Читать книгу Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World - Clifton R. Wooldridge - Страница 70

The most transparent fraud on the streets of the great cities is the pseudo-paralytic. At almost any street corner can be seen what purports to be a trembling wreck of a man. His legs are twisted into horrible shapes. The hand which he stretches forth for alms is a mere claw, seemingly twisted by pain into all sorts of distorted shapes, trembling and wavering. The arms move back and forth in pathetic twistings as if the pains were shooting up and down the ligaments with all the force of sciatica.

The head bobs from side to side as if it were impossible to keep it still. And the words which come from the half-paralyzed mouth are a mere mumble of inarticulate sounds, as if the tongue, too, were suffering torture.

A more pitiable sight than this could not be conjured up. And the extended hat of the victim of what seems to be a complication of St. Vitus dance, paralysis, sciatic rheumatism, and the delirium tremens, is always a ready receptacle for the pennies, nickels and dimes of the thoughtless. This is one side of the picture; now look on the other.

It is dusk. Just that time of day when the lights are not yet brightening the streets, and when the sun has made the great tunnels between the sky-scrapers, ways of darkness. Detective Wooldridge is watching. He has been watching two of the deplorable fraternity for two hours. As the dusk deepens he sees them both arise, dart swiftly across the street and board a car. By no mere chance is it that they are both on the same car. The detective follows. Before a low saloon on the West Side the victims of innumerable diseases descend from the car, walking upright as six-year soldiers on parade. They enter the saloon. They seat themselves at a table behind an angle in the back which conceals them from the street. The detective loiters down to the end of the bar and watches. From every pocket, even from the hat rim, pours a pile of coins.

The two sort out the quarters, the nickels, the pennies. The heaps are very evenly divided over two or three cheap whiskies or a couple of bottles of five-cent beer.

Then the real finale comes. Detective Wooldridge gets busy, and a goodly portion of the spoil finds its way out of the hands of the sharpers in the way of a fine.

But for every one of these paralytic frauds caught there are dozens, even scores, who get away unscathed. It is the estimate of the best detectives that not one in a thousand of these paralytic beggars is genuine. It is one of the most bare-faced cases of deception of the public which comes under the notice of the police.