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were named Nicotine and Mutineer.

      At this time, sulky racing was still popular. I used to race one or the other of my horses hitched to my sulky, at Billy Gilliam’s racecourse at 35th and Grand Boulevard. When I could afford it, I bought a buggy and used Nicotine and Mutineer as carriage horses.

      Driving up Michigan Avenue in my buggy, with these two blooded horses prancing and champing at the bit, I often attracted attention. One day a well-dressed, elderly man hailed me. I stopped.

      “Young man,” he said, “is that rig for sale?”

      “I hadn’t thought about it,” I replied, “but I’ll sell it for the right price.”

      “How much do you want?”

      “A thousand dollars,” I declared, after some thought.

      “I’ll give you five hundred.”

      “No,” I said. “A thousand is my price.”

      “Well,” he grumbled, “if you change your mind come to see me at my office. I’m Mr. Loomis, you know.”

      “Yes, sir, I know,” I replied.

      Mr. Loomis was the head of a large wholesale grocery firm which was then, and still is, one of the leaders in the Middle West. His proposal inspired me with an idea for a new confidence game. This one was to be an excellent money-maker - and within the law.

      Two days later, I called at his office.

      “Have you decided to accept my proposition?” he asked eagerly.

      “No, I haven’t, Mr. Loomis. But I have come to make you a counterproposal. I want you to lend me $5,000.”

      “What!” he exclaimed, when he had recovered from my effrontery. “That’s a lot of money, young man. Do you have any collateral?”

      “All I have is my rig,” I replied. “But if you will make me the loan, I will put up the rig as collateral and at the same time tell you how you can make a lot of money.”

      “I suppose I ought to throw you out,” frowned Mr. Loomis, “but you interest me. In the first place, I’d like to have that rig. Now what is your proposal?”

      “Are we alone?” I asked, looking around his office. “This must be strictly confidential.”

      “No one can hear.” To make doubly sure, he got up and closed the door. “Now, what is it?”

      “You know of the big handicap race at Hawthorne three weeks from now?”

      “Of course.”

      “I am going to tell you how to make a lot of money. I happen to know the race is fixed. The man who weighs in the horses is a friend of mine. The winning horse will carry no weight. I also know the judge. In case my horse fails to win, he will declare it no contest. In other words, Mr. Loomis, you can’t lose.”

      “And your proposition?”

      “Lend me $5,000. When the race is over, I’ll not only pay you back out of my winnings, but I’ll make you a present of my rig. Just to show my good faith, though, I’ll pledge my two fine horses and buggy. If, by some mischance, our horse should fail to win, then you’ll have my rig.”

      Mr. Loomis required only a few minutes to think this over. He wrote me a check for $5,000. I gave him a mortgage on my outfit. Then I told him the name of the horse - Mobina.

      Actually, Mobina was a selling plater and hadn’t won a race in months. There was so little chance that Mobina would win now that he was listed at 10 to 1.

      Of course, the odds appealed to Mr. Loomis greatly. He got ready to make a killing. He was helped along by my enthusiastic reports from the track. Within a few days, he was figuring up the vast sum he was going to add to his already sizable fortune.

      But before the race came off, I took Mr. Loomis for more money. I dashed in to say that the judge was afraid and that we needed a couple of hundred dollars to keep him quiet. On another occasion, I told him that the jockey had threatened to expose the whole thing. On one pretext or another, I took him for an additional $1,700.

      Then came the day of the race. Mobina didn’t even show. Of course, the race hadn’t been fixed and nothing had been paid to the judge. The only fixing I had done was to give the jockey a couple of hundred dollars to pull the horse, just to make sure it didn’t win.

      Sorrowfully, I went to Mr. Loomis and gave him the rig.

      “I can’t understand it,” I said. “Something went wrong. It has absolutely cleaned me out.”

      Mr. Loomis got his rig. And there is a moral to this story: if he had been willing to make an honest deal for it in the first place, he could have bought it. But he wasn’t willing to pay a fair price and in the end, it cost him $6,700, in addition to whatever he lost on the race.

      I tried the same deal, with variations, on other wealthy men. Almost without exception, they were eager to get in on the easy money. I didn’t have my rig as bait, but I played on their natural greed. I asked for a loan and told my story of a fixed race. The amounts I got varied with the individuals. But I never found another who was as gullible as Mr. Loomis.

      One day, I approached John R. Thompson, who founded the Thompson restaurant chain. I asked him for a loan of $2,500 and told him my fixed race story.

      “If you are desperately in need of $2,500,” offered Mr. Thompson, “and if you can prove it to me, I’ll lend you the money. But I will have absolutely nothing to do with a fixed race.”

      I didn’t take anything from Mr. Thompson. I probably could have talked him into the loan, but I didn’t. In my long career, I can truthfully say that Mr. Thompson was the only man I ever met who was one hundred per cent honest.

      There was, of course, a limit to the number of suckers who would take part in this con game. After my experience with Mr. Thompson, I went back to touting at the racecourses. I met a man named Frank Hogan and worked with him successfully for a number of years. For a time we operated a bucket shop on La Salle Street, and engaged in other enterprises to separate people from their money.

      In the saloons and poolrooms of Chicago, we were known as a pair of young fellows with sharp wits. Our favorite hangout was the saloon of “Bathhouse John” Coughlin, located on Madison Street near La Salle. The Bath was then Alderman of the First Ward. He was a swell fellow, as many another will tell you.

      One evening the Bath saw me glancing at a newspaper, The New York Journal, to which he subscribed. A comic sheet had caught my eye. It was called “Hogan’s Alley and the Yellow Kid.”

      “I’m through with that paper, if you want it,” said Coughlin.

      “I like that comic sheet,” I told him.

      “Then I’ll save it for you every day,” said Coughlin.

      He did. And I read the comic regularly. The Yellow Kid depicted was malformed, as far as body structure and facial equipment were concerned. He had large ears, an enormous mouth, and protruding teeth with much space between them.

      One night a race-horse tout named Jack Mack entered Coughlin’s saloon. It was after midnight, but the saloon never closed. Downstairs was the bathhouse and above was a hotel. Tommy Chamale, who was later to become a millionaire banker and the owner of the Green Mill, the Riviera, and Tivoli theatres, was night porter and bar boy.

      Jack Mack had an egg in his hand and he was attempting to stand it up on the bar. That attracted Chamale, who asked what Mack was trying to do.

      “I’m trying to stand this egg on end,” replied Mack.

      Chamale tried it, but without success.

      “I can make it stand up and I can do it without injuring the shell,” said Mack. “How much have you got in the cash register?”

      “Twenty-eight dollars,” Chamale returned, after counting his money.

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