Cowperwood merely curled his mustaches and smiled sardonically.
“Well, never mind,” he said.
“Will you go down to New York, or shall I?”
It was decided, after some talk, that Addison should go.
When he reached New York he found, to his surprise, that the local opposition to Cowperwood had, for some mysterious reason, begun to take root in the East.
“I’ll tell you how it is,” observed Joseph Haeckelheimer, to whom Addison applied—a short, smug, pussy person who was the head of Haeckelheimer, Gotloeb & Co., international bankers.
“We hear odd things concerning Mr. Cowperwood out in Chicago.
Some people say he is sound—some not.
He has some very good franchises covering a large portion of the city, but they are only twenty-year franchises, and they will all run out by 1903 at the latest.
As I understand it, he has managed to stir up all the local elements—some very powerful ones, too—and he is certain to have a hard time to get his franchises renewed.
I don’t live in Chicago, of course. I don’t know much about it, but our Western correspondent tells me this is so.
Mr. Cowperwood is a very able man, as I understand it, but if all these influential men are opposed to him they can make him a great deal of trouble.
The public is very easily aroused.”
“You do a very able man a great injustice, Mr. Haeckelheimer,” Addison retorted.
“Almost any one who starts out to do things successfully and intelligently is sure to stir up a great deal of feeling.
The particular men you mention seem to feel that they have a sort of proprietor’s interest in Chicago.
They really think they own it.
As a matter of fact, the city made them; they didn’t make the city.”
Mr. Haeckelheimer lifted his eyebrows.
He laid two fine white hands, plump and stubby, over the lower buttons of his protuberant waistcoat.
“Public favor is a great factor in all these enterprises,” he almost sighed.
“As you know, part of a man’s resources lies in his ability to avoid stirring up opposition.
It may be that Mr. Cowperwood is strong enough to overcome all that.
I don’t know.
I’ve never met him.
I’m just telling you what I hear.”
This offish attitude on the part of Mr. Haeckelheimer was indicative of a new trend.
The man was enormously wealthy.
The firm of Haeckelheimer, Gotloeb & Co. represented a controlling interest in some of the principal railways and banks in America.
Their favor was not to be held in light esteem.
It was plain that these rumors against Cowperwood in New York, unless offset promptly by favorable events in Chicago, might mean—in the large banking quarters, anyhow—the refusal of all subsequent Cowperwood issues.
It might even close the doors of minor banks and make private investors nervous.
Addison’s report of all this annoyed Cowperwood no little.
It made him angry. He saw in it the work of Schryhart, Hand, and others who were trying their best to discredit him.
“Let them talk,” he declared, crossly.
“I have the street-railways. They’re not going to rout me out of here.
I can sell stocks and bonds to the public direct if need be!
There are plenty of private people who are glad to invest in these properties.”
At this psychological moment enter, as by the hand of Fate, the planet Mars and the University.
This latter, from having been for years a humble Baptist college of the cheapest character, had suddenly, through the beneficence of a great Standard Oil multimillionaire, flared upward into a great university, and was causing a stir throughout the length and breadth of the educational world.
It was already a most noteworthy spectacle, one of the sights of the city.
Millions were being poured into it; new and beautiful buildings were almost monthly erected.
A brilliant, dynamic man had been called from the East as president.
There were still many things needed—dormitories, laboratories of one kind and another, a great library; and, last but not least, a giant telescope—one that would sweep the heavens with a hitherto unparalleled receptive eye, and wring from it secrets not previously decipherable by the eye and the mind of man.
Cowperwood had always been interested in the heavens and in the giant mathematical and physical methods of interpreting them.
It so happened that the war-like planet, with its sinister aspect, was just at this time to be seen hanging in the west, a fiery red; and the easily aroused public mind was being stirred to its shallow depth by reflections and speculations regarding the famous canals of the luminary.
The mere thought of the possibility of a larger telescope than any now in existence, which might throw additional light on this evasive mystery, was exciting not only Chicago, but the whole world.
Late one afternoon Cowperwood, looking over some open fields which faced his new power-house in West Madison Street, observed the planet hanging low and lucent in the evening sky, a warm, radiant bit of orange in a sea of silver.
He paused and surveyed it.
Was it true that there were canals on it, and people?