d
there will be no one to turn a hand for you.' That is what Mr. Stener
says Mr. Cowperwood said to him. I, for my part, haven't a doubt in the
world that he did. Mr. Steger, in his very guarded references to his
client, describes him as a nice, kind, gentlemanly agent, a broker
merely on whom was practically forced the use of five hundred thousand
dollars at two and a half per cent. when money was bringing from ten to
fifteen per cent. in Third Street on call loans, and even more. But I
for one don't choose to believe it. The thing that strikes me as
strange in all of this is that if he was so nice and kind and gentle and
remote--a mere hired and therefore subservient agent--how is it that
he could have gone to Mr. Stener's office two or three days before the
matter of this sixty-thousand-dollar check came up and say to him, as
Mr. Stener testifies under oath that he did say to him, 'If you don't
give me three hundred thousand dollars' worth more of the city's money
at once, to-day, I will fail, and you will be a convict. You will go
to the penitentiary.'? That's what he said to him. 'I will fail and you
will be a convict. They can't touch me, but they will arrest you. I
am an agent merely.' Does that sound like a nice, mild, innocent,
well-mannered agent, a hired broker, or doesn't it sound like a hard,
defiant, contemptuous master--a man in control and ready to rule and win
by fair means or foul?

"Gentlemen, I hold no brief for George W. Stener. In my judgment he is
as guilty as his smug co-partner in crime--if not more so--this oily
financier who came smiling and in sheep's clothing, pointing out subtle
ways by which the city's money could be made profitable for both; but
when I hear Mr. Cowperwood described as I have just heard him described,
as a nice, mild, innocent agent, my gorge rises. Why, gentlemen, if you
want to get a right point of view on this whole proposition you will
have to go back about ten or twelve years and see Mr. George W. Stener
as he was then, a rather poverty-stricken beginner in politics, and
before this very subtle and capable broker and agent came along and
pointed out ways and means by which the city's money could be made
profitable; George W. Stener wasn't very much of a personage then, and
neither was Frank A. Cowperwood when he found Stener newly elected to
the office of city treasurer. Can't you see him arriving at that time
nice and fresh and young and well dressed, as shrewd as a