Page:Memoirs of the United States Secret Service.djvu/138

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WILLIAM BROCKWAY.
121

parties some years ago, whom he openly denounces and charges with attempts at subornation of witnesses, of offering to accept bribes, of cheating him with fair promises they never intended to perform, of "beating him" out of thousands of dollars, and "crying for more," of leeching him and wronging him at every turn, for their own aggrandizement—there is a deal too much of plausibility. And the end may not as yet have been reached!

Brockway is a plausible but innately determined person, and has given the police, as well as the U. S. authorities, an immense amount of trouble. It has come out, in the course of the tedious, tortuous examinations and trials to which this arch deceiver has been subjected in the past three or four years, that he has been the intended victim of a series of experiments at blackmailing, unparalleled in criminal annals.

He has studiously battled against these attempts, and steadily refused to submit to the unrighteous and selfish demands of those whom he declares have thus persecuted him. Plenary proof is furnished that plans have been laid thus to "clean him out" of his ill-gotten gains; but he has stoutly refused to succumb to the pressure brought to bear against him, in past years; and hence much of the fierce enmity he has incurred, in certain directions.

That he is a precious knave, and one of the guiltiest rascals in the land, as forger and counterfeiter, there is not the slightest question. And that most of his assertions in relation to the villainous course pursued towards him, by those upon whom he so fiercely turns, in his adversity, are equally true, it may now well be believed.

At the same time he has escaped conviction, latterly, and is now at large; though he is not known to have offended, recently—and it is supposed he has given up his old trade, it is to be hoped—altogether.