say that I am not glad to be here, or that I would not be glad to work with you in any way that I might. Circumstances simply have not thrown me across your path before.”
As he talked his eye fixed McKenty steadily, almost innocently; and the latter, following him clearly, felt all the while that he was listening to a strange, able, dark, and very forceful man. There was no beating about the bush here, no squeamishness of spirit, and yet there was subtlety—the kind McKenty liked. While he was amused by Cowperwood’s casual reference to the silk stockings who were keeping him out, it appealed to him. He caught the point of view as well as the intention of it. Cowperwood represented a new and rather pleasing type of financier to him. Evidently, he was traveling in able company if one could believe the men who had introduced him so warmly. McKenty, as Cowperwood was well aware, had personally no interest in the old companies and also— though this he did not say—no particular sympathy with them. They were just remote financial corporations to him, paying political tribute on demand, expecting political favors in return. Every few weeks now they were in council, asking for one gas-main franchise after another (special privileges in certain streets), asking for better (more profitable) light-contracts, asking for dock privileges in the river, a lower tax rate, and so forth and so on. McKenty did not pay much attention to these things personally. He had a subordinate in council, a very powerful henchman by the name of Patrick Dowling, a meaty, vigorous Irishman and a true watch-dog of graft for the machine, who worked with the mayor, the city treasurer, the city tax receiver—in fact, all the officers of the current administration—and saw that such minor matters were properly equalized. Mr. McKenty had only met two or three of the officers of the South Side Gas Company, and that quite casually. He did not like them very well. The truth was that the old companies were officered by men who considered politicians of the McKenty and Dowling stripe as very evil men; if they paid them and did other such wicked things it was because they were forced to do so.
“Well,” McKenty replied, lingering his thin gold watch-chain in a thoughtful manner, “that’s an interesting scheme you have. Of course the old companies wouldn’t like your asking for a rival franchise, but once you had it they couldn’t object very well, could they?” He smiled. Mr. McKenty spoke with no suggestion of a brogue. “From one point of view it might be looked upon as bad business, but not entirely. They would be sure to make a great cry, though they haven’t been any too kind to the public themselves. But if you offered to combine with them I see no objection. It’s certain to be as good for them in the long run as it is for you. This merely permits you to make a better bargain.”
“Exactly,” said Cowperwood.
“And you have the means, you tell me, to lay mains in every part of the city, and fight with them for business if they won’t give in?”
“I have the means,” said Cowperwood, “or if I haven’t I can get them.”
Mr. McKenty looked at Mr. Cowperwood very solemnly. There was a kind of mutual sympathy, understanding, and admiration between the two men, but it was still heavily veiled by self-interest. To Mr. McKenty Cowperwood was interesting because he was one of the few business men he had met who were not ponderous, pharasaical, even hypocritical when they were dealing with him.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Mr. Cowperwood,” he said, finally. “I’ll take it all under consideration. Let me think it over until Monday, anyhow. There is more of an excuse now for the introduction of a general gas ordinance than there would be a little later—I can see that. Why don’t you draw up your proposed franchise and let me see it? Then we might find out what some of the other gentlemen of the city council think.”
Cowperwood almost smiled at the word “gentlemen.”
“I have already done that,” he said. “Here it is.”
McKenty took it, surprised and yet pleased at this evidence of business proficiency. He liked a strong manipulator of this kind—the more since he was not one himself, and most of those that he did know were thin- blooded and squeamish.
“Let me take this,” he said. “I’ll see you next Monday again if you wish. Come Monday.”
Cowperwood got up. “I thought I’d come and talk to you direct, Mr. McKenty,” he said, “and now I’m glad that I did. You will find, if you will take the trouble to look into this matter, that it is just as I represent it. There is a very great deal of money here in one way and another, though it will take some little time to work it out.”
Mr. McKenty saw the point. “Yes,” he said, sweetly, “to be sure.”
They looked into each other’s eyes as they shook hands.
“I’m not sure but you haven’t hit upon a very good idea here,” concluded McKenty, sympathetically. “A very good idea, indeed. Come and see me again next Monday, or about that time, and I’ll let you know what I think. Come any time you have anything else you want of me. I’ll always be glad to see you. It’s a fine night, isn’t it?” he added, looking out as they neared the door. “A nice moon that!” he added. A sickle moon was in the sky. “Good night.”
Chapter XIII.
The Die is Cast
The significance of this visit was not long in manifesting itself. At the top, in large affairs, life goes off into almost inexplicable tangles of personalities. Mr. McKenty, now that the matter had been called to his attention, was interested to learn about this gas situation from all sides—whether it might not be more profitable to deal with the Schryhart end of the argument, and so on. But his eventual conclusion was that Cowperwood’s plan, as he had outlined it, was the most feasible for political purposes, largely because the Schryhart faction, not being in a position where they needed to ask the city council for anything at present, were so obtuse as to forget to make overtures of any kind to the bucaneering forces at the City Hall.
When Cowperwood next came to McKenty’s house the latter was in a receptive frame of mind. “Well,” he said, after a few genial preliminary remarks, “I’ve been learning what’s going on. Your proposition is fair enough. Organize your company, and arrange your plan conditionally. Then introduce your ordinance, and we’ll see what can be done.” They went into a long, intimate discussion as to how the forthcoming stock should be divided, how it was to be held in escrow by a favorite bank of Mr. McKenty’s until the terms of the agreement under the eventual affiliation with the old companies or the new union company should be fulfilled, and details of that sort. It was rather a complicated arrangement, not as satisfactory to Cowperwood as it might have been, but satisfactory in that it permitted him to win. It required the undivided services of General Van Sickle, Henry De Soto Sippens, Kent Barrows McKibben, and Alderman Dowling for some little time. But finally all was in readiness for the coup.
On a certain Monday night, therefore, following the Thursday on which, according to the rules of the city council, an ordinance of this character would have to be introduced, the plan, after being publicly broached but this very little while, was quickly considered by the city council and passed. There had been really no time for public discussion. This was just the thing, of course, that Cowperwood and McKenty were trying to avoid. On the day following the particular Thursday on which the ordinance had been broached in council as certain to be brought up for passage, Schryhart, through his lawyers and the officers of the old individual gas companies, had run to the newspapers and denounced the whole thing as plain robbery; but what were they to do? There was so little time for agitation. True the newspapers, obedient to this larger financial influence, began to talk of “fair play to the old companies,” and the uselessness of two large rival companies in the field when one would serve as well. Still the public, instructed or urged by the McKenty agents to the contrary, were not prepared to believe it. They had not been so well treated by the old companies as to make any outcry on their behalf.
Standing outside the city council door, on the Monday evening when the bill was finally passed, Mr. Samuel Blackman, president of the South Side Gas Company, a little, wispy man with shoe-brush whiskers, declared emphatically:
“This is a scoundrelly piece of business. If the mayor signs that he should be impeached. There is not a vote in there to-night that has not been purchased—not one. This is a fine element of brigandage to introduce into Chicago; why, people who have worked years and years to build up a business are not safe!”
“It’s true, every word of it,” complained Mr. Jordan Jules, president of the North Side company, a short, stout man with a head like an egg lying lengthwise, a mere fringe of hair, and hard, blue eyes. He was with Mr. Hudson Baker, tall and ambling, who was president of the West Chicago company. All of these had come to protest.
“It’s that scoundrel from Philadelphia. He’s the cause of all our troubles. It’s high time the respectable business element of Chicago realized just what sort of a man they have to deal with in him. He ought to be driven
