Theodore Dreiser - The Financier

“I don’t suppose you could keep this matter of Stener and the city treasury quiet for a day or two until I see how I come out?” suggested Cowperwood warily.

“I can’t promise that,” replied Butler. “I’ll have to do the best I can. I won’t lave it go any further than I can help—you can depend on that.” He was thinking how the effect of Stener’s crime could be overcome if Cowperwood failed.

“Owen!”

He stepped to the door, and, opening it, called down over the banister.

“Yes, father.”

“Have Dan hitch up the light buggy and bring it around to the door. And you get your hat and coat. I want you to go along with me.”

“Yes, father.”

He came back.

“Sure that’s a nice little storm in a teapot, now, isn’t it? Chicago begins to burn, and I have to worry here in Philadelphia. Well, well—” Cowperwood was up now and moving to the door. “And where are you going?”

“Back to the house. I have several people coming there to see me. But I’ll come back here later, if I may.”

“Yes, yes,” replied Butler. “To be sure I’ll be here by midnight, anyhow. Well, good night. I’ll see you later, then, I suppose. I’ll tell you what I find out.”

He went back in his room for something, and Cowperwood descended the stair alone. From the hangings of the reception-room entryway Aileen signaled him to draw near.

“I hope it’s nothing serious, honey?” she sympathized, looking into his solemn eyes.

It was not time for love, and he felt it.

“No,” he said, almost coldly, “I think not.”

“Frank, don’t let this thing make you forget me for long, please. You won’t, will you? I love you so.”

“No, no, I won’t!” he replied earnestly, quickly and yet absently.

“I can’t! Don’t you know I won’t?” He had started to kiss her, but a noise disturbed him. “Sh!”

He walked to the door, and she followed him with eager, sympathetic eyes.

What if anything should happen to her Frank? What if anything could? What would she do? That was what was troubling her. What would, what could she do to help him? He looked so pale—strained.

The condition of the Republican party at this time in Philadelphia, its relationship to George W. Stener, Edward Malia Butler, Henry A. Mollenhauer, Senator Mark Simpson, and others, will have to be briefly indicated here, in order to foreshadow Cowperwood’s actual situation. Butler, as we have seen, was normally interested in and friendly to Cowperwood. Stener was Cowperwood’s tool. Mollenhauer and Senator Simpson were strong rivals of Butler for the control of city affairs. Simpson represented the Republican control of the State legislature, which could dictate to the city if necessary, making new election laws, revising the city charter, starting political investigations, and the like. He had many influential newspapers, corporations, banks, at his beck and call. Mollenhauer represented the Germans, some Americans, and some large stable corporations—a very solid and respectable man. All three were strong, able, and dangerous politically. The two latter counted on Butler’s influence, particularly with the Irish, and a certain number of ward leaders and Catholic politicians and laymen, who were as loyal to him as though he were a part of the church itself. Butler’s return to these followers was protection, influence, aid, and good-will generally. The city’s return to him, via Mollenhauer and Simpson, was in the shape of contracts—fat ones—street-paving, bridges, viaducts, sewers. And in order for him to get these contracts the affairs of the Republican party, of which he was a beneficiary as well as a leader, must be kept reasonably straight. At the same time it was no more a part of his need to keep the affairs of the party straight than it was of either Mollenhauer’s or Simpson’s, and Stener was not his appointee. The latter was more directly responsible to Mollenhauer than to any one else.

As Butler stepped into the buggy with his son he was thinking about this, and it was puzzling him greatly.

“Cowperwood’s just been here,” he said to Owen, who had been rapidly coming into a sound financial understanding of late, and was already a shrewder man politically and socially than his father, though he had not the latter’s magnetism. “He’s been tellin’ me that he’s in a rather tight place. You hear that?” he continued, as some voice in the distance was calling “Extra! Extra!” “That’s Chicago burnin’, and there’s goin’ to be trouble on the stock exchange to-morrow. We have a lot of our street-railway stocks around at the different banks. If we don’t look sharp they’ll be callin’ our loans. We have to ’tend to that the first thing in the mornin’. Cowperwood has a hundred thousand of mine with him that he wants me to let stay there, and he has some money that belongs to Stener, he tells me.”

“Stener?” asked Owen, curiously. “Has he been dabbling in stocks?” Owen had heard some rumors concerning Stener and others only very recently, which he had not credited nor yet communicated to his father. “How much money of his has Cowperwood?” he asked.

Butler meditated. “Quite a bit, I’m afraid,” he finally said. “As a matter of fact, it’s a great deal—about five hundred thousand dollars. If that should become known, it would be makin’ a good deal of noise, I’m thinkin’.”

“Whew!” exclaimed Owen in astonishment. “Five hundred thousand dollars! Good Lord, father! Do you mean to say Stener has got away with five hundred thousand dollars? Why, I wouldn’t think he was clever enough to do that. Five hundred thousand dollars! It will make a nice row if that comes out.”

“Aisy, now! Aisy, now!” replied Butler, doing his best to keep all phases of the situation in mind. “We can’t tell exactly what the circumstances were yet. He mayn’t have meant to take so much. It may all come out all right yet. The money’s invested. Cowperwood hasn’t failed yet. It may be put back. The thing to be settled on now is whether anything can be done to save him. If he’s tellin’ me the truth—and I never knew him to lie—he can get out of this if street-railway stocks don’t break too heavy in the mornin’. I’m going over to see Henry Mollenhauer and Mark Simpson. They’re in on this. Cowperwood wanted me to see if I couldn’t get them to get the bankers together and have them stand by the market. He thought we might protect our loans by comin’ on and buyin’ and holdin’ up the price.”

Owen was running swiftly in his mind over Cowperwood’s affairs—as much as he knew of them. He felt keenly that the banker ought to be shaken out. This dilemma was his fault, not Stener’s—he felt. It was strange to him that his father did not see it and resent it.

“You see what it is, father,” he said, dramatically, after a time. “Cowperwood’s been using this money of Stener’s to pick up stocks, and he’s in a hole. If it hadn’t been for this fire he’d have got away with it; but now he wants you and Simpson and Mollenhauer and the others to pull him out. He’s a nice fellow, and I like him fairly well; but you’re a fool if you do as he wants you to. He has more than belongs to him already. I heard the other day that he has the Front Street line, and almost all of Green and Coates; and that he and Stener own the Seventeenth and Nineteenth; but I didn’t believe it. I’ve been intending to ask you about it. I think Cowperwood has a majority for himself stowed away somewhere in every instance. Stener is just a pawn. He moves him around where he pleases.”

Owen’s eyes gleamed avariciously, opposingly. Cowperwood ought to be punished, sold out, driven out of the street-railway business in which Owen was anxious to rise.