The Ocean Wireless Boys on War Swept Seas

“Those prices are steep,” he reflected, “but the food and service are worth it.”

Barely had he walked a block when he recognized Tom Jukes a few strides in front of him. Bill’s first impulse was to hail Tom, but something about the latter made him hesitate.

“Something seems queer,” muttered Tom, puzzled. He was undecided. Should he follow the millionaire’s son?

Tom Jukes seemed anxious to avoid being seen. Every now and then he glanced about him hurriedly. He kept close to the building line, his cap pulled over his eyes. He turned into one of those ancient alleys down in the financial district of New York.

Bill Raynor came to a quick decision.

“I’ll follow him!” he muttered.

A moment later Bill was also in the moldy alleyway. Tom swung south, then west, and south again, and finally halted before a pair of ornamental iron gates of the most antique and peculiar design.

Bill, mystified that such places still existed in the Great Metropolis, dogged Tom’s footsteps, always careful to keep well out of sight.

He saw Tom pass through these iron gates. A moment later Bill had followed Tom through, though now he had to be far more careful, for every flagstone seemed to give up a hollow bellow.

Tom walked up an iron staircase clinging to a decaying bulk of a dirt-gray stone ramshackle building. He climbed one flight and then disappeared from view.

Bill, very carefully – every nerve alert – followed. A moment later he stepped into a long, dim, lofty corridor, walled with marble of a greenish tint, and smelling faintly of dry-rot.

Picking his steps with the greatest caution, Bill felt his way forward. Somewhere in front of him he saw the shadowy form of Tom.

Bill saw Tom pause before a door, which he opened very slowly. A faint light came from within. A moment later Tom had disappeared from view.

Bill crept forward.

Should he open the door?

“I wish Jack were here,” said Bill to himself.

Jack, it was, who had won the approval of Jacob Jukes, head of the great shipping combine, and father of Tom, for his masterly handling of many difficult situations.

Under the circumstances, Bill did not flinch in his determination to learn what was going on behind that door!

Bill put his ear to the door – and at once heard a faint tick-tick, as well as a muffled voice. Slowly Bill felt the door for the knob and to his surprise he found there was none!

“Entrance by signal only!” instantly decided Bill.

But how was he to get in without it?

His eyes were now more accustomed to the gloom. He looked about him, hoping to find a window or some outlet that might lead to the barred room.

Farther down the corridor, to his right, he saw a stairway – or what appeared to be a stairway. He walked toward it, always bearing in mind to be extremely careful.

He climbed up one flight without mishap. On this floor, the feeling of desertion and forlorn desolation grew deeper. Bill could barely suppress a shiver.

Suddenly a rat scampered across the floor.

“Phew!” ejaculated Bill, “this is some place!”

He noticed a thin ray of daylight a short distance from him. Bill at once decided to discover its origin. A moment later he saw that the light flowed from the cracks of a door.

A brief investigation proved the door to be unlocked. As he quietly pulled the door open he saw that the room was absolutely bare, and that the light came from the mud-pasted windows facing a brick wall not five feet from them.

Bill tip-toed across the room, and raised one of the windows. To his satisfaction he at once noticed the drain pipe at arm’s length. A moment later he had slid to the floor below.

To his surprise he saw the window of that mysterious room wide open. He could see only part of it. There seemed many men listlessly sitting about, though the majority kept unseeing eyes on a blackboard.

“A blind tiger!” breathed Bill, amazed.

Bill meant that it was a fake racing broker’s place. In years gone by there were many such dens of evil in New York, where congregated the broken-hearted, the reckless, the unscrupulous, all of whom tempted fate on this horse or that. As a rule the proprietor controlled the destinies of his victims, for he could “fake” any information he desired as to what horse won or lost. Happily these dens are now more scarce than hen’s teeth. It was these dens, the graves of dupes, that were called blind tigers.

“Does Tom play the ponies?” wondered Bill.

He listened intently.

Somewhere a ticker droned, and a husky voice announced:

“Gas a half – five eighths; Steel six – nine hundred at a quarter – a thousand – five-hundred – a quarter – an eighth – Erie – an eighth – Steam – an eighth – ”

“What does this mean?” questioned Bill. “It sounds like stock quotations. Can it be – ?”

He decided to risk glancing into the room.

At some risk of losing his hold he balanced himself in order to accomplish his wish.

He saw a room, unclean and unwholesome. The men seemed to be of the discarded of the street, the diseased and maimed of the financial district; here and there was a younger, smarter type, the kind that makes the gangster, the pickpocket and worse. He also saw Tom sitting quietly yet alert. At his elbow was a young man, somewhat older than Tom. On the wall facing the window was a great blackboard, and as the ticker spelled out its information, and the slovenly dressed clerk gave it voice, a second clerk chalked away without cessation.

Beyond this clerk’s announcements everything was quiet. Bill felt himself slipping, so he silently swung back to his former position. The light of understanding was in his eyes.

“By Jove, it’s a bucket shop!”

Now a bucket shop is where people buy and sell stock on less margin or in smaller quantity than is accepted on the curb on Broad Street or on the Stock Exchange. These establishments, too, are fast disappearing, though as is always possible in New York, an exception – as in all directions of semi-organized crime – manages to keep from the sharp talons of the law for a longer period of time.

The bucket shops were where messenger boys and clerks gamboled with Dame Fortune. Sooner or later they lost – lost not only every cent to their names, but much of their self-respect and honesty. It was also the place for the men who had gone down to defeat in the great battle fought bitterly every minute of the day in the great financial arena. These men were unfit for everything else, so they turned to the bucket shops as a drowning man grasps at a straw. But we have digressed enough – though this was really necessary – and let us continue with the narrative.

Bill did not know what to make of it all.

Surely Tom Jukes had little need to play for stakes. His father was sufficiently wealthy and knew the great money game, and its pitfalls, not to have acquainted his son with them. The more Bill thought, the more puzzled he became.

Suddenly he heard Tom shout:

“You robber, you thief!”

“Git out,” bawled the voice, evidently that of the proprietor, “or I’ll have you put out!”

“You do, and I’ll have you in the hands of the police within twenty-four hours!”