But all without avail.  All were interested, considerate; but things were very uncertain.  The Girard National Bank refused an hour’s grace, and he had to send a large bundle of his most valuable securities to cover his stock shrinkage there.  Word came from his father at two that as president of the Third National he would have to call for his one hundred and fifty thousand dollars due there.  The directors were suspicious of his stocks.  He at once wrote a check against fifty thousand dollars of his deposits in that bank, took twenty-five thousand of his available office funds, called a loan of fifty thousand against Tighe & Co., and sold sixty thousand Green & Coates, a line he had been tentatively dabbling in, for one-third their value—­and, combining the general results, sent them all to the Third National.  His father was immensely relieved from one 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: