Chicago may get too uncomfortable for him.
I know Mr. McKenty personally, but he is not the kind of man I care to do business with.”
Mr. Schryhart’s method of negotiating at City Hall was through certain reputable but somewhat slow-going lawyers who were in the employ of the South Side company.
They had never been able to reach Mr. McKenty at all.
Ricketts echoed a hearty approval.
“You’re very right,” he said, with owlish smugness, adjusting a waistcoat button that had come loose, and smoothing his cuffs.
“He’s a prince of politicians.
We’ll have to look sharp if we ever trap him.”
Mr. Ricketts would have been glad to sell out to Mr. Cowperwood, if he had not been so heavily obligated to Mr. Schryhart. He had no especial affection for Cowperwood, but he recognized in him a coming man.
Young MacDonald, talking to Clifford Du Bois in the office of the Inquirer, and reflecting how little his private telephone message had availed him, was in a waspish, ironic frame of mind.
“Well,” he said, “it seems our friend Cowperwood hasn’t taken our advice.
He may make his mark, but the Inquirer isn’t through with him by a long shot.
He’ll be wanting other things from the city in the future.”
Clifford Du Bois regarded his acid young superior with a curious eye.
He knew nothing of MacDonald’s private telephone message to Cowperwood; but he knew how he himself would have dealt with the crafty financier had he been in MacDonald’s position.
“Yes, Cowperwood is shrewd,” was his comment.
“Pritchard, our political man, says the ways of the City Hall are greased straight up to the mayor and McKenty, and that Cowperwood can have anything he wants at any time.
Tom Dowling eats out of his hand, and you know what that means.
Old General Van Sickle is working for him in some way. Did you ever see that old buzzard flying around if there wasn’t something dead in the woods?”
“He’s a slick one,” remarked MacDonald.
“But as for Cowperwood, he can’t get away with this sort of thing very long.
He’s going too fast.
He wants too much.”
Mr. Du Bois smiled quite secretly.
It amused him to see how Cowperwood had brushed MacDonald and his objections aside—dispensed for the time being with the services of the Inquirer.
Du Bois confidently believed that if the old General had been at home he would have supported the financier.
Within eight months after seizing the La Salle Street tunnel and gobbling four of the principal down-town streets for his loop, Cowperwood turned his eyes toward the completion of the second part of the programme—that of taking over the Washington Street tunnel and the Chicago West Division Company, which was still drifting along under its old horse-car regime.
It was the story of the North Side company all over again. Stockholders of a certain type—the average—are extremely nervous, sensitive, fearsome.
They are like that peculiar bivalve, the clam, which at the slightest sense of untoward pressure withdraws into its shell and ceases all activity.
The city tax department began by instituting proceedings against the West Division company, compelling them to disgorge various unpaid street-car taxes which had hitherto been conveniently neglected.
The city highway department was constantly jumping on them for neglect of street repairs.
The city water department, by some hocus-pocus, made it its business to discover that they had been stealing water.
On the other hand were the smiling representatives of Cowperwood, Kaifrath, Addison, Videra, and others, approaching one director or stockholder after another with glistening accounts of what a splendid day would set in for the Chicago West Division Company if only it would lease fifty-one per cent. of its holdings—fifty-one per cent. of twelve hundred and fifty shares, par value two hundred dollars—for the fascinating sum of six hundred dollars per share, and thirty per cent. interest on all stock not assumed.
Who could resist?
Starve and beat a dog on the one hand; wheedle, pet, and hold meat in front of it on the other, and it can soon be brought to perform.
Cowperwood knew this.
His emissaries for good and evil were tireless.
In the end—and it was not long in coming—the directors and chief stockholders of the Chicago West Division Company succumbed; and then, ho! the sudden leasing by the Chicago West Division Company of all its property—to the North Chicago Street Railway Company, lessee in turn of the Chicago City Passenger Railway, a line which Cowperwood had organized to take over the Washington Street tunnel.
How had he accomplished it? The question was on the tip of every financial tongue.
Who were the men or the organization providing the enormous sums necessary to pay six hundred dollars per share for six hundred and fifty shares of the twelve hundred and fifty belonging to the old West Division company, and thirty per cent. per year on all the remainder?
Where was the money coming from to cable all these lines?
It was simple enough if they had only thought.
Cowperwood was merely capitalizing the future.
Before the newspapers or the public could suitably protest, crowds of men were at work day and night in the business heart of the city, their flaring torches and resounding hammers making a fitful bedlamic world of that region; they were laying the first great cable loop and repairing the La Salle Street tunnel.
It was the same on the North and West Sides, where concrete conduits were being laid, new grip and trailer cars built, new car-barns erected, and large, shining power-houses put up.
The city, so long used to the old bridge delays, the straw-strewn, stoveless horse-cars on their jumping rails, was agog to see how fine this new service would be.
The La Salle Street tunnel was soon aglow with white plaster and electric lights.
The long streets and avenues of the North Side were threaded with concrete-lined conduits and heavy street-rails.
The powerhouses were completed and the system was started, even while the contracts for the changes on the West Side were being let.
Schryhart and his associates were amazed at this swiftness of action, this dizzy phantasmagoria of financial operations.