The Financier, a novel eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 732 pages of information about The Financier, a novel.

The Financier, a novel eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 732 pages of information about The Financier, a novel.
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 fitted 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 florist, with a pale face, a wide speculative forehead, and anemic hands, struck him as being sufficiently 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 flaxen 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, first with larceny, second with embezzlement, third with larceny as bailee, and fourth with embezzlement of a certain sum of money—­a specific 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 certificates 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 certificates as they might mature in the hands of holders and be presented for payment—­for which purpose, however, the check in question had never been used.

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The Financier, a novel from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.