250,000 IN BLACKMAIL.

Otago Witness, Volume 25, Issue 2321, 25 August 1898, Page 55

250,000 IN BLACKMAIL.

" There is one side of London life that I ■ expect you know little or nothing about. j I can hold my oAvn with financiers, and, | beyond a single exception, with anyone in ! the City. There is one creature who always ! gels the better of me — the blackmailer." [ Sir Hooley Avas at the zenith of his career \ when he made the above remarkable &tate•ment to me. As the representative of this | journal, I Avas chatting Avith the man whose 1 name was then, as iioav, on cA r erybody's lips, the subject being his OAvn career, and if the reader who keeps a file of AnsAvers Aviii . turn to the issue for September 4 last, he Avill there find — in the shape of No. CXVI, of " Life and Stories of Successful Men "—" — the result of the interview. But not everything that passed A7as recorded. Some of Mr Hooley 's assertions A^ere of so unexpected, so SAveeping a | character that I hesitated to make use of ; (hem, lest I should be charged Avith fabrica- j tion. " But," said I, in response to the j confession which opens this article, " unless you have done, or intend to do, something shady, and not accordmg to the laAVS which rule the Avar of finanefc, surely you have only to kick these people out of the door?" i '" Not a bit of it," Mr Hooley replied. | And without further ado he proceeded to I tell me Avhat sounded very much like an ex- | tract from the "Arabian Nights," and I venture to think that if I had made use of the story at the time — not long after the big Dunlop deal — people Avould have said that I had been humbugged Avith fairy tales, or that the Avhole thing was a fcit of imagination. " The instance I am thinking of," said the financier, "occurred in this very room." (We Avere sitting in Mr Hooley' s bedroom, every other room — to sa,y nothing of the corridor — being croAvded with arislocratic j sj-cophants, fcekers after directorships, safe ( " tips," and I know not Avhafc else.) " I Lad just gone to bed — I always retire eaily — when there came a knock at the door, and the porter told me that two gentlemen had come to see me on business Avhich Avould not admit of the least delay. There Avas nothing remarkable about this, so I slipped on a dressing gown and told the men to come in. Then they explained their business. They had brought a special document Avith them, and it seized their purpose better than if they had held a gun at my head. What do you think it Avas? They had discovered an old law AA-hich had never been repealed, but AA r hich I imagine the best laAvyeys in rhe country know nothing about. "It Avas a statute of the eighteenth century, which enacted that anyone Avho dealt speculatively in stocks and shares Avas liable to arrest and imprisonment. Well, it Avas a smart thing to have unearthed, that avoiiderful statute ; but my visitors had been even smarter. If they had called a night earlier or a night later I should have told them to ariest ms as much as they liked, j and I don't think anything Avorse would luwe happened than a repeal of the old statute — unless every stockbroker in Great Britain is to be throAvn into prison. But the difficulty was this, and the men knew it very ■well. It Avas the eA'e of the Duniop settlement. The three millions purchase ironey for the Dunlop Company was in the bank in my name, and the next morning the transaction had to be completed, and ;hc money handed over. If, instead of business, I had to submit myself to arrest, it spelt ruin. " I had a good look at the writ. It Avas all li^'ht. It Avould mean about tAVo days' delay for me, that Avas all ; but it Avould just tie me up and finish me. What did I do? I went over to the table, got out my cheque book, and said : ' What do you Avant?' ' TAvent-y-fh r e thousand,' they leplied. And I gave it to them — an open cheque for £.25,000, on the understanding that" if I ."topped payment in the morning they Avould put their Avaxrant into effect." Mr Hooley added no ornamentation to the fetory, and spoke in his usual calm, matter-of-fact way. In fact, he seemed, as he talked, almost enchanted to think that so sharp a man as himself could be ?o thoroughly cornered. '• What' did I say? As little as possible ; they renily were most polite to me. I complimented them on haA'ing taken such a rise out of a mail avlio was not used to being 'done,' and got back into bed. But evQvy tune I start anything new, some ingenious

scheme is put into working order for block* mailing me. These two men vere exceptionally clever; but with tlio finnnoial papers of the lower sort it's a lecular busi« ness, and I tell you that all thc&a clr 1 < L a put together will make more out of my business than I do, if X don't put a stop io it. ll may seem a confession for mo io make, hut altogether J enmoi hr.rs j>;u(\ away less than £250,000 in blackmail. A ncl of course the money U as much List us if I had taken it to sea in one lump and dropped it overboard in the middb of the Atlantic."

I told Mr Hooley that I would make no mention of his story in my interview v/ith him at that time ; the responsibility Avould be too giedt. But now I feel that "the ban has been removed. .At the clo^e of our conversation he made another statement. Avhioh reads remarkable erough when Avowed in the light of other event?.

" I'm &i ill on the right side of 40. ar.d I've passed millions of pounds thiou^h my bank. But don't think ma a money-grabber. There, must be an end of this sort of thing, and I Avant to throAV myself heart and soul into politics. I intend giving business up altogether by the end of this year!" Pressed for a reason lie added : "i" have a sort of premonition that if 1 'continue after 18&7 success Avill nob attend my undertakings as it has done up till now. So 1828 Arill find nic a private individual,"

One cannot help Avonderins; whether Aye should ever have heard of My IJooley's name being linked Avith the Bankruptcy "Court if he had adhered to his determination, and closed his financial affairs in December last. — By Ernest T. Hooley, in AnsAvers.-