g to get it, or
Butler, or anybody, in these times? They can't. They don't intend to.
When I'm through, you're through, and you'll be exposed quicker than any
one else. They can't hurt me, George. I'm an agent. I didn't ask you to
come to me. You came to me in the first place of your own accord. If you
don't help me, you're through, I tell you, and you're going to be sent
to the penitentiary as sure as there are jails. Why don't you take a
stand, George? Why don't you stand your ground? You have your wife and
children to look after. You can't be any worse off loaning me three
hundred thousand more than you are right now. What difference does it
make--five hundred thousand or eight hundred thousand? It's all one and
the same thing, if you're going to be tried for it. Besides, if you loan
me this, there isn't going to be any trial. I'm not going to fail. This
storm will blow over in a week or ten days, and we'll be rich again.
For Heaven's sake, George, don't go to pieces this way! Be sensible! Be
reasonable!"

He paused, for Stener's face had become a jelly-like mass of woe.

"I can't, Frank," he wailed. "I tell you I can't. They'll punish me
worse than ever if I do that. They'll never let up on me. You don't know
these people."

In Stener's crumpling weakness Cowperwood read his own fate. What could
you do with a man like that? How brace him up? You couldn't! And with a
gesture of infinite understanding, disgust, noble indifference, he threw
up his hands and started to walk out. At the door he turned.

"George," he said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for you, not for myself. I'll
come out of things all right, eventually. I'll be rich. But, George,
you're making the one great mistake of your life. You'll be poor; you'll
be a convict, and you'll have only yourself to blame. There isn't a
thing the matter with this money situation except the fire. There isn't
a thing wrong with my affairs except this slump in stocks--this panic.
You sit there, a fortune in your hands, and you allow a lot of schemers,
highbinders, who don't know any more of your affairs or mine than a
rabbit, and who haven't any interest in you except to plan what they can
get out of you, to frighten you and prevent you from doing the one thing
that will save your life. Three hundred thousand paltry dollars that in
three or four weeks from now I can pay back to you four and five
times over, and for that you will see me go broke and yourself to the
penitentiary.