The Financier a novel by Theodore Dreiser

 
 

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Chapter XLIV 
Meanwhile the great argument had been begun in the jury-room, and all the 
points that had been meditatively speculated upon in the jury-box were now 
being openly discussed. 
It is amazingly interesting to see how a jury will waver and speculate in a 
case like this—how curious and uncertain is the process by which it makes 
up its so-called mind. So-called truth is a nebulous thing at best; facts are 
capable of such curious inversion and interpretation, honest and otherwise. 
The jury had a strongly complicated problem before it, and it went over it 
and over it. 
Juries reach not so much definite conclusions as verdicts, in a curious 
fashion and for curious reasons. Very often a jury will have concluded little 
so far as its individual members are concerned and yet it will have reached a 
verdict. The matter of time, as all lawyers know, plays a part in this. Juries, 
speaking of the members collectively and frequently individually, object to 
the amount of time it takes to decide a case. They do not enjoy sitting and 
deliberating over a problem unless it is tremendously fascinating. The 
ramifications or the mystery of a syllogism can become a weariness and a 
bore. The jury-room itself may and frequently does become a dull agony. 
On the other hand, no jury contemplates a disagreement with any degree of 
satisfaction. There is something so inherently constructive in the human 
mind that to leave a problem unsolved is plain misery. It haunts the average 
individual like any other important task left unfinished. Men in a jury-room, 
like those scientifically demonstrated atoms of a crystal which scientists and 
philosophers love to speculate upon, like finally to arrange themselves into 
an orderly and artistic whole, to present a compact, intellectual front, to be 
whatever they have set out to be, properly and rightly—a compact, sensible 
jury. One sees this same instinct magnificently displayed in every other 
phase of nature—in the drifting of sea-wood to the Sargasso Sea, in the 
geometric interrelation of air-bubbles on the surface of still water, in the 
marvelous unreasoned architecture of so many insects and atomic forms 
which make up the substance and the texture of this world. It would seem 
as though the physical substance of life—this apparition of form which the 
eye detects and calls real were shot through with some vast subtlety that 
loves order, that is order. The atoms of our so-called being, in spite of our 
so-called reason—the dreams of a mood—know where to go and what to do. 
They represent an order, a wisdom, a willing that is not of us. They build 
orderly in spite of us. So the subconscious spirit of a jury. At the same time, 
one does not forget the strange hypnotic effect of one personality on another, 
the varying effects of varying types on each other, until a solution—to use 
the word in its purely chemical sense—is reached. In a jury-room the 

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thought or determination of one or two or three men, if it be definite enough, 
is likely to pervade the whole room and conquer the reason or the opposition 
of the majority. One man "standing out" for the definite thought that is in 
him is apt to become either the triumphant leader of a pliant mass or the 
brutally battered target of a flaming, concentrated intellectual fire. Men 
despise dull opposition that is without reason. In a jury-room, of all places, 
a man is expected to give a reason for the faith that is in him—if one is 
demanded. It will not do to say, "I cannot agree." Jurors have been known to 
fight. Bitter antagonisms lasting for years have been generated in these close 
quarters. Recalcitrant jurors have been hounded commercially in their local 
spheres for their unreasoned oppositions or conclusions. 
After reaching the conclusion that Cowperwood unquestionably deserved 
some punishment, there was wrangling as to whether the verdict should be 
guilty on all four counts, as charged in the indictment. Since they did not 
understand how to differentiate between the various charges very well, they 
decided it should be on all four, and a recommendation to mercy added. 
Afterward this last was eliminated, however; either he was guilty or he was 
not. The judge could see as well as they could all the extenuating 
circumstances—perhaps better. Why tie his hands? As a rule no attention 
was paid to such recommendations, anyhow, and it only made the jury look 
wabbly. 
So, finally, at ten minutes after twelve that night, they were ready to return 
a verdict; and Judge Payderson, who, because of his interest in the case and 
the fact that he lived not so far away, had decided to wait up this long, was 
recalled. Steger and Cowperwood were sent for. The court-room was fully 
lighted. The bailiff, the clerk, and the stenographer were there. The jury filed 
in, and Cowperwood, with Steger at his right, took his position at the gate 
which gave into the railed space where prisoners always stand to hear the 
verdict and listen to any commentary of the judge. He was accompanied by 
his father, who was very nervous. 
For the first time in his life he felt as though he were walking in his sleep. 
Was this the real Frank Cowperwood of two months before—so wealthy, so 
progressive, so sure? Was this only December 5th or 6th now (it was after 
midnight)? Why was it the jury had deliberated so long? What did it mean? 
Here they were now, standing and gazing solemnly before them; and here 
now was Judge Payderson, mounting the steps of his rostrum, his frizzled 
hair standing out in a strange, attractive way, his familiar bailiff rapping for 
order. He did not look at Cowperwood—it would not be courteous—but at 
the jury, who gazed at him in return. At the words of the clerk, "Gentlemen 
of the jury, have you agreed upon a verdict?" the foreman spoke up, "We 
have." 

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"Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?" 
"We find the defendant guilty as charged in the indictment." 
How had they come to do this? Because he had taken a check for sixty 
thousand dollars which did not belong to him? But in reality it did. Good 
Lord, what was sixty thousand dollars in the sum total of all the money that 
had passed back and forth between him and George W. Stener? Nothing, 
nothing! A mere bagatelle in its way; and yet here it had risen up, this 
miserable, insignificant check, and become a mountain of opposition, a 
stone wall, a prison-wall barring his further progress. It was astonishing. He 
looked around him at the court-room. How large and bare and cold it was! 
Still he was Frank A. Cowperwood. Why should he let such queer thoughts 
disturb him? His fight for freedom and privilege and restitution was not over 
yet. Good heavens! It had only begun. In five days he would be out again on 
bail. Steger would take an appeal. He would be out, and he would have two 
long months in which to make an additional fight. He was not down yet. He 
would win his liberty. This jury was all wrong. A higher court would say so. 
It would reverse their verdict, and he knew it. He turned to Steger, where the 
latter was having the clerk poll the jury, in the hope that some one juror had 
been over-persuaded, made to vote against his will. 
"Is that your verdict?" he heard the clerk ask of Philip Moultrie, juror No. 1. 
"It is," replied that worthy, solemnly. 
"Is that your verdict?" The clerk was pointing to Simon Glassberg. 
"Yes, sir." 
"Is that your verdict?" He pointed to Fletcher Norton. 
"Yes." 
So it went through the whole jury. All the men answered firmly and clearly, 
though Steger thought it might barely be possible that one would have 
changed his mind. The judge thanked them and told them that in view of 
their long services this night, they were dismissed for the term. The only 
thing remaining to be done now was for Steger to persuade Judge Payderson 
to grant a stay of sentence pending the hearing of a motion by the State 
Supreme Court for a new trial. 
The Judge looked at Cowperwood very curiously as Steger made this request 
in proper form, and owing to the importance of the case and the feeling he 
had that the Supreme Court might very readily grant a certificate of 
reasonable doubt in this case, he agreed. There was nothing left, therefore, 
but for Cowperwood to return at this late hour with the deputy sheriff to the 
county jail, where he must now remain for five days at least—possibly 
longer. 

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The jail in question, which was known locally as Moyamensing Prison, was 
located at Tenth and Reed Streets, and from an architectural and artistic 
point of view was not actually displeasing to the eye. It consisted of a central 
portion—prison, residence for the sheriff or what you will—three stories 
high, with a battlemented cornice and a round battlemented tower about 
one-third as high as the central portion itself, and two wings, each two 
stories high, with battlemented turrets at either end, giving it a highly 
castellated and consequently, from the American point of view, a very 
prison-like appearance. The facade of the prison, which was not more than 
thirty-five feet high for the central portion, nor more than twenty-five feet for 
the wings, was set back at least a hundred feet from the street, and was 
continued at either end, from the wings to the end of the street block, by a 
stone wall all of twenty feet high. The structure was not severely prison-like, 
for the central portion was pierced by rather large, unbarred apertures hung 
on the two upper stories with curtains, and giving the whole front a rather 
pleasant and residential air. The wing to the right, as one stood looking in 
from the street, was the section known as the county jail proper, and was 
devoted to the care of prisoners serving short-term sentences on some 
judicial order. The wing to the left was devoted exclusively to the care and 
control of untried prisoners. The whole building was built of a smooth, light-
colored stone, which on a snowy night like this, with the few lamps that 
were used in it glowing feebly in the dark, presented an eery, fantastic, 
almost supernatural appearance. 
It was a rough and blowy night when Cowperwood started for this 
institution under duress. The wind was driving the snow before it in 
curious, interesting whirls. Eddie Zanders, the sheriff's deputy on guard at 
the court of Quarter Sessions, accompanied him and his father and Steger. 
Zanders was a little man, dark, with a short, stubby mustache, and a 
shrewd though not highly intelligent eye. He was anxious first to uphold his 
dignity as a deputy sheriff, which was a very important position in his 
estimation, and next to turn an honest penny if he could. He knew little save 
the details of his small world, which consisted of accompanying prisoners to 
and from the courts and the jails, and seeing that they did not get away. He 
was not unfriendly to a particular type of prisoner—the well-to-do or 
moderately prosperous—for he had long since learned that it paid to be so. 
To-night he offered a few sociable suggestions—viz., that it was rather 
rough, that the jail was not so far but that they could walk, and that Sheriff 
Jaspers would, in all likelihood, be around or could be aroused. 
Cowperwood scarcely heard. He was thinking of his mother and his wife and 
of Aileen. 
When the jail was reached he was led to the central portion, as it was here 
that the sheriff, Adlai Jaspers, had his private office. Jaspers had recently 

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been elected to office, and was inclined to conform to all outward 
appearances, in so far as the proper conduct of his office was concerned, 
without in reality inwardly conforming. Thus it was generally known among 
the politicians that one way he had of fattening his rather lean salary was to 
rent private rooms and grant special privileges to prisoners who had the 
money to pay for the same. Other sheriffs had done it before him. In fact, 
when Jaspers was inducted into office, several prisoners were already 
enjoying these privileges, and it was not a part of his scheme of things to 
disturb them. The rooms that he let to the "right parties," as he invariably 
put it, were in the central portion of the jail, where were his own private 
living quarters. They were unbarred, and not at all cell-like. There was no