Page:Memoirs of the United States Secret Service.djvu/135

118 Chief of the U. S. Secret Service Division. Brockway was the only man known in the country who possessed the ability to accomplish this kind of feat in counterfeiting; to wit, the accurate transferring of the face of a plate, by electrotype process, from which the fine steel-plate engraving could be so nicely reproduced.

But he was arrested, and very soon afterwards was "turned up" by somebody, and went clear. Did he buy his way out of this dilemma ? He had ample means to do this. Could he have so planned his affair? With whom? And how did he escape? . . . . . . "That is the question!"

He did go free. It was said that there was no positive legal proof forthcoming to condemn him. Yet a plate, (said to have been the actual one from which these spurious Bonds had been printed,) was, through some unknown process, produced; and then Brockway was permitted to go about his business. Whether the prisoner turned this plate out, or whether somebody else did it, has never been satisfactorily shown, nor has it been settled that this plate, however obtained, was the plate from which the Bonds in question were printed, at all!

He gave bail for $20,000. When his sureties were called for, his wife promptly drew from her bosom forty $1000 U. S. Bonds, and stood ready to back the bondsmen who signed Bill's bail. But the whole matter became involved in fog, and thus it "hung fire" for mouths. Then it was dropped, and Brockway went his way. The reasons for this action are best known to those who had the management of the case, and whom Brockway charged with having profited pecuniarily by this result in Bill's favor. This counterfeit, or copy, of the true plate for $1000 was traced, and when sent to the United States Treasury, was in a damaged condition. Then it was that the difficulty arose as to its actual