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It was in vain that the Addisons, Sledds, Kingslands, Hoecksemas, and others made their appearance; Aileen was not reassured. However, after dinner the younger set, influenced by McKibben, came to dance, and Aileen was at her best in spite of her doubts. She was gay, bold, attractive. Kent McKibben, a past master in the mazes and mysteries of the grand march, had the pleasure of leading her in that airy, fairy procession, followed by Cowperwood, who gave his arm to Mrs. Simms. Aileen, in white satin with a touch of silver here and there and necklet, bracelet, ear-rings, and hair-ornament of diamonds, glittered in almost an exotic way. She was positively radiant. McKibben, almost smitten, was most attentive.

“This is such a pleasure,” he whispered, intimately. “You are very beautiful – a dream!”

“You would find me a very substantial one,” returned Aileen. “Would that I might find,” he laughed, gaily; and Aileen, gathering the hidden significance, showed her teeth teasingly. Mrs. Simms, engrossed by Cowperwood, could not hear as she would have liked.

After the march Aileen, surrounded by a half-dozen of gay, rudely thoughtless young bloods, escorted them all to see her portrait. The conservative commented on the flow of wine, the intensely nude Gerome at one end of the gallery, and the sparkling portrait of Aileen at the other, the enthusiasm of some of the young men for her company. Mrs. Rambaud, pleasant and kindly, remarked to her husband that Aileen was “very eager for life,” she thought. Mrs. Addison, astonished at the material flare of the Cowperwoods, quite transcending in glitter if not in size and solidity anything she and Addison had ever achieved, remarked to her husband that “he must be making money very fast.”

“The man’s a born financier, Ella,” Addison explained, sententiously. “He’s a manipulator, and he’s sure to make money. Whether they can get into society I don’t know. He could if he were alone, that’s sure. She’s beautiful, but he needs another kind of woman, I’m afraid. She’s almost too good-looking.”

“That’s what I think, too. I like her, but I’m afraid she’s not going to play her cards right. It’s too bad, too.”

Just then Aileen came by, a smiling youth on either side, her own face glowing with a warmth of joy engendered by much flattery. The ball-room, which was composed of the music and drawing rooms thrown into one, was now the objective. It glittered before her with a moving throng; the air was full of the odor of flowers, and the sound of music and voices.

“Mrs. Cowperwood,” observed Bradford Canda to Horton Biggers, the society editor, “is one of the prettiest women I have seen in a long time. She’s almost too pretty.”

“How do you think she’s taking?”⁵⁶ queried the cautious Biggers.

“Charming, but she’s hardly cold enough, I’m afraid; hardly clever enough. It takes a more serious type. She’s a little too high-spirited. These old women would never want to get near her; she makes them look too old. She’d do better if she were not so young and so pretty.”

“That’s what I think exactly,” said Biggers. As a matter of fact, he did not think so at all; he had no power of drawing any such accurate conclusions. But he believed it now, because Bradford Canda had said it.

Chapter XI
The Fruits of Daring

Next morning, over the breakfast cups at the Norrie Simmses’ and elsewhere, the import of the Cowperwoods’ social efforts was discussed and the problem of their eventual acceptance or non-acceptance carefully weighed. <…>

Before this social situation had time to adjust itself one way or the other, however, a matter arose which in its way was far more vital, though Aileen might not have thought so. The feeling between the new and old gas companies was becoming strained; the stockholders of the older organization were getting uneasy. They were eager to find out who was back of these new gas companies which were threatening to poach on their exclusive preserves⁵⁷. Finally one of the lawyers who had been employed by the North Chicago Gas Illuminating Company to fight the machinations of De Soto Sippens and old General Van Sickle, finding that the Lake View Council had finally granted the franchise to the new company and that the Appellate Court was about to sustain it, hit upon the idea of charging conspiracy and wholesale bribery of councilmen. Considerable evidence had accumulated that Duniway, Jacob Gerecht, and others on the North Side had been influenced by cash, and to bring legal action would delay final approval of the franchises and give the old company time to think what else to do. This North Side company lawyer, a man by the name of Parsons, had been following up the movements of Sippens and old General Van Sickle, and had finally concluded that they were mere dummies and pawns, and that the real instigator in all this excitement was Cowperwood, or, if not he, then men whom he represented. Parsons visited Cowperwood’s office one day in order to see him; getting no satisfaction, he proceeded to look up his record and connections. These various investigations and counter-schemings came to a head in a court proceeding filed in the United States Circuit Court late in November, charging Frank Algernon Cowperwood, Henry De Soto Sippens, Judson P. Van Sickle, and others with conspiracy; this again was followed almost immediately by suits begun by the West and South Side companies charging the same thing. In each case Cowperwood’s name was mentioned as the secret power behind the new companies, conspiring to force the old companies to buy him out. His Philadelphia history was published, but only in part – a highly modified account he had furnished the newspapers some time before. Though conspiracy and bribery are ugly words, still lawyers’ charges prove nothing. But a penitentiary record, for whatever reason served, coupled with previous failure, divorce, and scandal (though the newspapers made only the most guarded reference to all this), served to whet public interest and to fix Cowperwood and his wife in the public eye.

Cowperwood himself was solicited for an interview, but his answer was that he was merely a financial agent for the three new companies, not an investor; and that the charges, in so far as he was concerned, were untrue, mere legal folde-rol trumped up to make the situation as annoying as possible. He threatened to sue for libel. Nevertheless, although these suits eventually did come to nothing (for he had fixed it so that he could not be traced save as a financial agent in each case), yet the charges had been made, and he was now revealed as a shrewd, manipulative factor, with a record that was certainly spectacular. <…>

Similarly Mr. Norman Schryhart, a man who up to this time had taken no thought of Cowperwood, although he had noted his appearance about the halls of the Calumet and Union League Clubs, began to ask seriously who he was. <…>

He was wondering why men like himself, Merrill, Arneel, and others had not worked into this field long ago or bought out the old companies. He went away interested, and a day or two later – even the next morning – had formulated a scheme. Not unlike Cowperwood, he was a shrewd, hard, cold man. He believed in Chicago implicitly and in all that related to its future. This gas situation, now that Cowperwood had seen the point, was very clear to him. Even yet it might not be impossible for a third party to step in and by intricate manipulation secure the much coveted rewards. Perhaps Cowperwood himself could be taken over – who could tell?

Mr. Schryhart, being a very dominating type of person, did not believe in minor partnerships or investments. If he went into a thing of this kind it was his preference to rule. He decided to invite Cowperwood to visit the Schryhart office and talk matters over. Accordingly, he had his secretary pen a note, which in rather lofty phrases invited Cowperwood to call “on a matter of importance.”

Now just at this time, it so chanced, Cowperwood was feeling rather secure as to his place in the Chicago financial world, although he was still smarting from the bitterness of the aspersions recently cast upon him from various quarters. Under such circumstances it was his temperament to evince a rugged contempt for humanity, rich and poor alike. He was well aware that Schryhart, although introduced, had never previously troubled to notice him.

“Mr. Cowperwood begs me to say,” wrote Miss Antoinette Nowak, at his dictation, “that he finds himself very much pressed for time at present, but he would be glad to see Mr. Schryhart at his office at any time.”

This irritated the dominating, self-sufficient Schryhart a little, but nevertheless he was satisfied that a conference could do no harm in this instance – was advisable, in fact. So one Wednesday afternoon he journeyed to the office of Cowperwood, and was most hospitably received. <…>

“Well, to tell the truth,” replied Schryhart, staring at the financier, “I am interested in this local gas situation myself. It offers a rather profitable field for investment, and several members of the old companies have come to me recently to ask me to help them combine.” (This was not true at all.) “I have been wondering what chance you thought you had of winning along the lines you are now taking.”

Cowperwood smiled. “I hardly care to discuss that,” he said, “unless I know much more of your motives and connections than I do at present. Do I understand that you have really been appealed to by stockholders of the old companies to come in and help adjust this matter?”

“Exactly,” said Schryhart.

“And you think you can get them to combine? On what basis?”

“Oh, I should say it would be a simple matter to give each of them two or three shares of a new company for one in each of the old. We could then elect one set of officers. have one set of offices, stop all these suits, and leave everybody happy.”

He said this in an easy, patronizing way, as though Cowperwood had not really thought it all out years before. It amazed the latter no little to see his own scheme patronizingly brought back to him, and that, too, by a very powerful man locally – one who thus far had chosen to overlook him utterly.

“On what basis,” asked Cowperwood, cautiously, “would you expect these new companies to come in?”

“On the same basis as the others, if they are not too heavily capitalized. I haven’t thought out all the details. Two or three for one, according to investment. Of course, the prejudices of these old companies have to be considered.”

Cowperwood meditated. Should or should he not entertain this offer? Here was a chance to realize quickly by selling out to the old companies. Only Schryhart, not himself, would be taking the big end in this manipulative deal. Whereas if he waited – even if Schryhart managed to combine the three old companies into one – he might be able to force better terms. He was not sure. Finally he asked, “How much stock of the new company would be left in your hands – or in the hands of the organizing group – after each of the old and new companies had been provided for on this basis?”

“Oh, possibly thirty-five or forty per cent. of the whole,” replied Schryhart, ingratiatingly. “The laborer is worthy of his hire.”

“Quite so,” replied Cowperwood, smiling, “but, seeing that I am the man who has been cutting the pole to knock this persimmon it seems to me that a pretty good share of that should come to me; don’t you think so?”

“Just what do you mean?”

“Just what I have said. I personally have organized the new companies which have made this proposed combination possible. The plan you propose is nothing more than what I have been proposing for some time. The officers and directors of the old companies are angry at me merely because I am supposed to have invaded the fields that belong to them. Now, if on account of that they are willing to operate through you rather than through me, it seems to me that I should have a much larger share in the surplus. My personal interest in these new companies is not very large. I am really more of a fiscal agent than anything else.” (This was not true, but Cowperwood preferred to have his guest think so.)

Schryhart smiled. “But, my dear sir,” he explained, “you forget that I will be supplying nearly all the capital to do this.”

“You forget,” retorted Cowperwood, “that I am not a novice. I will guarantee to supply all the capital myself, and give you a good bonus for your services, if you want that. The plants and franchises of the old and new companies are worth something. You must remember that Chicago is growing.”

“I know that,” replied Schryhart, evasively, “but I also know that you have a long, expensive fight ahead of you. As things are now you cannot, of yourself, expect to bring these old companies to terms. They won’t work with you, as I understand it. It will require an outsider like myself – someone of influence, or perhaps, I had better say, of old standing in Chicago, someone who knows these people – to bring about this combination. Have you anyone, do you think, who can do it better than I?”

“It is not at all impossible that I will find someone,” replied Cowperwood, quite easily.

“I hardly think so; certainly not as things are now. The old companies are not disposed to work through you, and they are through me. Don’t you think you had better accept my terms and allow me to go ahead and close this matter up?”

“Not at all on that basis,” replied Cowperwood, quite simply. “We have invaded the enemies’ country too far and done too much. Three for one or four for one – whatever terms are given the stockholders of the old companies – is the best I will do about the new shares, and I must have one-half of whatever is left for myself. At that I will have to divide with others.” (This was not true either.)

“No,” replied Schryhart, evasively and opposingly, shaking his square head. “It can’t be done. The risks are too great. I might allow you one-fourth, possibly – I can’t tell yet.”

“One-half or nothing,” said Cowperwood, definitely.

Schryhart got up. “That’s the best you will do, is it?” he inquired.

“The very best.”

“I’m afraid then,” he said, “we can’t come to terms. I’m sorry. You may find this a rather long and expensive fight.”

“I have fully anticipated that,” replied the financier.

Chapter XII
A New Retainer

Cowperwood, who had rebuffed Schryhart so courteously but firmly, was to learn that he who takes the sword may well perish by the sword⁵⁸. His own watchful attorney, on guard at the state capitol, where certificates of incorporation were issued in the city and village councils, in the courts and so forth, was not long in learning that a counter-movement of significance was under way. Old General Van Sickle was the first to report that something was in the wind in connection with the North Side company. <…>

“Someone – I don’t know who – is getting these three old companies together in one. There’s a certificate of incorporation been applied for at Springfield for the United Gas and Fuel Company of Chicago, and there are some directors’ meetings now going on at the Douglas Trust Company. I got this from Duniway, who seems to have friends somewhere that know.”

Cowperwood put the ends of his fingers together in his customary way and began to tap them lightly and rhythmically.

“Let me see – the Douglas Trust Company. Mr. Simms is president of that. He isn’t shrewd enough to organize a thing of that kind. Who are the incorporators?”

The General produced a list of four names, none of them officers or directors of the old companies.

“Dummies, every one,” said Cowperwood, succinctly. “I think I know,” he said, after a few moments’ reflection, “who is behind it, General; but don’t let that worry you. They can’t harm us if they do unite. They’re bound to sell out to us or buy us out eventually.”

Still it irritated him to think that Schryhart had succeeded in persuading the old companies to combine on any basis; he had meant to have Addison go shortly, posing as an outside party, and propose this very thing. Schryhart, he was sure, had acted swiftly following their interview. He hurried to Addison’s office in the Lake National.

“Have you heard the news?” exclaimed that individual, the moment Cowperwood appeared. “They’re planning to combine. It’s Schryhart. I was afraid of that. Simms of the Douglas Trust is going to act as the fiscal agent. I had the information not ten minutes ago.”

“So did I,” replied Cowperwood, calmly. “We should have acted a little sooner. Still, it isn’t our fault exactly. Do you know the terms of agreement?”

“They’re going to pool their stock on a basis of three to one, with about thirty per cent. of the holding company left for Schryhart to sell or keep, as he wants to. He guarantees the interest. We did that for him – drove the game right into his bag.”

“Nevertheless,” replied Cowperwood, “he still has us to deal with. I propose now that we go into the city council and ask for a blanket franchise⁵⁹. It can be had. If we should get it, it will bring them to their knees. We will really be in a better position than they are with these smaller companies as feeders. We can unite with ourselves.”

“That will take considerable money, won’t it?”

“Not so much. We may never need to lay a pipe or build a plant. They will offer to sell out, buy, or combine before that. We can fix the terms. Leave it to me. You don’t happen to know by any chance this Mr. McKenty, who has so much say in local affairs here – John J. McKenty?”

Cowperwood was referring to a man who was at once gambler, rumored owner or controller of a series of houses of prostitution, rumored maker of mayors and aldermen, rumored financial backer of many saloons and contracting companies – in short, the patron saint of the political and social underworld of Chicago, and who was naturally to be reckoned with in matters which related to the city and state legislative programme.

“I don’t,” said Addison; “but I can get you a letter. Why?”

“Don’t trouble to ask me that now. Get me as strong an introduction as you can.”

“I’ll have one for you to-day some time,” replied Addison, efficiently. “I’ll send it over to you.”

Cowperwood went out while Addison speculated as to this newest move. Trust Cowperwood to dig a pit into which the enemy might fall. He marveled sometimes at the man’s resourcefulness. He never quarreled with the directness and incisiveness of Cowperwood’s action.

The man, McKenty, whom Cowperwood had in mind in this rather disturbing hour, was as interesting and forceful an individual as one would care to meet anywhere, a typical figure of Chicago and the West at the time. He was a pleasant, smiling, bland, affable person, not unlike Cowperwood in magnetism and subtlety, but different by a degree of animal coarseness (not visible on the surface) which Cowperwood would scarcely have understood, and in a kind of temperamental pull drawing to him that vast pathetic life of the underworld in which his soul found its solution. There is a kind of nature, not artistic, not spiritual, in no way emotional, nor yet unduly philosophical, that is nevertheless a sphered content of life; not crystalline, perhaps, and yet not utterly dark – an agate temperament, cloudy and strange. As a three-year-old child McKenty had been brought from Ireland by his emigrant parents during a period of famine. He had been raised on the far South Side in a shanty which stood near a maze of railroad-tracks, and as a naked baby he had crawled on its earthen floor. His father had been promoted to a section boss after working for years as a day-laborer on the adjoining railroad, and John, junior, one of eight other children, had been sent out early to do many things – to be an errand-boy in a store, a messenger-boy for a telegraph company, an emergency sweep about a saloon, and finally a bartender. This last was his true beginning, for he was discovered by a keen-minded politician and encouraged to run for the state legislature and to study law. Even as a stripling what things had he not learned – robbery, ballot-box stuffing, the sale of votes, the appointive power of leaders, graft, nepotism, vice exploitation⁶⁰ – all the things that go to make up (or did) the American world of politics and financial and social strife. There is a strong assumption in the upper walks of life that there is nothing to be learned at the bottom. If you could have looked into the capacious but balanced temperament of John J. McKenty you would have seen a strange wisdom there and stranger memories – whole worlds of brutalities, tendernesses, errors, immoralities suffered, endured, even rejoiced in – the hardy, eager life of the animal that has nothing but its perceptions, instincts, appetites to guide it. Yet the man had the air and the poise of a gentleman.

To-day, 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, office-holders, 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 stock-yards.

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. <…>

“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. <…> It was not very long after I started out to get franchises to do business in Lake View 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 stepped in and offered to combine them. His plan is to do exactly what I wanted to do; only his further proposition is, once he has the three old companies united, to invade this new gas field of ours and hold us up, or force us to sell by obtaining rival franchises in these outlying places. <…> Now, Mr. McKenty, I know that you are a practical man. <…> I am not coming to you with any vague story concerning my troubles and expecting you to be interested as a matter of sympathy. <…> I need advice and assistance, and I am not begging it. <…> Briefly, I want to know if you won’t give me your political support in this matter and join in with me on the basis that I propose? I will make it perfectly clear to you beforehand who my associates are. I will put all the data and details on the table before you so that you can see for yourself how things are. <…> I want you to give me your aid on such terms as you think are fair and equitable.” <…>

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 here⁶¹, 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. <…> 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. <…> 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 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.”