of a lovely nude nymph—­just the little feet broken off at the ankles.  The base on which the feet of the nymph and the monolith stood was ornamented with carved ox-skulls intertwined with roses.  In his reception hall were replicas of Caligula, Nero, and other Roman emperors; and on his stair-walls reliefs of dancing nymphs in procession, and priests bearing offerings of sheep and swine to the sacrificial altars.  There was a clock in some corner of the house which chimed the quarter, the half, the three-quarters, and the hour in strange, euphonious, and pathetic notes.  On the walls of the rooms were tapestries of Flemish origin, and in the reception-hall, the library, the living-room, and the drawing-room, richly carved furniture after the standards of the Italian Renaissance.  The Senator’s taste in the matter of paintings was inadequate, and he mistrusted it; but such as he had were of distinguished origin and authentic.  He cared more for his curio-cases filled with smaller imported bronzes, Venetian glass, and Chinese jade.  He was not a collector of these in any notable sense—­merely a lover of a few choice examples.  Handsome tiger and leopard skin rugs, the fur of a musk-ox for his divan, and tanned and brown-stained goat and kid skins for his tables, gave a sense of elegance and reserved profusion.  In addition the Senator had a dining-room done after the Jacobean idea of artistic excellence, and a wine-cellar which the best of the local vintners looked after with extreme care.  He was a man who loved to entertain lavishly; and when his residence was thrown open for a dinner, a reception, or a ball, the best of local society was to be found there.

The conference was in the Senator’s library, and he received his colleagues with the genial air of one who has much to gain and little to lose.  There were whiskies, wines, cigars on the table, and while Mollenhauer and Simpson exchanged the commonplaces of the day awaiting the arrival of Butler, they lighted cigars and kept their inmost thoughts to themselves.

It so happened that upon the previous afternoon Butler had learned from Mr. David Pettie, the district attorney, of the sixty-thousand-dollar-check transaction.  At the same time the matter had been brought to Mollenhauer’s attention by Stener himself.  It was Mollenhauer, not Butler who saw that by taking advantage of Cowperwood’s situation, he might save the local party from blame, and at the same time most likely fleece Cowperwood out of his street-railway shares without letting Butler or Simpson know anything about it.  The thing to do was to terrorize him with a private threat of prosecution.

Butler was not long in arriving, and apologized for the delay.  Concealing his recent grief behind as jaunty an air as possible, he began with: 

“It’s a lively life I’m leadin’, what with every bank in the city wantin’ to know how their loans are goin’ to be taken care of.”  He took a cigar and struck a match.