LONDON CROOKS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 16037, 23 January 1918, Page 6

LONDON CROOKS.

DANGERS FOR STRANGERS. CARDS AND CARPET GOLF, Mon and mere lads, who go out to give their lives for us, are in many cases paying a price which has nothing to do with the Him or the trenches. Hero in this l<ondotL (writes Max Pemberton in the Weekly Dispatch) they are being robbed of honour ami of good name; made the prey of harpies and sent to tho front with shame at their elbow. Never in our history has there been such an orgy of fraud and robbery as that which now menaces our dear boys in many of the great cities. The lonely woman upon the sofa in the corridor has dropped her fan, and the ruddy-faced subaltern has picked it up. She laughs sweetly, has fine teeth, and he'is too young to ask how she got her golden hair. “Staying in tho hotel?” she asks him “and all alone?” He answers in the affirmative, and she, suppressing a strong desire to powder her nose, discovers a sigh and an engaging ankle. Ten minutes afterwards they are lunching together, and she is talking of any place to which she has never been. Her flat, she 1 says, is by Ourzon Street, and will he come along and have a’ whisky and soda. . Of course he goes—l am writing the story, of one who went—and there milady'is annoyed to discover “that her dear old friend,” Major Allwits, is already waiting for her. This is aggravating; but it really is past bearing that the major should be joined presently by Mr. and Mrs; Lovegame, who was indiscreet enough to suggest a. little bridge. The young officer is quite_ unaware that cutting a puck is a tricky business, and he does not understand why the rod-faced Lo vega me is so much put about when he has -Major Allwits for his partner. Look at the major for a moment andv watch how he fingers his cards. His 'very way of holding them is a signal —every word he speaks is out of a code. He can intimate in a phrase that he is nearly strong enough for “no trumps,” hut hasn’t got a heart. He will sign to his partner to leave the opponents in —or he will make it plain that he, as fourth player, is about to double. And the boy sits there with the lonely woman’s eyes upon his own and her foot pressing his beneath the table. He may have lost a hundred or he may have lost five when dinner is announced. Tho lad ot whom I spoke was robbed of IMIB exactly, and to this day he does not know tho nature of the stakes for which 'ho played. PRETTY GIRL ON NEXT SEAT. I will take you to another scene at a later hour of the day—to be precise, at 1.30 of the.clock, that depressing moment at which you return to your home from tho theatre, and the Swiss waiter in the big li'del is dreaming of Berlin.

Of course, the boy was going out. Three days of his leave remained. He was a rich Canadian, and he was lonely. By scheming which must have been unusually alert, the gang planted an exceedingly pretty girl in the next stall to him at the theatre. He was talking to her in the interval, and had gone round the map with her by the time the baud played “God save the. King.” Wide-eyed and angelic, she spoke of her little'flat off Baker Street, and sajd that a few friends would be coming in to supper. He would come, of course, and of course lip want. There are champagne bottles all over the place—corks pop— the laughter is hysterical, the cards arc dealt, the boy is drunk, but not so drunk that they do not thrust a pen into his hand, and bid hjm sign the cheque. Four thousand bdd pounds they declare he has lost. He has not got so much money in the bank, is his answer. Well, here, by good Providence, is one of the company ; he will lend the money to oblige. The note must be made payable to him for n l . loan and not to tlio keeper of the house, for then the law would intervene. To-morrow he will be in France. But rage and humiliation go with him—for what will his people out yonder say? EXPENSIVE CARPET GOLF. Two cheerful rogues picked up a lad at a bar and took him round to their rooms off Cork Street. There they appear to have suggested a little game of carpet-putting. The young soldier thought it must be the finest game in the world. You just put a tumbler endways upon the carpet and try to send a golf ball into the mouth of it. What he certainly did not know was that the kind gentlemen in que-stion had arranged the carpet to their satisfaction—put something under it which gave a. bias to the ball, ’and had practised the particular stroke until Harry Vardon himself could sot have beaten them. The young officer lost £3OO in a couple of hours, anj told his tale subsequently with heat. He must have been a very simple young fellow; but so are most of them. _ Our philanthropist with tho big cigar meets the-subaltern at the biv of the restaurant and suggests that a little loan might do him no harm. He probably knows for just how much the boy’s people are good. They take a cab to A n obliging gentleman by Jermyn Street, and there the boy is told that he can have the money. But first he . must insure his life—and is it not lucky that round the corner are a couple of offices which will do this kind of thing while you wait? As a matter of fact, neither has the slighttest intention of insuring the boy's life at all—but the premiums will be deducted from tile loan, and there will be war risks and lawyers to pay, and as many vultures about the carcase as any decent-sized room can hold. In one case I am told of a loan in which £15,000 was arranged, and but 7000-odd pounds handed to the .soldier. The ’knaves took the risk of the boy being killed, for his people were rich, and had he been shot they would merely have presented the note of hand and the parents would have paid as an affair of honour. So they handed out over seven thousand in the sure and certain hope of getting fifteen—and tip’s thing upon different scales is being done in London every day, and every day those who are saving our homes are being robbed by charlatans whom, -alas! no law seems able to touch. MEN ABOUT TO DIE. At the restaurants these rogues and vagabonds do chiefly congregate. They are cheek hy jowl with us every day. Fat men and thin, pretty girls with them, and the best they can buy upon the tables before them, •

Consult any maitre d’hotcl and lie will tell you. Yonder is a crook from America; here ore from Spain. To the soldier hoys these accomplished swindlers often appear the most charming men in the world. A great hive and the drones loud among us! Men fight and die across yonder that we may live; yet this is our welcome to them.

The hag with the lantern and the muck rake, walking the field of battle with her knife unsheathed , did her work swiftly. But these night prowlers leave wounds which the years may not heal.