Page:Memoirs of the United States Secret Service.djvu/134

Rh How had this work been accomplished ?

Nobody could answer.

Indeed no one could positively say whether or not these Bonds were genuine! It fell out one day that two returned Bonds at the Treasury bore the same number upon their faces. But none could determine for a time which was which, so admirably were both finished, in every particular. It has taken three years to decide this knotty question, already. And to-day there are current more good theories than one, as to the probabilities.

Jay Cooke, and others who had received and sent these $1,000 counterfeit or spurious Bonds back to the Treasury, legally contested the question of their alleged falsity, and after a lengthened hearing in the Courts, the Government obtained a verdict in its favor. They were thus pronounced counterfeits, though the other side claimed that they must have been printed from the genuine plates, through some surreptitious means, if they were irregular. But the depositors of the bonds were compelled by the decision of the Court to "pocket this loss," at last.

When Brockway was arrested and charged with having had some connection with this monstrous fraud, it was argued that he must have contrived in some way to have got into the Printing Department of the U. S. Treasury, where he deftly played the same game that he was known to have practiced in New Haven.

It was also alleged that he had in this, or some other inexplicable way, obtained an impression of the original plates, from which he had printed these perfect imitation Bonds. But nothing appears clearly ever to have been known about all this complicated transaction. Still, Bill was "pulled," and the Detectives went at him, hopefully.

This occurred in 1867, before Col. Whitley was appointed