The "anonymous letter" dodge is also sometimes successfully operated in levying black-mail. The conspirator becomes acquainted with real or alleged facts, and dispatches an artfully-worded communication for the purpose of frightening the intended quarry. Very frequently silence is obtained by the payment of a lump sum of money, especially where the victim lacks backbone and decision of character.
Another form of black-mail is practiced by women who run fashionable assignation houses and bagnios in this city. Gentlemen well known in public life, fathers of families, and even clergymen, are occasionally found in these gilded palaces of sin. It is a simple matter for the madame of the house to inform "her friend" that Mr. This, or the Reverend Mr. That, has been numbered among her recent visitors. The usual machinery is set in motion forthwith—threats of exposure and importunate demands for money. When the intended victim refuses to be black-mailed, his family—his daughter, perchance—is notified of her father's transgression and informed that the affair will be made public. Under such circumstances she is very likely indeed to pay hush-money rather than have her family's honored name dragged through the dirt of public scandal.
It is not so long ago that a regular business of blackmail was conducted in connection with the leading assignation houses. Ladies, as well as gentlemen, who visited them by appointment were "shadowed" and "spotted"; sometimes followed home and their standing and character in the community carefully determined, preparatory to the application of the financial thumbscrews.
A noted black-mailer of this city at one time maintained his wife in a private house, conveniently within call of a woman who kept a house of ill-fame. The wife promptly responded to any summons from the madame, and when she subsequently made the acquaintance of some wealthy visitor she would inform her husband of the gentleman's name and position. If, as probable, he was a person of ostensible respectability and advanced in years, with everything to lose by exposure, he "came down" promptly and liberally. On other occasions this high-toned husband would procure, through the offices of a mutual friend, an introduction for his wife to some prominent member of the Stock Exchange. The lady, who was a remarkably handsome, fascinating and wily woman, usually entangled the intended victim in the snare. Then the Husband appeared on the scene, boiling with indignation and "breathing threatenings and slaughter" until money was paid. The gentleman so entrapped might afterwards complain to his friend who introduced him to the siren, but he would never dream of associating him in the "crooked" transaction.
We are not alarmists by any means, but simply relate facts as they have come within our personal knowledge. The weakness of human nature, combined with the play of the passions, especially the passion of love, renders the existence of the black-mailer possible and often profitable. In a city like ours, where such freedom is accorded to young wives and demoiselles, it is not surprising that machinations against their virtue and their honor are planned and executed.
The picture has still another side. What does the reader think, for example, of a mother who has three daughters,—bright, beautiful little girls, with long braided hair hanging down their shapely backs, large, lustrous, melting eyes; childish, innocent-looking lambs, aged respectively thirteen, fifteen and seventeen,—and sends them on the street in the afternoons, exquisitely and temptingly dressed, in order to capture susceptible elderly gentlemen? Yet these bewitching little girls have been often seen in the neighborhood of Madison Square, on Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and even down on Wall street. Their mother would follow them at a distance, keeping them in view all the time. When accosted by a gentleman, which happened every day, their mother would follow them, watch the man when he came out of the house or hotel with one of her daughters, and the next day visit him, saying he had destroyed her young and beautiful daughter, and so on, and that she was going to have him arrested. This species of black-mail is not so uncommon as it would seem, even the fathers of young and prepossessing girls are partners in these affairs.
As a fact there is nothing that devilish ingenuity can devise to entice men and women into committing every kind of crime that is not practiced by the blackmailers of this city, and many are the fish that are landed and great the booty that is secured.
[C]HAPTER XIX.
ABOUT DETECTIVES.
The "Javerts," "Old Sleuths" and "Buckets" of Fiction as Contrasted with the Genuine Article—Popular Notions of Detective Work Altogether Erroneous—An Ex-Detective's Views—The Divorce Detective.