tical
leaders of Philadelphia, but afterward, and when political defeat
threatened, was picked upon as the most available scapegoat anywhere
within reach.

And it took him a half hour to do that. And afterward but only after he
had pointed to Stener as the true henchman and stalking horse, who had,
in turn, been used by political forces above him to accomplish certain
financial results, which they were not willing to have ascribed to
themselves, he continued with:

"But now, in the light of all this, only see how ridiculous all this is!
How silly! Frank A. Cowperwood had always been the agent of the city in
these matters for years and years. He worked under certain rules
which he and Mr. Stener had agreed upon in the first place, and which
obviously came from others, who were above Mr. Stener, since they were
hold-over customs and rules from administrations, which had been long
before Mr. Stener ever appeared on the scene as city treasurer. One of
them was that he could carry all transactions over until the first of
the month following before he struck a balance. That is, he need not pay
any money over for anything to the city treasurer, need not send him any
checks or deposit any money or certificates in the sinking-fund until
the first of the month because--now listen to this carefully, gentlemen;
it is important--because his transactions in connection with city loan
and everything else that he dealt in for the city treasurer were so
numerous, so swift, so uncalculated beforehand, that he had to have a
loose, easy system of this kind in order to do his work properly--to
do business at all. Otherwise he could not very well have worked to the
best advantage for Mr. Stener, or for any one else. It would have meant
too much bookkeeping for him--too much for the city treasurer. Mr.
Stener has testified to that in the early part of his story. Albert
Stires has indicated that that was his understanding of it. Well, then
what? Why, just this. Would any jury suppose, would any sane business
man believe that if such were the case Mr. Cowperwood would be running
personally with all these items of deposit, to the different banks or
the sinking-fund or the city treasurer's office, or would be saying to
his head bookkeeper, 'Here, Stapley, here is a check for sixty thousand
dollars. See that the certificates of loan which this represents are put
in the sinking-fund to-day'? And why not? What a ridiculous supposition
any other sup