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In the money, Riley followed perfectly the pattern of the big-shot movie gangster. He draped his lanky frame in the best clothes money could buy, lived in a swank apartment house. Almost unique among Shanghai criminals, he never smoked, drank or doped. He built himself a reputation for great openhandedness, particularly to women. According to legend, he paid off one girl friend with $25,000 in Shanghai Power Co. shares.
But Riley was still a U.S. citizen, still, according to treaty, under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court for China. This court, which seldom handles criminal cases, got interested in Jackpot, quietly investigated him, looked up his record. In November he was arrested on gambling charges, released on $25,000 bail.
Until the day of his trial, Riley went about his business, then jumped bail and went to ground in the Japanese-occupied Hongkew section of Shanghai. But the Japanese would not protect him. At the end of March they joined with the Shanghai Municipal Police to raid his hideout. This time there was no bail and the trial was short. His sentence was light enough, only 18 months, but Shanghai remembered the Oklahoma jail break, thought it had probably seen the last of Jackpot Riley.
* Typical are Ping-yang in Shansi, whose most conspicuous business is a 300-girl "Nippon National Brothel"; Peiping, where, out of 2,026 new Japanese businesses, 500 are brothels, 1,000 dope shops.