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More "Blackmail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blackmail Stella had levied on Phelps, I wondered? Was she taking from him to give to Gordon? Had Stella broken him? Was she the real cause of the tangle in his affairs? And had Phelps in insane passion revenged himself ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... would throw away his fire was a possibility remote from the best effort of Burr's imagination, and although he knew that no one could fire more quickly than himself, he was not the man to go to the ground unprepared for emergencies: if his daughter, now Mrs. Alston, would obey his hint and blackmail, she might realize a pretty fortune. That Theodosia Burr, even with the incentive of poverty, would have sunk to such ignominy, no one who knows the open history of her short life will believe; but the father, whose idol she was, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... destruction was, no doubt, attributable to the action of the sepoys and rabble of the city, who during the siege, and in the state of anarchy which prevailed during that period, had looted to their hearts' content, levying blackmail on the richer inhabitants and pursuing their evil course without let or hindrance. Still, that which had escaped the plundering and devastating hands of the sepoys was most effectually ruined by our men. Not a single house or building remained intact, and the damage done must have amounted ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... in financial straits, brought his manuscript to Rabbi Minor of Moscow, declaring his willingness to forego the publication of his brochure, which no doubt would cause great harm to the Jews, for a consideration of 500 rubles ($250). His blackmail offer was rejected Lutostanski thereupon published his hideous book in 1876, and travelled with it to St. Petersburg where he managed to present it to the crown prince, subsequently Alexander III., and to secure from him a grateful acknowledgement. The ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... she added, as a parting shot, "that girls don't get into clubs here by blackmail. Even if Judy had put you up, you wouldn't have had the ghost ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... him the equivalent of five hundred sterling in blackmail. I am afraid it will be a long ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... power to deceive the public and to withhold or to publish at will hidden things: his power in this terrifies the professional politicians who hold nominal authority: in a word, the newspaper owner controls the professional politician because he can and does blackmail the professional politician, especially upon his private life. But if he does not command a large public this power to blackmail does not exist; and he can only command a large public—that is, a large circulation—by interesting that public and even by flattering it that ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... 'em all nervous, 'cause Monty's a bad man to be up against. Remember: she claimed that she knows Monty and he knows her. She means by that that he knows she's a desperado, and she thinks he'll draw the line at a trip that promises murder and blackmail and such like dirty work. So she puts a scare into us with a view to our throwing a scare into him. If I scare any one, it's going to be that dame herself. I'll not ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... living by the novel and ingenious process of trading on the fears and credulity of stray travellers, making them believe the pass is dangerous and charging them a small sum for his services as guard. It is not at all unlikely that he is the present incumbent of an hereditary right to extort blackmail from such travellers along this lonely road as may be prevailed upon without resorting to violence to pay it, and is but humbly following in the footsteps of his worthy sire and still ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... great western wilds, and of pushing the outposts into the very heart of the singular wilderness we have laid open, so as to maintain some degree of sway over the country, and to put an end to the kind of "blackmail," levied on all occasions by the savage "chivalry ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... on the blindness and weakness that was the primal cause of their life-failure. Throughout that long and horrible night he felt only resentment toward his mother, and cherished no better purpose toward her than was embodied in his plan to wring from her, even by methods that savored of blackmail, the means of living a dissipated life in some city where he was unknown, and could lose himself in ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... dome and flitted round Kharvani's image, the place where every one must go who needed favors of the priests, the central hub of treason and intrigue, where every plot was hatched and every rumor had its origin—the ultimate, mazy, greedy, undisgorging goal of every bribe and every blackmail-wrung rupee! ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... claim to belong to the party of law and order, and they agree with the great orator who once said:—"The party of law and order includes every farmer who does not want to rob the landlord of his due and who does not want to be forced to pay blackmail to agitation—every poor fellow who desires to be at liberty to earn a day's wages by whomsoever they are offered him, without being shunned, insulted, beaten, or too probably murdered." The orator in ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... he had given her all the money he could spare, and for years the blackmail had continued. Then, at last, after he had been a year in England, the worm ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... common convictions for acts which are peculiar to women, like abortion, infanticide, child abandonment and the like. As to the other crimes, few women are burglars or robbers, or guilty of other crimes of violence, except murder. Women steal and poison and blackmail and extort money and lie and slander and gossip, and probably cause as much unhappiness as men; but their crimes, like their lives, are not on so large or adventurous a scale. They do not so readily take a chance; they lack the imagination that ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... "What, blackmail a man like Allen? Huh! He's fair game, if there ever was any. But it won't work with him, that's what I'm afraid of. He's too cunning to be taken in by it, he is. He had good legal advice before he came here, or he ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... I asked myself, Could Charles' conduct be dictated by the desire to have a hold over Benson—with a view to blackmail later on? But he was not likely to risk his own neck by becoming an accomplice in the concealment of the murdered man's body! Charles, if he were innocent himself, must have thought that Benson was the murderer. ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... Burke's speeches which he had brought with him, one of the jurors objected to the evidence in the eighty-seventh case. "We cannot be too cautious, gentlemen," he said, "in arriving at a decision in these delicate matters. The apprehension of blackmail in relation to females hangs over every ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... rather sheepish. "I'm afraid we've made a mess of it between us. Case of political blackmail, you see, and the young lady thought she could handle it herself. And so she could have done if we hadn't butted in, begging your pardon for ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... policemen take money in exchange for protection? True that they practise blackmail and extortion? Of course it's true. Whenever a big temptation appears loose in a city half the people who get a look at it trip and fall. Oh, I'd like to reform this city, Miss Barbara—and this country. I'd like to be dictator ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... can beat Tammany Hall permanently in one way—by making the government of a city as human, as kindly, as jolly as Tammany Hall. I am aware of the contract-grafts, the franchise-steals, the dirty streets, the bribing and the blackmail, the vice-and-crime partnerships, the Big Business alliances of Tammany Hall. And yet it seems to me that Tammany has a better perception of human need, and comes nearer to being what a government should be, than any scheme yet proposed ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... not recognize you?" replied the bum in a most insolent tone while at the same time he pointed his hand at Joe's birthmark. "When you bent forward to pick up your cap I remembered you the moment I put my eyes on that streak of white hair," and then, sure that he had before him a victim whom he could blackmail with perfect impunity, he inquired, "Have you been back to Rugby since I saw you the last time, and say, McDonald, how are the chances for your helping a poor friend to the price of a meal and a ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... his long career had the Prime Minister known so flagrant an instance of blackmail unpunishable by law as that which the Princess Charlotte sprung on him when, in brief interview, she dictated the terms on which alone the Ann Juggins episode was to be allowed to sink into oblivion. And perhaps one can hardly ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... when I left Godfrey. I expected that he would want to take some sort of legal proceedings against Bob Power which would have involved us all in a great deal of unpleasantness. I should not have been surprised if he had tried to blackmail Bob or Conroy, or both, and I should have disliked that very much. But his letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to be merely foolish. In the first place Bob Power was not smuggling. In the next place the Chancellor of the Exchequer would never see Godfrey's letter. It ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... the sabotage," said the Major precisely, "or he can arrange to be caught trying to do it. If he's caught—he tried; and the blackmail threat is no threat at all so long as he keeps his mouth shut. Which he does. And—ah—you would be surprised how often a man who wasn't born in the United States would rather go to prison ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... early days of his prosperity in New York, it had been necessary for him to come to an agreement with Sondheim and Kastner. And the more his prosperity increased the less he dared to resent their petty tyranny and blackmail, because, whether or not they might suffer under his public accusations, it was very certain that internment, if not imprisonment for a term of years, would be the fate reserved for himself. And ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... from religious zeal, but still more from the greed of booty. The Polish nobleman Roskowsky wore boots of different colors, a red one to indicate fire, and a black one for death. Thus he rode, levying blackmail, from one place to another, and in Jastrow he had the hands, the feet, and finally the head of the Protestant preacher Willich cut off and thrown into a swamp. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... Instead, he went to the father, who as a man could be expected to understand the situation. George was embarrassed and not a little nervous about it; for although he had never misrepresented his attitude to the family, one could never feel entirely free from the possibility of blackmail in such cases. However, Lizette's father behaved decently, and was duly grateful for the moderate sum of money which George handed him in parting. He promised to break the news gently to Lizette, and George went away with his mind made up that he ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... lost play Bacchus, festivals of Bacis, a soothsayer Bagpipes, ancient Barathrum, cleft of rock —place of execution Basket-bearers, the Baths of Heracles Beans, used for voting Beetle, flying on a Beetles, names of boats Blackmail Blankets, soiled with urine Blood, unspilled in sacrifice Boasting derided Boeotians, the Boulomachus, meaning of Boy's name, dispute over Brasidas, fell in Thrace Brauron, its temple "Brazen House," the Bread, used for finger-wiping Buckler, swearing over Bucklers, as trophies Bupalus, the sculptor ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... England. The method of nominating candidates for Parliament in England removes the temptation to "influence" primaries and bribe delegations. In the absence of State legislatures, railway and other corporations are not exposed to the same system of blackmail. ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... you had, I would now be going peaceful, with the kind policeman instead of being a willing victim of a very pleasant form of blackmail." ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... two of starvation struggles to get on with the legitimate, he packed up his scruples and laid them away—temporarily, he said. He resorted to sharp practice, knavery, and all the forms of legal blackmail; it was not long before his bank account began to swell. His business thrived. He was so clever that not one of his shady proceedings reacted. It is safe to venture that ninety-nine per cent, of the people who ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... gettin' wise?" murmured Tip. "He ain't smart enough to know that fer him to go to his old man an' tell the whole yarn 'ud be cheapest in the run. The old man 'ud be mad at Rip, but the old man's a lawyer, an' 'ud know how to lay down the blackmail law to me!" ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... all that," he said, laying a hand on the excited man's arm. "Remember, that Wales would never dare breathe a word of it; Carmen has no reputation or standing whatsoever now in this city; and Ames would make out a case of blackmail against you so quickly that it would sweep you right into the Tombs. Go easy. And first, let us get the girl herself ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... cannot blackmail me. My wife knows all about that. The knowledge of that occurrence is worthless as a piece ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... in peace. I've not come to blackmail you into loving me, Cecily. Yes, you shall be left in peace to move the furniture about." Glancing toward the table, he saw Mr Gainsborough's birthday gift. He took it up, looked at it for a moment, and then replaced it. His manner was involuntarily expressive. Even if she brought ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... person or persons in which the diction is elevated, the movement solemn and stately, and the catastrophe sad; a kind of drama of a lofty or mournful cast, dealing with the dark side of life and character." Richard Harding Davis's "Blackmail" is a notable example ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... may remain undisturbed. The very existence of a segregated district under police regulation means, of course, that the existing law must be nullified or at least rendered totally inoperative. When police regulation takes the place of law enforcement a species of municipal blackmail inevitably becomes intrenched. The police are forced to regulate an illicit trade, but because the men engaged in an unlawful business expect to pay money for its protection, the corruption of the police department is firmly established and, as the Chicago vice commission ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... about him," said the other, sharply. "He was not above blackmail; not above ruining the life of a friend to do himself a benefit. A loafer, a ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... gasped. 'I had little money, and no friends. Who would believe my story? Besides this, Lord Rantremly retained possession of a letter, signed by myself, that would convict me of attempted blackmail, while the butler would swear to ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... Chinese maintaining all their posts on the frontier, and the retreat of the Mongols, who had suffered too heavy a loss to feel elated at their repulse of Suta. At the same time no solid peace had been obtained, and the Mongols continued to harass the borders, and to exact blackmail from all who traversed the desert. When Hongwou endeavored to attain a settlement by a stroke of policy his efforts were not more successful. His kind reception of the Mongol Prince Maitilipala has been referred to, and about the year 1374 he sent him back to Mongolia, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... of Sylvia. I could not bring myself to believe that she had wilfully forsaken her home and her husband. Upon her, I felt confident, some species of blackmail had been levied, and she had been forced away from me by ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... which the boy spoke was cold and bitter. Yet, instead of terrifying the storekeeper, it caused him to laugh as he exclaimed: "You can't blackmail me, you ungrateful young wretch! Get out of here, before I call the police! I steal your money, indeed! Insanity seems to ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... mass of gold would awake suspicions in the mind of anyone he went to; but then, there were people who were always ready to do shady things, provided they were well paid. So whomsoever he went to would levy blackmail on him on threat of informing the police and having him arrested. Therefore, the most feasible thing would be that he had got about half of the value of the nugget, which would be about six hundred ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... the honga, he took upon himself the task of relieving us from further toll, by stating we were from Ugogo or Kanyenyi. The chief simply nodded his head, and we passed on. It seems that the Wagogo do not exact blackmail of those caravans who intend only to trade in their own country, or have no intention of passing beyond their ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... to his feet. "Do you think you're going to get a cent of it? I might pay blackmail to an honest rascal who delivered the goods paid for. But I had your size the first time you came around. Don't you think I knew what you wanted? If I'd thought you were worth buying, I'd have settled it up for three ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... conquerors from the soil of Mexico. Look at Sonora and Chihuahua, half-depopulated! Look at New Mexico; its citizens living by suffrance: living, as it were, to till the land and feed the flocks for the support of their own enemies, who levy their blackmail by the year! But, come; the sun tells us ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... and sneak, and coming here to gather blackmail and betray that poor fellow to the gallows, or to ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... I'm damned if he can. Leaving the whole high church party to blackmail all they can out of us and vote how they like! Here ... I've got my Yorkshire people to think of. I can bargain for them with you in a cabinet ... not if you've the pull of ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... a fair fight, the duty of every American would be to keep on the side-lines and preserve an open mind. But it is not a fair fight. To devastate a country you have sworn to protect, to drop bombs upon unfortified cities, to lay sunken mines, to levy blackmail by threatening hostages with death, to destroy cathedrals is not to ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... I tired of it and tried to end it. Then she used it to blackmail me for ten years, till, in desperation, I came to America, to see if I ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... I'll have no more of this. You are an impostor. I don't know where you obtained your information, but if you have come to levy blackmail on the strength of such a mad tale, you ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... Lady Turnour. (Really, if she takes to interfering every time we others have got to the middle of an interesting conversation, I don't know what I shall do to her! Perhaps I'll put her transformation on side-wise. Or would that be blackmail?) ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... 'Clancarty Elegant Extracts.' His Lordship, in fact, accused Macallester of showing all his letters to Lord Clare, whom Clancarty hated. He then gave Macallester the lie, and next apologised; in fact, he behaved like Sir Francis Clavering. Before publishing his book, Macallester tried to 'blackmail' Clancarty. 'His Lordship is now secretly and fully advertised that this matter is going to the press,' and, indeed, it was matter to make the Irish peer uncomfortable in France, where he had consistently reviled ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... is interwoven with blackmail: even some of the noblest people do favours for other people who are depended upon not to tell somebody something that the noblest people have done. Blackmail is born into us all, and our nurses teach us more blackmail by threatening to tell our parents if we won't do this and that—and our parents ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... have money at my camp. If that is not enough to pay your blackmail, my valet has gone back to the railway with my guide for a remittance of a thousand dollars, which must have come on a ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... authorities," she said, "unless I get some proper explanation from you. I shall have no option. You are forcing—or have forced—my mother to enter into some strange arrangements with you, and I can't think it is for anything but what I say—blackmail. You've got—or you think you've got—some hold on her. Now what is it? I mean to know, one way ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... what he was talking about, and his representations were so fair that finally I agreed to pay him twenty-five cents a week for hauling the garbage away. That evening I heard from Mr. Baylor that the scheme was a vulgar bit of blackmail; that the fellow was driver for one of the city wagons and made a practice of extorting fees from householders for doing work which he was already paid to do. I felt grievously outraged and I threatened to report this infamy ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... is possible that the bellowing bluster of the guns at Metz may have allayed that fear in high places; and that terror of the Hun was already becoming less deathly among the cantons of a race which had trembled under Boche blackmail for a hundred years. However, for whatever reason it might have been, no Swiss patrols bothered the ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... member of the 1523 parliament. Wolsey found him an apt man of business, and entrusted him with a good deal of the financial management of his educational schemes; in the course of which it is at least probable that he applied the twin practices of bribery and blackmail, which not without reason were attributed at a later date to his servants. Yet, however unscrupulous he may have been in his dealings with others, to the master whose service he had followed he ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... money," he murmured, as he read the note again. "What the devil does she want, then, if she has all the money she needs! Perhaps some discarded mistress! Bah! The old man's heart is as hollow as a sentrybox, and, besides, he has not been in Europe for nearly twenty years. Ah, I see! Perhaps a bit of blackmail—some early indiscretion! She did speak about the girl! Then I must be the silent partner of her future harvest! She probably needs a man's arm to reach the wary old Baronet in future. My lady ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... this one, and preside at board meetings. The company's lawyers tell him whatever they think he ought to know. They probably say they're having trouble down here owing to one of the local revolutions, and that Garcia is trying to blackmail them." ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... but my common sense assured me that father would not stop to parley with a burglar. While I stood wondering, father raised his voice slightly, and I caught one word which he uttered. Ramon, that word sounded to me like 'blackmail!' Why, what is it? Why do you look at me so strangely?" she added hastily, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... "What's your blackmail for this?" vociferated Harran. "How much do you want to let us go? How much have we got to pay you to be ALLOWED to use our own ploughs—what's your ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... you about right now, Barker. You're the only person except the Chief here, and myself, who knows that Mrs. Lawrence is connected with the case. I want her name kept out of it. Of course that makes it impossible to arrest you for blackmail—and so, if you tell me the entire truth, I'm going to let you go free. But if I ever hear of her name in connection with this case I'll know that you have leaked—and I'll get you if it ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... begged her again to "Come and say good night to me!" terrified as I saw the light from my father's candle already creeping up the wall, but also making use of his approach as a means of blackmail, in the hope that my mother, not wishing him to find me there, as find me he must if she continued to hold out, would give in to me, and say: "Go back to ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... was the unexpected result of your attempts to blackmail young Dalton's murderer. You, being afraid of him, and not confessing that timidity to Mildred, persuaded her to approach ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... whatever we choose to say, what limit do you think he will place upon his extortions now that he holds our secret? We have taught him his music, and he will make us do our part in the chorus, and can blackmail us as well ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... socially I am nil; mentally and physically my faculties are at your disposal. Do you happen to know anything in the lady's past or present that she would not care to have exploited? Blackmail, yes? I have no scruples. What do ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... seemed a Catholic army in the field. The commander-in-chief had scattered such companies as could still be relied upon in the villages of the friendly arch-episcopate of Cologne, and had obtained, not by murders and blackmail—according to the recent practice of the Admiral of Arragon, at whose grim name the whole country-side still shuddered—but from the friendship of the leading inhabitants and by honest loans, a sufficient ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a time," said Raffles. "On the other hand, you would be permanently out of danger of figuring in the dock on a charge of blackmail. And you know your profession isn't popular in the courts, Mr. Levy; it's in nearly as bad odour as the ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... key with the brass head, and, associating one with the other, he tried the key in the lock. The door opened. He saw nothing but papers. They must be very valuable to have been put away in a safe, and the key to which to be of so much importance. Perhaps a thought of blackmail occurred to him as a useful possibility in helping him in his designs on Mademoiselle Stangerson. He quickly made a parcel of the papers and took it to the lavatory in the vestibule. Between the time of his first examination ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... do, do come," said Nora, and the next moment they were all standing in a circle round Mother Rachel, who pocketed her blackmail eagerly, and repeated some gibberish over each little hand. Over Annie's palm she lingered for a brief moment, and looked with her penetrating eyes into the ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... Scotland; a rank which he modestly accepted by writing in 1838 to a friend:—"I am getting a kind of fame as the literary man of Scotland. Thirty years ago, in the North countries, a fellow achieved an immense reputation as 'The Tollman,' being the solitary individual entitled by law to levy blackmail at a ferry." In 1860 he was made Honorary President of the Associated Societies of the University of Edinburgh, his competitor being Thackeray. This was the place held afterward by Lord Lytton, Sir David Brewster, Carlyle, and Gladstone. Aytoun wrote ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... puts the procurer or brothel-keeper in prison, is worth more than a heavy sentence by way of fine, which can be met by further oppression of his slaves. Besides, the heavier the sentence threatened, if there be an alternative fine, the more potent implement it furnishes for blackmail in the hands of corrupt police officials. Penalties by means of fines invariably tend to degenerate into a monthly squeeze to the police, in payment for toleration, and thus tend to make the police official a defender of social ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... attacking Edward Arens, and contains the famous chapter on "Demonology" in which Mrs. Eddy devotes forty-six pages to settling scores with half a dozen of her early students, charging one and another with theft, adultery, murder, blackmail, etc. The Reverend Mr. Wiggin, when he revised Mrs. Eddy's book in 1885, persuaded her to omit these vituperative passages on the ground that ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... my fellow-men, but in this I knew myself wiser; I knew where I was cheated. I knew that the schoolmaster who cost me thirty pounds a year was a licensed footpad; half the money spent in restaurants and tea-shops was blackmail paid to respectability; the landlord who took his forty-five pounds a year from my pocket was a mere robber, who took advantage of the need I had to live in a certain locality that I might attend to my vocation. Not only were my brains exploited that my employer ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... after I had told her that I was to be married, hang me if she hadn't cleared out. No scene, no tears, no maledictions—just good, hard sense, Bingle, that's what it was. Not many of them would have been so decent about it. They usually make a bluff or something of the sort—money, you know, regular blackmail. But she didn't. She got out as quietly as a mouse, left no trace behind, no regrets, no complaints. Just a note saying she understood and wishing me ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... substitute for the frontier regulations which Congress made haste to nationalize in 1866. It declared that under these regulations "title after title hangs on a local record which may be defective, mutilated, stolen for blackmail, or destroyed to accomplish fraud, and of which the grantor, the Government, has neither knowledge nor control"; that in the evidence taken "it was repeatedly shown that two or three prospectors, camped in the ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... entirely.... Even if I do help my sister in the house, and even if I do go on errands, I would never have consented to go on such an one.... I said to my sister: It's marriage or nothing.... We don't go in for blackmail, of that you may be sure." "Well, my dear man," Niebeldingk laughed, "If that's the ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... Now at last, the reformers thought, American politics would be purified. But, no! The corruption, simply took a new and more alarming turn. Direct money contributions took the place of the spoils. It became the practice to levy blackmail on corporations either to be let alone, or for the purpose of fleecing the public. The monopolies granted to protected industries are the source of a large share of these "campaign funds." The Legislatures are ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... government consists in being honest." With a back door to every ordinance that touched the lives of the people, if indeed the whole thing was not the subject of open ridicule or the vehicle of official blackmail, it seemed as if we had provided a perfect municipal machinery for bringing the law into contempt with the young, and so for wrecking citizenship ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... communicated the infection to others. This witness further stated that some chemists charged consultation fees in addition to charges for drugs applied, and in certain cases charges for drugs were made which were little short of blackmail. ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... poor young man's mind at rest. So you see, Miss Jennie, you will have to talk very sweetly and politely to me and not make any threats, because I am like those dreadful persons in the sensational plays who possess the guilty secrets of other people and blackmail them. But you are a nice girl, and I won't say anything you don't want to hear said. Now, what is it you wish to find out about ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... the civilizations of India and China a broad tract of wild and mountainous country, inhabited by a mongrel race of savages, known as Shans and Kakhyens, who, while nominally owing allegiance to one or the other of their more civilized neighbors, practically find their chief support in levying blackmail on all ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... partly to their well-known habit of sticking by one another, and still more to the mild but very definite terrorism which they exercise. Country residents, when a Gipsy encampment comes near them, know that a certain amount of blackmail in this way or that has to be paid, and that in their own time the strangers, if not interfered with, will go. Interference with them is apt to bring down a visit from that very unpleasant fowl, the 'red cock,' whose crowings usually cost a good deal more than a stray chicken here ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... thoroughly interested in myself, got on to the subject of exercise; when my banker passed from the subject of interest on overdrafts to the advisability of my seeing the great Geneva view, it was undoubtedly blackmail; and as for my dentist—well, you know what dentists are and what mean advantages they take. But this one, I think, over-stepped the limit when he allowed the crown of my tooth to remind him of the crown of Mont Blanc; paused in fixing the former to descant on the beauties of the latter; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... turned up again. In Brazil he had heard a story of Ali Tschorbadschi's jewels from an old criminal from Turkey, and he had returned to blackmail Timar. But he did not find him till Timar was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... fell back. They were a gentle, simple-minded lot, used in the old country to oppression, blackmail and tyranny, and burning with a religious fervor unknown to the pale heterodoxy ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... which recognized in equitable measure our rights and our liberties, we resumed liberty of action? The truth is that Austria and Germany believed until the last days that they had to deal with an Italy weak, blustering, but not acting, capable of trying blackmail, but not enforcing by arms her good right, with an Italy which could be paralyzed by spending a few millions, and which by dealings which she could not avow was placing herself between the country and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of course, was a share of the Clark estate. Of course he hadn't a chance in law, but he saw a chance to blackmail young Jud Clark and he tried it. Not personally, for he hadn't any real courage, but by mail. Clark's attorneys wrote back saying they would jail him if he tried it again, and he went back to Dry River and after ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Any other kind of talk is bluff and blackmail. So that's young Latisan's latest move, eh?" he ejaculated, squinting appraisingly at Dawes and turning full gaze of candor's fine assumption ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... desire to return to primitive simplicity, foreswore life in the towns "under the bell," and made their homes in the mountains or other remote places. Gathered in small bands with such arms as they could secure, they sustained themselves by highway robbery and the levying of blackmail from the country folk. ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... as soldier was exemplary, till, watching his chance, he killed his colonel, and managed to get clear away. With a band of deserters, who chose him for their chief, he had taken refuge beyond the wild and waterless Bolson de Tonoro. The haciendas paid him blackmail in cattle and horses; extraordinary stories were told of his powers and of his wonderful escapes from capture. He used to ride, single-handed, into the villages and the little towns on the Campo, driving a pack mule before ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... minute that he'd be guilty even of dreaming of such a piece of rascality as this. It's much more likely to be some pettifogging lawyer's game—some sneaking rogue that's got these fellow-rascals round him, with an idea of doing a little bit of blackmail. Stubbs is a decent fellow—for a lawyer. I don't think Stubbs would have a finger in that sort of pie, any more than his master. But Stubbs has been got at; that's how it'll turn out, you bet. Keep ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... "Very much. Blackmail's Warbler is often mistaken for the Chiff-chaff, even by so-called experts"—and I turned to the Authority and added, "Have another sandwich, won't you?"—"particularly so, of course, during the breeding season. It is true that the eggs are ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... can blackmail me into a partnership?" I turned at bay. "You must have seen that I wanted to keep out of ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... . . I haven't told even my own people. This is not blackmail, because I arranged it all before I saw you; I never expected to see you again after that night at the theatre. I was just trying to save something out of the wreckage. . . . I'm going away nominally for three months, but I'm not coming back. I could ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... advertize them, the restaurants which cater for them, and, in short, all the trades to which they are good customers, not to mention the public officials and representatives whom they silence by complicity, corruption, or blackmail. Add to these the employers who profit by cheap female labor, and the shareholders whose dividends depend on it [you find such people everywhere, even on the judicial bench and in the highest places in Church and State], and you get a large and powerful class with a strong pecuniary incentive ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw
... was about a month grass-widowed when Waring came on his first duty there. He had an uncongenial lot of brother officers for a two-company post, and really had known of this girl and her people before the war, and she appealed to him, first for sympathy and help, then charity, then blackmail, I reckon, from which his fever saved him. Then she struck some quartermaster or other and lived off him for a while; drifted over here, and no sooner did he arrive, all ignorant of her presence in or around New Orleans, than she began pestering him again. When he turned a deaf ear, she probably ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... relaxed in an ironical grin. "All right, take it that way, if you want to. He let on he thought I was trying to blackmail him." ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... after the first meeting between Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas I heard that they were being pestered on account of some amorous letters which had been stolen from them. There was talk of blackmail and hints of ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... have always lived by plunder, and they always intend to do so. For one thing, these raiding dattos don't like to have white men on Mindanao. The spread of civilization here means that the old-time dattos will be driven into the wilds, and that there won't be any more plunder or blackmail money to live on. These Moros out yonder wouldn't have bothered me, this time, if I had paid ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... sender was to be under his thumb, bound to his service by the terrifying recollection of the question he had written down. You know the sort of things that wealthy and powerful personages would be likely to ask. This blackmail brought ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... to have told me," he said. "And you should not have believed that I would win you by blackmail, even though I am ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... who, exiled and retributive, sought revenge and lucre in the attacks upon the argosies from India to Spain. Their successes attracted adventurers from Asia Minor, and thus augmented they acquired formidable power, established citadels and states, governed by daring and sagacious leaders, and levied blackmail upon Christian countries for the protection of commerce. It was not until the vigorous campaign of Decatur that the backbone of this sanctioned lawlessness of the Barbary States was broken and safety upon the high seas ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... do?" I paused to eye him a moment. "Why, you went down to Merton and dug up all the old family skeletons. Now you were surer of your ground; you were ready to levy tribute—blackmail—not from Page, though, because he would have promptly kicked you out—but again your nerve failed you. That's where you have fallen down, Burke, all the way through. You carried a letter or two to Fluette to prove your claims; then, before their loss was discovered, ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... it was not a mere levy of blackmail that was now to satisfy the partisan chieftains. One was determined upon robbing him of his wife—while the other coveted his money—and therefore the subterfuges of Don Fernando were ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... to help her. She draws upon her stock of knowledge. 'Can she be secretly married to him? A wife of the past turned up to blackmail him? That's very common.' ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... was now a happy bridegroom. Owing to an indiscreet word dropped by our simple-minded hero, a gang of smugglers, who ran an illicit still on the moors, had gathered something about Andy stealing the letters from the post-office and Squire Egan burning them. They had already begun to blackmail the squire, and in order to defeat them it was necessary to get Andy out of the country for some time. So nothing could be ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... before Troy is taken," laughed Pratinas. "Don't be alarmed, my good fellow. Your excellent patron will reward us, no doubt, amply." And he muttered to himself: "If I don't bleed that Lucius Ahenobarbus, that Roman donkey, out of two-thirds of his new fortune; if I don't levy blackmail on him without mercy when he's committed himself, and becomes a partner in crime, I'm no fox of a Hellene. I wonder that he is the son of a man like Domitius, who was so shrewd in that old affair with ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... fillet around the girl's temples, and an embroidered belt which encircles her waist. But these, though pretty ornaments, are not of great intrinsic value; and as Shebotha has in view a further levy of blackmail at a future time, she can ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... made a clean breast of everything. It seems that William had secretly followed his two masters on the night when they made their raid upon Mr. Acton's, and, having thus got them into his power, proceeded under threats of exposure to levy blackmail upon them. Mister Alec, however, was a dangerous man to play games of that sort with. It was a stroke of positive genius on his part to see in the burglary scare, which was convulsing the country side, an opportunity of plausibly ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... yet drive the descendants of those very conquerors from the soil of Mexico. Look at Sonora and Chihuahua, half-depopulated! Look at New Mexico; its citizens living by suffrance: living, as it were, to till the land and feed the flocks for the support of their own enemies, who levy their blackmail by the year! But, come; the sun tells us ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... particularly hard on what is called blackmail. It is therefore essential that the applicant should write nothing that might afterwards be twisted ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... stretch a cordon across these routes from Ghadames and Ghat in the east to the great oases of Insalah and Twat in the west; and from the oases and hills forming their headquarters they spread for pasturage and blackmail over the desert.[1078] They exact toll over and over again from a caravan, provide it with a military escort of their own tribesmen, and then pillage it on the way.[1079] This has been the experience of Barth[1080] and other explorers. Caravans have not been their only prey. The agricultural ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... cordon of sentries round the cantonment, strong piquets were posted on all the principal roads leading towards the hills; and every house had to be guarded by a chokidar, or watchman, belonging to one of the robber tribes. The maintaining this watchman was a sort of blackmail, without consenting to which no one's horses or other property were safe. The watchmen were armed with all sorts of quaint old firearms, which, on an alarm being given, they discharged in the most reckless manner, making it quite a work of danger to pass along a Peshawar road after ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... recognised that, to force words from me, he was threatening a kind of blackmail. Another voice began to call from ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... ever see two people that looked less like they was related to each other? You bet you didn't. Now I got a hunch that the prisoner follered her to that guy's apartment. What for, I don't know. Maybe for blackmail. He got onto what was goin' on, and makes up his mind to rake in a nice bunch of hush-money. That's been done a couple of times in the apartment buildin' I'm superintendent of. A feller I had workin' for me as a porter cleaned up five or six hundred dollars that way, he told me. This robbery ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... know," said Esther. "She is half crazy. Don't you see she is? She might have had a hundred reasons. She might have thought if he tried to steal it he'd get caught, and she could blackmail him." ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... but a goldsmith's. That is fit for kings, and rich men who represent kings, and a false state of property, to make presents of gold and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolical sin-offering,[463] or payment of blackmail.[464] ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... intend to do so. For one thing, these raiding dattos don't like to have white men on Mindanao. The spread of civilization here means that the old-time dattos will be driven into the wilds, and that there won't be any more plunder or blackmail money to live on. These Moros out yonder wouldn't have bothered me, this time, if I had paid the money ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... a', Robin," retorted the Bailie. "I mean ye disloyal traitor—worst of a'! Ye had better stick to your auld trade o' theft-boot and blackmail than ruining nations. And wha the deevil's this?" he continued, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... should at once be despatched to Wambe, whose kraal was two days' journey from where I was, telling him that I proposed to come and pay my respects to him in a few days, and to ask his formal permission to shoot in his country. Also I intimated that I was prepared to present him with 'hongo,' that is, blackmail, and that I hoped to do a little trade with him in ivory, of which I heard he had a ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... sir; I'll have no more of this. You are an impostor. I don't know where you obtained your information, but if you have come to levy blackmail on the strength of such a mad tale, ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... at Washington issues a statement characterizing Stegler's allegations about Capt. Boy-Ed as "false and fantastic," and "of a pathological character," and hinting at attempted blackmail. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... everything forgiven or, what is quite as satisfactory, forgotten. And now! Columns and columns, endlessly, day in, day out; the Paliser Case dragged from one court to another, the stench of it exceeded only by that of the Huns! But, by comparison, blackmail, however bitter, was sweet. When one may choose between honey and ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... sure it is a fraud, or blackmail, or something of the sort. For all that, he threatens ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... not going to tell before the girl, but it was blackmail which you and Pinto engineered. He paid his last instalment—the four thousand pounds was ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... intriguing, I will even say complotting, to get me up The Saleve. My doctor, having made me thoroughly interested in myself, got on to the subject of exercise; when my banker passed from the subject of interest on overdrafts to the advisability of my seeing the great Geneva view, it was undoubtedly blackmail; and as for my dentist—well, you know what dentists are and what mean advantages they take. But this one, I think, over-stepped the limit when he allowed the crown of my tooth to remind him of the crown of Mont Blanc; paused in fixing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... Blackmail, I hear you exclaim! And, so, if you wish, you may construe my behavior, since I reply—"Science first, science last!" To have been deprived of the means to pursue my experiments at this time would have been, I believed, to impoverish the world. For not even science could reveal to me ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... seem to be so terribly alarming to me after all. Why, for instance, do you fear those letters—this scoundrel Lang's confession? Kill him. Let the letter come to Adare. Cannot Josephine swear that she is innocent? Can she not have a story of her own showing how foully Lang tried to blackmail her into a crime? Would not Adare believe her word before that of a freebooter? And am I not here to swear—that ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... possible that the bellowing bluster of the guns at Metz may have allayed that fear in high places; and that terror of the Hun was already becoming less deathly among the cantons of a race which had trembled under Boche blackmail for a hundred years. However, for whatever reason it might have been, no Swiss patrols bothered the blue devils ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... behavior of men in high places, of men in low places, and men whom the people have been perforce obliged to trust. This is no new thing, though the struggle against it, the combination of the forces of reform and blackmail, of dreamers and highwaymen, ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... papers had reported the strange kidnapping of Gennaro's five-year-old daughter Adelina, his only child, and the sending of a demand for ten thousand dollars ransom, signed, as usual, with the mystic Black Hand—a name to conjure with in blackmail and extortion. ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... like herself, supperless for its sins to the purgatory of early bedtime. Split came stealing in from the other room, bringing Frank along that she might not cry and betray her elder sister's movements—a successful sort of blackmail the youngest Madigan often practised. And later, Kate, looking most conventional and full-dressed in this nightgowned society, brought succor for the starving. They munched chocolate and camped comfortably, three on each ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... so after the first meeting between Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas I heard that they were being pestered on account of some amorous letters which had been stolen from them. There was talk of blackmail and hints of ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... knowledge of anything, he will go on with the business on my lines as far as he can. Perhaps he may succeed, and, in any case, he will be almost certain to ruin my chances of success—that is, if I were not willing to buy him off. He would be pretty sure to try blackmail if he found he could not make good use of the knowledge ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... remain undisturbed. The very existence of a segregated district under police regulation means, of course, that the existing law must be nullified or at least rendered totally inoperative. When police regulation takes the place of law enforcement a species of municipal blackmail inevitably becomes intrenched. The police are forced to regulate an illicit trade, but because the men engaged in an unlawful business expect to pay money for its protection, the corruption of the police department is firmly ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... person," I flung at him. "You're trying to frighten me—to blackmail me—into selling you my lace for thirty shillings, when maybe it's worth twenty times that. But if any one calls the police, it will be me, to give you ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... but if Pitman is 7. Yes, but if I am right about dishonest and finds the Uncle Masterman, I can blackmail bill, he will know who Michael. Joseph is, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was known of this interview except the general impression in the family that Mrs. Catron had successfully resisted a vague attempt at blackmail from one of her husband's former dissolute companions. Yet it is only fair to say that Mrs. Catron snapped up, quite savagely, two male sympathizers on this subject, and cried a good deal for two days afterward, and once, in the hearing of her sister-in-law, to ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... as a parting shot, "that girls don't get into clubs here by blackmail. Even if Judy had put you up, you wouldn't have had the ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... to the highwaymen which infest many of the provinces, but that most offices anticipate these casualties by compounding for a certain annual sum which is paid regularly to the leader of the gang. For this blackmail the robbers of the district not only agree to abstain from pilfering themselves, but also to keep all others from doing so too. The arrangement suits the local officials admirably, as they escape those pains and penalties which would be exacted if it came to be known that their rule was too weak, ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... itself. He received twelve dollars a week, to be sure, for making telephone quotations and extending invoices between times; but when, as the evening shadows of pay-day descended and he drew his envelope, the procedure reminded him vaguely of blackmail, for any office-boy who did not stutter could have held ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... dishonoured. An historian, well used to the manipulation of text, he seized upon detached phrases of Clerambault's pamphlet and brandished them as an act of treason. A personal letter would not have satisfied his virtuous indignation; he chose a loud "yellow journal," a laboratory of blackmail despised by a million Frenchmen, who nevertheless swallowed all ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... the key in the lock. The door opened. He saw nothing but papers. They must be very valuable to have been put away in a safe, and the key to which to be of so much importance. Perhaps a thought of blackmail occurred to him as a useful possibility in helping him in his designs on Mademoiselle Stangerson. He quickly made a parcel of the papers and took it to the lavatory in the vestibule. Between the time of his first examination of the pavilion and the night of the murder of the ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... She was a dainty little blonde, with a baby face, in which were set two light-blue eyes, of a sort to widen often in demure wonder over most things in a surprising and naughty world. She had been convicted of blackmail, and she made no pretense even of innocence. Instead, she was inclined to boast over her ability to bamboozle men at her will. She was a natural actress of the ingenue role, and in that pose she could unfailingly beguile the heart of ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... sort of man who wants the world to get on, look for the removal (or the ingenious contrivance) of obstructions and entanglements, for the allaying (or the fomentation) of suspicion, misapprehension, and ignorant opposition, for administration (or class blackmail). ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... course, it may be some sort of blackmail." Christopher looked whimsically at his wife. "As I remember my father-in-law," he said, "it seems to me improbable that out of the past could come this engaging ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... absolutely deprive the ruled, and by the assertion of the individual rights of chiefs. Sultans, rajahs, maharajahs, datus, etc., under ordinary circumstances have been and still are in most of the unprotected States unable to control the chiefs under them, who have independently levied taxes and blackmail till the harassed cultivators came scarcely to care to possess property which might at any time be seized. Forced labor for a quarter of the laboring year was obligatory on all males, besides military service ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... the early days of his prosperity in New York, it had been necessary for him to come to an agreement with Sondheim and Kastner. And the more his prosperity increased the less he dared to resent their petty tyranny and blackmail, because, whether or not they might suffer under his public accusations, it was very certain that internment, if not imprisonment for a term of years, would be the fate reserved for himself. And ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... gallant and gracious individual, that his honour stood rooted in dishonour. He was, indeed, somewhat in the position of such an aristocrat in a romance, whose splendour has the dark spot of a secret and a sort of blackmail. There was, to begin with, an uncomfortable paradox in the tale of his pedigree. Many heroes have claimed to be descended from the gods, from beings greater than themselves; but he himself was far more heroic than his ancestors. His glory did not come from the Crusades but ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... threat of exposure they would simply leave England at once. Nothing could induce them to part—be quite sure of that. The man, as I said, has a high position, and you might be tempted to suppose that—to speak coarsely—he would pay blackmail. Don't think it for a moment. He is far too wise to persevere in what would be a lost game; they would at once go abroad. It is only on the stage that men consent to pay for the keeping of a secret which is quite ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... Walpole: Ive been here hardly ten minutes; and already he's tried to borrow 150 pounds from me. Then he proposed that I should get the money for him by blackmailing his wife; and youve just interrupted him in the act of suggesting that I should blackmail my patients into sitting to ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... afraid, slightly resembles a sort of sanctimonious blackmail, Winifred. The combination of morality, religion, and yourself is too powerful for me to combat.... So if my choice must be between permitting morality to publicly besmirch this young girl's reputation, and affixing my signature to the agreement you suggest, I ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... car, whose driver was already planning the ways to spend the money which he was to make by a little scientific blackmail. ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... equivocal, compromising question, he omitted to return the packet; the sender was to be under his thumb, bound to his service by the terrifying recollection of the question he had written down. You know the sort of things that wealthy and powerful personages would be likely to ask. This blackmail brought him in ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... "soldiering" when we came upon him, but he hopped up and chipped out a couple of steps about big enough for a cat, and charged us a franc or two for it. Then he sat down again, to doze till the next party should come along. He had collected blackmail from two or three hundred people already, that day, but had not chipped out ice enough to impair the glacier perceptibly. I have heard of a good many soft sinecures, but it seems to me that keeping toll-bridge on a glacier is the softest ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a dog who, suspecting I had some secret in emigrating here, tried to blackmail and ruin me," said Blandford, with a sudden expression of hatred that seemed inconsistent with anything that Ezekiel had ever known of his old master's character—"a scoundrel who tried to break up my new life as another had broken up the old." He stopped and recovered ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... with criminal intentions could submit gracefully to that much blackmail. Besides, Grim was rather pressed for time and couldn't afford ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... I have no hesitation in saying that there are evil-disposed, Indians, especially of late years, who deliberately seek to provoke disagreeable incidents by their own misbehaviour, either in the hope of levying blackmail or in order to make political capital by posing as the victims of English brutality. But even when Englishmen put themselves entirely in the wrong, there is perhaps a tendency amongst Anglo-Indians—chiefly amongst the non-official community—to treat such cases with ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... frankly. That's why I took in O'Brien. I wasn't supposed to keep any liquor in the house—that was one of the conditions. But damn it, I wasn't born to be a teetotaler, and that's the plain truth, Mr. Merton. That devil O'Brien found me out and started to blackmail me—" ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... persons in which the diction is elevated, the movement solemn and stately, and the catastrophe sad; a kind of drama of a lofty or mournful cast, dealing with the dark side of life and character." Richard Harding Davis's "Blackmail" is a ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... him in the European Magazine, Jan. 1786. BOSWELL. There we learn that he was in his time a grammar-school usher, actor, poet, the puffing partner in a quack medicine, and tutor to a youthful Earl. He was suspected of levying blackmail by threats of satiric publications, and he suffered from a disease which rendered him an object almost offensive to sight. He was born in 1738 or ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... "'twas blackmail the baggage was after, ye can take it from me, and—keep the door open when ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... "Consequently excluding blackmail!" she laughed, her mood like ice again. "When you quarrelled with Hume a year ago you called him a ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... act, by Charles Stuart. 2 males, 1 female, and a non-speaking part for a five-year-old child. 1 interior scene. Time, 25 minutes. A powerful, dramatic sketch, wherein is told how a scoundrel attempts to blackmail a wife, and is ...
— Three Hats - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Alfred Debrun
... in turn appealed to the Acting Superintendent. "See! It's nothing less than blackmail. Is he any good, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... him an apt man of business, and entrusted him with a good deal of the financial management of his educational schemes; in the course of which it is at least probable that he applied the twin practices of bribery and blackmail, which not without reason were attributed at a later date to his servants. Yet, however unscrupulous he may have been in his dealings with others, to the master whose service he had followed he was always loyal. Wolsey made him his secretary; and when the Cardinal fell, the secretary's ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... put his arm around Lyla as they walked. If they killed him, it would have to be without their having the satisfaction of the pictures they wanted with which to blackmail her. ...
— —And Devious the Line of Duty • Tom Godwin
... "You don't have to dress it up like this," I protested. "This is blackmail or extortion, I'm not sure which. I'm not joining anything you bunch of creeps are a ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... fez had superseded my uniform coat and cap. We all carried rifles slung across our backs, and revolvers belted around our waists, and were transformed generally into as fantastic brigands as ever sallied forth from the passes of the Apennines to levy blackmail upon unwary travellers. A timid tourist, meeting us as we galloped furiously across the plain toward Pushchin would have fallen on his knees and pulled out his purse without asking ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... Spofford. The third edition opens with a preface (signed Asa G. Eddy) attacking Edward Arens, and contains the famous chapter on "Demonology" in which Mrs. Eddy devotes forty-six pages to settling scores with half a dozen of her early students, charging one and another with theft, adultery, murder, blackmail, etc. The Reverend Mr. Wiggin, when he revised Mrs. Eddy's book in 1885, persuaded her to omit these vituperative passages on the ground ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... of this blackmail soon became a serious affair. The ruler, or pasha, of Tripoli was bold enough to declare war against this country, and cut down the flagstaff in front of our consul's house. Two other Barbary states, Morocco and Tunis, began to be impudent ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... when we begin, but later we find we are it. If the lawyers would form a union and agree not to listen to any man's tale of woe until he placed a hundred dollars in the attorney's ginger-jar, it would be a benefit untold to humanity. Contingent fees and blackmail have much ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... gutter, what advantages had she had? Her mother died in childbirth and her father, a professional gambler, abandoned the little girl to the tender mercies of an indifferent neighbor. When she was about eight years old her father was arrested. He refused to pay police blackmail, was indicted, railroaded to prison and died soon after in convict stripes. There was no provision for Annie's maintenance, so at the age of nine she found herself toiling in a factory, a helpless victim of the brutalizing system of child slavery which in spite ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... of blackmail, and was sentenced to one year at hard labor in the State prison, in addition to a ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... with one that would be hard to circumvent if it came to a matter of craftiness. And at last, after a lot of thinking, as I walked about in the dusk, it struck me that Crone might be for taking a hand in the game of which I had heard, but had never seen played—blackmail. ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... 1849, and executed on the 18th of September, 1850. Thakur Purshad and his cousin, Bhugwunt Sing, remained at large, and at the head of their gang of robbers continued to plunder the country, and levy blackmail from landholders and village communities till the 1st of February 1851, though pressed by a force of one thousand infantry, fifty troopers, and some ten guns. On the morning of that day, Captain Hearsey, commanding a detachment ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... papers and put them into my pocket. I did not then feel, nor have I since been able to understand, all the indignation which has been poured on Lord Clive's head for this artifice, by which a treacherous, overreaching scoundrel was robbed of the blackmail he had tried to extort. As to the charge which has been made against that great man of having caused Admiral Watson's name to be forged to the second treaty, I can only say that it was the general opinion at the ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... who has spent his lifetime lending money and hoarding it; he has something like eighty or a hundred millions now, I believe, and once every six months or so you will read in the newspapers that some woman has made an attempt to blackmail him. That is because he does to every pretty girl who comes into his office just exactly what old Waterman did to you; and those who are arrested for blackmail are simply the ones who are so unwise as ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... made a fool of you? Chance threw into your hands a secret of the Lamottes; you need not stare, we ain't fools down here at the factories. Maybe I know what that secret is, and maybe I don't. It's no matter. I know more of your doings than you give me credit for, John Burrill. Now, what must you do? Blackmail would have satisfied a sensible man; but straightway you are seized with the idea that you were born to be a gentleman. You! Then you form your plan; and you force, by means of the power in your hands, that beautiful young lady ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Ambrose Blaurer to Bullinger, "labors under such hatred of some whom he obscures by his light that he is considered the worst of heretics by them." Among other things he was accused of levying tribute from his followers by a species of blackmail, threatening publicly to denounce them unless they gave ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Press cannot complain if words are ascribed to them which they never uttered, if they are held guilty of deeds from which they would shrink in horror. Law and custom are alike powerless to fight this tyranny, which is the most ingenious and irksome form of blackmail yet invented. ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... Tammany Hall permanently in one way—by making the government of a city as human, as kindly, as jolly as Tammany Hall. I am aware of the contract-grafts, the franchise-steals, the dirty streets, the bribing and the blackmail, the vice-and-crime partnerships, the Big Business alliances of Tammany Hall. And yet it seems to me that Tammany has a better perception of human need, and comes nearer to being what a government ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... He knew as well as any one that the Conti were ruined and could not raise any such sum as he proposed to demand, even to save Sabina's good name. It would apparently be necessary to extract the blackmail from Volterra by some means to be discovered. On the other hand, Volterra was not only rich, he also possessed much power, and it would be somewhat dangerous to ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... to turn him down hard; and I believe he stole that necklace of Van Ruyne's from her during the short time she had it—either just to get her into trouble and be revenged on her, or to get her into his power. Whichever it was—to blackmail her—for he'd cadged on her for money before her father died—or to scare her into going to him for help—I'd like to hunt the worthless hound down for it. And I'd never ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... secretary for the arguments with which to support them and the actual words in which to give them being. But on this occasion he felt that a special effort was required of him. He would show Lady Marchpane that the blackmail of yesterday had only roused him to a still greater effort on behalf of his country. He would write ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... thyself!" he cried, in the dialect. "Thou'st done for thyself! And I'll have thee by the heels for embezzlement, and blackmail as well." He waved his arms. "May God strike me if I give thee any quarter ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... as the 'practisers.' Later, by Leicester's command, Blount brought Appleyard to him at Greenwich. What speeches passed Blount did not know, but Leicester was very angry, and bade Appleyard begone, 'with great words of defiance.' It is clear that, with or without grounds, Appleyard was trying to blackmail Leicester. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... Aylmore's release. Aylmore goes abroad, makes money, in time comes back, starts new career, gets into Parliament, becomes big man. In time, Maitland, who, after his time, has also gone abroad, also comes back. The two meet. Maitland probably tries to blackmail Aylmore or threatens to let folk know that the flourishing Mr. Aylmore, M.P., is an ex-convict. Result—Aylmore lures him to the Temple and quiets him. Pooh!—the whole thing's clear as noontide, as I ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... your husband has kept a close watch over their movements instead of informing the police. He hoped to recover the papers and, at the same time, that compromising article which has enabled the two brothers to hold over him threats of exposure and blackmail." ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... remarked meditatively, "have you ever considered the possibilities of blackmail if the right sort of evidence were obtained under this new 'white-slavery act'? Scandals that some of the fast set may be inclined to wink at, that at worst used to end in Reno, become felonies with federal prison sentences looming up in ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... bunch and control 'em than be blackmailed by 'em, Brydges! If every penny grafter didn't hold up the corporation, every damned little squirt of a county supervisor and road contractor and town councilman, if they didn't hold the corporation up for blackmail way the highwaymen of old used to hold up the lone traveller, if they didn't hold us up for blackmail, Brydges, it wouldn't be necessary for us to man that gang across ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... it, aren't we?" demanded Shirley, as he placed the record in the grip. "Don't you see the wisdom of knowing who may systematically blackmail you after secrecy is obtained. This is a matter of the future, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... that the roof of a veranda is not intended to be walked on. Your curiosity is insufferable. I suppose it has become professional. Or are you hoping for blackmail? If so, the hotel is the ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... course, was before I even saw the Judge, but I was getting my training, and learning how easy money could be made to come through a little fol-de-rol here and a bit of blackmail there, and introducing one class of society to another in the next place. It was easy to salve my conscience, because the old adventuress was curing many a poor sleepless or rheumatic creature who could spend money like dirt to get the result, and besides, she took an interest ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... King, that chance throws in their way. Sometimes they act as a kind of irregular police force, levying chantage from those whom they detect in the commission of an offence; and, when crime is scarce, they often exact blackmail from wholly innocent people by threatening to accuse them of some ill-deed, unless their goodwill is purchased at their own price. They are known as the Budak Raja—or King's Youths—and are greatly feared by the people, for they are as reckless, as ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... to believe that, wouldn't you? You would like to have a dying man's oath that there was nothing but a pack of lies to the whole thing, blackmail of the crudest, most ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... articles in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopaedia, under "Bedouins" and "Anzah," gives full particulars respecting the Anizeh, otherwise Anaessi, tribe—that they were in the habit of joining the Wahabees and other Bedouin tribes in attacking caravans and levying blackmail. The Turkish Pasha at Damascus had to pay annually passage-money to ensure the safety of the pilgrims to Mecca. On one occasion two of the Bedouin sheiks were decoyed by the Turks and killed; but the Anaessi, aided by ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... sorts of damage; and not content with this, they actually squatted there on land which was no more theirs than it is mine (I am thankful to say), where they insulted and even assaulted innocent passers-by, and levied blackmail on John Bull's adjacent tenants, and, in short, became the terror of the neighbourhood and a disgrace to civilization. And when Mr. Bull's watchman (I told you there is no regular police force, and everybody has to look after himself), when Thomas ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... fact. It was his barber (if I remember right) who had to be treated on a confidential footing with regard to this peculiarity; and his barber, instead of behaving like a go-ahead person of the Succeed-at-all-costs school and trying to blackmail King Midas, went away and whispered this splendid piece of society scandal to the reeds, who enjoyed it enormously. It is said that they also whispered it as the winds swayed them to and fro. I look reverently ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... conduct; you hear her speech; is it likely—is it possible—that I could have married such a person? You see the absurdity of the thing. No, gentlemen; this person is a lunatic, laboring under some fantastic hallucination, or she is an impostor, conspiring, with others, to blackmail me. I demand, in the name of justice, that she be arrested and sent to prison for her flagrant breach of the peace in her outrageous assault upon me ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... no tears, no maledictions—just good, hard sense, Bingle, that's what it was. Not many of them would have been so decent about it. They usually make a bluff or something of the sort—money, you know, regular blackmail. But she didn't. She got out as quietly as a mouse, left no trace behind, no regrets, no complaints. Just a note saying she understood and wishing me ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... consent twelve, and the penalty for rape death, which, indeed, is the common law, but which law has extraordinary consequences when the age is raised, as it is in many States, to eighteen. Two more States adopt the laws against abduction and one a statute against blackmail. ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... funds which the complainant recognized were legally in the hands of Aguinaldo. It could be carried on only with great difficulty without his presence and without his account books. Meetings were held, and Artacho was denounced as attempting to extort blackmail, but he refused to yield, and Aguinaldo, rather than explain the inner workings of the Hongkong junta before a British court, prepared for flight. A summons was issued for his appearance before the supreme court of Hongkong ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... they tried to blackmail him about some of his old Eurasian love affairs, or else some official secret they had spied out. You see the niggers in the marble house were all Ram Lal's friends, and any one of them could have left the murderers alone to do their work and then ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... in an ironical grin. "All right, take it that way, if you want to. He let on he thought I was trying to blackmail him." ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... anxiety hasn't, by begetting them, placed himself in a position of captivity to fortune, or to the future, or whatever you like to call it. He very much has. He's backed a bill that any day may fall due and find him without means to meet it; he's let himself in for blackmail, always over him a threat. But I'm talking about men above the struggle line. They don't, in their children, give hostages. It's the woman does that. Men don't give nor forfeit anything. It's the woman gives and forfeits. Why, when his friends ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... in Hampton's Magazine for September, 1909, says that he might have accepted bribes during his first year in office, from gamblers, dive keepers and other criminals, amounting to $600,000 or even a million dollars. He thinks that the graft and blackmail of New York City amount perhaps to a hundred million dollars a year. He asks the question, Who receives the graft? and answers: "Patrolmen, police captains and inspectors, employees in city offices, city officials, politicians, high and ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... antagonism of race—that instinct older than civilization—was in the voice with which he ordered her out of his sight. "It was downright blackmail. The fool was trying to blackmail me," he thought. "If I'd yielded an inch I'd have been at her mercy. It's a pretty pass things have come to when men have to protect themselves from negro women." The more he reflected on her impudence, the stronger ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... poor man." It reads simply and plainly, "Thou shalt not steal." No good whatever will come from that warped and mock morality which denounces the misdeeds of men of wealth and forgets the misdeeds practiced at their expense; which denounces bribery, but blinds itself to blackmail; which foams with rage if a corporation secures favors by improper methods, and merely leers with hideous mirth if the corporation is itself wronged. The only public servant who can be trusted honestly ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... human inhabitants. These hundred miles of crag and forest were a bulwark none too wide or strong against the incursions of the terrible Mohawks, whose name sent a shiver of fear throughout savage New England, and whose forbearance the Nipmucks and Mohegans were fain to ensure by a yearly payment of blackmail. Each summer there came two Mohawk elders, secure in the dread that Iroquois prowess had everywhere inspired; and up and down the Connecticut valley they seized the tribute of weapons and wampum, and proclaimed the last ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... nervous, 'cause Monty's a bad man to be up against. Remember: she claimed that she knows Monty and he knows her. She means by that that he knows she's a desperado, and she thinks he'll draw the line at a trip that promises murder and blackmail and such like dirty work. So she puts a scare into us with a view to our throwing a scare into him. If I scare any one, it's going to be that dame herself. I'll ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... hadn't regular or much. But the section's grown well-to-do lately on account of the cocoa trade, and I gather what the Injuns pay on it now is about ordinary taxes. Now, if the Injuns pay the old man a sort of blackmail to get him to moderate his earthquakes, and he calls it his proper rents, why, I say, a rose by any name'll smell as sweet, supposing the commission for collecting is the same. That's the idea. Why not? All he's got to do is to stay in ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... none but he and Satan could find it, and the longest liver should take all'; how, out of some such tradition, Edgar Poe built up the wonderful tale of the Gold Bug; how the planters of certain Southern States, and even the Governor of North Carolina, paid him blackmail, and received blackmail from him likewise; and lastly, how he met a man as brave as he, but with a clear conscience and a clear sense of duty, in the person of Mr. Robert Maynard, first lieutenant of the Pearl, who found him after endless difficulties, and fought him ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... machine drawing, and I took up these subjects with considerable avidity. Exercise I got chiefly in the form of walks. There was some cricket in the summer and football in the winter sustained by young men's clubs that levied a parasitic blackmail of the big people and the sitting member, but I was never very keen at these games. I didn't find any very close companions among the youths of Wimblehurst. They struck me, after my cockney schoolmates, as loutish and slow, servile ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... December in New Orleans. Up the Mississippi. Leaving Henry in Massachusetts. Back in Maine Again. Return to Boston, Profitable Horse-Trading. Plenty of Money. My First Wife's Children. How they Have Been Brought Up. A Barefaced Robbery. Attempt to Blackmail Me. My Son Tries to Rob and Kill Me. My Rescue Last ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... conceived the happy idea of being paid for their silence and services. The brigand, then, was hoist with his own petard and forced to disgorge his ill-gotten summer gains to these blood-suckers, who extorted heavy blackmail under menaces of disclosure to the police, thriving on their double infamy to such an extent that they acquired immense riches. One of the wealthiest men in Italy descends from this class; his two hundred million (?) francs are invested, mostly, in England; every ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... me off the life raft. I fight with every weapon I can lay hands on. And I know as well as you do that, if you get into serious trouble through this loan, at least five men we could both name would have to step in and save the bank and cover up the scandal. You'll blackmail them, just as you've blackmailed them before, and they you. Blackmail's a legitimate part of the game. Nobody appreciates that better than you." It was no time for the smug hypocrisies under which we people down town usually conduct our business—just as the desperadoes used to patrol the highways ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... illegal. It is worth while considering whether it would not be wise to confer on the Government the right of civil action against the beneficiary of a rebate for at least twice the value of the rebate; this would help stop what is really blackmail. Elevator allowances should be stopped, for they have now grown to such an extent that they are demoralizing and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and edifying books, replete with talent if not with sincerity, as well as an innumerable mass of satires, pamphlets, statements, diatribes which caused all the princes of his day to tremble, and through making them tremble also brought gold into the coffers of Aretino; he had raised blackmail to the ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... soldier was exemplary, till, watching his chance, he killed his colonel, and managed to get clear away. With a band of deserters, who chose him for their chief, he had taken refuge beyond the wild and waterless Bolson de Tonoro. The haciendas paid him blackmail in cattle and horses; extraordinary stories were told of his powers and of his wonderful escapes from capture. He used to ride, single-handed, into the villages and the little towns on the Campo, driving a pack mule before him, with two revolvers in his belt, go straight to the shop ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... had, I would now be going peaceful, with the kind policeman instead of being a willing victim of a very pleasant form of blackmail." ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... is, that Parslett saw the real murderer of Daniel Multenius come out of Multenius's side-door, while he, Parslett, was standing at his own; that he recognized him, that he tried to blackmail him yesterday, and that the man contrived to poison him, in such a fashion that Parslett died shortly after leaving him," said Ayscough, confidently. "It's but a theory—but I'll lay anything I'm not ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... perpetrated upon me and mine, and must refer you for disgraceful details to my agent, Mr. Peleg Peterson of Whitefield, —— Co., ——. Hoping that you will not add to the injury you have already inflicted, by further complicity in this audacious scheme of fraud and blackmail, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... this house. You may remember a discussion arising one morning on the subject of a letter from Sandacre Court. That letter, I am now convinced, was written by the same hand, and these facts point to the very unpleasant conclusion that the man who wrote them—Guillaume Rodolphe—has been levying blackmail. He is apparently aware of a most unfortunate episode which occurred at Valpre ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... my sight, sir! But have it from me first that Rickie and his aunt have both behaved most generously. No, no, Agnes, I'll not be interrupted. Garbled versions must not get about. If the Wonham man is not satisfied now, he must be insatiable. He cannot levy blackmail on us for ever. Sir, I give you two minutes; then you will be ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... truth of the situation flashed over her. He had come with an offer that set her bidding against her husband for the letters. And in a case of dollars her husband would win. One thousand dollars! It was blackmail. ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... we choose to say, what limit do you think he will place upon his extortions now that he holds our secret? We have taught him his music, and he will make us do our part in the chorus, and can blackmail us as ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... His whole interest is in transferring the wealth of the minority to his own pocket. There was a time when he thought that universal suffrage would get for him what he desires; but he has lost all faith in constitutional methods. To levy blackmail on the community, under threats of civil war, seems to him a more expeditious way of gaining his object. Monopolies are to be established by pitiless coercion of those who wish to keep their freedom. The trade unions are large capitalists; they are well able to start factories for themselves and ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... nil; mentally and physically my faculties are at your disposal. Do you happen to know anything in the lady's past or present that she would not care to have exploited? Blackmail, yes? I have no scruples. What do ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... the roof of a veranda is not intended to be walked on. Your curiosity is insufferable. I suppose it has become professional. Or are you hoping for blackmail? If so, the hotel is the ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... utterance. "Only at the very first did he make any effort to disguise his nature, or conceal the object of his marriage. He endeavored to wring money from my people, and—and struck me when I refused him aid. He failed because I blocked him; tried blackmail and failed again, although I saved him from exposure. If he had ever cared for me, by this time his love had changed to dislike or indifference. He left me for weeks at a time, often alone and in poverty. My father ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... same Ab Handy who once did business with a marked deck; who cheated widows and orphans; who sold bogus bonds; who got on two sides of lawsuits, and whose note was never good at any bank unless backed by blackmail. ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... to the half-effaced initials upon his arm, and die of fright when he had a letter from Fordingham? Then I remembered that Fordingham was in Hampshire, and that this Mr. Beddoes, whom the seaman had gone to visit and presumably to blackmail, had also been mentioned as living in Hampshire. The letter, then, might either come from Hudson, the seaman, saying that he had betrayed the guilty secret which appeared to exist, or it might come from Beddoes, warning an old confederate that such a ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... will boast about it! He may blackmail all of you. He may convince the public that he ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... peaceful and settled government. The consequence is that general lawlessness prevails in the districts remote from the towns; while in the forests that clothe the side of Mount Etna, there are numerous hordes of bandits who set the authorities at defiance, levy blackmail throughout the surrounding villages, and carry off wealthy inhabitants, and put them to ransom. No one in his senses would think of ascending that mountain, unless he had something like an ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... man remained-motionless, staring up. The word "blackmail" resumed its buzzing in Mr. Ventnor's ears. The impudence the consummate impudence of it from this fraudulent old ruffian with one foot in bankruptcy and one foot in the grave, if ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... London, and we sent it off the next day. He left here on good terms with everybody, but he told us distinctly that the business on which he was summoned away was of a very unpleasant nature. I think that some one was trying to blackmail him. Now you can make what inquiries you like, but I am very certain of one thing, that anything you may discover is more likely to bring discredit upon Lord Ronald himself than ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... strictly commercial—and peculiar. There were fingerprints to be photographed and identified for purpose of private revenge, photographs of people to be merged and repictured in compromising closeness for reasons of blackmail. And even X-Ray photography was included in the scope of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... anything Pop Yak had ever hinted, but the funny thing was he had to find it out step by step for himself. That kind of excitement wasn't in stories. The adventures of explorers, research men, and detectives were written into stories, but not money men. The life and growth and death and blackmail of individuals were in the stories he had read, but not the murder of planets and cities, the control and blackmail of whole populations, in this odd legal game with the simple rules. Funny there hadn't been lurid ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... one time or another and left loopholes through which the police were able to attack them and break them up. But Rudolph Rayne had flung his octopus-like tentacles so far afield that he had actually attached to him—by fear of blackmail—an eminent Counsel who appeared for the defense of any member of the circle who happened to make a slip. That well-known member of the Bar I will call Mr. Henry Moyser, a lawyer whose fame was of world-wide repute, and ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... your visit is blackmail?" he said. "You will fail in this, as you will also fail in your effort to force Mr. Gorham's hand. You have been misinformed—I have bought ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... in 1838 to a friend:—"I am getting a kind of fame as the literary man of Scotland. Thirty years ago, in the North countries, a fellow achieved an immense reputation as 'The Tollman,' being the solitary individual entitled by law to levy blackmail at a ferry." In 1860 he was made Honorary President of the Associated Societies of the University of Edinburgh, his competitor being Thackeray. This was the place held afterward by Lord Lytton, Sir David Brewster, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... paying Rambaugh blackmail for about four years. This morning I decided to stop it, and looked your name up in the telephone book. Rambaugh must ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... hard on what is called blackmail. It is therefore essential that the applicant should write nothing that might afterwards be twisted to ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... course, a mystery, but once having taken the false step it was not my business to inquire. Not until quite recently did I discover his real position as chief of a gang of international crooks, who combined forgery with blackmail and theft upon a colossal scale. That he intended Bellairs should furnish him with an impression of the safe key of a diamond dealer in Hatton Garden is now plain. Bellairs defied him and threatened to denounce him to the police. Therefore, ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... of the shameful conditions of affairs in a Raad of which so much good was expected did as much as anything could do to destroy all hope. It was a painful exhibition, and the sordid details which came to light, the unblushing attempts to levy blackmail on those who were threatened with pillage by would-be concessionaires, the shameless conduct of Raad members fighting as hirelings to impose a fresh burden on their own country, sickened ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... is to hear that name again. Seven years since then. Here I am called Margaret Henson, and nobody knows. And now you have found out. Do you come here to blackmail and ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... me first that Rickie and his aunt have both behaved most generously. No, no, Agnes, I'll not be interrupted. Garbled versions must not get about. If the Wonham man is not satisfied now, he must be insatiable. He cannot levy blackmail on us for ever. Sir, I give you two minutes; then you will ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... chiefs. Sultans, rajahs, maharajahs, datus, etc., under ordinary circumstances have been and still are in most of the unprotected States unable to control the chiefs under them, who have independently levied taxes and blackmail till the harassed cultivators came scarcely to care to possess property which might at any time be seized. Forced labor for a quarter of the laboring year was obligatory on all males, besides military ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... said Eddie. "I believe he came to blackmail you. To see what he could get out of you if he offered to stop the marriage. Well, why not? If these fellows believe all the money ought to be taken away from the capitalists, why should they care how it's done? I can't see much difference between robbing a ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... they've chucked me over, sir. They say I insult them by thinking they would ever do such a thing. That was when I went and asked 'em for my money. Last thing was, when I told 'em it was their doing, and they set me at it, they said I were trying to blackmail 'em— that they never thought I meant such a thing, and that if I warn't off they'd hand me over ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... O'Brien. I wasn't supposed to keep any liquor in the house—that was one of the conditions. But damn it, I wasn't born to be a teetotaler, and that's the plain truth, Mr. Merton. That devil O'Brien found me out and started to blackmail me—" ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... pointed his hand at Joe's birthmark. "When you bent forward to pick up your cap I remembered you the moment I put my eyes on that streak of white hair," and then, sure that he had before him a victim whom he could blackmail with perfect impunity, he inquired, "Have you been back to Rugby since I saw you the last time, and say, McDonald, how are the chances for your helping a poor friend to the price of a meal and a ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... lost rights. Bertha Dorset, to save herself, had not scrupled to ruin her by an open falsehood; why should she hesitate to make private use of the facts that chance had put in her way? After all, half the opprobrium of such an act lies in the name attached to it. Call it blackmail and it becomes unthinkable; but explain that it injures no one, and that the rights regained by it were unjustly forfeited, and he must be a formalist indeed who can find no plea ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... said Hartley with decision. "And as for your opinion of Heath—well, it strikes me as curious that a man of good character should be a mark for blackmail." ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... had confessed her wretched secret which she had thought so wholly her own—and confessed it—horrible and degrading thought!—to Roger Delane. Not in words indeed—but in act. No innocent woman would have paid the blackmail. The dark room in which she lay seemed to be haunted ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Kharvani's image, the place where every one must go who needed favors of the priests, the central hub of treason and intrigue, where every plot was hatched and every rumor had its origin—the ultimate, mazy, greedy, undisgorging goal of every bribe and every blackmail-wrung rupee! ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... science of government consists in being honest." With a back door to every ordinance that touched the lives of the people, if indeed the whole thing was not the subject of open ridicule or the vehicle of official blackmail, it seemed as if we had provided a perfect municipal machinery for bringing the law into contempt with the young, and so for wrecking citizenship by ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... mother died in childbirth and her father, a professional gambler, abandoned the little girl to the tender mercies of an indifferent neighbor. When she was about eight years old her father was arrested. He refused to pay police blackmail, was indicted, railroaded to prison and died soon after in convict stripes. There was no provision for Annie's maintenance, so at the age of nine she found herself toiling in a factory, a helpless victim of the brutalizing system of child ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... am. Did you ever see two people that looked less like they was related to each other? You bet you didn't. Now I got a hunch that the prisoner follered her to that guy's apartment. What for, I don't know. Maybe for blackmail. He got onto what was goin' on, and makes up his mind to rake in a nice bunch of hush-money. That's been done a couple of times in the apartment buildin' I'm superintendent of. A feller I had workin' for me as a porter ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... nightgowned world, sent, like herself, supperless for its sins to the purgatory of early bedtime. Split came stealing in from the other room, bringing Frank along that she might not cry and betray her elder sister's movements—a successful sort of blackmail the youngest Madigan often practised. And later, Kate, looking most conventional and full-dressed in this nightgowned society, brought succor for the starving. They munched chocolate and camped comfortably, three on each bed, while Sissy told her adventures. When she came to the description ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... before Midsummer day, the feast of St. John the Baptist. While Robert was watching Stirling, his brother Edward devastated the country round Carlisle, lording it for three days at the bishop's castle of Rose, and levying heavy blackmail on the men ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Featherstone never spoke about his life in the Old Country, and Foster was surprised when he stated his intention of spending a few months there. It looked as if Daly knew his secret and had used his knowledge to blackmail him. ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... from private individuals by means of theft and blackmail has not been levied by order of the 'committee,' but by certain unscrupulous Nihilists acting on their own behalf. However, we are all the more ready to admit that such things have been done when we remember that only five such cases are ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... terminated with the Chinese maintaining all their posts on the frontier, and the retreat of the Mongols, who had suffered too heavy a loss to feel elated at their repulse of Suta. At the same time no solid peace had been obtained, and the Mongols continued to harass the borders, and to exact blackmail from all who traversed the desert. When Hongwou endeavored to attain a settlement by a stroke of policy his efforts were not more successful. His kind reception of the Mongol Prince Maitilipala has been referred to, and about the year 1374 he sent him back to Mongolia, in the hope that he would ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... pay one penny? What proofs have you? It looks to me, with all respect to you, Mr. Blake, like an ordinary case of blackmail." ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... lay in his cell he chewed the cud of revenge. Yes, let them take him before the magistrate; it was not he that was afraid of justice. He would expose her, the false Catholic, the she-cat! A pretty convert! Another man would have preferred to blackmail her, he told himself with righteous indignation, especially in such straits of poverty. But he—the thought had scarcely crossed his mind. He had not even thought of her helping him, only of the joy of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... a profitable one. It is nothing of the kind. On the threat of exposure they would simply leave England at once. Nothing could induce them to part—be quite sure of that. The man, as I said, has a high position, and you might be tempted to suppose that—to speak coarsely—he would pay blackmail. Don't think it for a moment. He is far too wise to persevere in what would be a lost game; they would at once go abroad. It is only on the stage that men consent to pay for the keeping of a secret which is quite certain ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... I can only guess at, without being able to explain my conviction. But, honestly, fellows, I hardly think these people are as bad as you make out. I know blackmail is practiced over in Italy a lot. And that one of the favorite ways to get money is to kidnap the son or daughter of a rich man, and demand a heavy ransom. But in this case they would hardly pick Nat Scott for a pigeon to be plucked. His father ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... ago that a regular business of blackmail was conducted in connection with the leading assignation houses. Ladies, as well as gentlemen, who visited them by appointment were "shadowed" and "spotted"; sometimes followed home and their standing and character in the community carefully determined, preparatory to ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... Earth needed a star-drive badly; a few more years, and the need would be desperate. And if a group of power-hungry men could control a star-drive and hold it for profit, they could blackmail an entire planet for centuries, and build an empire in space that could never ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... Was it blackmail Stella had levied on Phelps, I wondered? Was she taking from him to give to Gordon? Had Stella broken him? Was she the real cause of the tangle in his affairs? And had Phelps in insane ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... Pederson now, whose face took on a sudden febrile gleam. "Blackmail ... by God, Beardsley, that's it! And I have the proof! Sure, it was Carmack I was after, but I dug out a lot more—" Pederson shot a challenging look at the Minister of Justice. "It goes back some years, but I can prove that Amos Carmack had enough on Mandleco ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... at the silhouette of his antagonist with a tense set of his jaws. Many plans were revolving in his mind. Moralists might have labelled them "blackmail," but Lars Larssen was utterly free from scruples where his own interests were concerned. Honesty with him was a mere matter of policy. To a man with the average sense of honour, such an attitude of mind is scarcely ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... other, he tried the key in the lock. The door opened. He saw nothing but papers. They must be very valuable to have been put away in a safe, and the key to which to be of so much importance. Perhaps a thought of blackmail occurred to him as a useful possibility in helping him in his designs on Mademoiselle Stangerson. He quickly made a parcel of the papers and took it to the lavatory in the vestibule. Between the time of his first examination of the ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... that—we'll put it up to our lawyers. Maybe they'll call it conspiracy, maybe blackmail. They'll make it whatever ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... day Rivers entered the room where Lamb lay abed, he saw at once that he was better. He meant to make plain to a revengeful man that Josiah had friends and that the attempt to blackmail him would be dangerous. Lamb was sitting up in bed apparently relieved, and was reading a newspaper. The moment he spoke Rivers knew that he was a far more intelligent person than the man ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Vanderbilt loomed up the richest magnate in the United States. His ambition was consummated; what mattered it to him that his fortune was begot in blackmail and extortion, bribery and theft? Now that he had his hundred millions he had the means to demand adulation and the semblance of respect, if not respect itself. The commercial world admired, even while it opposed, him; in his methods it saw at bottom the abler ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... "I can ring for the gendarmes to take you back to the cells, and you will stand your trial for blackmail, theft, assault and robbery." ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... right now, Barker. You're the only person except the Chief here, and myself, who knows that Mrs. Lawrence is connected with the case. I want her name kept out of it. Of course that makes it impossible to arrest you for blackmail—and so, if you tell me the entire truth, I'm going to let you go free. But if I ever hear of her name in connection with this case I'll know that you have leaked—and I'll get you if it ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... McGuffey for two. You'd have the bulge on me forever after. You could blackmail me until I dassen't call my ship ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... wages. The latter had lately been forced down to the minimum, as profits had been well-nigh extinguished, by the general depression of business. In fear of actual want, the populace rose, wasted farms, destroyed factories, plundered and levied blackmail—in a word, tried to inflict on others the misery that had maddened themselves. The word has been given to the most quiet and law-abiding people in Europe to defend themselves: a step far more significant of stern intentions than the sharpest military repression. Yet the Government ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... particle. Henceforward she would be branded as flighty, irrational, not to be depended upon. Her living would be taken away, but something even worse might happen. She stood the chance of landing herself in a libel action, she might indeed be accused of having the intent to blackmail. She knew one case of the kind—the woman in question had ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... "And you can rise in the Senate on Tuesday and move your vote of want of confidence and object to our concession, and when you have resumed your seat the Secretary of Mines will rise in his turn and tell the Senate how you stole out here in the night and tried to blackmail me, and begged me to bribe you to be silent, and that you offered to throw over your friends and to take all that we would give you and keep it yourself. That will make you popular with your friends, and will ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... raiding dattos don't like to have white men on Mindanao. The spread of civilization here means that the old-time dattos will be driven into the wilds, and that there won't be any more plunder or blackmail money to live on. These Moros out yonder wouldn't have bothered me, this time, if I had paid the money their ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... Thane's parents and pleaded for the righting of the wrong. Howard Thane had, by this time, lost all patience with his son. He refused to have anything to do with the matter. The young man's mother ordered Miss Ritter's mother out of the apartment and threatened to have her arrested for blackmail. Shortly after this episode, we were consulted by Mrs. Ritter, much against the wishes of her daughter, who shrank from the notoriety and the disgrace of a lawsuit. The elder Thane was adamant in his decision that his son ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... again: "Well, I've stated your case, messieurs. It amounts to simple, clumsy blackmail. I'm to split my earnings with you, or you'll denounce me to the police. That's ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... her, he always liked nice-spoken nice-looking girls; for her sake and her mother's (a very decent woman), he had forgiven Tom many irregularities. At last his patience gave out and Tom was prosecuted; when arrested, Tom had tried blackmail; Sir Winterton was not to be bullied, and Tom's speech from the dock was no more than an outburst ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... fake story ten years old, news? That ain't news! It's spite work. Even your dirty paper, Waldemar, wouldn't rake that kind of muck up after ten years. It'd be a boomerang. You'll have to put up a stronger line of blackmail and bluff than that." ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sentence, which invariably puts the procurer or brothel-keeper in prison, is worth more than a heavy sentence by way of fine, which can be met by further oppression of his slaves. Besides, the heavier the sentence threatened, if there be an alternative fine, the more potent implement it furnishes for blackmail in the hands of corrupt police officials. Penalties by means of fines invariably tend to degenerate into a monthly squeeze to the police, in payment for toleration, and thus tend to make the police official a defender of social vice, ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... wide open. They know much, but are usually inactive. When one recollects that all the escrocs of Europe gather at the tapis vert in winter and spring, it is not surprising that they close their eyes to such minor crimes as theft, blackmail and false pretences. ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... result of a deep-laid plot. Gye, the printer, who lived in the market-place, was believed to be the chief instigator. His character was indifferent, and he had money invested in Gregory's shop; and the business was in so bad a way that there was a temptation to seek for some large haul by way of blackmail. Mrs. Leigh Perrot was selected as the victim, people thought, because her husband was so extremely devoted to her that he would be sure to do anything to save her from the least vexation. If so, the conspirators were mistaken ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... can pay him the equivalent of five hundred sterling in blackmail. I am afraid it will be a long time," ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... does not exist in England. The method of nominating candidates for Parliament in England removes the temptation to "influence" primaries and bribe delegations. In the absence of State legislatures, railway and other corporations are not exposed to the same system of blackmail. ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... region, and from Babylon went on to seize the fabulous riches which the Persian kings had amassed in their spring residence, Susa. Thence he at last ascended upon the Iranian plateau. The mountain tribes on the road (the Oxii, Pers, Huzha), accustomed to exact blackmail even from the king's train, learnt by a bitter lesson that a stronger hand had come to wield the empire. Alexander entered Persis, the cradle of the Achaemenian house, and came upon fresh masses of treasure in the royal city, Persepolis. He ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... but by the landlords of their houses, the newspapers which advertize them, the restaurants which cater for them, and, in short, all the trades to which they are good customers, not to mention the public officials and representatives whom they silence by complicity, corruption, or blackmail. Add to these the employers who profit by cheap female labor, and the shareholders whose dividends depend on it [you find such people everywhere, even on the judicial bench and in the highest places in Church and State], and you get a large and powerful class with a strong pecuniary incentive to ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw
... have no more of this. You are an impostor. I don't know where you obtained your information, but if you have come to levy blackmail on the strength of such a mad tale, you ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... always depended upon his secretary for the arguments with which to support them and the actual words in which to give them being. But on this occasion he felt that a special effort was required of him. He would show Lady Marchpane that the blackmail of yesterday had only roused him to a still greater effort on behalf of his country. He ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... fortification of the Factories, except such as was necessary to protect them against possible incursions of the Marathas, who at that time made periodical attacks on Muhammadans and Hindus alike to enforce the payment of the chauth,[2] or blackmail, which they levied upon all the countries within their reach. In Southern India the English and French had been constantly at war whenever there was war in Europe, but in Bengal the strength of the Government, the terror ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... too, should he faint at an allusion to the half-effaced initials upon his arm, and die of fright when he had a letter from Fordingbridge? Then I remembered that Fordingbridge was in Hampshire, and that this Mr. Beddoes, whom the seaman had gone to visit, and presumably to blackmail, had also been mentioned as living in Hampshire. The letter, then, might either come from Hudson, the seaman, saying that he had betrayed the guilty secret which appeared to exist, or it might come from Beddoes, warning an old ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... transactions with the natives; it was therefore all important that I should start immediately, and by a forced march arrive at Ellyria and get through the pass before they should communicate with the chief. I had no doubt that by paying blackmail I should be able to clear Ellyria, provided I was in advance of the Turks; but should they outmarch me, there would be no hope; a fight and defeat would be the climax. I accordingly gave orders for an IMMEDIATE start. "Load the camels, my brothers!" I exclaimed to the sullen ruffians around me; ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... Yes, but if Pitman is 7. Yes, but if I am right about dishonest and finds the Uncle Masterman, I can blackmail bill, he will know who Michael. Joseph is, and he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... left of "Louise Moreau." Natalie's lip curls as she fathoms the motive of the girl's disappearance. Friends of Marie Berard's have probably secreted her, as a part of the old scheme of blackmail upon her. Did the secret die with her? It is fight now. She muses: "Now they may keep her. The seal of the grave is on the only lips which could tell the story of Lagunitas." Villa Rocca even, does not know who the child was! His evidence ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... was tried before Hon. Clifford D. Gregory in the month of March, 1899, in the city of Albany, New York. It was entitled the "People of the State of New York against Margaret E. Cody," as charged with the crime of blackmail, in the sending of a letter to Mr. George J. Gould, in which she threatened to divulge certain information which she claimed to possess about his dead father, Jay Gould. The character of this information was such that if true it meant that Jay Gould and his wife ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... if the worst comes to the worst, you needn't necessarily be convicted under your own name. Then they're indispensable in dealing with the fences. I drive all my bargains in the tongue and raiment of Shoreditch. If I didn't there'd be the very devil to pay in blackmail. Now, this cupboard's full of all sorts of toggery. I tell the woman who cleans the room that it's for my models when I find 'em. By the way, I only hope I've got something that'll fit you, for you'll want a rig for ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... thought of spoiling such exquisite blague by taking it seriously. Its motive was universally understood in Ireland. The orators of the movement never for a moment dreamed of levying war on Mr Gladstone, but they were determined to levy blackmail. They saw that they could bluff English opinion into granting all manner of extravagant compensation for the extinction of their privileges and their ascendancy, if only the Orange drum was beaten loudly enough. It was a case of the more cry the more wool. And in point of fact they succeeded. ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... his new acquaintance as desirable, since it would be, in effect, charging him with blackmail. Moreover, he could bring nothing tangible against our young hero. ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... They were a gentle, simple-minded lot, used in the old country to oppression, blackmail and tyranny, and burning with a religious fervor unknown to the pale heterodoxy ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... primal cause of their life-failure. Throughout that long and horrible night he felt only resentment toward his mother, and cherished no better purpose toward her than was embodied in his plan to wring from her, even by methods that savored of blackmail, the means of living a dissipated life in some city where he was unknown, and could lose ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... and he was eager to learn the unsuspected means the use of which had been so long delayed, he could get nothing but monosyllables out of Ivan, who soon showed plainly that he would say nothing more concerning it. And, indeed, when a young and honorable officer has come to the determination to use blackmail upon his Colonel, be the purpose never so laudable, it is not a matter that he is likely to talk of, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Through the South. Secession Times. December in New Orleans. Up the Mississippi. Leaving Henry in Massachusetts. Back in Maine Again. Return to Boston, Profitable Horse-Trading. Plenty of Money. My First Wife's Children. How they Have Been Brought Up. A Barefaced Robbery. Attempt to Blackmail Me. My Son Tries to Rob and Kill Me. My Rescue Last of ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... a policy," said the Viceroy. "A Policy is the blackmail levied on the Fool by the Unforeseen. I am not the former, and I do not believe ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... armed slave owners had crossed the borders at night, and destroyed the homes of a group of Northern settlers, Sumner said: "Border incursions, which in barbarous lands fretted and harried an exposed people, are here renewed, with this peculiarity, that our border robbers do not simply levy blackmail and drive off a few cattle, they do not seize a few persons and sweep them away into captivity, like the African slave-traders whom we brand as tyrants, but they commit a succession of deeds in which border sorrows and African wrongs are revived together on American soil, ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... is queerer than human nature, and will you be surprised if I tell you that I believe I was a better priest when I was drinking than I am now that I'm sober? I was saying that human nature is very queer; and it used to seem queer to myself. I looked upon drink as a sort of blackmail I paid to the devil so that he might let me be a good priest in everything else. That's the way it was with me, and there was more sense in the idea than you'd be thinking, for when the drunken fit was over I used ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... of civilized life is interwoven with blackmail: even some of the noblest people do favours for other people who are depended upon not to tell somebody something that the noblest people have done. Blackmail is born into us all, and our nurses teach us more blackmail by threatening to tell our parents if we won't ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... of every American would be to keep on the side-lines and preserve an open mind. But it is not a fair fight. To devastate a country you have sworn to protect, to drop bombs upon unfortified cities, to lay sunken mines, to levy blackmail by threatening hostages with death, to destroy cathedrals ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... the nineteenth century. Perhaps she loved the big, bearded man whose photograph she had once shown me. He killed himself for not having enough money to live as he wished to live. That was her explanation. I think there was some blackmail; she had to pay some money to the dead man's relations for letters. These sensual American women are like orchids, and who would hesitate between an orchid and a rose? It was twenty years ago since she turned round on me in the gloom of her brougham unexpectedly, and it was as if some sensual ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... his own, concocted in emergency, as he asserted in his confession at London, or whether it was a carefully constructed lie taught him by his father in order to revenge himself upon some hated neighbors, and perhaps to exact blackmail, as some of the accused later charged, we shall never know. In later life the boy is said to have admitted that he had been set on by his father,[8] but the narrative possesses certain earmarks of a story struck out by a child's imagination.[9] ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... people by force. Never blackmail. Be content with your pay." He looked at the group before him and said: "Let every man of you who owns two garments share with the person who has none at all. If you have ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... caution invaded him. It would be well not to implicate himself too far with his wife's companion. She was a far shrewder woman than was common; there was such a thing as blackmail. He studied her privately. Damn it, what a pen he had been caught in! Her manner, too, changed immediately, as though she ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... his letters to Lord Clare, whom Clancarty hated. He then gave Macallester the lie, and next apologised; in fact, he behaved like Sir Francis Clavering. Before publishing his book, Macallester tried to 'blackmail' Clancarty. 'His Lordship is now secretly and fully advertised that this matter is going to the press,' and, indeed, it was matter to make the Irish peer uncomfortable in France, where he had consistently reviled ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... boiling sugar would make one's mouth water as he passed, and the same assistants, never weary in well-doing, might be seen setting saucers of black jam upon the window-sill to "jeel," and receiving, as a kind of blackmail, another saucerful of "skim," which, I am informed, is really the refuse of the sugar, but, for all that, wonderfully toothsome. Bear with a countryman's petty foolishness, ye mighty people who live in cities, and whose dainties come ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... because a couple are separated upon the grounds of cruelty or incompatibility in some Western state, they are still legally man and wife in New York or Massachusetts. All sorts of hideous complications are going on: blackmail ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... again. In Brazil he had heard a story of Ali Tschorbadschi's jewels from an old criminal from Turkey, and he had returned to blackmail Timar. But he did not find him till Timar was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... complainant recognized were legally in the hands of Aguinaldo. It could be carried on only with great difficulty without his presence and without his account books. Meetings were held, and Artacho was denounced as attempting to extort blackmail, but he refused to yield, and Aguinaldo, rather than explain the inner workings of the Hongkong junta before a British court, prepared for flight. A summons was issued for his appearance before the supreme court of Hongkong on April 13, 1898, but he was by that ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... five police officers at various times, and I should say twice as many peasants who have ventured to offend him. He and his band levied a sort of blackmail in the district, and woe betide the small farmer who refused to send in a sheep or a bag of meal once a month. Their cattle were killed and their ricks set on fire; and so in a short time he had the whole neighborhood under his thumb. Whenever ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... round the cantonment, strong piquets were posted on all the principal roads leading towards the hills; and every house had to be guarded by a chokidar, or watchman, belonging to one of the robber tribes. The maintaining this watchman was a sort of blackmail, without consenting to which no one's horses or other property were safe. The watchmen were armed with all sorts of quaint old firearms, which, on an alarm being given, they discharged in the most reckless manner, making it quite a work of danger to pass along a Peshawar road after dark. No one ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... shut her up! Though, probably, he'd have to give her some money? How much would he have to give her? And how much would he have to pay the lawyer? He had a crazy vision of Lily's attaching his salary. He imagined a dialogue with his employer: "A case of blackmail, sir." "Don't worry about it, Curtis; we'll shut her up." This brought an instant's warm sense of safety, which as instantly vanished—and again he was walking down the road, with Edith beside him, talking, talking... Eleanor would have to know... No! ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... probably, or, rather, certainly, just before Aylmore's release. Aylmore goes abroad, makes money, in time comes back, starts new career, gets into Parliament, becomes big man. In time, Maitland, who, after his time, has also gone abroad, also comes back. The two meet. Maitland probably tries to blackmail Aylmore or threatens to let folk know that the flourishing Mr. Aylmore, M.P., is an ex-convict. Result—Aylmore lures him to the Temple and quiets him. Pooh!—the whole thing's clear as ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... gentleman, was a dummy director and a tool of corporations that secretly robbed widows and orphans. This gentleman, who collected fine editions and was an especial patron of literature, paid blackmail to a heavy-jowled, black-browed boss of a municipal machine. This editor, who published patent medicine advertisements and did not dare print the truth in his paper about said patent medicines for fear of losing the advertising, called me a scoundrelly ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... weeks Walter Tyrrel remained in town, awaiting the result of the Wharfedale Viaduct competition. With some difficulty he raised and paid over meanwhile to Erasmus Walker the ten thousand pounds of blackmail—for it was little else—agreed upon between them. The great engineer accepted the money with as little compunction as men who earn large incomes always display in taking payment for doing nothing. It is an enviable state of mind, unattainable by most of us who work hard for our ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... an account of him in the European Magazine, Jan. 1786. BOSWELL. There we learn that he was in his time a grammar-school usher, actor, poet, the puffing partner in a quack medicine, and tutor to a youthful Earl. He was suspected of levying blackmail by threats of satiric publications, and he suffered from a disease which rendered him an object almost offensive to sight. He was born in 1738 or 1739, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... which Mildred called into question the legitimacy of one of her children, and the honourability of Darres as a card-player. The conversation at last turned on Panama. M. Delacour had, of course, denied the charge of blackmail and bribery. Neither had been proved against him. Nevertheless, his constituency had refused to re-elect him. That, of course, had ruined him politically. Nothing had been proved against him, but he had merely failed to explain ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... 1595 the Leverton wardens have the entries: "pd. to the apparitor for fallts in the churche ijs. viijd.," and: "for playing in the churche iijs. viijd." The last is explained by a third entry: "to the apparator for suffering a plaie in the church." (Op. cit., 367.) This looks like bribery, or blackmail, or both. For examples of bribery see Wing Acc'ts, s.a. 1561, Archaeologia, xxxvi ("to ye S[um]m[o]ner to kepe us ffrom Lincoln for slacknes of o[u]r auters"). Abbey Parish Acc'ts, s.a. 1600, Shrop. Arch. ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... lines as far as he can. Perhaps he may succeed, and, in any case, he will be almost certain to ruin my chances of success—that is, if I were not willing to buy him off. He would be pretty sure to try blackmail if he found he could not make good use of ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... here in peace. I've not come to blackmail you into loving me, Cecily. Yes, you shall be left in peace to move the furniture about." Glancing toward the table, he saw Mr Gainsborough's birthday gift. He took it up, looked at it for a moment, and then replaced it. His manner was ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... thought they hadn't regular or much. But the section's grown well-to-do lately on account of the cocoa trade, and I gather what the Injuns pay on it now is about ordinary taxes. Now, if the Injuns pay the old man a sort of blackmail to get him to moderate his earthquakes, and he calls it his proper rents, why, I say, a rose by any name'll smell as sweet, supposing the commission for collecting is the same. That's the idea. Why not? All he's got to do is to stay ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... a very few years will see the venerable institution represented by only the Mahmal and its guard. The late Sa'id Pasha of Egypt once consigned the memorial litter per steam-frigate to Jeddah: the innovation saved Ghafr ("blackmail") to the Bedawin; but it was not approved of ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... very often made. The motive may be to extort blackmail, revenge, or mere delusion. On examining such cases bruises are seldom found, but scratches which the woman has made on the front of her body may be discovered, and the local injuries to the generative organs are slight, ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... spluttered. "You're a liar; she's a liar; you're all a pack of liars, trying to blackmail a decent man. He had no money, I say! He had no money, and if ever he ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... alarmed, my good fellow. Your excellent patron will reward us, no doubt, amply." And he muttered to himself: "If I don't bleed that Lucius Ahenobarbus, that Roman donkey, out of two-thirds of his new fortune; if I don't levy blackmail on him without mercy when he's committed himself, and becomes a partner in crime, I'm no fox of a Hellene. I wonder that he is the son of a man like Domitius, who was so shrewd in that old affair with me ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... tribunal in Oude, of the murder of the twenty-seven persons in Dewa, in October, 1849, and executed on the 18th of September, 1850. Thakur Purshad and his cousin, Bhugwunt Sing, remained at large, and at the head of their gang of robbers continued to plunder the country, and levy blackmail from landholders and village communities till the 1st of February 1851, though pressed by a force of one thousand infantry, fifty troopers, and some ten guns. On the morning of that day, Captain Hearsey, commanding a detachment of the Oude Frontier Police, who had been ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... of people of good social position, not only Italians or Spaniards, but German or English travellers in the south, who were captives for a time. The chief sufferers were the inhabitants of the coasts of Sicily, Naples and Spain. But all traders belonging to nations which did not pay blackmail in order to secure immunity were liable to be taken at sea. The payment of blackmail, disguised as presents or ransoms, did not always secure safety with these faithless barbarians. The most powerful states in Europe condescended to make payments to them and to tolerate their insults. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... provisions of the pernicious legislation the Labor Commissioner was cooking up in secret,—"that'd confiscate two years' profits from every near mill in town," said MacQueen. But the rest was news, and highly unwelcome news. To fight blackmail legislation against progressive business was comparatively simple; but a string of lies in the newspapers made a more insidious assault, injuring a man's credit, his standing as a conservative financier, his ability to inspire "confidence": valuable possessions ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... telling the least important thing first. If a man who belonged to an Italian secret society, one local branch of which bore as a badge an olive-green ribbon, had entered his house, and in some sensational interview tried to bribe or blackmail him, he would have told the story with great energy and indignation, but he would have been incapable of beginning with anything except the question of the colour of olives. His whole method was founded both in literature and life upon the principle of the ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... one had lent me money on such a perishable note the courts would now hold him at fault, not me; they would demand evidence, and all he could show them would be what he had himself bargained for. Now it occurs to me that seashore sand, and the tricks of rogues, and blackmail, and tyranny ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... never trouble you or her for blackmail, even if he had dared, after what has passed; so I think he may be left out of the question altogether. You will not, I am sure, think of handing the man over to ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... he was not prepossessing in his appearance and Mr. Tutt assured Judge Bender that far from being what the district attorney pretended, the man was a well-known gambler, who made his living largely by blackmail. He might be a son of a dragon or he might not; anyway he was a son of Belial. An interpreter was the conduit through which all the evidence must pass. If the official were biased or corrupt the testimony would be ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... machine isn't going to be put on the market at all. It is to be used simply as a threat to make other people pay what I should call blackmail." ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... forest were a bulwark none too wide or strong against the incursions of the terrible Mohawks, whose name sent a shiver of fear throughout savage New England, and whose forbearance the Nipmucks and Mohegans were fain to ensure by a yearly payment of blackmail. Each summer there came two Mohawk elders, secure in the dread that Iroquois prowess had everywhere inspired; and up and down the Connecticut valley they seized the tribute of weapons and wampum, and proclaimed the last harsh edict ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... third edition opens with a preface (signed Asa G. Eddy) attacking Edward Arens, and contains the famous chapter on "Demonology" in which Mrs. Eddy devotes forty-six pages to settling scores with half a dozen of her early students, charging one and another with theft, adultery, murder, blackmail, etc. The Reverend Mr. Wiggin, when he revised Mrs. Eddy's book in 1885, persuaded her to omit these vituperative passages on the ground that ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... march of the American pioneer I had tried to express it in an address which was in fact a sloppy poem. I should not like to have that manuscript printed precisely as it came from my pen, and a phonographic record of my voice would serve admirably as an instrument of blackmail. However, I thought at the time that I had done moderately well, and my mother's shy smile confirmed ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... way into Wolsey's entourage, and was a member of the 1523 parliament. Wolsey found him an apt man of business, and entrusted him with a good deal of the financial management of his educational schemes; in the course of which it is at least probable that he applied the twin practices of bribery and blackmail, which not without reason were attributed at a later date to his servants. Yet, however unscrupulous he may have been in his dealings with others, to the master whose service he had followed he was always loyal. Wolsey made him his secretary; and when the Cardinal ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... refer to your scheme to blackmail John Nason," replied Albert resolutely, and not mincing words, "I am too ashamed to think I ever listened to your proposals to even speak ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... Haddon was trying to blackmail that kid Bangs," was his comment. "That is unless there was something in the talk about that barn being burned with the horses. It's just possible that fellow Bangs had something to do with it and Haddon was making him pay for ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... settled government. The consequence is that general lawlessness prevails in the districts remote from the towns; while in the forests that clothe the side of Mount Etna, there are numerous hordes of bandits who set the authorities at defiance, levy blackmail throughout the surrounding villages, and carry off wealthy inhabitants, and put them to ransom. No one in his senses would think of ascending that mountain, unless he had something like an army ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... francs a day for attendance is a snare and a delusion, for it is well known that this does not in the least exonerate one from feeing the waiter, chambermaid, porter, boots, and even the omnibus tout. It is a system of blackmail throughout, and I think something should be done to abolish it, for it is undoubtedly one of the greatest drawbacks to foreign travel. At present there seems a private understanding among the servants, that one and all ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... military posts and a mounted force to protect our traders in their journeys across the great western wilds, and of pushing the outposts into the very heart of the singular wilderness we have laid open, so as to maintain some degree of sway over the country, and to put an end to the kind of "blackmail," levied on all occasions by the savage ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... to tell!" went on Godfrey inexorably. "Any fool could guess. She came for the letters! She had resolved herself to blackmail you, madame!" ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... and free-hearted gentleman," said Smith. "Well, Doctor, name the amount and nature of the blackmail you intend to levy upon me. But have a conscience, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... it is a fraud, or blackmail, or something of the sort. For all that, he threatens ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... committee placed it at sixty millions; and Matthew J. O'Rourke, after thorough study, fixed it at seventy-five millions, adding that if his report had included the vast issues of fraudulent bonds, the swindling by franchises and favours granted, and peculation by blackmail and extortion, the grand total would aggregate two hundred millions. Of the entire sum stolen ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... "But—but that is blackmail!" he whispered aloud. "A man can't do that sort of thing. What the devil ever put it into my head? ... And there are men I know—women, too—scoundrelly blackguards, who'd use that information somehow; and make it pay, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... did it I'm not going to tell before the girl, but it was blackmail which you and Pinto engineered. He paid his last instalment—the four thousand pounds was ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... those very conquerors from the soil of Mexico. Look at Sonora and Chihuahua, half-depopulated! Look at New Mexico; its citizens living by suffrance: living, as it were, to till the land and feed the flocks for the support of their own enemies, who levy their blackmail by the year! But, come; the sun tells ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... American Chemical Company has simply dispensed with the services of the jobber, and the retailer. They manufacture the goods and sell them direct to the consumer through their own stores. The day of the jobber and retailer is done. They had to go. You were not ruined by blackmail, you were crushed by a law of progress as resistless as ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... the newspapers which advertize them, the restaurants which cater for them, and, in short, all the trades to which they are good customers, not to mention the public officials and representatives whom they silence by complicity, corruption, or blackmail. Add to these the employers who profit by cheap female labor, and the shareholders whose dividends depend on it [you find such people everywhere, even on the judicial bench and in the highest places in Church and State], ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw
... instance, do you fear those letters—this scoundrel Lang's confession? Kill him. Let the letter come to Adare. Cannot Josephine swear that she is innocent? Can she not have a story of her own showing how foully Lang tried to blackmail her into a crime? Would not Adare believe her word before that of a freebooter? And am I not here to ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... experience had proved to be the fundamental law and corner-stone of the professional base ball business. Without such a repressive law it was evident that the League would be subject to periodical attempts on the part of unscrupulous managers or players to war upon the reserve rule for blackmail purposes. The necessity for some such law was made evident by the recent efforts made to organize a new American Association on the basis of not only warring upon the reserve rule but of trespassing on the territorial ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... argosies from India to Spain. Their successes attracted adventurers from Asia Minor, and thus augmented they acquired formidable power, established citadels and states, governed by daring and sagacious leaders, and levied blackmail upon Christian countries for the protection of commerce. It was not until the vigorous campaign of Decatur that the backbone of this sanctioned lawlessness of the Barbary States was broken and safety upon the high seas of the ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... not reduce the sum for the General Hospital Fund; he had been giving to that a number of years.—Nor that for the asylum; Mrs. Wright was the president of that board, and had told him she counted on him.—Hang Mrs. Wright! It was positive blackmail!—Nor the pew-rent; that was respectable—nor the Associated Charities; every one gave to that. He must cut out the ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... about. Two women had started some story about her travelling to Paris with a French artist; and the man himself, who had arrived since, had made a fool of himself at the Casino, and apparently tried to blackmail her. She was said to have given him money. No love, no matter how great, could justify Prince Giovanni Della Robbia in making such a girl his wife while uncertain of the truth which underlay her amazing eccentricities, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... amends. But I take it that it was Mr. LOCKE'S idea to present a very ordinary decent sort with the common man's prejudices and frank distrust of subtleties. A sinister mystery of love, death and blackmail runs, a turbid undercurrent, through the story. The publisher's pathetic apology for the drab grey paper on which, in the interests of War Economy, the book is printed, makes one wonder how the other publishers ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... Northern settlers, Sumner said: "Border incursions, which in barbarous lands fretted and harried an exposed people, are here renewed, with this peculiarity, that our border robbers do not simply levy blackmail and drive off a few cattle, they do not seize a few persons and sweep them away into captivity, like the African slave-traders whom we brand as tyrants, but they commit a succession of deeds in which border sorrows and African wrongs are revived together ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... chose. Thus he preserved the union and the fidelity of his gang, punishing by judicial murder the smallest insubordination, the faintest suspicion of rivalry. Even when he had shut his victim up in Newgate, he did not leave him so long as there was a chance of blackmail. He would make the most generous offers of evidence and defence to every thief that had a stiver left him. But whether or not he kept his bargain—that depended upon policy and inclination. On one occasion, when he had brought a friend to the Old Bailey, and relented ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... the others. She was a dainty little blonde, with a baby face, in which were set two light-blue eyes, of a sort to widen often in demure wonder over most things in a surprising and naughty world. She had been convicted of blackmail, and she made no pretense even of innocence. Instead, she was inclined to boast over her ability to bamboozle men at her will. She was a natural actress of the ingenue role, and in that pose she could unfailingly beguile the heart of ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... seems nothing to go on, sir," he remarked. "I did hear it said that some one was trying to blackmail him and Mr. Rosario wasn't ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... transaction of the lots as Mrs. Peabody had explained it to her, and Bob understood that the farmer, basing his reasoning on his own probable conduct under similar conditions, suspected him of intended blackmail. ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... let Florence into things and Florence was the only created being who had any idea that the Ashburnhams were not just good people with nothing to their tails. She determined at once, not so much to give Florence the privilege of her intimacy—which would have been the payment of a kind of blackmail—as to keep Florence under observation until she could have demonstrated to Florence that she was not in the least jealous of poor Maisie. So that was why she had entered the dining-room arm in arm with my wife, and why she had so markedly planted herself at our table. She ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... that place, he was welcome to, for all that Slavens envied him. As for Slavens himself, he had run his race and won it by a nose; and now that he was putting down the proceeds to appease what he held as blackmail, he had no very keen regrets for what he was losing. He had passed through that. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... raid into an outlying corner of his property and did all sorts of damage; and not content with this, they actually squatted there on land which was no more theirs than it is mine (I am thankful to say), where they insulted and even assaulted innocent passers-by, and levied blackmail on John Bull's adjacent tenants, and, in short, became the terror of the neighbourhood and a disgrace to civilization. And when Mr. Bull's watchman (I told you there is no regular police force, and everybody has to look ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... from the neighbouring Highlands. We used to be quite free from them while we paid blackmail to Fergus Mac-Ivor Vich Ian Vohr; but my father thought it unworthy of his rank and birth to pay it any longer, and so this disaster has happened. It is not the value of the cattle, Captain Waverley, that vexes me; but my father is so much hurt at the affront, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... building. Much of this wholesale destruction was, no doubt, attributable to the action of the sepoys and rabble of the city, who during the siege, and in the state of anarchy which prevailed during that period, had looted to their hearts' content, levying blackmail on the richer inhabitants and pursuing their evil course without let or hindrance. Still, that which had escaped the plundering and devastating hands of the sepoys was most effectually ruined by our men. Not a single house or building remained ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... was no vulnerable point in his public armour. Of his private he was not so sure; Reynolds was in jail, for attempting, in company with one Clingman, to suborn a witness to commit perjury, and had appealed to him for aid. He had ignored him, determined to submit to no further blackmail, be the consequences what they might. But he was the last man to anticipate trouble, and on the whole he was in the best of humours as the Christmas holidays approached, with his boys home from their school on Staten Island, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... all their posts on the frontier, and the retreat of the Mongols, who had suffered too heavy a loss to feel elated at their repulse of Suta. At the same time no solid peace had been obtained, and the Mongols continued to harass the borders, and to exact blackmail from all who traversed the desert. When Hongwou endeavored to attain a settlement by a stroke of policy his efforts were not more successful. His kind reception of the Mongol Prince Maitilipala has been referred to, and about the year 1374 he sent him back to Mongolia, in the ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... his theory that every man had something to gain or lose, which he concealed discreetly, had led him to it. He held a card too valuable to be used at the beginning of a game. Its power might have lasted a long time, and proved an influence without limit. He forbore any mental reference to blackmail; the word was absurd. One used what fell into one's hands. If Tembarom had followed his lead with any degree of docility, he would have felt it wiser to save his ammunition until further pressure was necessary. But behind his ridiculous rawness, his foolish jocularity, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... part of Europe was under no settled government, each petty baron living in his own castle, and holding but slight allegiance to any feudal lord, making war upon his neighbour on his own account, levying blackmail from travellers, and perpetually at variance with the burghers of the towns. The hills were covered with immense forests, which stretched for many leagues in all directions, and these were infested by wolves, bears, and robbers. The latter, however, ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... immediate protection of the King, that chance throws in their way. Sometimes they act as a kind of irregular police force, levying chantage from those whom they detect in the commission of an offence; and, when crime is scarce, they often exact blackmail from wholly innocent people by threatening to accuse them of some ill-deed, unless their goodwill is purchased at their own price. They are known as the Budak Raja—or King's Youths—and are greatly feared by the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... childbirth and her father, a professional gambler, abandoned the little girl to the tender mercies of an indifferent neighbor. When she was about eight years old her father was arrested. He refused to pay police blackmail, was indicted, railroaded to prison and died soon after in convict stripes. There was no provision for Annie's maintenance, so at the age of nine she found herself toiling in a factory, a helpless victim of the brutalizing system of child slavery which in spite of prohibiting laws still ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... reformers thought, American politics would be purified. But, no! The corruption, simply took a new and more alarming turn. Direct money contributions took the place of the spoils. It became the practice to levy blackmail on corporations either to be let alone, or for the purpose of fleecing the public. The monopolies granted to protected industries are the source of a large share of these "campaign funds." The Legislatures are crowded by professional lobbyists, and it is, in consequence, ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... society which aims at boycotting the law-courts, superseding the law, and ruling the island; its chief weapon is the boycott; violence is only resorted to for vengeance; funds are raised by blackmail; popular support enables it to control elections, avoid legal proceedings, and influence industrial questions. The Italian government try in vain to put ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... come," said Nora, and the next moment they were all standing in a circle round Mother Rachel, who pocketed her blackmail eagerly, and repeated some gibberish over each little hand. Over Annie's palm she lingered for a brief moment, and looked with her penetrating eyes into ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... acid-faced seaman? Why, too, should he faint at an allusion to the half-effaced initials upon his arm, and die of fright when he had a letter from Fordingbridge? Then I remembered that Fordingbridge was in Hampshire, and that this Mr. Beddoes, whom the seaman had gone to visit, and presumably to blackmail, had also been mentioned as living in Hampshire. The letter, then, might either come from Hudson, the seaman, saying that he had betrayed the guilty secret which appeared to exist, or it might come from Beddoes, warning an old confederate that such a betrayal ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... I'd always loved the name of Max, so he loved it, too; and though you had other names given to you—the ones we planned beforehand—nothing fitted the 'little Frenchman' so well as Max. That's all the story. At first Anne and I used to be afraid of blackmail, either from the Delatour woman (who went off at once, before she was really strong enough to travel) or from the doctor, who hurried her away as much for his sake as for hers, lest it should be found out ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... in his right hand so deftly as to cut off the head of the groom who held the bridle. From his behaviour in these sportive moods one may judge what he was capable of on serious occasions. He was a fair sample of the Barbary monarchs. The foreign policy of these wretches was summed up in piracy and blackmail. Their corsairs swept the Mediterranean and ventured far out upon the ocean, capturing merchant vessels, and murdering or enslaving their crews. Of the rich booty, a fixed proportion was paid over to the robber sovereign, and the rest was divided among ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... "I'm pretty sure you'll find whisky in there. Give them both a stiff dose: they've broken up. Now, guardian," he continued, when Spargo had carried out this order, "what was he after? Shall I suggest it? Was it—blackmail?" ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... my action could not be termed extortion or blackmail within the meaning of the law, though to any one conversant with Mr. Mainwaring's private correspondence it may have had that appearance. I was, however, merely making an effort to collect what was legally due me. Mr. Mainwaring, before leaving ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... metropolis. The extent of corruption was not suspected until the Lexow investigating committee brought it to light. It is certain that not even the committee itself conceived the vastness of the system of thuggery and blackmail. Having begun its labors, evidence poured in upon it in a constantly increasing stream. It could do no less than go ahead. Its prosecuting attorney, John C. Goff, who not so many years ago was a counter jumper in a big New York store, and is now the city recorder at a salary of $12,000 a year ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... word, without proofs, could be as easily brushed away as his connection with Fogg in the' matter of the Conomo. In fact, so Mayo pondered, he might find association with Burkett dangerous, because demands for consideration can be twisted into semblance of blackmail by able lawyers. He entertained so few hopes in regard to any assistance from Burkett that he was rather relieved to discover that the man was no longer a guest at ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... You see, I could have proved an alibi for the weapon, at all events, during my trip to town a year ago. Yes, poor Minchin wrote to me, and I went up to town by the next train to take him by surprise. How you got to know of his letter I can't conceive. But it carried no hint of blackmail. I think you did wonders, and I hope you will forgive me for that little trap; it really wasn't set for you. It is also perfectly true that I stayed at the Cadogan and was out at that particular time. ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... chucked me over, sir. They say I insult them by thinking they would ever do such a thing. That was when I went and asked 'em for my money. Last thing was, when I told 'em it was their doing, and they set me at it, they said I were trying to blackmail 'em— that they never thought I meant such a thing, and that if I warn't off they'd hand me over to ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... not blackmail, it's not extortion. If I came to you and said out and out, flat, tear up that account of mine or I'll boycott you—that, Al, that would be ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan. Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown; The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown; The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale, And the loud straggler levying his blackmail,— Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears, All that lies buried under fifty years. To thee, as is most fit, I bring my lay, And, grateful, own the debt ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... what it means. You want money—blackmail, and you think you've got a good chance. But I will not give you a cent. I will tell Dr. Sommers first, and let ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... There his conduct as soldier was exemplary, till, watching his chance, he killed his colonel, and managed to get clear away. With a band of deserters, who chose him for their chief, he had taken refuge beyond the wild and waterless Bolson de Tonoro. The haciendas paid him blackmail in cattle and horses; extraordinary stories were told of his powers and of his wonderful escapes from capture. He used to ride, single-handed, into the villages and the little towns on the Campo, driving a pack mule before him, with two revolvers in his belt, go straight ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... detached; and handed over to her. Then her greedy eyes go to the fillet around the girl's temples, and an embroidered belt which encircles her waist. But these, though pretty ornaments, are not of great intrinsic value; and as Shebotha has in view a further levy of blackmail at a future time, she can then take ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... the girl Jenny, who was wearing an outrageous bonnet, should accompany us, because, knowing the greed of her class, I feared she might blackmail me at ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... which he modestly accepted by writing in 1838 to a friend:—"I am getting a kind of fame as the literary man of Scotland. Thirty years ago, in the North countries, a fellow achieved an immense reputation as 'The Tollman,' being the solitary individual entitled by law to levy blackmail at a ferry." In 1860 he was made Honorary President of the Associated Societies of the University of Edinburgh, his competitor being Thackeray. This was the place held afterward by Lord Lytton, Sir David Brewster, Carlyle, and Gladstone. Aytoun wrote the 'The Life and Times of Richard ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... success. "God A'mighty! Why the h—l didn't you ask, man!" And to tell the truth, I am not designed by nature for the cut-throat business of interviewing. To stand before a stranger, note-book in hand, and pry into his personal record, always seems to me only a form of infamy midway between blackmail and burglary. There is to me something in any man's personality that is sacred, something before which there should be a veil, never to be drawn aside save in secret places. An effete whim, no doubt. At any rate it explained why I had enjoyed no success ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... went to Thane's parents and pleaded for the righting of the wrong. Howard Thane had, by this time, lost all patience with his son. He refused to have anything to do with the matter. The young man's mother ordered Miss Ritter's mother out of the apartment and threatened to have her arrested for blackmail. Shortly after this episode, we were consulted by Mrs. Ritter, much against the wishes of her daughter, who shrank from the notoriety and the disgrace of a lawsuit. The elder Thane was adamant in his decision that his son should marry the girl, ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... whose kraal was two days' journey from where I was, telling him that I proposed to come and pay my respects to him in a few days, and to ask his formal permission to shoot in his country. Also I intimated that I was prepared to present him with 'hongo,' that is, blackmail, and that I hoped to do a little trade with him in ivory, of which I heard he had a ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... that Rickie and his aunt have both behaved most generously. No, no, Agnes, I'll not be interrupted. Garbled versions must not get about. If the Wonham man is not satisfied now, he must be insatiable. He cannot levy blackmail on us for ever. Sir, I give you two minutes; then you will ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... sometimes benevolently inclined. But occasionally they conceived the happy idea of being paid for their silence and services. The brigand, then, was hoist with his own petard and forced to disgorge his ill-gotten summer gains to these blood-suckers, who extorted heavy blackmail under menaces of disclosure to the police, thriving on their double infamy to such an extent that they acquired immense riches. One of the wealthiest men in Italy descends from this class; his two hundred million (?) ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... again to "Come and say good night to me!" terrified as I saw the light from my father's candle already creeping up the wall, but also making use of his approach as a means of blackmail, in the hope that my mother, not wishing him to find me there, as find me he must if she continued to hold out, would give in to me, and say: "Go back to your room. I ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... sheepish. "I'm afraid we've made a mess of it between us. Case of political blackmail, you see, and the young lady thought she could handle it herself. And so she could have done if we hadn't butted in, begging ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... expected to receive favours at his hands. Assessments and taxes were enormous; the public works were notoriously neglected, the accounts were slurred over by bribed auditors, and the decent citizen was terrorized into paying public blackmail, and holding his tongue lest some ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... stronger than at first anticipated, and I cheerfully admitted the same to the stockholders assembled. The Eastern mind, living under established conditions, could hardly realize the chaotic state of affairs in the West, with its vicious morals, and any attempt to levy tribute in the form of blackmail was repudiated by the stockholders in assembly. Major Hunter understood my position and delicately suggested coming to terms with the company's avowed enemies as the only feasible solution of the impending trouble. To further ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... added, as a parting shot, "that girls don't get into clubs here by blackmail. Even if Judy had put you up, you wouldn't have had the ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... woman except heavily veiled under her chudder, much less can a European talk to her. The laws of Persia are so severe that anything in the shape of a flirtation with a Persian lady may cost the life of Juliet or Romeo, or both, and if life is spared, blackmail is ever after levied by the police or by the ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... all the earmarks of a castiron moocher. Let me tell you, suh—such methods are unbecoming. They suggest damyankee push and blackmail. Remember Reconstruction and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... "She's using blackmail," he said, and some of his old bitterness was in his voice. "Anyone taking treatment from an herb doctor in this section is cut off from Medical Lobby service. Damn it, Jake, that ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... poisoning of a costermonger at Shadwell is of little interest as compared with a similar catastrophe in that quarter of London vaguely known as "the West End." The letters were suspicious, and both coroner and jury accepted them as evidence that Lane was engaged upon an elaborate scheme of blackmail. ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... through set teeth. "I've had enough! I've asked you once before if you'd any more to say—now I'll put it in another fashion. For I see what you're after—and it's blackmail! How much do you want? Come on—give it ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... life-failure. Throughout that long and horrible night he felt only resentment toward his mother, and cherished no better purpose toward her than was embodied in his plan to wring from her, even by methods that savored of blackmail, the means of living a dissipated life in some city where he was unknown, and could lose himself ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... world, sent, like herself, supperless for its sins to the purgatory of early bedtime. Split came stealing in from the other room, bringing Frank along that she might not cry and betray her elder sister's movements—a successful sort of blackmail the youngest Madigan often practised. And later, Kate, looking most conventional and full-dressed in this nightgowned society, brought succor for the starving. They munched chocolate and camped comfortably, three on each bed, while Sissy told her ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... a model of respectability—sacrosanct, almost. His idea of worldly happiness consisted in knowing that he was a solid, trustworthy business man, of undoubted years and discretion, whom no human being could blackmail. Now, as he fled from the odor of respectability he yearned to wallow in deviltry, to permit his soul, so long cramped in virtue, ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... "have you ever considered the possibilities of blackmail if the right sort of evidence were obtained under this new 'white-slavery act'? Scandals that some of the fast set may be inclined to wink at, that at worst used to end in Reno, become felonies with federal prison sentences looming up in ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... due to a message from a lady friend; suppose the lady went to see him accompanied by a friend whom Sir Horace did not like—a friend of whom Sir Horace was jealous. Suppose they asked for money—blackmail—and there was a quarrel in which Sir Horace was shot. Then we have your idea as to how the lady's handkerchief was torn—I agree with that in the main. The lady and her friend fled from the place. Later in the night the place is burgled by some one who has had his eye on it for some time, ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... is the only attempt at blackmail I have been subjected to in California, and I hope it will be the last. On I read the paper till I saw my name in good round English, and the allusions to my 'bare-faced hypocrisy and insolence.' Europe, hear this! Has not the 'hypocrisy' been ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... personal experience as well as from what I have heard on unimpeachable authority, I have no hesitation in saying that there are evil-disposed, Indians, especially of late years, who deliberately seek to provoke disagreeable incidents by their own misbehaviour, either in the hope of levying blackmail or in order to make political capital by posing as the victims of English brutality. But even when Englishmen put themselves entirely in the wrong, there is perhaps a tendency amongst Anglo-Indians—chiefly amongst the non-official ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... poor beast's appearance of a strange dog that worried the flock. Even Captain Benjamin, as you have seen, was unable to withstand the demand on him. The hymeneal pair are licensed freebooters levying blackmail on us; survivors of an uncivilized period. But in taking without mercy, I venture to trust that the manners of a happier era instruct them not to scorn us. I apprehend that Mr. Whitford has a lower order of latrons ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and low wages. The latter had lately been forced down to the minimum, as profits had been well-nigh extinguished, by the general depression of business. In fear of actual want, the populace rose, wasted farms, destroyed factories, plundered and levied blackmail—in a word, tried to inflict on others the misery that had maddened themselves. The word has been given to the most quiet and law-abiding people in Europe to defend themselves: a step far more significant of stern ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... wanted, of course, was a share of the Clark estate. Of course he hadn't a chance in law, but he saw a chance to blackmail young Jud Clark and he tried it. Not personally, for he hadn't any real courage, but by mail. Clark's attorneys wrote back saying they would jail him if he tried it again, and he went back to Dry River and after ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... gentleman, as of another gallant and gracious individual, that his honour stood rooted in dishonour. He was, indeed, somewhat in the position of such an aristocrat in a romance, whose splendour has the dark spot of a secret and a sort of blackmail. There was, to begin with, an uncomfortable paradox in the tale of his pedigree. Many heroes have claimed to be descended from the gods, from beings greater than themselves; but he himself was far more heroic than his ancestors. His glory did not come from the Crusades but ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... can fix that. I'll get you one, if you need her. But you won't have to take that trouble—just tell your girl a hard luck story. You've got a wife, you thought you could get free from her, but now you find you can't; your wife's got wind of what you're doing here, and she's trying to blackmail you. Fix it up so your girl can't do anything on account of hurting the Goober defense. If she's really sincere about it, she won't disgrace you; maybe she won't even ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... fight with every weapon I can lay hands on. And I know as well as you do that, if you get into serious trouble through this loan, at least five men we could both name would have to step in and save the bank and cover up the scandal. You'll blackmail them, just as you've blackmailed them before, and they you. Blackmail's a legitimate part of the game. Nobody appreciates that better than you." It was no time for the smug hypocrisies under which we people down town usually conduct our business—just as the desperadoes used to patrol ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... a bunch and control 'em than be blackmailed by 'em, Brydges! If every penny grafter didn't hold up the corporation, every damned little squirt of a county supervisor and road contractor and town councilman, if they didn't hold the corporation up for blackmail way the highwaymen of old used to hold up the lone traveller, if they didn't hold us up for blackmail, Brydges, it wouldn't be necessary for us to man that gang across the way on ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... her daughter. The Siren clattered after us with angrily ringing sabots, raging for money; the children cried; the friends shouted frank criticisms of our features, our hats, our manners. I would have gone away without rewarding their blackmail with another penny; but in desperation Starr turned and dashed four or five gulden at the crowd. The coins rolled, and the bright beings swooped, more than ever like a flock of gaudy, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... of considerable interest was tried before Hon. Clifford D. Gregory in the month of March, 1899, in the city of Albany, New York. It was entitled the "People of the State of New York against Margaret E. Cody," as charged with the crime of blackmail, in the sending of a letter to Mr. George J. Gould, in which she threatened to divulge certain information which she claimed to possess about his dead father, Jay Gould. The character of this information was such that if true it ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... any attempt is made to blackmail or coerce Mr. Melrose, he will be obliged, much against his will, to draw the attention of the Italian police to certain matters relating to Mr. Smeath, of which he has the evidence in his possession. He ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... once, had occasion to use a record that related to a private conversation or agreement. Then it concerned a matter involving a large sum, a demand having been made upon him that smacked of blackmail. He arranged a meeting, which his opponent regarded as an indication that he was willing to yield. There were present the contestant, his lawyer, Thor's counsel ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... I can make use of this. Why, I could hold a thing of this sort over the head of your fair bride, and blackmail ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... had been inadvertently enrolled in the native police force, and received heavy sentences for theft, blackmail, and violent abuse of their functions. Indeed it took nearly a couple of years to weed out the disreputable members of this body. The total army forces in the Islands amounted to about 70,000 men, and at the end of 1900 it was decided to send back the volunteer corps to America early in the following ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... keep any liquor in the house—that was one of the conditions. But damn it, I wasn't born to be a teetotaler, and that's the plain truth, Mr. Merton. That devil O'Brien found me out and started to blackmail me—" ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... now," Clay said to him, quietly. "And you can rise in the Senate on Tuesday and move your vote of want of confidence and object to our concession, and when you have resumed your seat the Secretary of Mines will rise in his turn and tell the Senate how you stole out here in the night and tried to blackmail me, and begged me to bribe you to be silent, and that you offered to throw over your friends and to take all that we would give you and keep it yourself. That will make you popular with your friends, and will show the ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... themselves to a Soames and a Filch, and dwell with romantic glow, on their larcenous deeds? A descendant of Soames may have as much pride in recalling the deeds of that distinguished felon in the Strand, as a descendant of a border chief has in recounting his ancestors levies of blackmail."—Pope might ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... he had struck a sore tooth which had been troubling him, and he broke out with the exclamation, "Dr. Butterfield, the physical and moral world is degenerating. Things get worse and worse. Look, for instance, at the tone of many of the newspapers; gossip, abuse, lies, blackmail, make up the chief part of them, and useful intelligence is the exception. The public have more interest in murders and steamboat explosions than in the items of mental and spiritual progress. Church and State are ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... settled in Damascus before he expressed his intention of visiting the historic Tadmor in the desert. It was an eight days' journey, and the position of the two wells on the way was kept a secret by Jane Digby's tribe, who levied blackmail on all visitors to the famous ruins. The charge was the monstrous one of L250; but Burton—at all times a sworn foe to cupidity—resolved to go without paying. Says Mrs. Burton, "Jane Digby was in a very anxious state when ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... infers that Shakespear was at a social disadvantage through his lack of middle-class training. They are rowdy, ill-mannered, abusive, mischievous, fond of quoting obscene schoolboy anecdotes, adepts in that sort of blackmail which consists in mercilessly libelling and insulting every writer whose opinions are sufficiently heterodox to make it almost impossible for him to risk perhaps five years of a slender income by an appeal to a prejudiced orthodox jury; and they see nothing in all this cruel blackguardism ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... print a rumour that cannot be substantiated. I spoke of George a moment ago for a very good reason. I am afraid of him. He has been going down hill pretty fast of late. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that he had sunk low enough to attempt blackmail." ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... Wilkinson, trembling with passion. "So this is all the desperate attempt of a felon to levy blackmail upon his benefactor!" ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... own guilty knowledge. There seems no sense in such behaviour. It might have been guessed that Sprot knew of Logan's guilt, but had no documentary evidence of it, and therefore forged evidence for the purpose of extorting blackmail from Logan. But, by 1608, when Sprot was arrested with some of the documents in his pocket, Logan had been dead for nearly ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... any other object than to steal and to lie. From the top to the bottom of the house all was pillage and waste. Bois l'Hery's horses were unsound, Schwalbach's gallery was a swindle, Moessard's articles a recognised blackmail. De Gery had made a long detailed memorandum of these scandalous abuses, with proofs in support of it. But he specially recommended to Jansoulet's attention the accounts of the Territorial Bank as the real danger of the situation. Attracted by the Nabob's name, as chairman of the company, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... thought of her, he pulled his coat together and arranged the rough scarf at his neck involuntarily. Ten thousand dollars—but ten thousand dollars by blackmail, hush-money, the reward of fire and blood and shame! Was it to go on? Was he to commit a ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... in their notions of privacy. There had, for instance, been no printed news-sheet in Illinois for twenty-seven years. Chicago argued that engines for printed news sooner or later developed into engines for invasion of privacy, which in turn might bring the old terror of Crowds and blackmail back to the Planet. So ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... Extracts.' His Lordship, in fact, accused Macallester of showing all his letters to Lord Clare, whom Clancarty hated. He then gave Macallester the lie, and next apologised; in fact, he behaved like Sir Francis Clavering. Before publishing his book, Macallester tried to 'blackmail' Clancarty. 'His Lordship is now secretly and fully advertised that this matter is going to the press,' and, indeed, it was matter to make the Irish peer uncomfortable in France, where he had ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
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