"Blackmail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him the equivalent of five hundred sterling in blackmail. I am afraid it will be a long ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... dropping from her lips as though they burned in 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 sought in vain to get me away ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... money, but in this case he is asking for it before it was due, and further than that he was demanding it with threats. It is not the practice of the average money lender to go after his clients with a loaded revolver. Another peculiar thing is that if he wished to blackmail you, that is to say, bring you into contempt in the eyes of your friends, why did he choose to meet you in a dark and unfrequented road, and not in your house where the moral pressure would be greatest? Also, why did he write you a threatening letter which would certainly ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... 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 ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... insinuations that all who stand against it must be apologists for the evil itself, and then they proceed to extend its aims by bold inferences, and to dragoon the courts into ratifying those inferences, and to employ it as a means of persecution, terrorism and blackmail. The history of the Mann Act offers a shining example of this purpose. It was carried through Congress, over the veto of President Taft, who discerned its extravagance, on the plea that it was needed to put down the traffic in prostitutes; ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... playing a most desperate game," I hastened to assure him. "He's meeting difficulties. She must have her dupe's letters in her possession. Blackmail, I dare say. Best leave his lordship free. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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, ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... they shared their spoils with the supposed officers of the law. And there were more degenerate miscreants still, who connived with the Police and went unscathed. As if the vast sums collected from these willing bribers were not enough, the Police added a system of blackmail to be levied on those who were not deliberately vicious, but who sought convenience. If you walked downtown you found the sidewalk in front of certain stores almost barricaded by packing-boxes, whereas next door the way might be clear. This simply meant that the firm which wished to use the sidewalk ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... 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, and died ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... 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
... green bandbox house, baby in arms, shrieked encouragement to 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, savage birds ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... 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 ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... looked safe. His face sagged more than ever, as though the Postlethwaite nose had withdrawn its support from that pale flesh of funk. If it had any clear meaning at all it expressed a terrified expectation of blackmail. His very moustache and ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... 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 ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... Daney planted a sweet forget-me-not. As a married man, he was 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, to expand ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... 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 ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... subject of many disparaging remarks, in the course of 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 how he ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... "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 ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... 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, ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... burning. Many noble Hindu families, ousted by the tax-collectors from their estates, began to seek subsistence from robbery. Others, consulting their selfish interests amid the general distress, "found it more profitable to shelter banditti on their estates, levying blackmail from the surrounding villages as the price of immunity from depredation, and sharing in the plunder of such as would not come to terms. Their country houses were robber strongholds, and the early English administrators ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... 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 ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... this course be continued, 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 by ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... worked but always seemed to have plenty of money. They were his pals and showed him how it was done. It wasn't long before he learned that he could often get more by hitting a man with a blackjack than by using his fists in the roped ring. Then, too, there were various ways of blackmail and extortion that were simple, safe, and lucrative. He might be arrested, but he early found that by making himself useful to some politicians, they could fix that ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... sycee, make up a tolerably valuable bag, and would often fall a prey 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 ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... opinions himself, he 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 would ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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 that they ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... seat of the empire and its richest 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 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... her own since time immemorial. But you can not easily poison any one who does not eat, and who drinks wine that was bottled in Europe; or at any rate, to do it you must call in experts who are expensive in the first place as well as adepts at blackmail in the second. Yasmini enjoyed a charmed life and an increasing appetite, Gungadhura's guards attending to it however, that she took no more forbidden walks and rides and swims by moonlight to make the hunger really unendurable. Supplies were allowed to pass through the palace ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... course Moulin attracted a good deal of attention, and an inquiry was suggested and made as to whether he was compos mentis. The parties who made the inquiry reported that he was not insane, but was actuated by a fiendish malignity, a love of notoriety and the expectation of extorting money by blackmail. For years—indeed until September, 1871—he continued to besiege and annoy the grand juries of the United States courts with his imaginary grievances, until he became an intolerable nuisance. His exemption from punishment had emboldened him to apply to ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... what his importunity meant, then! She had been paying blackmail all this time.... Somewhere, from the first, in an obscure fold of consciousness, she had felt the stir of an unnamed, unacknowledged fear; and now the fear raised its head and looked at her. Well! She would look back at ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... well 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 ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... in which 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
... 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 ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... 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 ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... 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 news-sheets ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... said, if ever I again dared introduce his name to print, in either my own or any other public journal, he would cut off my left ear (and I do not think he was jesting) and send me home to my family a visibly mutilated man, to be a standing warning to all low-lived puppies who seek to blackmail gentlemen and to injure their good names. And when he did so operate, he informed me that his implement would not be a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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
... 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 ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... he said angrily, 'you can't blackmail me like that. You can't prove anything on me. I reckon the people around here will take the word of the sheriff of their county against the booze fightin' son of ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... of blackmail, and was sentenced to one year at hard labor in the State prison, in addition to a fine of three ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... but her fears made him uneasy. Not for the first time, he was threatened with blackmail. He was rich and supposed to be moral; the Basts knew that he was not, and might find it profitable to hint ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... prompted this visit at ten in the evening? Did she come to plead a financial matter?—or was she here for purposes of blackmail? Did she have knowledge of his incriminating conduct, and was she sent to ensnare him into further complications? Above all, what attitude should he ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... thought was 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 reasons ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... 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 harsh edict issued from the savage council at Onondaga. The scowls that ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... 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, rather than ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... 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
... 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 the Government. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... his rooms in 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 ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 time that ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... 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 ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... 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 ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... village slaughter-house was getting close home. If bad meat was ever put out, it was from these secret places, managed by one or two men who did things in their own sweet way. Their work was not inspected. They themselves were the sole judges. There were not even employees to see and blackmail them if they failed to walk the chalk-line. They bought up cattle, drove them in at night and killed them. No effort was made to utilize the blood or offal and this putrefying mass advertised itself for miles. Savage dogs and slaughter-houses go together, as ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... Winterton had distinguished the girl by some kind notice; he liked 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
... 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 "chivalry ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... due to hysteria, to imagination, the women really believing that rape or an attempt at rape was committed on them, while investigation shows the accusation to be entirely false. Many accusations of rape are due to a desire for revenge or merely to motives of blackmail. ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... unit system and low taxes. And I don't blame the Bowery. You 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 by a group of "uptown good ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... 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 in common. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... whole art and 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
... will not bow to the common tyrant of the 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
... has 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
... rape are 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, if present ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... I'd better tell you straight that there's no blackmail about this at all. He's my father, isn't he? Well, can't a son come to his father if he's hard up? Where are your threatening letters? Where's the blackmail? Anyway, what's he going to do about it? Put his ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... 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)
... 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
... 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 crime ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... such a coward and sneak, and coming here to gather blackmail and betray that poor fellow to the gallows, or ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... 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 for ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... carried by one of the gang well behind the rest so as to enable it to be hidden if the party is challenged." In Bombay they openly rob the standing crops, and the landlords stand in such awe of them that they secure their goodwill by submitting to a regular system of blackmail. [417] ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... did not feel in a particularly kindly frame of mind towards Mr. Rhodes, and I knew and thoroughly disliked his ways with the Press. Further, I did not want to run any risk of Mr. Rhodes hinting later that I had tried to blackmail him, or that he had made a suggestion as to interesting me later in the Chartered Company which had been apparently welcomed by me, and so on and so on. I therefore expressed my opinion that there was no need whatever for a personal interview. Mr. Boyd thereupon made a strong plea ad misericordiam. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... absolutely at his mercy because she loved the children. "Never let him blackmail you," Peter had said. "Stand up to him always, ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... of blackmail, so effectual with the Highlanders, did not secure the border counties from these flippant fighters, and in sooth Normans were much too proud for any such evasion of ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... into a fever. I had long believed that there was some connivance between the pirates of the coast and the English traders, and small blame to them for it. 'Twas a sensible way to avoid trouble, and I for one would rather pay a modest blackmail every month or two than run the risk of losing a good ship and a twelve-month's cargo. But when it came to using this connivance for private spite, the thing was ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... 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 about it, ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... eggsplained? Zat night you mean, I did schleep in mine hat because I had got a cold in my head. I vas not dronk, no more zan you. Vat you found in my pocket vas a mere joke, and ze cabman who called next day vas jost vat I told him to his ogly face—a blackmail." ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... 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 the ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... 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. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 Government just what sort of a leader ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... the oak chest for others. No sound was heard save the crackling of crisp paper and an occasional ejaculation from either of them when they came upon some proof or other of Heriot's propensity for blackmail. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Forty dollars a week was, he wagered to himself, more money than any other maid in Hamilton was lucky enough to receive! Nita in a new light—an over-generous Nita! Or—was Nita herself paying blackmail on a ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... repulsive horror of the surrounding mountains, attended only by Usman Shah. A few months earlier, this ruffian was sent down from Leh with six other soldiers and an officer to guard the fort, where they became the terror of all who crossed the bridge by their outrageous levies of blackmail. My swashbuckler quarrelled with the officer over a disreputable affair, and one night stabbed him mortally, induced his six comrades to plunge their knives into the body, sewed it up in a blanket, and threw it into the Indus, which disgorged it a little ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... been found. 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
... 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 ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... "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, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... 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 ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... Dyckman as co-respondent in a divorce suit—or threaten to—and collect heavily that way. This was not blackmail in Gilfoyle's eyes. He scorned such a crime. This was honorable and necessary vindication of his offended dignity. There was probably never a practiser of blackmail who did not find a better word ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... the 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
... 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
... inhabitants, at the success of brigandage. It has never been my fortune before or since to live among such a timid population. One day at a large town a leading landed proprietor received notice that if he did not pay a certain sum in blackmail,—I forget at this distance of time the exact amount,—his farm or masseria would be robbed. This farm, which was in fact a handsome country house, was distant about ten miles from the town. He therefore made an appeal ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... to keep still, make it worth his while—but don't say anything to him about it. That opens the way to blackmail. ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... time or another had a go at John M. Hurd. Boring him to death has been unsuccessfully tried several times, but as you are in the family, you may of course have superior facilities to any of your predecessors. Blackmail might accomplish something. But really I can't help you any, Charlie. If I had any plan, I'd deserve to hang from your friend's pergola roof for giving it to you instead of using it myself. I guess this is where you begin to do a ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... that, 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 ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... getting away, God help you! But whoever wanted to get away from Durdlebury, except the Bishop? In pre-motor days he used to grumble tremendously and threaten the House of Lords with Railway Bills and try to blackmail the Government with dark hints of resignation, and so he lived and threatened and made his wearisome diocesan round of visits and died. But now he has his episcopal motor-car, which has deprived him ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... 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 him for ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... but his methods were not so praise-worthy. After a year of 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 ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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
... refused to consent to Colombia being paid for the territory seized by President Roosevelt. Mr. Lodge made a report (this was when Mr. Wilson was President, and I mention it merely as an historical fact) in which he denounced Colombia's claim as blackmail, resented it as an insult to the memory of Mr. Roosevelt, and declared in approved copybook fashion (being fond of platitudes), that friendship between nations cannot be bought. Later (this was when Mr. Harding ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... an' 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
... sir," he said, "but you misunderstand me 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 ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... 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 ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... purpose having been served, he demanded half the property on board, or he would give notice to the Russian naval authorities that the pirate yacht was afloat. He attempted to blackmail my father, as he had already done so many times, but his scheme was frustrated. My father, because of his inhuman treatment of poor Elma, defied him, when it appears that Oberg, who was in Helsingfors, telegraphed to the admiral of the Russian ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... "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
... that doesn't always follow," Betty broke in eagerly. "There are a great many people who, even if they had the money, would try to bring the rascal to justice before they submitted to blackmail." ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... that up, and things had gone from bad to worse. The police blackmail had taken out of it what little profit there was in the push-cart business. Times had grown harder than they ever were in Hester Street. To cap it all, two weeks ago gas had begun to leak into the basement from somewhere, and made Hansche sick, so that she dropped down at her work. Adam had complained ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... 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 bunking place ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... are still capable, but others are not, and then their excitation only manifests itself in manipulations of the genital organs, etc. Such cases play a considerable part in law scandals. The patient (for so he must be called) often becomes the victim of blackmail on the part of vicious girls or children, incited by unnatural parents. One often sees also, at the onset of senile dementia, an old man become enamored of some prostitute or adventuress who makes him marry ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... round the traveller, and obliging him to exercise ceaseless vigilance, but the inhabitants of the villages through which he passed, the local lords and the kings of the countries which he traversed, had no scruple in levying blackmail upon him in obliging him to pay dearly for right of way through their marches or territory.** There were less risks in choosing a sea route: the Euphrates on one side, the Tigris, the Ulai, and the Uknu on the other, ran through a country peopled with a ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... contributed largely to his success:] but for his burning all the documents that were found in the chests of Antonius, thus esteeming his own safety as of slight importance in comparison with having no blackmail result from them, I do not see how I may celebrate his memory as it deserves. But Domitian, as he had got a pretext from that source, proceeded to a series of slaughters even without the documents, and no one could well ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... 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
... They atoned, be it remembered, for their early sins by making those names in after years a terror to the invaders of their native land: but as yet their prowess was limited to drunken brawls and faction-fights; to upsetting old women at their work, levying blackmail from quiet chapmen on the high road, or bringing back in triumph, sword in hand and club on shoulder, their leader Hereward from some duel which his insolence ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... 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
... Irus of similar character patrolled Teviotdale, while Andrew Gemmells was attached to Ettrick and Yarrow. This was Blind Willie Craw. Willie was the Society Journal of Hawick, and levied blackmail on the inhabitants. He is thus described by Mr. Grieve, in the Diary already quoted: "He lived at Branxholme Town, in a free house set apart for the gamekeeper, and for many a year carried all the bread from Hawick used in my father's family. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... "Blackmail?" said the Terror in a tone of pleasant animation. "Why, that's what the Scotch reavers used to do! I never knew ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... "'Blackmail' is not a word to be used between gentlemen," he protested. "Look here, can't you behave like a decent fellow—an ordinary human being, you know? You are not exactly my sort, but I am sure you're a man of honour, I haven't ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in the army. 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 ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... a liberal 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 ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... so you would understand how much right I have to be interested. I am perfectly sure this dreadful creature, Hugh Gordon, is at the bottom of the whole business, that these charges in the papers this morning are nothing but revenge for his failure to blackmail Mr. Brand, and it is just as certain as can be that he has got Mr. Brand imprisoned somewhere, maybe drugged, and the thing for you to do now is to find this Gordon and make him tell where Felix is. Oh, please ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... 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
... Burchill. "No blackmail at all—in my view. I happen to possess information of a ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... 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, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... three or four days since the 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. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... 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 Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... he 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 said ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... 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
... the railroads soon began to give them widespread political power in other ways. It was commonly charged in some states that the legislature and the courts were "owned" by the railroads. The railroads, in part because they were the victims at times of attempts at blackmail by dishonest public officials, declared that they were compelled, in self-defense to maintain a lobby. The railroad lobby, defensive and offensive, was, in many states, the all-powerful "third ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... 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 ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... 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 ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... "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 ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... suspicious character, not one who came there for any other purpose than to steal or lie. From attic to cellar, pillage and waste. Bois-l'Hery's horses were unsound, the Schwalbach gallery a fraud, Moessard's articles notorious blackmail. De Gery had drawn up a long detailed list of those impudent frauds, with proofs in support of his allegations; but he commended especially to Jansoulet's attention the matter of the Caisse Territoriale, as the really dangerous element ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... 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
... of fear," said the Duc de Grandlieu, "for he has possessed himself, so as to be able to levy blackmail, of the letters written by Madame de Serizy and Madame de Maufrigneuse to Lucien Chardon, that man's tool. It would seem that it was a matter of system in the young man to extract passionate letters in return ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... 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, ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... cut down on his charities. He could 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
... down 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 himself ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... 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
... 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 ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... 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
... the abhorrent act in Iran, our Nation has never been aroused and unified so greatly in peacetime. Our position is clear. The United States will not yield to blackmail. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Jimmy Carter • Jimmy Carter
... 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
... 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 ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... oneself too much in the power of unscrupulous people, and, alas! the world was full of unscrupulous people. It was a pity that people could be so unscrupulous as to take advantage of a bargain made in good faith. That was blackmail. However, the prestige of the Nelson name was great, the power of its money was potent, and Henry believed that he could protect himself from eventualities. After cautious deliberation he sent word to one of his men in the ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... 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 ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... 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 ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... pitching you his yarn," cried Randall, "he left out the blackmail. He bragged in his beastly way that Colonel Boyce was worth a thousand a year to him. All he had to live upon now that the blood-suckers had ruined his business. Then he began to weep and slobber—he was a disgusting sight—and he said he would give it all up ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke |
