Page:Memoirs of the United States Secret Service.djvu/137

120. But, as there could be adduced no proof against him, he was discharged.

He got bail, readily, on that charge, and about the middle of 1870, one of his former accusers, (whom he names,) came to him and informed him that he "could save him serious trouble, if he would give him $1,000 in cash." He declined, and was arrested again, but he was afterwards notified that "he was not the man" they wanted. This same ex-officer met Brockway six months afterwards, and offered, if Brockway would give him $5,000, that he would show B. how to get out of his scrape. He had a valuable secret, he said, which he would sell to Brockway, etc, out of which, with his genius, a fortune could be realized. But Brockway adds that he refused to have anything to do with any such proposal or "secret."

All this, and more of the same sort, is charged by Brockway upon the heads of others. In conclusion, he stoutly avers that he has had no connection with any of these transactions, and affirms, with a show of apparent injured innocence, that "no man, alive or dead, could say truthfully that he is now connected, in any manner, with counterfeiters or coney dealers."

His case is a very curious one. He is talented, sharp, taciturn, and knows how to "keep his counsel," despite all that is charged against him. He is unquestionably a polished rogue. If all that is stated so freely about Brockway is true, he ought long since to have been "put away." But his case is an interesting as well as a melancholy instance of the prostitution of rare talents to the basest purposes. That the allegations preferred against him for years are mainly true, no one who has studied the facts in the evidence that has accumulated against him can doubt.

That he may have been the victim of the rapacity of