st, which showed plainer than words what had been going
on, and the other, the matter of the sixty-thousand-dollar check. His
financial wit had told him there were ways to assign his holdings in
favor of his largest creditors, which would tend to help him later to
resume; and he had been swift to act. Indeed, Harper Steger had drawn up
documents which named Jay Cooke & Co., Edward Clark & Co., Drexel & Co.,
and others as preferred. He knew that even though dissatisfied holders
of smaller shares in his company brought suit and compelled readjustment
or bankruptcy later, the intention shown to prefer some of his most
influential aids was important. They would like it, and might help him
later when all this was over. Besides, suits in plenty are an excellent
way of tiding over a crisis of this kind until stocks and common sense
are restored, and he was for many suits. Harper Steger smiled once
rather grimly, even in the whirl of the financial chaos where smiles
were few, as they were figuring it out.

"Frank," he said, "you're a wonder. You'll have a network of suits
spread here shortly, which no one can break through. They'll all be
suing each other."

Cowperwood smiled.

"I only want a little time, that's all," he replied. Nevertheless,
for the first time in his life he was a little depressed; for now this
business, to which he had devoted years of active work and thought, was
ended.

The thing that was troubling him most in all of this was not the five
hundred thousand dollars which was owing the city treasury, and which
he knew would stir political and social life to the center once it
was generally known--that was a legal or semi-legal transaction, at
least--but rather the matter of the sixty thousand dollars' worth of
unrestored city loan certificates which he had not been able to replace
in the sinking-fund and could not now even though the necessary money
should fall from heaven. The fact of their absence was a matter of
source. He pondered over the situation a good deal. The thing to do, he
thought, if he went to Mollenhauer or Simpson, or both (he had never
met either of them, but in view of Butler's desertion they were his only
recourse), was to say that, although he could not at present return the
five hundred thousand dollars, if no action were taken against him now,
which would prevent his resuming his business on a normal scale a little
later, he would pledge his word that every dollar of the involved fi