Most of the well-known gamblers up town, as well as
their "respectable" down town fellow members of the fraternity, were old
acquaintances of mine; Joe Healey was as close a friend as I had. He had
great fame far squareness--and, in a sense, deserved it. With his fellow
gamblers he was straight as a string at all times--to be otherwise would
have meant that when he went broke he would stay broke, because none of
the fraternity would "stake" him. But with his patrons--being regarded by
them as a pariah, he acted toward them like a pariah--a prudent pariah. He
fooled them with a frank show of gentlemanliness, of honesty to his own
hurt; under that cover he fleeced them well, but always judiciously.
That night, I recall, Joe's guests were several young fellows of the
fashionable set, rich men's sons and their parasites, a few of the big down
town operators who hadn't yet got hipped on "respectability"--they playing
poker in a private room--and a couple of flush-faced, flush-pursed chaps
from out of town, for whom one of Joe's men was dealing faro from what
looked to my experienced and accurate eye like a "brace" box.
Joe, very elegant, too elegant in fact, in evening dress, was showing a new
piece of statuary to the oldest son of Melville, of the National Industrial
Bank.
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