“Rambaud!” sneered Schryhart. “Cowperwood’s man—he and all the others. You couldn’t have gone to a worse crowd if you had tried. So that’s where this stock is coming from, beyond a doubt. That fellow or his friends are selling us out. You might have known he’d do it. He hates us. So you’re through, are you?—not another single trick to turn?” “Not one,” replied Stackpole, solemnly. “Well, that’s too bad. You have acted most unwisely in going to Cowperwood; but we shall have to see what can be done.” Schryhart’s idea, like that of Hand, was to cause Hull & Stackpole to relinquish all their holdings for nothing to the banks in order that, under pressure, the latter might carry the stocks he and the others had hypothecated with them until such a time as the company might be organized at a profit. At the same time he was intensely resentful against Cowperwood for having by any fluke of circumstance reaped so large a profit as he must have done. Plainly, the present crisis had something to do with him. Schryhart was quick to call up Hand and Arneel, after Stackpole had gone, suggesting a conference, and together, an hour later, at Arneel’s office, they foregathered along with Merrill to discuss this new and very interesting development. As a matter of fact, during the course of the afternoon all of these gentlemen had been growing more and more uneasy. Not that between them they were not eminently capable of taking care of their own losses, but the sympathetic effect of such a failure as this (twenty million dollars), to say nothing of its reaction upon the honor of themselves and the city as a financial center, was a most unsatisfactory if not disastrous thing to contemplate, and now this matter of Cowperwood’s having gained handsomely by it all was added to their misery. Both Hand and Arneel growled in opposition when they heard, and Merrill meditated, as he usually did, on the wonder of Cowperwood’s subtlety. He could not help liking him. There is a sort of municipal pride latent in the bosoms of most members of a really thriving community which often comes to the surface under the most trying circumstances. These four men were by no means an exception to this rule. Messrs. Schryhart, Hand, Arneel, and Merrill were concerned as to the good name of Chicago and their united standing in the eyes of Eastern financiers. It was a sad blow to them to think that the one great enterprise they had recently engineered—a foil to some of the immense affairs which had recently had their genesis in New York and elsewhere—should have come to so untimely an end. Chicago finance really should not be put to shame in this fashion if it could be avoided. So that when Mr. Schryhart arrived, quite warm and disturbed, and related in detail what he had just learned, his friends listened to him with eager and wary ears.