“There’s a line that I know of here in the city which could be made into a splendidly paying property,” continued Cowperwood, meditatively, “if the right things could be done with it. Just like this North Pennsylvania line, it isn’t long enough. The territory it serves isn’t big enough. It ought to be extended; but if you and I could get it, it might eventually be worked with this North Pennsylvania Company or some other as one company. That would save officers and offices and a lot of things. There is always money to be made out of a larger purchasing power.”
He paused and looked out the window of his handsome little hardwood office, speculating upon the future. The window gave nowhere save into a back yard behind another office building which had formerly been a residence. Some grass grew feebly there. The red wall and old-fashioned brick fence which divided it from the next lot reminded him somehow of his old home in New Market Street, to which his Uncle Seneca used to come as a Cuban trader followed by his black Portuguese servitor. He could see him now as he sat here looking at the yard.
“Well,” asked Stener, ambitiously, taking the bait, “why don’t we get hold of that—you and me? I suppose I could fix it so far as the money is concerned. How much would it take?”
Cowperwood smiled inwardly again.
“I don’t know exactly,” he said, after a time. “I want to look into it more carefully. The one trouble is that I’m carrying a good deal of the city’s money as it is. You see, I have that two hundred thousand dollars against your city-loan deals. And this new scheme will take two or three hundred thousand more. If that were out of the way—”
He was thinking of one of the inexplicable stock panics—those strange American depressions which had so much to do with the temperament of the people, and so little to do with the basic conditions of the country. “If this North Pennsylvania deal were through and done with—”
He rubbed his chin and pulled at his handsome silky mustache.
“Don’t ask me any more about it, George,” he said, finally, as he saw that the latter was beginning to think as to which line it might be. “Don’t say anything at all about it. I want to get my facts exactly right, and then I’ll talk to you. I think you and I can do this thing a little later, when we get the North Pennsylvania scheme under way. I’m so rushed just now I’m not sure that I want to undertake it at once; but you keep quiet and we’ll see.” He turned toward his desk, and Stener got up.
“I’ll make any sized deposit with you that you wish, the moment you think you’re ready to act, Frank,” exclaimed Stener, and with the thought that Cowperwood was not nearly as anxious to do this as he should be, since he could always rely on him (Stener) when there was anything really profitable in the offing. Why should not the able and wonderful Cowperwood be allowed to make the two of them rich? “Just notify Stires, and he’ll send you a check. Strobik thought we ought to act pretty soon.”
“I’ll tend to it, George,” replied Cowperwood, confidently. “It will come out all right. Leave it to me.”
Stener kicked his stout legs to straighten his trousers, and extended his hand. He strolled out in the street thinking of this new scheme. Certainly, if he could get in with Cowperwood right he would be a rich man, for Cowperwood was so successful and so cautious. His new house, this beautiful banking office, his growing fame, and his subtle connections with Butler and others put Stener in considerable awe of him. Another line! They would control it and the North Pennsylvania! Why, if this went on, he might become a magnate—he really might—he, George W. Stener, once a cheap real-estate and insurance agent. He strolled up the street thinking, but with no more idea of the importance of his civic duties and the nature of the social ethics against which he was offending than if they had never existed.
XXII
The services which Cowperwood performed during the ensuing year and a half for Stener, Strobik, Butler, State Treasurer Van Nostrand, State Senator Relihan, representative of “the interests,” so-called, at Harrisburg, and various banks which were friendly to these gentlemen, were numerous and confidential. For Stener, Strobik, Wycroft, Harmon and himself he executed the North Pennsylvania deal, by which he became a holder of a fifth of the controlling stock. Together he and Stener joined to purchase the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Street line and in the concurrent gambling in stocks.
By the summer of 1871, when Cowperwood was nearly thirty-four years of age, he had a banking business estimated at nearly two million dollars, personal holdings aggregating nearly half a million, and prospects which other things being equal looked to wealth which might rival that of any American. The city, through its treasurer—still Mr. Stener—was a depositor with him to the extent of nearly five hundred thousand dollars. The State, through its State treasurer, Van Nostrand, carried two hundred thousand dollars on his books. Bode was speculating in street-railway stocks to the extent of fifty thousand dollars. Relihan to the same amount. A small army of politicians and political hangers-on were on his books for
