'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.

"Now you know," observed Butler, thickly and solemnly, "I always thought
that young felly was clever, but I hardly thought he was as clever as
all that. So that's his game. You're pretty shrewd yourself, aren't you?
Well, we can fix that, if we think well of it. But there's more than
that to all this. You don't want to forget the Republican party. Our
success goes with the success of that, you know"--and he paused and
looked at his son. "If Cowperwood should fail and that money couldn't be
put back--" He broke off abstractedly. "The thing that's troublin' me
is this matter of Stener and the city treasury. If somethin' ain't done
about that, it may go hard with the party this fal