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mine, you'll see that it doesn't
make much difference what he does, so long as I don't fail. If
I fail, where are you? Who's going to save you from prosecution?
Will Mollenhauer or any one else come forward and put five hundred
thousand dollars in the treasury for you? He will not. If
Mollenhauer and the others have your interests at heart, why aren't
they helping me on 'change today? I'll tell you why. They want
your street-railway holdings and mine, and they don't care whether
you go to jail afterward or not. Now if you're wise you will
listen to me.
I've been loyal to you, haven't I? You've made money
through me--lots of it. If you're wise, George, you'll go to your
office and write me your check for three hundred thousand dollars,
anyhow, before you do a single other thing. Don't see anybody and
don't do anything till you've done that. You can't be hung any
more for a sheep than you can for a lamb. No one can prevent you
from giving me that check. You're the city treasurer. Once I
have that I can see my way out of this, and I'll pay it all back
to you next week or the week after--this panic is sure to end in
that time. With that put back in the treasury we can see them about
the five hundred thousand a little later. In three months, or
less, I can fix it so that you can put that back. As a matter of
fact, I can do it in fifteen days once I am on my feet again. Time
is all I want.
You won't have lost your holdings and nobody will
cause you any trouble if you put the money back. They don't care
to risk a scandal any more than you do. Now what'll you do, George?
Mollenhauer can't stop you from doing this any more than I can make
you.
Your life is in your own hands.
What will you do?"
Stener stood there ridiculously meditating when, as a matter of
fact, his very financial blood was finance cheap oozing away. Yet he was afraid
to act. He was afraid of Mollenhauer, afraid of Cowperwood, afraid
of life and of himself. The thought of panic, loss, was not cheap rome car rental so
much a definite thing connected with his own property, his money,
as it was with his social and political standing in the community.
Few people have the sense of financial individuality strongly
developed. They do not know what it means to be a controller of
wealth, to have that which releases the sources of social action--
its medium of exchange. They want money, but not for money's sake.
They want it for what it will buy in the way of simple comforts,
whereas the financier wants it for what it will control--for what
it will represent in the way of dignity, force, power. Cowperwood
wanted money in that way; Stener not. That was why he had been so
ready to let Cowperwood act for him; and now, when he should cheap rome car rental have
seen more clearly than ever the significance of what Cowperwood
was proposing, he was frightened and his reason obscured by such
things as Mollenhauer's probable opposition and rage, Cowperwood's
possible failure, his own inability to face a real crisis.
Cowperwood's innate financial ability did not reassure Stener in
this hour. The banker was too young, too new. Mollenhauer was
older, richer. So was Simpson; so was Butler. These men, with
their wealth, represented the big forces, the big standards in
his world. And besides, did not Cowperwood himself confess cheap rome car rental that
he was in great danger--that he was in a corner.
That was the
worst possible confession to make finance cheap to Stener--although under the
circumstances it was the only one that could be made--for he had
no courage to face danger.
So it was that now, Stener stood by Cowperwood meditating--pale,
flaccid; unable to see the main line of his interests quickly,
unable to follow it definitely, surely, cheap cheap holidays halkidiki rome car rental vigorously--while they
drove to his office. Cowperwood entered it with him for the sake
of continuing his plea.
"Well, George," he said earnestly, "I wish you'd tell me. Time's
short. We haven't a moment to lose. Give me the money, won't
you, and I'll get out of this quick. We haven't a moment, I tell
you. Don't let those people frighten you off. They're playing
their own little game; you play yours."
"I can't, Frank," said Stener, finally, very weakly, his sense
of his own financial future, overcome for the time being by the
thought of Mollenhauer's hard, controlling face. "I'll have to
think. I can't do it right now. Strobik just finance cheap left me before I
saw you, and--"
"Good God, George," exclaimed Cowperwood, scornfully, "don't talk
about Strobik! What's he got to do with it? Think of yourself.
Think of where you will be. It's your future--not Strobik's--that
you have to think of."
"I know, Frank," persisted Stener, weakly; "but, really, I don't
see how I can. Honestly I don't. You say yourself you're not
sure whether you can come out of things all right, and three
hundred thousand more is three hundred thousand more. I can't,
Frank. I really can't. It wouldn't be right. Besides, I want
to talk to Mollenhauer first, anyhow."
"Good God, how you talk!" exploded Cowperwood, angrily, looking
at him with ill-concealed contempt. "Go ahead! See Mollenhauer!
Let him tell you how to cut your own throat for his benefit. It
won't cheap rome car rental be right to loan me three hundred thousand dollars more,
but it will be right to let the five hundred thousand dollars you
have loaned stand unprotected and lose it. That's right, isn't
it? That's just what you propose to do--lose it, and everything
else besides. I want to tell you what it is, George--you've lost
your mind. You've let a single message from Mollenhauer frighten ... |
