Читать книгу Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World - Clifton R. Wooldridge - Страница 27

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In August, 1890, complaints had been made at the Stanton Avenue Police Station for several weeks concerning the establishment of a disorderly house at 306 Thirty-first street, but try as they would uniformed officers were helpless so far as securing evidence enough to convict was concerned. Wooldridge at that time a uniformed man, was put in plain clothes and detailed on the case. One of the great stumbling blocks in the way of the police had been the high basement under the house, which made it impossible for any one to look in the windows of the flat without the aid of the ladder. As the presence of a ladder would arouse suspicion, the problem of viewing the inside of the flat was a difficult one.

One thing the other men on the case had overlooked. This was the presence of a beam jutting out from the top of the building to which a rope, pulley, and barrel were attached, used as a means of lowering garbage and ashes from the second floor to the alley. Wooldridge saw the possibilities of the rope and barrel trick. Attaching to the rope a vinegar barrel with holes bored in it at convenient intervals, he awaited an opportune time, curled up in the barrel, and had himself drawn up to the level of the windows by two officers. The lowering and raising of the barrel being a customary thing in the building, excited no suspicion in the minds of those in the flat, and Wooldridge, with his sleuth's eye at one of the holes, saw what served to drive the place out of existence and secure the conviction of its keeper.