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THE FINANCIER
ed to allow these several indictments to take their course. Cowperwood was to be punished quite as severely as Stener for the moral
effect on the community. Stener was to be sentenced the maximum
sentence for his crime in order that the party and the courts should
appear properly righteous. Beyond that he was to be left to the mercy of the governor, who could ease things up for him if he chose,
and if the leaders wished. In the silly mind of the general public
the various judges of Quarter Sessions, like girls incarcerated in
boarding-schools, were supposed in their serene aloofness from
life not to know what was going on in the subterranean realm of
politics; but they knew well enough, and, knowing particularly well
from whence came their continued position and authority, they
were duly grateful.
CHAPTER XL
When Cowperwood came into the crowded courtroom with
his father and Steger, quite fresh and jaunty (looking the part of
the shrewd fi nancier, the man of affairs), every one stared. It was really too much to expect, most of them thought, that a man like this
would be convicted. He was, no doubt, guilty; but, also, no doubt,
he had ways and means of evading the law. His lawyer, Harper Steger, looked very shrewd and canny to them. It was very cold, and
both men wore long, dark, bluish-gray overcoats, cut in the latest
mode. Cowperwood was given to small boutonnieres in fair weather,
but to-day he wore none. His tie, however, was of heavy, impressive
silk, of lavender hue, set with a large, clear, green emerald. He wore
only the thinnest of watch-chains, and no other ornament of any
kind. He always looked jaunty and yet reserved, good-natured, and
yet capable and self-suffi cient. Never had he looked more so than
he did to-day.
He at once took in the nature of the scene, which had a peculia r
interest for him. Before him was the as yet empty judge’s rostrum,
and at its right the empty jury-box, between which, and to the judge’s
left, as he sat facing the audience, stood the witness-chair where he
must presently sit and testify. Behind it, already awaiting the arrival of the court, stood a fat bailiff, one John Sparkheaver whose
business it was to present the aged, greasy Bible to be touched by
the witnesses in making oath, and to say, «Step this way», when
the testimony was over. There were other bailiffs – one at the gate
giving into the railed space before the judge’s desk, where prisoners
were arraigned, lawyers sat or pleaded, the defendant had a chair,
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and so on; another in the aisle leading to the jury-room, and still another guarding the door by which the public entered. Cowperwood
surveyed Stener, who was one of the witnesses, and who now, in his
helpless fright over his own fate, was without malice toward any
one. He had really never borne any. He wished if anything now that
he had followed Cowperwood’s advice, seeing where he now was,
though he still had faith that Mollenhauer and the political powers
represented by him would do something for him with the governor,
once he was sentenced. He was very pale and comparatively thin.
Already he had lost that ruddy bulk which had been added during
the days of his prosperity. He wore a new gray suit and a brown tie,
and was clean-shaven. When his eye caught Cowperwood’s steady
beam, it faltered and drooped. He rubbed his ear foolishly. Cowperwood nodded.
«You know», he said to Steger, «I feel sorry for George. He’s such
a fool. Still I did all I could».
Cowperwood also watched Mrs. Stener out of the tail of his eye –
an undersized, peaked, and sallow little woman, whose clothes fi tted
her abominably. It was just like Stener to marry a woman like that, he
thought. The scrubby matches of the socially unelect or unfi t always
interested, though they did not always amuse, him. Mrs. Stener had
no affection for Cowperwood, of course, looking on him, as she did,
as the unscrupulous cause of her husband’s downfall. They were now
quite poor again, about to move from their big house into cheaper
quarters; and this was not pleasing for her to contemplate.
Judge Payderson came in after a time, accompanied by his undersized but stout court attendant, who looked more like a pouter-pigeon
than a human being; and as they came, Bailiff Sparkheaver rapped on
the judge’s desk, beside which he had been slumbering, and mumbled,
«Please rise!» The audience arose, as is the rule of all courts. Judge Payderson stirred among a number of briefs that were lying on his desk,
and asked, briskly, «What’s the fi rst case, Mr. Protus?» He was speaking to his clerk.
During the long and tedious arrangement of the day’s docket and
while the various minor motions of lawyers were being considered,
363
THEODORE DREISER
this courtroom scene still retained interest for Cowperwood. He was
so eager to win, so incensed at the outcome of untoward events which
had brought him here. He was always intensely irritated, though he
did not show it, by the whole process of footing delays and queries
and quibbles, by which legally the affairs of men were too often hampered. Law, if you had asked him, and he had accurately expressed
himself, was a mist formed out of the moods and the mistakes of men,
which befogged the sea of life and prevented plain sailing for the little
commercial and social barques of men; it was a miasma of misinterpretation where the ills of life festered, and also a place where the accidentally wounded were ground between the upper and the nether millstones of force or chance; it was a strange, weird, interesting,
and yet futile battle of wits where the ignorant and the incompetent
and the shrewd and the angry and the weak were made pawns and
shuttlecocks for men – lawyers, who were playing upon their moods,
their vanities, their desires, and their necessities. It was an unholy
and unsatisfactory disrupting and delaying spectacle, a painful commentary on the frailties of life, and men, a trick, a snare, a pit and
gin. In the hands of the strong, like himself when he was at his best,
the law was a sword and a shield, a trap to place before the feet of
the unwary; a pit to dig in the path of those who might pursue. It was
anything you might choose to make of it – a door to illegal opportunity; a cloud of dust to be cast in the eyes of those who might choose, and
rightfully, to see; a veil to be dropped arbitrarily between truth and its
execution, justice and its judgment, crime and punishment. Lawyers in
the main were intellectual mercenaries to be bought and sold in any
cause. It amused him to hear the ethical and emotional platitudes of
lawyers, to see how readily they would lie, steal, prevaricate, misrepresent in almost any cause and for any purpose. Great lawyers were
merely great unscrupulous subtleties, like himself, sitting back in
dark, close-woven lairs like spiders and awaiting the approach of unwary human fl ies. Life was at best a dark, inhuman, unkind, unsympathetic struggle built of cruelties and the law, and its lawyers were
the most despicable representatives of the whole unsatisfactory mess.
Still he used law as he would use any other trap or weapon to rid
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him of a human ill; and as for lawyers, he picked them up as he would
any club or knife wherewith to defend himself. He had no particular
respect for any of them – not even Harper Steger, though he liked
him. They were tools to be used – knives, keys, clubs, anything you
will; but nothing more. When they were through they were paid and
dropped – put aside and forgotten. As for judges, they were merely
incompetent lawyers, at a rule, who were shelved by some fortunate
turn of chance, and who would not, in all likelihood, be as effi cient
as the lawyers who pleaded before them if they were put in the same
position. He had no respect for judges – he knew too much about
them. He knew how often they were sycophants, political climbers,
political hacks, tools, time-servers, judicial door-mats lying before
the fi nancially and politically great and powerful who used them as
such. Judges were fools, as were most other people in this dusty, shifty
world. Pah! His inscrutable eyes took them all in and gave no sign.
His only safety lay, he thought, in the magnifi cent subtley of his own
brain, and nowhere else. You could not convince Cowperwood of any
great or inherent virtue in this mortal scheme of things. He knew too
much; he knew himself.
When the judge fi nally cleared away the various minor motions
pending, he ordered his clerk to call the case of the City of Philadelphia versus Frank A. Cowperwood, which was done in a clear voice.
Both Dennis Shannon, the new district attorney, and Steger, were on
their feet at once. Steger and Cowperwood, together with Shannon
and Strobik, who had now come in and was standing as the representative of the State of Pennsylvania – the complainant – had
seated themselves at the long table inside the railing which inclosed
the space before the judge’s desk. Steger proposed to Judge Payderson, for effect’s sake more than anything else, that this indictment be
quashed, but was overruled.
A jury to try the case was now quickly impaneled – twelve men
out of the usual list called to serve for the month – and was then
ready to be challenged by the opposing counsel. The business of impaneling a jury was a rather simple thing so far as this court was concerned. It consisted in the mandarin-like clerk taking the names of all
365
THEODORE DREISER
the jurors called to serve in this court for the month – some fi fty in
all – and putting them, each written on a separate slip of paper, in
a whirling drum, spinning it around a few times, and then lifting out
the fi rst slip which his hand encountered, thus glorifying chance and
settling on who should be juror No. 1. His hand reaching in twelve
times drew out the names of the twelve jurymen, who as their names
were called, were ordered to take their places in the jury-box.
Cowperwood observed this proceeding with a great deal of interest. What could be more important than the men who were going to
try him? The process was too swift for accurate judgment, but he received a faint impression of middle-class men. One man in particular, however, an old man of sixty-fi ve, with iron-gray hair and beard,
shaggy eyebrows, sallow complexion, and stooped shoulders, struck
him as having that kindness of temperament and breadth of experience which might under certain circumstances be argumentatively
swayed in his favor. Another, a small, sharp-nosed, sharp-chinned
commercial man of some kind, he immediately disliked.
«I hope I don’t have to have that man on my jury», he said to Steger, quietly.
«You don’t», replied Steger. «I’ll challenge him. We have
the right to fi fteen peremptory challenges on a case like this, and so
has the prosecution».
When the jury-box was fi nally full, the two lawyers waited for
the clerk to bring them the small board upon which slips of paper
bearing the names of the twelve jurors were fastened in rows in order of their selection – jurors one, two, and three being in the fi rst
row; four, fi ve, and six in the second, and so on. It being the prerogative of the attorney for the prosecution to examine and challenge the jurors fi rst, Shannon arose, and, taking the board, began to
question them as to their trades or professions, their knowledge of
the case before the court, and their possible prejudice for or against
the prisoner.
It was the business of both Steger and Shannon to fi nd men who
knew a little something of fi nance and could understand a peculiar
situation of this kind without any of them (looking at it from Steger’s
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point of view) having any prejudice against a man’s trying to assist
himself by reasonable means to weather a fi nancial storm or (looking at it from Shannon’s point of view) having any sympathy with
such means, if they bore about them the least suspicion of chicanery,
jugglery, or dishonest manipulation of any kind. As both Shannon and
Steger in due course observed for themselves in connection with this
jury, it was composed of that assorted social fry which the dragnets of
the courts, cast into the ocean of the city, bring to the surface for purposes of this sort. It was made up in the main of managers, agents,
tradesmen, editors, engineers, architects, furriers, grocers, traveling
salesmen, authors, and every other kind of working citizen whose experience had fi tted him for service in proceedings of this character.
Rarely would you have found a man of great distinction; but very frequently a group of men who were possessed of no small modicum of
that interesting quality known as hard common sense.
Throughout all this Cowperwood sat quietly examining the men.
A young fl orist, with a pale face, a wide speculative forehead, and
anemic hands, struck him as being suffi ciently impressionable to his
personal charm to be worth while. He whispered as much to Steger.
There was a shrewd Jew, a furrier, who was challenged because he had
read all of the news of the panic and had lost two thousand dollars in
street-railway stocks. There was a stout wholesale grocer, with red
cheeks, blue eyes, and fl axen hair, who Cowperwood said he thought
was stubborn. He was eliminated. There was a thin, dapper manager of
a small retail clothing store, very anxious to be excused, who declared,
falsely, that he did not believe in swearing by the Bible. Judge Payderson, eyeing him severely, let him go. There were some ten more in
all – men who knew of Cowperwood, men who admitted they were
prejudiced, men who were hidebound Republicans and resentful of
this crime, men who knew Stener – who were pleasantly eliminated.
By twelve o’clock, however, a jury reasonably satisfactory to both
sides had been chosen.
CHAPTER XLI
At two o’clock sharp Dennis Shannon, as district attorney, began his opening address. He stated in a very simple, kindly way –
for he had a most engaging manner – that the indictment as here
presented charged Mr. Frank A. Cowperwood, who was sitting at
the table inside the jury-rail, fi rst with larceny, second with embezzlement, third with larceny as bailee, and fourth with embezzlement of a certain sum of money – a specifi c sum, to wit, sixty thousand dollars – on a check given him (drawn to his order) October 9,
1871, which was intended to reimburse him for a certain number of
certifi cates of city loan, which he as agent or bailee of the check was
supposed to have purchased for the city sinking-fund on the order of the city treasurer (under some form of agreement which had
been in existence between them, and which had been in force for
some time) – said fund being intended to take up such certifi cates
as they might mature in the hands of holders and be presented for
payment – for which purpose, however, the check in qu estion had
never been used.
«Now, gentlemen», said Mr. Shannon, very quietly, «before we
go into this very simple question of whether Mr. Cowperwood did
or did not on the date in question get from the city treasurer sixty
thousand dollars, for which he made no honest return, let me explain to you just what the people mean when they charge him fi rst
with larceny, second with embezzlement, third with larceny as bailee, and fourth with embezzlement on a check. Now, as you see, there
are four counts here, as we lawyers term them, and the reason there
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are four counts is as follows: A man may be guilty of larceny and
embezzlement at the same time, or of larceny or embezzlement separately, and without being guilty of the other, and the district attorney representing the people might be uncertain, not that he was not
guilty of both, but that it might not be possible to present the evidence under one count, so as to insure his adequate punishment
for a crime which in a way involved both. In such cases, gentlemen,
it is customary to indict a man under separate counts, as has been
done in this case. Now, the four counts in this case, in a way, overlap and confi rm each other, and it will be your duty, after we have
explained their nature and character and presented the evidence, to
say whether the defendant is guilty on one count or the other, or on
two or three of the counts, or on all four, just as you see fi t and proper – or, to put it in a better way, as the evidence warrants. Larceny,
as you may or may not know, is the act of taking away the goods or
chattels of another without his knowledge or consent, and embezzlement is the fraudulent appropriation to one’s own use of what is
intrusted to one’s care and management, especially money. Larceny
as bailee, on the other hand, is simply a more defi nite form of larceny wherein one fi xes the act of carrying away the goods of another
without his knowledge or consent on the person to whom the goods
were delivered in trust that is, the agent or bailee. Embezzlement on
a check, which constitutes the fourth charge, is simply a more defi nite form of fi xing charge number two in an exact way and signifi es appropriating the money on a check given for a certain defi nite
purpose. All of these charges, as you can see, gentlemen, are in a way
synonymous. They overlap and overlay each other. The people,
through their representative, the district attorney, contend that Mr.
Cowperwood, the defendant here, is guilty of all four charges. So
now, gentlemen, we will proceed to the history of this crime, which
proves to me as an individual that this defendant has one of the most
subtle and dangerous minds of the criminal fi nancier type, and we
hope by witnesses to prove that to you, also».
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THEODORE DREISER
Shannon, because the rules of evidence and court procedure
here admitted of no interruption of the prosecution in presenting
a case, then went on to describe from his own point of view how
Cowperwood had fi rst met Stener; how he had wormed himself into
his confi dence; how little fi nancial knowledge Stener had, and so
forth; coming down fi nally to the day the check for sixty thousand
dollars was given Cowperwood; how Stener, as treasurer, claimed
that he knew nothing of its delivery, which constituted the base of
the charge of larceny; how Cowperwood, having it, misappropriated
the certifi cates supposed to have been purchased for the sinkingfund, if they were purchased at all – all of which Shannon said constituted the crimes with which the defendant was charged, and of
which he was unquestionably guilty.
«We have direct and positive evidence of all that we have thus
far contended, gentlemen», Mr. Shannon concluded violently. «This
is not a matter of hearsay or theory, but of fact. You will be shown by
direct testimony which cannot be shaken just how it was done. If,
after you have heard all this, you still think this man is innocent –
that he did not commit the crimes with which he is charged – it is
your business to acquit him. On the other hand, if you think the witnesses whom we shall put on the stand are telling the truth, then
it is your business to convict him, to fi nd a verdict for the people as
against the defendant. I thank you for your attention».
The jurors stirred comfortably and took positions of ease, in
which they thought they were to rest for the time; but their idle comfort was of short duration for Shannon now called out the name of
George W. Stener, who came hurrying forward very pale, very fl accid, very tired-looking. His eyes, as he took his seat in the witnesschair, laying his hand on the Bible and swearing to tell the truth,
roved in a restless, nervous manner.
His voice was a little weak as he started to give his testimony.
He told fi rst how he had met Cowperwood in the early months of
1866 – he could not remember the exact day; it was during his
fi rst term as city treasurer – he had been elected to the offi ce in
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