Today, at forty-eight, McKenty was an exceedingly important personage. His roomy house on the West Side, at Harrison Street and Ashland Avenue, was visited at sundry times by financiers, business men, officeholders, priests, saloon-keepers—in short, the whole range and gamut of active, subtle, political life. From McKenty they could obtain that counsel, wisdom, surety, solution which all of them on occasion were anxious to have, and which in one deft way and another—often by no more than gratitude and an acknowledgment of his leadership—they were willing to pay for. To police captains and officers whose places he occasionally saved, when they should justly have been discharged; to mothers whose erring boys or girls he took out of prison and sent home again; to keepers of bawdy houses whom he protected from a too harsh invasion of the grafting propensities of the local police; to politicians and saloon-keepers who were in danger of being destroyed by public upheavals of one kind and another, he seemed, in hours of stress, when his smooth, genial, almost artistic face beamed on them, like a heaven-sent son of light, a kind of Western god, all-powerful, all-merciful, perfect. On the other hand, there were ingrates, uncompromising or pharasaical religionists and reformers, plotting, scheming rivals, who found him deadly to contend with. There were many henchmen—runners from an almost imperial throne—to do his bidding. He was simple in dress and taste, married and (apparently) very happy, a professing though virtually non-practising Catholic, a suave, genial Buddha-like man, powerful and enigmatic.
When Cowperwood and McKenty first met, it was on a spring evening at the latter’s home. The windows of the large house were pleasantly open, though screened, and the curtains were blowing faintly in a light air. Along with a sense of the new green life everywhere came a breath of stockyards.
On the presentation of Addison’s letter and of another, secured through Van Sickle from a well-known political judge, Cowperwood had been invited to call. On his arrival he was offered a drink, a cigar, introduced to Mrs. McKenty—who, lacking an organized social life of any kind, was always pleased to meet these celebrities of the upper world, if only for a moment—and shown eventually into the library. Mrs. McKenty, as he might have observed if he had had the eye for it, was plump and fifty, a sort of superannuated Aileen, but still showing traces of a former hardy beauty, and concealing pretty well the evidences that she had once been a prostitute. It so happened that on this particular evening McKenty was in a most genial frame of mind. There were no immediate political troubles bothering him just now. It was early in May. Outside the trees were budding, the sparrows and robins were voicing their several moods. A delicious haze was in the air, and some early mosquitoes were reconnoitering the screens which protected the windows and doors. Cowperwood, in spite of his various troubles, was in a complacent state of mind himself. He liked life—even its very difficult complications—perhaps its complications best of all. Nature was beautiful, tender at times, but difficulties, plans, plots, schemes to unravel and make smooth—these things were what made existence worthwhile.
“Well now, Mr. Cowperwood,” McKenty began, when they finally entered the cool, pleasant library, “what can I do for you?”
“Well, Mr. McKenty,” said Cowperwood, choosing his words and bringing the finest resources of his temperament into play, “it isn’t so much, and yet it is. I want a franchise from the Chicago city council, and I want you to help me get it if you will. I know you may say to me why not go to the councilmen direct. I would do that, except that there are certain other elements—individuals—who might come to you. It won’t offend you, I know, when I say that I have always understood that you are a sort of clearing-house for political troubles in Chicago.”
Mr. McKenty smiled. “That’s flattering,” he replied, dryly.
“Now, I am rather new myself to Chicago,” went on Cowperwood, softly. “I have been here only a year or two. I come from Philadelphia. I have been interested as a fiscal agent and an investor in several gas companies that have been organized in Lakeview, Hyde Park, and elsewhere outside the city limits, as you may possibly have seen by the papers lately. I am not their owner, in the sense that I have provided all or even a good part of the money invested in them. I am not even their manager, except in a very general way. I might better be called their promoter and guardian; but I am that for other people and myself.”
Mr. McKenty nodded.
“Now, Mr. McKenty, it was not very long after I started out to get franchises to do business in Lakeview and Hyde Park before I found myself confronted by the interests which control the three old city gas companies. They were very much opposed to our entering the field in Cook County anywhere, as you may imagine, although we were not really crowding in on their field. Since then they have fought me with lawsuits, injunctions, and charges of bribery and conspiracy.”
“I know,” put in Mr. McKenty. “I have heard something of it.”
“Quite so,” replied Cowperwood. “Because of their opposition I made them an offer to combine these three companies and the three new ones into one, take out a new charter, and give the city a uniform gas service. They would not do that—largely because I was an outsider, I think. Since then another person, Mr. Schryhart”—McKenty nodded—“who has never had anything to do with the gas business here, has
