h newspaper
publicity. She gave this rapacious vampire all the money she could
procure, even borrowing from her father. The pawnbrokers had in safe
keeping her diamonds, jewels, and some of her furs and laces. They had
been pledged to furnish this licensed black-mailer with money, and still
he was insatiate and unappeased. Her husband's suspicions meanwhile had
been aroused. She spent so much money in occult ways that he had been
impelled to ask her father what he thought L---- was doing with so much
money. Fettered thus, with the torments both of Prometheus and
Tantalus--the vulture gnawing at her vitals, and the lost joys mocking
her out of reach--she had at last in sheer desperation been driven to
request her father to procure her the assistance of a fearless lawyer.

It is not expedient to reveal the _modus operandi_ used in emancipating
this unfortunate lady from her worse than Egyptian bondage. But the
reader may rest assured that through the co-operation of the police
commissioners the shameless scoundrel was dismissed from the police
force. Afterwards, he served a term in a Western state prison, and up to
this hour has been heard no more of in New York.

CHAPTER VIII.

PANEL HOUSES AND PANEL THIEVES.

_The Inmates--The Victims--The Gains--Complete Exposure of the Manner of
Operations, and how Unsuspecting Persons are Robbed._

Some years since respectable New York was startled and horrified by the
recitals of criminal life, which, in the fulfillment of a disagreeable
public duty, the daily newspapers printed in their news columns. The
stirring appeal for the suppression of the evil then made by the press
to the moral sentiment of the community, was backed by the judiciary, by
the money and influence of wealthy and patriotic citizens, by the
various charitable organizations, and by the whole police force.
Consequently, the foul Augean stable of vice and iniquity, for the time
being, at least, was in a great degree cleansed and purified. The
leaders of that foul army of vicious men and women were gradually rooted
out and driven away from their noxious haunts. Some found a congenial
haven in the State prison, a few reformed, and many died in want. The
plague being temporarily stayed, and popular indignation a matter of
record, New York, as is its invariable custom, permitted its vigilance
to go quietly to sleep, with a fair prospect of it being rudely awakened
to find history repeating itself. That this awak