"Blackmail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... 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
... him the equivalent of five hundred sterling in blackmail. I am afraid it will be a long time," ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... 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
... 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 ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... 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
... "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
... 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
... Blackmail? Graft? I can't call the dope. But listen here! Don't forget that it ain't Quint who wants it. It's the big feller behind him who's backin' him. It's some swell guy higher up who's payin' Quint. And Quint, he pays us. So where's the ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... 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
... "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 figure? Come, spit ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... 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
... blackmail," said Robin thoughtfully, "but I am wondering how much we shall glean from this precious letter when we do see it. I am glad you asked Jeekes to ring me up, though. He should be able to tell us something about these mysterious letters on the blue paper that used to put Parrish in such a stew ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... "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
... blackmail," commented Garrison, carefully replacing the letter in its envelope. "And it serves me right. I wonder do I look silly. I must; for people take me ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... 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
... blackmail me!" said Bloeckman, and then, his voice rising to a faintly shrill note of pride: "He got what ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... 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
... 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 ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... 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 |
