are looking after that.”
As a matter of fact, all that Mr. Gilgan was saying was decidedly true. A henchman of young MacDonald’s who was beginning to learn to play politics—an alderman by the name of Klemm—had been scheduled as a kind of field-marshal, and it was MacDonald—not Gilgan, Tiernan, Kerrigan, or Edstrom—who was to round up the recalcitrant aldermen, telling them their duty. Gilgan’s quadrumvirate had not as yet got their machine in good working order, though they were doing their best to bring this about. “I helped to elect every one of these men, it’s true; but that doesn’t mean I’m running ’em by any means,” concluded Gilgan. “Not yet, anyhow.”
At the “not yet” Cowperwood smiled.
“Just the same, Mr. Gilgan,” he went on, smoothly, “you’re the nominal head and front of this whole movement in opposition to me at present, and you’re the one I have to look to. You have this present Republican situation almost entirely in your own fingers, and you can do about as you like if you’re so minded. If you choose you can persuade the members of council to take considerable more time than they otherwise would in passing these ordinances—of that I’m sure. I don’t know whether you know or not, Mr. Gilgan, though I suppose you do, that this whole fight against me is a strike campaign intended to drive me out of Chicago. Now you’re a man of sense and judgment and considerable business experience, and I want to ask you if you think that is fair. I came here some sixteen or seventeen years ago and went into the gas business. It was an open field, the field I undertook to develop—outlying towns on the North, South, and West sides. Yet the moment I started the old-line companies began to fight me, though I wasn’t invading their territory at all at the time.”
“I remember it well enough,” replied Gilgan. “I was one of the men that helped you to get your Hyde Park franchise. You’d never have got it if it hadn’t been for me. That fellow McKibben,” added Gilgan, with a grin, “a likely chap, him. He always walked as if he had on rubber shoes. He’s with you yet, I suppose?”
“Yes, he’s around here somewhere,” replied Cowperwood, loftily. “But to go back to this other matter, most of the men that are behind this General Electric ordinance and this ‘L’ road franchise were in the gas business— Blackman, Jules, Baker, Schryhart, and others—and they are angry because I came into their field, and angrier still because they had eventually to buy me out. They’re angry because I reorganized these old-fashioned street-railway companies here and put them on their feet. Merrill is angry because I didn’t run a loop around his store, and the others are angry because I ever got a loop at all. They’re all angry because I managed to step in and do the things that they should have done long before. I came here—and that’s the whole story in a nutshell. I’ve had to have the city council with me to be able to do anything at all, and because I managed to make it friendly and keep it so they’ve turned on me in that section and gone into politics. I know well enough, Mr. Gilgan,” concluded Cowperwood, “who has been behind you in this fight. I’ve known all along where the money has been coming from. You’ve won, and you’ve won handsomely, and I for one don’t begrudge you your victory in the least; but what I want to know now is, are you going to help them carry this fight on against me in this way, or are you not? Are you going to give me a fighting chance? There’s going to be another election in two years. Politics isn’t a bed of roses that stays made just because you make it once. These fellows that you have got in with are a crowd of silk stockings. They haven’t any sympathy with you or any one like you. They’re willing to be friendly with you now—just long enough to get something out of you and club me to death. But after that how long do you think they will have any use for you—how long?”
“Not very long, maybe,” replied Gilgan, simply and contemplatively, “but the world is the world, and we have to take it as we find it.”
“Quite so,” replied Cowperwood, undismayed; “but Chicago is Chicago, and I will be here as long as they will. Fighting me in this fashion—building elevated roads to cut into my profits and giving franchises to rival companies— isn’t going to get me out or seriously injure me, either. I’m here to stay, and the political situation as it is to-day isn’t going to remain the same forever and ever. Now, you are an ambitious man; I can see that. You’re not in politics for your health—that I know. Tell me exactly what it is you want and whether I can’t get it for you as quick if not quicker than these other fellows? What is it I can do for you that will make you see that my side is just as good as theirs and better? I am playing a legitimate game in Chicago. I’ve been building up an excellent street-car service. I don’t want to be annoyed every fifteen minutes by a rival company coming into the field. Now, what can I do to straighten this out? Isn’t there some way that you and I can come together without fighting at every step? Can’t you suggest some programme we can both follow that will make things easier?”
Cowperwood paused, and Gilgan thought for a long time. It was true, as Cowperwood said, that he was not in politics for his health. The situation, as at present conditioned, was not inherently favorable for the brilliant programme he had originally mapped out for himself. Tiernan, Kerrigan, and Edstrom were friendly as yet; but they were already making extravagant demands; and the reformers—those who had been led by the newspapers to believe that Cowperwood was a scoundrel and all his works vile—were demanding that a strictly moral programme be adhered to in all the doings of council, and that no jobs, contracts, or deals of any kind be entered into without the full knowledge of the newspapers and of the public. Gilgan, even after the first post-election conference with his colleagues, had begun to feel that he was between the devil and the deep sea, but he was feeling his way, and not inclined to be in too much of a hurry.
“It’s rather a flat proposition you’re makin’ me,” he said softly, after a time, “askin’ me to throw down me friends the moment I’ve won a victory for ’em. It’s not the way I’ve been used to playin’ politics. There may be a lot of truth in what you say. Still, a man can’t be jumpin’ around like a cat in a bag. He has to be faithful to somebody sometime.” Mr. Gilgan paused, considerably nonplussed by his own position.
“Well,” replied Cowperwood, sympathetically, “think it over. It’s difficult business, this business of politics. I’m in it, for one, only because I have to be. If you see any way you can help me, or I can help you, let me know. In the mean time don’t take in bad part what I’ve just said. I’m in the position of a man with his hack to the wall. I’m fighting for my life. Naturally, I’m going to fight. But you and I needn’t be the worse friends for that. We may become the best of friends yet.”
“It’s well I know that,” said Gilgan, “and it’s the best of friends I’d like to be with you. But even if I could take care of the aldermen, which I couldn’t alone as yet, there’s the mayor. I don’t know him at all except to say how- do-ye-do now and then; but he’s very much opposed to you, as I understand it. He’ll be running around most likely and talking in the papers. A man like that can do a good deal.”
“I may be able to arrange for that,” replied Cowperwood. “Perhaps Mr. Sluss can be reached. It may be that he isn’t as opposed to me as he thinks he is. You never can tell.”
Chapter XXXIX.
The New Administration
Oliver Marchbanks, the youthful fox to whom Stimson had assigned the task of trapping Mr. Sluss in some legally unsanctioned act, had by scurrying about finally pieced together enough of a story to make it exceedingly unpleasant for the Honorable Chaffee in case he were to become the too willing tool of Cowperwood’s enemies. The principal agent in this affair was a certain Claudia Carlstadt—adventuress, detective by disposition, and a sort of smiling prostitute and hireling, who was at the same time a highly presentable and experienced individual. Needless to say, Cowperwood knew nothing of these minor proceedings, though a genial nod from him in the beginning had set in motion the whole machinery of trespass in this respect.
Claudia Carlstadt—the instrument of the Honorable Chaffee’s undoing—was blonde, slender, notably fresh as yet, being only twenty-six, and as ruthless and unconsciously cruel as only the avaricious and unthinking type— unthinking in the larger philosophic meaning of the word—can be. To grasp the reason for her being, one would have had to see the spiritless South Halstead Street world from which she had sprung—one of those neighborhoods of old, cracked, and battered houses where slatterns trudge to and fro with beer-cans and shutters swing on broken hinges. In her youth Claudia had been made to “rush the growler,” to sell newspapers at the corner of Halstead and Harrison streets, and to buy cocaine at the nearest drug store. Her little dresses and underclothing had always been of the poorest and shabbiest material—torn and dirty, her ragged stockings frequently showed the white flesh of her thin little legs, and her shoes were worn and cracked, letting the water and snow seep through in winter. Her companions were wretched little street boys of her own neighborhood, from whom she learned to swear and to understand and indulge in vile practices, though, as is often the case with children, she was not utterly depraved thereby, at that. At eleven, when her mother died, she ran away from the wretched children’s home to which she
