Both Hand and Arneel, sober men both, agreed with this—admiring Addison—and so the case stood. Schryhart, however, frequently intimated to them both that Cowperwood was merely building up the Chicago Trust Company at the expense of the Lake City National, in order to make the former strong enough to do without any aid, at which time Addison would resign and the Lake City would be allowed to shift for itself. Hand had never acted on this suggestion but he had thought.
It was not until the incidents relating to Cowperwood and Mrs. Hand had come to light that things financial and otherwise began to darken up. Hand, being greatly hurt in his pride, contemplated only severe reprisal. Meeting Schryhart at a directors’ meeting one day not long after his difficulty had come upon him, he remarked:
“I thought a few years ago, Norman, when you talked to me about this man Cowperwood that you were merely jealous—a dissatisfied business rival. Recently a few things have come to my notice which cause me to think differently. It is very plain to me now that the man is thoroughly bad—from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. It’s a pity the city has to endure him.”
“So you’re just beginning to find that out, are you, Hosmer?” answered Schryhart. “Well, I’ll not say I told you so. Perhaps you’ll agree with me now that the responsible people of Chicago ought to do something about it.”
Hand, a very heavy, taciturn man, merely looked at him. “I’ll be ready enough to do,” he said, “when I see how and what’s to be done.”
A little later Schryhart, meeting Duane Kingsland, learned the true source of Hand’s feeling against Cowperwood, and was not slow in transferring this titbit to Merrill, Simms, and others. Merrill, who, though Cowperwood had refused to extend his La Salle Street tunnel loop about State Street and his store, had hitherto always liked him after a fashion—remotely admired his courage and daring—was now appropriately shocked.
“Why, Anson,” observed Schryhart, “the man is no good. He has the heart of a hyena and the friendliness of a scorpion. You heard how he treated Hand, didn’t you?”
“No,” replied Merrill, “I didn’t.”
“Well, it’s this way, so I hear.” And Schryhart leaned over and confidentially communicated considerable information into Mr. Merrill’s left ear.
The latter raised his eyebrows. “Indeed!” he said.
“And the way he came to meet her,” added Schryhart, contemptuously, “was this. He went to Hand originally to borrow two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on West Chicago Street Railway. Angry? The word is no name for it.”
“You don’t say so,” commented Merrill, dryly, though privately interested and fascinated, for Mrs. Hand had always seemed very attractive to him. “I don’t wonder.”
He recalled that his own wife had recently insisted on inviting Cowperwood once.
Similarly Hand, meeting Arneel not so long afterward, confided to him that Cowperwood was trying to repudiate a sacred agreement. Arneel was grieved and surprised. It was enough for him to know that Hand had been seriously injured. Between the two of them they now decided to indicate to Addison, as president of the Lake City Bank, that all relations with Cowperwood and the Chicago Trust Company must cease. The result of this was, not long after, that Addison, very suave and gracious, agreed to give Cowperwood due warning that all his loans would have to be taken care of and then resigned—to become, seven months later, president of the Chicago Trust Company. This desertion created a great stir at the time, astonishing the very men who had suspected that it might come to pass. The papers were full of it.
“Well, let him go,” observed Arneel to Hand, sourly, on the day that Addison notified the board of directors of the Lake City of his contemplated resignation. “If he wants to sever his connection with a bank like this to go with a man like that, it’s his own lookout. He may live to regret it.”
It so happened that by now another election was pending Chicago, and Hand, along with Schryhart and Arneel—who joined their forces because of his friendship for Hand—decided to try to fight Cowperwood through this means.
Hosmer Hand, feeling that he had the burden of a great duty upon him, was not slow in acting. He was always, when aroused, a determined and able fighter. Needing an able lieutenant in the impending political conflict, he finally bethought himself of a man who had recently come to figure somewhat conspicuously in Chicago politics—one Patrick Gilgan, the same Patrick Gilgan of Cowperwood’s old Hyde Park gas-war days. Mr. Gilgan was now a comparatively well-to-do man. Owing to a genial capacity for mixing with people, a close mouth, and absolutely no understanding of, and consequently no conscience in matters of large public import (in
