it?  He could have sent a boy for it, as usual.  That was the way it had always been done before.  Why anything different now?  I’ll tell you why! [Shannon suddenly shouted, varying his voice tremendously.] I’ll tell you why!  He knew that he was a ruined man!  He knew that his last semi-legitimate avenue of escape—­the favor of George W. Stener—­had been closed to him!  He knew that honestly, by open agreement, he could not extract another single dollar from the treasury of the city of Philadelphia.  He knew that if he left the office without this check and sent a boy for it, the aroused city treasurer would have time to inform his clerks, and that then no further money could be obtained.  That’s why!  That’s why, gentlemen, if you really want to know.

“Now, gentlemen of the jury, I am about done with my arraignment of this fine, honorable, virtuous citizen whom the counsel for the defense, Mr. Steger, tells you you cannot possibly convict without doing a great injustice.  All I have to say is that you look to me like sane, intelligent men—­just the sort of men that I meet everywhere in the ordinary walks of life, doing an honorable American business in an honorable American way.  Now, gentlemen of the jury [he was very soft-spoken now], all I have to say is that if, after all you have heard and seen here to-day, you still think that Mr. Frank A. Cowperwood is an honest, honorable man—­that he didn’t steal, willfully and knowingly, sixty thousand dollars from the Philadelphia city treasury; that he had actually bought the certificates he said he had, and had intended to put them in the sinking-fund, as he said he did, then don’t you dare to do anything except turn him loose, and that speedily, so that he can go on back to-day into Third Street, and start to straighten out his much-entangled financial affairs.  It is the only thing for honest, conscientious men to do—­to turn him instantly loose into the heart of this community, so that some of the rank injustice that my opponent, Mr. Steger, alleges has been done him will be a little made up to him.  You owe him, if that is the way you feel, a prompt acknowledgment of his innocence.  Don’t worry about George W. Stener.  His guilt is established by his own confession.  He admits he is guilty.  He will be sentenced without trial later on.  But this man—­he says he is an honest, honorable man.  He says he didn’t think he was going to fail.  He says he used all that threatening, compelling, terrifying language, not because he was in danger of failing, but because he didn’t want the bother of looking further for aid.  What do you think?  Do you really think that he had purchased sixty thousand dollars more of certificates for the sinking-fund, and that he was entitled to the money?  If so, why didn’t he put them in the sinking-fund?  They’re not there now, and the sixty thousand dollars is gone.  Who got it?  The Girard National Bank, where he was overdrawn to the extent of one hundred thousand dollars!  Did it get it and forty