Do you think the friendly game of poker is on "the square"? If you do you are mistaken. The house has two men, professional sharks, fishing for your money. They are out to get it and they will succeed. They will whip-saw you back and forth until they exhaust you and tire your alertness. Then they will crucify you on the cross of your own cupidity and zeal to make a millionaire's fortune in a night on the income of a counter clerk. The game has not been beaten. That is why the gambling combine is strong. That is why it has the support of the Vice Trust. Like the man who hopes to withstand the temptations of the crime-centers, and as the woman who ventures is poisoned unto death with the venom of sin, so the man who goes forth to tempt Fate and win a kiss from the cold lips of Chance, is enmeshed before he is aware of it and borne onward in the terrible maelstrom which hurls him into the bottomless pit of infamy and shame. The gambling curse is a terrible one. Its stigma burns on the cheek of its victims forever. Scarcely any hope can be held out to the man who is trapped by its subtle lure. To those young men and young women of the city and the country, we write this warning. We have shown that you "cannot beat the game," no matter how intelligently you try. The Vice Trust has never known defeat. It will not know defeat in this enormous source of revenue pouring into its coffers annually from the favored, police-protected, bomb-throwing, life-destroying Gambling Combine. [Illustration: IF HOLDUPS INCREASE. By Courtesy of The Chicago Daily News. STEPPING OUT TO POST A LETTER May take the form of an armed sortie.] CHAPTER IX. Tearing Off the Police Mask. A Story of the Hypocrisy of the Police Department--Its Neglect of Duty--Its Protection of Crime--The Fate of the Honest Policeman--Collusion of Police and Thieves. The minds which conspire to create a system such as the Vice Trust is shown to control, must of necessity find agents to carry on the various phases of the work. It has been demonstrated that no species of vice or sin exists in Chicago except at the will of the vice lords and in return for the payment of large sums of money. In a large majority, the police department, holding in its hands the power to enforce or ignore the laws of the city, state or country, is the thumb screw used by the Vice Trust to exact its toll of sin-existence. This body of men, each one of whom swore on his word of honor before God and man to enforce the man-made laws, as a whole, is decaying with the poison of graft and vice in its veins. From a servant of the people, the policeman has become the servant of the people's enemies. Trapped and enmeshed by the political powers above them hundreds of policemen prostitute their power for the purpose of aiding and abetting sin and vice and in defrauding the people of their proper tax-paid protection.