better yet, will you give it to
me now? I got your note about no more purchases. I'm going back to
the office. You can just credit the sinking-fund with eight hundred
certificates at from seventy-five to eighty. I'll send you the itemized
list later."

"Certainly, Mr. Cowperwood, certainly," replied Albert, with alacrity.
"Stocks are getting an awful knock, aren't they? I hope you're not very
much troubled by it?"

"Not very, Albert," replied Cowperwood, smiling, the while the chief
clerk was making out his check. He was wondering if by any chance
Stener would appear and attempt to interfere with this. It was a legal
transaction. He had a right to the check provided he deposited the
certificates, as was his custom, with the trustee of the fund. He waited
tensely while Albert wrote, and finally, with the check actually in
his hand, breathed a sigh of relief. Here, at least, was sixty thousand
dollars, and to-night's work would enable him to cash the seventy-five
thousand that had been promised him. To-morrow, once more he must see
Leigh, Kitchen, Jay Cooke & Co., Edward Clark & Co.--all the long list
of people to whom he owed loans and find out what could be done. If he
could only get time! If he could get just a week!

Chapter XXIX

But time was not a thing to be had in this emergency. With the
seventy-five thousand dollars his friends had extended to him, and sixty
thousand dollars secured from Stires, Cowperwood met the Girard call and
placed the balance, thirty-five thousand dollars, in a private safe in
his own home. He then made a final appeal to the bankers and financiers,
but they refused to help him. He did not, however, commiserate himself
in this hour. He looked out of his office window into the little court,
and sighed. What more could he do? He sent a note to his father, asking
him to call for lunch. He sent a note to his lawyer, Harper Steger, a
man of his own age whom he liked very much, and asked him to call
also. He evolved in his own mind various plans of delay, addresses to
creditors and the like, but alas! he was going to fail. And the worst
of it was that this matter of the city treasurer's loans was bound to
become a public, and more than a public, a political, scandal. And the
charge of conniving, if not illegally, at least morally, at the misuse
of the city's money was the one thing that would hurt him most.

How industriously his rivals would advertise this fact! He might get
on h