ocket, walk off, and never make any
return of any kind in any manner, shape, or form to the city, and then,
subsequently, twenty-four hours later, fail, owing this and five hundred
thousand dollars more to the city treasury, or did he not? What are
the facts in this case? What have the witnesses testified to? What has
George W. Stener testified to, Albert Stires, President Davison, Mr.
Cowperwood himself? What are the interesting, subtle facts in this case,
anyhow? Gentlemen, you have a very curious problem to decide."

He paused and gazed at the jury, adjusting his sleeves as he did so,
and looking as though he knew for certain that he was on the trail of a
slippery, elusive criminal who was in a fair way to foist himself upon
an honorable and decent community and an honorable and innocent jury as
an honest man.

Then he continued:

"Now, gentlemen, what are the facts? You can see for yourselves exactly
how this whole situation has come about. You are sensible men. I don't
need to tell you. Here are two men, one elected treasurer of the city of
Philadelphia, sworn to guard the interests of the city and to manipulate
its finances to the best advantage, and the other called in at a time
of uncertain financial cogitation to assist in unraveling a possibly
difficult financial problem; and then you have a case of a quiet,
private financial understanding being reached, and of subsequent illegal
dealings in which one man who is shrewder, wiser, more versed in
the subtle ways of Third Street leads the other along over seemingly
charming paths of fortunate investment into an accidental but none the
less criminal mire of failure and exposure and public calumny and what
not. And then they get to the place where the more vulnerable individual
of the two--the man in the most dangerous position, the city treasurer
of Philadelphia, no less--can no longer reasonably or, let us say,
courageously, follow the other fellow; and then you have such a
spectacle as was described here this afternoon in the witness-chair by
Mr. Stener--that is, you have a vicious, greedy, unmerciful financial
wolf standing over a cowering, unsophisticated commercial lamb, and
saying to him, his white, shiny teeth glittering all the while, 'If you
don't advance me the money I ask for--the three hundred thousand dollars
I now demand--you will be a convict, your children will be thrown in the
street, you and your wife and your family will be in poverty again, an