The Last of the Wire-Tappers


"Sir," replied the knave unabashed, "I am one of those who do make a
living by their wits."

John Felix, a dealer in automatic musical instruments in New York City,
was swindled out of $50,000 on February 2d, 1905, by what is commonly
known as the "wire-tapping" game. During the previous August a man
calling himself by the name of Nelson had hired Room 46, in a building
at 27 East Twenty-second Street, as a school for "wireless telegraphy."
Later on he had installed over a dozen deal tables, each fitted with a
complete set of ordinary telegraph instruments and connected with wires
which, while apparently passing out of the windows, in reality plunged
behind a desk into a small "dry" battery. Each table was fitted with a
shaded electric drop-light, and the room was furnished with the ordinary
paraphernalia of a telegraph office. The janitor never observed any
activity in the "school." There seemed to be no pupils, and no one
haunted the place except a short, ill-favored person who appeared
monthly and paid the rent.

On the afternoon of February 1st, 1905, Mr. Felix was called to the
telephone of his store and asked to make an appointment later in the
afternoon, with a gentleman named Nelson who desired to submit to him a
business proposition. Fifteen minutes afterward Mr. Nelson arrived in
person and introduced himself as having met Felix at "Lou" Ludlam's
gambling house. He then produced a copy of the _Evening Telegram_ which
contained an article to the effect that the Western Union Telegraph
Company was about to resume its "pool-room service,"--that is to say, to
supply the pool rooms with the telegraphic returns of the various