ARTHUR.T Stories ------The Last of the Wire-Tappers --IV---Page 23

To readers unfamiliar with the cast of mind of professional criminals it

will be almost impossible to appreciate with what bold insouciance these
vultures now hovered over the metropolitan barnyard. Had not the Court
of Appeals itself recognized their profession? They had nothing to fear.
The law was on their side. They walked the streets flaunting their
immunity in the very face of the police. "Wire-tapping" became an
industry, a legalized industry with which the authorities might

interfere at their peril. Indeed, there is one instance in which a

"wire-tapper" successfully prosecuted his victim (after he had trimmed

him) upon a charge of grand larceny arising out of the same transaction.
One crook bred another every time he made a victim, and the disease of
crime, the most infectious of all distempers, ate its way unchecked into
the body politic. Broadway was thronged by a prosperous gentry, the
aristocracy and elite of knavery, who dressed resplendently, flourished
like the green bay-tree, and spent their (or rather their victims')
money with the lavish hand of one of Dumas's gentlemen.

But the evil did not stop there. Seeing that their brothers prospered in

New York, and neither being learned in the law nor gifted with the power
of nice discrimination between rogueries, all the other knaves in the
country took it for granted that they had at last found the Elysian
fields and came trooping here by hundreds to ply their various trades.
The McCord case stood out like a cabalistic sign upon a gate-post
telling all the rascals who passed that way that the city was full of
honest folk waiting to be turned into rogues and "trimmed."

"And presently we did pass a narrow lane, and at the mouth espied a
written stone, telling beggars by a word like a wee pitchfork to go
that way."

The tip went abroad that the city was "good graft" for everybody, and in the train of the "wire-tappers" thronged the "flimflammer," "confidence man," "booster," "capper" and every sort of affiliated crook, recalling Charles Reade's account in "The Cloister and the Hearth" of Gerard in Lorraine among their kin of another period:

With them and all they had, 'twas lightly come and lightly go; and

when we left them my master said to me, "This is thy first lesson,

but to-night we shall be at Hansburgh. Come with me to the 'rotboss'
there, and I'll show thee all our folk and their lays, and
especially 'the lossners,' 'the dutzers,' 'the schleppers,' 'the
gickisses,' 'the schwanfelders,' whom in England we call 'shivering
Jemmies,' 'the suentregers,' 'the schwiegers,' 'the joners,' 'the
sessel-degers,' 'the gennscherers,' in France 'marcandiers a
rifodes,' 'the veranerins,' 'the stabulers,' with a few foreigners
like ourselves, such as 'pietres,' 'francmitoux,' 'polissons,'
'malingreux,' 'traters,' 'rufflers,' 'whipjacks,' 'dommerars,'
'glymmerars,' 'jarkmen,' 'patricos,' 'swadders,' 'autem morts,'
'walking morts,'--" "Enow!" cried I, stopping him, "art as gleesome
as the evil one a counting of his imps. I'll jot down in my tablet
all these caitiffs and their accursed names: for knowledge is
knowledge. But go among them alive or dead, that will I not with my
good will."

And a large part of it was due simply to the fact that seven learned men

upon seven comfortable chairs in the city of Albany had said, many years
ago, that "neither the law or public policy designs the protection of
rogues in their dealings with each other, or to insure fair dealing and
truthfulness as between each other, in their dishonest practices."

The reason that the "wire-tapping" game was supposed to come within the
scope of the McCord case was this: it deluded the victim into the
belief that he was going to cheat the pool room by placing a bet upon a
"sure thing." Secondarily it involved, as the dupe supposed, the theft
or disclosure of messages which were being transmitted over the lines of
a telegraph company--a misdemeanor. Hence, it was argued, the victim was
as much a thief as the proposer of the scheme, had parted with his money
for a dishonest purpose, did not come into court with "clean hands," and
no prosecution could be sustained, no matter whether he had been led to
give up his money by means of false pretences or not.

While "wire-tapping" differed technically from the precise frauds

committed by McCord and Livingston, it nevertheless closely resembled those swindlers in general character and came clearly within the
doctrine that the law was not designed to protect "rogues in their
dealings with each other."

No genuine attempt had ever been made to prosecute one of these gentry
until the catastrophe which deprived Felix of his $50,000. The
"wire-tappers" rolled in money. Indeed, the fraternity were so liberal
with their "rolls" that they became friendly with certain police
officials and intimately affiliated with various politicians of
influence, a friend of one of whom went on Summerfield's bond, when the
latter was being prosecuted for the "sick-engineer" frauds to the extent
of $30,000. They regularly went to Europe in the summer season and could
be seen at all the race-courses and gambling resorts of the Continent.
It is amusing to chronicle in this connection that just prior to
McPherson's arrest--that is to say during the summer vacation of
1904--he crossed the Atlantic on the same steamer with an assistant
district attorney of New York county, who failed to recognize his ship
companion and found him an entertaining and agreeable comrade.

The trial came on before Judge Warren W. Foster in Part 3 of the General
Sessions on February 27th, 1906. A special panel quickly supplied a
jury, which, after hearing the evidence, returned in short order a
verdict of guilty. As Judge Foster believed the McCord case to be still
the law of the State, he, of his own motion, and with commendable
independence, immediately arrested judgment. The People thereupon
appealed, the Court of Appeals sustained Judge Foster, and the defendant
was discharged. It is, however, satisfactory to record that the
Legislature at its next session amended the penal code in such a way as
to entirely deprive the wire-tappers and their kind of the erstwhile
protection which they had enjoyed under the law.