tes this
check had paid for, and used the check itself to raise money enough to
pay the Girard National Bank and to give himself thirty-five thousand in
cash besides.

"Well, I declare!" replied the old man. "You'd think he'd have better
sense than that. That's a perfectly legitimate transaction. When did you
say he notified you not to buy city loan?"

"Yesterday noon."

"He's out of his mind," Cowperwood, Sr., commented, laconically.

"It's Mollenhauer and Simpson and Butler, I know. They want my
street-railway lines. Well, they won't get them. They'll get them
through a receivership, and after the panic's all over. Our creditors
will have first chance at these. If they buy, they'll buy from them. If
it weren't for that five-hundred-thousand-dollar loan I wouldn't think a
thing of this. My creditors would sustain me nicely. But the moment that
gets noised around!... And this election! I hypothecated those city loan
certificates because I didn't want to get on the wrong side of Davison.
I expected to take in enough by now to take them up. They ought to be in
the sinking-fund, really."

The old gentleman saw the point at once, and winced.

"They might cause you trouble, there, Frank."

"It's a technical question," replied his son. "I might have been
intending to take them up. As a matter of fact, I will if I can before
three. I've been taking eight and ten days to deposit them in the past.
In a storm like this I'm entitled to move my pawns as best I can."

Cowperwood, the father, put his hand over his mouth again. He felt very
disturbed about this. He saw no way out, however. He was at the end
of his own resources. He felt the side-whiskers on his left cheek. He
looked out of the window into the little green court. Possibly it was a
technical question, who should say. The financial relations of the city
treasury with other brokers before Frank had been very lax. Every banker
knew that. Perhaps precedent would or should govern in this case. He
could not say. Still, it was dangerous--not straight. If Frank could get
them out and deposit them it would be so much better.

"I'd take them up if I were you and I could," he added.

"I will if I can."

"How much money have you?"

"Oh, twenty thousand, all told. If I suspend, though, I'll have to have
a little ready cash."

"I have eight or ten thousand, or will have by night, I hope."

He was thinking of some one who would give him a second mortgage on his
house