention, even
among those who were standing close by.
The prisoner was searched and questioned in
Captain Smith's office. He carried no weapons.
The letter he had written just before he was sent




31o

Crooks of the Waldorf

away from the hotel the first time was a rambling
appeal to the President to secure the release of
the crank's brother, who was said to be starving
to death in an English detention camp. He was
unable, however, to give a clear account of either
his alleged brother or himself. He said he had
previously written the President a number of letters along the same line but had received no reply.
This had angered him and he was determined to
bring the matter to the President's attention. His
pockets were filled with clippings containing criticisms of Mr. Wilson for his attitude toward the
war. The crank admitted he was born in Austria
but claimed to be a naturalized American. He was
turned over to the police and sent to the psychopathic ward at Bellevue Hospital.
None of the guests in the ballroom knew anything about the affair and Mr. Wilson returned
to Washington without any hint of the attempt
that had been made to secure an interview with
him by stealth and force. Except for that one
instance there never has been an effort to reach
any of the hotel's distinguished guests in any
threatening way.




314

Crooks of the Waldorf

On account of his exalted station the Viceroy
was never allowed to exert himself by walking,
no matter how short the distance. His equipment
included a magnificent sedan chair, covered with
gold, in which he was carried about. The carriers
were selected from the guard of honor that was
provided by the Police Departments in the different cities he visited, as an act of courtesy. As long
as he was travelling in the old world, where some
antiquated customs still prevail, he had no trouble
with his transportation, but when he reached the
new world he found a very different feeling and
much less respect for hoary traditions.
It happened that the police detail that was assigned to the Viceroy while he was in New York
was almost entirely composed of men of Irish
descent, who for some reason entertain a distinct
dislike of the Chinese. They were willing enough
to protect him in the freedom of his movements,
and to accompany him wherever he wanted to
go but when it came to carrying him around in a
big chair, even though it was covered with gold,
their Irish backs went up in scorn and they balked,
with all the stubbornness of their race. It didn't




316

Crooks of the Waldorf

from the superficially critical but quickly responsive throngs that surrounded them wherever they
went. They needed protection only from the cordially curious, who desired to look them over at
close range and, if at all possible, shake hands
with them.
King Albert was so greatly pleased with the
manner in which his party had been cared for
while at the Waldorf that when they were leaving
he conferred the Gold Medal of the Order of the
Crown of Belgium on Captain Smith, after thanking him warmly for his careful attentions. The
decoration itself, which is in the form of a gold
medal bearing the crown of Belgium suspended
from a ribbon, was subsequently forwarded to the
honored detective through the Belgian Consul
General in New York, accompanied by the formal
credentials.
It was after William J. Gaynor, then Mayor
of New York, had attended several banquets at
the hotel and observed the facile working of the
Smith machine that he surprised the Captain one
night, after an important gathering at which he
had been the principal speaker, by calling him




Protecting Royalty          317
aside and asking him how he would like to be
First Deputy Police Commissioner of New York
City.
Taken completely by surprise, Joe hesitated, but
only for a moment.
"I don't think I'd like it," he said.
"Well, don't decide such an important matter
so quickly," replied the Mayor, a trifle testily and
with evident disappointment. "There are a lot of
men after that place but I want a man I can depend on. I have heard a lot about your work and
seen something of it. You go on the principle of
preventing crime, instead of punishing it after it
has been committed. That is what I want and you
are the man for the job. Think it over and come
in to see me tomorrow."
Captain Smith visited the Mayor the following
day, as promised, but Mr. Gaynor could not persuade him to accept the position.
"I figured that the Police Department would
prove a good cemetery," explained Joe, "and I
was not ready for that then, nor am I now. I
never have mixed in politics and don't want to.
There was no politics in Mayor Gaynor's offer,




318

Crooks of the Waldorf

and he assured me that I need have no fear of
politicians, but just the same I knew I would soot
be in politics up to my neck. People would be pulling at me from all directions and that would have
annoyed me. Sooner or later I should have blown
up.
"I know the job I have and I like it too well
to exchange it for any other that could be offere(
to me. It is always interesting and never grows
monotonous. Mixing with people I know furnishes
all of the good companionship any man needs anc
matching wits with crooks provides plenty of entertainment. There is always some new experience
just around the corner. If it doesn't come today
it will be here tomorrow, or maybe tonight while
most of our guests are asleep."







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