Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/511

 sum running into the hundreds of thousands out their prey before they were checked; with the particularity that their victim did not know until its end that they were the real instigators of the extortion. In a provincial capital of Austria-Hungary some years ago, came much talk by a suit and a vehement counter-suit, for slander, brought respectively by two young men. One of them was of a distinguished northern family, temporarily in the city; the other was a rich young Viennese. The charge complicated mutual blackmail with mutual homosexualism. The case was such a tangle of social developments that it was finally dropped—by common consent. It was generally believed that money-difficulties of K—, one of the complainants, and his rather dramatic attempt to extort, were the original causes of the issue, especially as the other of the pair, young E—, was conclusively homosexual. This case had most bizarre lights and shadows. In fact, the old saying that almost everything in the world has at least three planes, is noted in the aristocratic blackmailers' census. Faire chanter is a lyrical temptation far from confined to Vulgar humanity.

Transatlantic blackmailing affairs are not often before the public. But they occur, passim. In America, always a practical country, occurred in the latter nineties a very curious example of a blackmailing plot, where every person concerned was of smart social position; men of culture, wealth and youth. A family living in one of the largest cities was conspicuous for fortune—a great fortune—for finance, and for religious affiliations, the line being Keltic-American. One of the brothers was noted as homosexual, had been publicly so charged. A younger one was even more famous for his effeminate beauty, his elegance, and skill as a dancer and actor in private theatricals. Humour had long united his name with several boyish "intimates" of fashionable life, art, letters, and the stage; also with an eminent clergyman