switches. He did not need to say anything more to expose the
character of the place.

Amazing as we found everything about us in the palace of crooks,
nothing made so deep an impression on me as the fact that it was
deserted. It seemed as if the gamblers had disappeared as though
in a fairy tale. Search room after room as Dillon's men did they
were unable to find a living thing.

One of the men had discovered, back of the gambling rooms on the
second floor, a little office evidently used by those who ran the
joint. It was scantily furnished, as though its purpose might have
been merely a place where they could divide up the profits in
private. A desk, a cabinet and a safe, besides a couple of chairs,
were all that the room contained.

Someone, however, had done some quick work in the little office
during those minutes while Garrick was opening the great ice-box
door with his hydraulic ram, for on every side were scattered
papers, the desk had been rifled, and even from the safe
practically everything of any value had been removed. It was all
part of the general scheme of things in the gambling joint.
Practically nothing that was evidential that could be readily
removed had been left. Whoever had planned the place must have
been a genius as far as laying out precautions against a raid were
concerned.

Garrick, Dillon and I ran hastily through some scattered
correspondence and other documents that spilled out from some
letter files on the floor, but as far as I could make out there