He set his teeth and his gray eyes fairly snapped their determination.

“Well, I’ve done all I can, Frank,” pleaded Steger, sympathetically.  “You’ll do me the justice to say that I put up the best fight I knew how.  I may not know how—­you’ll have to answer for that—­but within my limits I’ve done the best I can.  I can do a few things more to carry this thing on, if you want me to, but I’m going to leave it to you now.  Whatever you say goes.”

“Don’t talk nonsense at this stage, Harper,” replied Cowperwood almost testily.  “I know whether I’m satisfied or not, and I’d soon tell you if I wasn’t.  I think you might as well go on and see if you can find some definite grounds for carrying it to the Supreme Court, but meanwhile I’ll begin my sentence.  I suppose Payderson will be naming a day to have me brought before him now shortly.”

“It depends on how you’d like to have it, Frank.  I could get a stay of sentence for a week maybe, or ten days, if it will do you any good.  Shannon won’t make any objection to that, I’m sure.  There’s only one hitch.  Jaspers will be around here tomorrow looking for you.  It’s his duty to take you into custody again, once he’s notified that your appeal has been denied.  He’ll be wanting to lock you up unless you pay him, but we can fix that.  If you do want to wait, and want any time off, I suppose he’ll arrange to let you out with a deputy; but I’m afraid you’ll have to stay there nights.  They’re pretty strict about that since that Albertson case of a few years ago.”

Steger referred to the case of a noted bank cashier who, being let out of the county jail at night in the alleged custody of a deputy, was permitted to escape.  There had been emphatic and severe condemnation of the sheriff’s office at the time, and since then, repute or no repute, money or no money, convicted criminals were supposed to stay in the county jail at night at least.

Cowperwood meditated this calmly, looking out of the lawyer’s window into Second Street.  He did not much fear anything that might happen to him in Jaspers’s charge since his first taste of that gentleman’s hospitality, although he did object to spending nights in the county jail when his general term of imprisonment was being reduced no whit thereby.  All that he could do now in connection with his affairs, unless he could have months of freedom, could be as well adjusted from a prison cell as from his Third Street office—­not quite, but nearly so.  Anyhow, why parley?  He was facing a prison term, and he might as well accept it without further ado.  He might take a day or two finally to look after his affairs; but beyond that, why bother?

“When, in the ordinary course of events, if you did nothing at all, would I come up for sentence?”

“Oh, Friday or Monday, I fancy,” replied Steger.  “I don’t know what move Shannon is planning to make in this matter.  I thought I’d walk around and see him in a little while.”