“So that’s it,” he said.  “You’re expectin’ trouble to-morrow.  How are your own affairs?”

“I’m in pretty good shape, I think, all told, if the money element of this town doesn’t lose its head and go wild.  There has to be a lot of common sense exercised to-morrow, or to-night, even.  You know we are facing a real panic.  Mr. Butler, you may as well know that.  It may not last long, but while it does it will be bad.  Stocks are going to drop to-morrow ten or fifteen points on the opening.  The banks are going to call their loans unless some arrangement can be made to prevent them.  No one man can do that.  It will have to be a combination of men.  You and Mr. Simpson and Mr. Mollenhauer might do it—­that is, you could if you could persuade the big banking people to combine to back the market.  There is going to be a raid on local street-railways—­all of them.  Unless they are sustained the bottom is going to drop out.  I have always known that you were long on those.  I thought you and Mr. Mollenhauer and some of the others might want to act.  If you don’t I might as well confess that it is going to go rather hard with me.  I am not strong enough to face this thing alone.”

He was meditating on how he should tell the whole truth in regard to Stener.

“Well, now, that’s pretty bad,” said Butler, calmly and meditatively.  He was thinking of his own affairs.  A panic was not good for him either, but he was not in a desperate state.  He could not fail.  He might lose some money, but not a vast amount—­before he could adjust things.  Still he did not care to lose any money.

“How is it you’re so bad off?” he asked, curiously.  He was wondering how the fact that the bottom was going to drop out of local street-railways would affect Cowperwood so seriously.  “You’re not carryin’ any of them things, are you?” he added.

It was now a question of lying or telling the truth, and Cowperwood was literally afraid to risk lying in this dilemma.  If he did not gain Butler’s comprehending support he might fail, and if he failed the truth would come out, anyhow.

“I might as well make a clean breast of this, Mr. Butler,” he said, throwing himself on the old man’s sympathies and looking at him with that brisk assurance which Butler so greatly admired.  He felt as proud of Cowperwood at times as he did of his own sons.  He felt that he had helped to put him where he was.

“The fact is that I have been buying street-railway stocks, but not for myself exactly.  I am going to do something now which I think I ought not to do, but I cannot help myself.  If I don’t do it, it will injure you and a lot of people whom I do not wish to injure.  I know you are naturally interested in the outcome of the fall election.  The truth is I have been carrying a lot of stocks for Mr. Stener and some of his friends.  I do not know that all the money has come from the city treasury, but I think that most of it has.  I know