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point of view, but sadly depressed from another. He hurried out at the noon-hour to see what his
own holdings would bring. He was compromising himself in a way by doing it, but his parental
heart, as well as is own financial interests, were involved. By mortgaging his house and
securing loans on his furniture, carriages, lots, and stocks, he managed to raise one hundred
thousand in cash, and deposited it in his own bank to Frank's credit; but it was a very light
anchor to windward in this swirling storm, at that. Frank had been counting on getting all of his
loans extended three or four days at least. Reviewing his situation at two o'clock of this Monday
afternoon, he said to himself thoughtfully but grimly: "Well, Stener has to loan me three hundred
thousand--that's all there is to it. And I'll have to see Butler now, or he'll be calling his loan
before three."
He hurried out, and was off to Butler's house, driving like mad.
Chapter XXVI
Things had changed greatly since last Cowperwood had talked with Butler. Although most
friendly at the time the proposition was made that he should combine with Mollenhauer and
Simpson to sustain the market, alas, now on this Monday morning at nine o'clock, an additional
complication had been added to the already tangled situation which had changed Butler's
attitude completely. As he was leaving his home to enter his runabout, at nine o'clock in the
morning of this same day in which Cowperwood was seeking Stener's aid, the postman, coming
up, had handed Butler four letters, all of which he paused for a moment to glance at. One was
from a sub-contractor by the name of O'Higgins, the second was from Father Michel, his
confessor, of St. Timothy's, thanking him for a contribution to the parish poor fund; a third was
from Drexel & Co. relating to a deposit, and the fourth was an anonymous communication, on
cheap stationery from some one who was apparently not very literate--a woman most
likely--written in a scrawling hand, which read:
DEAR SIR--This is to warn you that your daughter Aileen is running around with a man that she
shouldn't, Frank A. Cowperwood, the banker. If you don't believe it, watch the house at 931
North Tenth Street. Then you can see for yourself.
There was neither signature nor mark of any kind to indicate from whence it might have come.
Butler got the impression strongly that it might have been written by some one living in the
vicinity of the number indicated. His intuitions were keen at times. As a matter of fact, it was
written by a girl, a member of St. Timothy's Church, who did live in the vicinity of the house
indicated, and who knew Aileen by sight and was jealous of her airs and her position. She was
a thin, anemic, dissatisfied creature who had the type of brain which can reconcile the
gratification of personal spite with a comforting sense of having fulfilled a moral duty. Her home
was some five doors north of the unregistered Cowperwood domicile on the opposite side of the
street, and by degrees, in the course of time, she made out, or imagined that she had, the
significance of this institution, piecing fact to fancy and fusing all with that keen intuition which is
so closely related to fact. The result was eventually this letter which now spread clear and grim
before Butler's eyes.
The Irish are a philosophic as well as a practical race. Their first and strongest impulse is to
make the best of a bad situation-- to put a better face on evil than it normally wears. On first
reading these lines the intelligence they conveyed sent a peculiar chill over Butler's sturdy
frame. His jaw instinctively closed, and his gray eyes narrowed. Could this be true? If it were
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