Now This is Fighting
When Cowperwood, after failing in his overtures to the three city gas
companies, confided to Addison his plan of organizing rival companies
in the suburbs, the banker glared at him appreciatively. "You're a
smart one!" he finally exclaimed. "You'll do! I back you to win!" He
went on to advise Cowperwood that he would need the assistance of some
of the strong men on the various village councils. "They're all as
crooked as eels' teeth," he went on. "But there are one or two that are
more crooked than others and safer--bell-wethers. Have you got your
lawyer?"
"I haven't picked one yet, but I will. I'm looking around for the
right man now.
"Well, of course, I needn't tell you how important that is. There is
one man, old General Van Sickle, who has had considerable training in
these matters. He's fairly reliable."
The entrance of Gen. Judson P. Van Sickle threw at the very outset a
suggestive light on the whole situation. The old soldier, over fifty,
had been a general of division during the Civil War, and had got his
real start in life by filing false titles to property in southern
Illinois, and then bringing suits to substantiate his fraudulent claims
before friendly associates. He was now a prosperous go-between,
requiring heavy retainers, and yet not over-prosperous. There was only
one kind of business that came to the General--this kind; and one
instinctively compared him to that decoy sheep at the stock-yards that
had been trained to go forth into nervous, frightened flocks of its
fellow-sheep, balking at being driven into the slaughtering-pens, and
lead them peacefully into the shambles, knowing enough always to make
his own way quietly to the rear during the onward progress and thus
escape. A dusty old lawyer, this, with Heaven knows what welter of
altered wills, broken promises, suborned juries, influenced judges,
bribed councilmen and legislators, double-intentioned agreements and
contracts, and a whole world of shifty legal calculations and false
pretenses floating around in his brain. Among the politicians, judges,
and lawyers generally, by reason of past useful services, he was
supposed to have some powerful connections. He liked to be called into
any case largely because it meant something to do and kept him from
being bored. When compelled to keep an appointment in winter, he would
slip on an old greatcoat of gray twill that he had worn until it was
shabby, then, taking down a soft felt hat, twisted and pulled out of
shape by use, he would pull it low over his dull gray eyes and amble
forth. In summer his clothes looked as crinkled as though he had slept
in them for weeks. He smoked. In cast of countenance he was not wholly
unlike General Grant, with a short gray beard and mustache which always
seemed more or less unkempt and hair that hung down over his forehead
in a gray mass. The poor General! He was neither very happy nor very
unhappy--a doubting Thomas without faith or hope in humanity and
without any particular affection for anybody.
"I'll tell you how it is with these small councils, Mr. Cowperwood,"
observed Van Sickle, sagely, after the preliminaries of the first
interview had been dispensed with.
"They're worse than the city council almost, and that's about as bad as
it can be. You can't do anything without money where these little
fellows are concerned. I don't like to be too hard on men, but these
fellows--" He shook his head.
"I understand," commented Cowperwood. "They're not very pleasing, even
after you make all allowances."
"Most of them," went on the General, "won't stay put when you think you
have them. They sell out. They're just as apt as not to run to this
North Side Gas Company and tell them all about the whole thing before
you get well under way. Then you have to pay them more money, rival
bills will be introduced, and all that." The old General pulled a long
face. "Still, there are one or two of them that are all right," he
added, "if you can once get them interested--Mr. Duniway and Mr.
Gerecht."
"I'm not so much concerned with how it has to be done, General,"
suggested Cowperwood, amiably, "but I want to be sure that it will be
done quickly and quietly. I don't want to be bothered with details.
Can it be done without too much publicity, and about what do you think
it is going to cost?"
"Well, that's pretty hard to say until I look into the matter," said
the General, thoughtfully. "It might cost only four and it might cost
all of forty thousand dollars--even more. I can't tell. I'd like to
take a little time and look into it." The old gentleman was wondering
how much Cowperwood was prepared to spend.
"Well, we won't bother about that now. I'm willing to be as liberal as
necessary. I've sent for Mr. Sippens, the president of the Lake View
Gas and Fuel Company, and he'll be here in a little while. You will
want to work with him as closely as you can." The energetic Sippens
came after a few moments, and he and Van Sickle, after being instructed
to be mutually helpful and to keep Cowperwood's name out of all matters
relating to this work, departed together. They were an odd pair--the
dusty old General phlegmatic, disillusioned, useful, but not inclined
to feel so; and the smart, chipper Sippens, determined to wreak a kind
of poetic vengeance on his old-time enemy, the South Side Gas Company,
via this seemingly remote Northside conspiracy. In ten minutes they
were hand in glove, the General describing to Sippens the penurious and
unscrupulous brand of Councilman Duniway's politics and the friendly
but expensive character of Jacob Gerecht. Such is life.
In the organization of the Hyde Park company Cowperwood, because he
never cared to put all his eggs in one basket, decided to secure a
second lawyer and a second dummy president, although he proposed to
keep De Soto Sippens as general practical adviser for all three or four
companies. He was thinking this matter over when there appeared on the
scene a very much younger man than the old General, one Kent Barrows
McKibben, the only son of ex-Judge Marshall Scammon McKibben, of the
State Supreme Court. Kent McKibben was thirty-three years old, tall,
athletic, and, after a fashion, handsome. He was not at all vague
intellectually--that is, in the matter of the conduct of his
business--but dandified and at times remote. He had an office in one
of the best blocks in Dearborn Street, which he reached in a reserved,
speculative mood every morning at nine, unless something important
called him down-town earlier. It so happened that he had drawn up the
deeds and agreements for the real-estate company that sold Cowperwood
his lots at Thirty-seventh Street and Michigan Avenue, and when they
were ready he journeyed to the latter's office to ask if there were any
additional details which Cowperwood might want to have taken into
consideration. When he was ushered in, Cowperwood turned to him his
keen, analytical eyes and saw at once a personality he liked. McKibben
was just remote and artistic enough to suit him. He liked his clothes,
his agnostic unreadableness, his social air. McKibben, on his part,
caught the significance of the superior financial atmosphere at once.
He noted Cowperwood's light-brown suit picked out with strands of red,
his maroon tie, and small cameo cuff-links. His desk, glass-covered,
looked clean and official. The woodwork of the rooms was all cherry,
hand-rubbed and oiled, the pictures interesting steel-engravings of
American life, appropriately framed. The typewriter--at that time just
introduced--was in evidence, and the stock-ticker--also new--was
ticking volubly the prices current. The secretary who waited on
Cowperwood was a young Polish girl named Antoinette Nowak, reserved,
seemingly astute, dark, and very attractive.
"What sort of business is it you handle, Mr. McKibben?" asked
Cowperwood, quite casually, in the course of the conversation. And
after listening to McKibben's explanation he added, idly: "You might
come and see me some time next week. It is just possible that I may
have something in your line."
In another man McKibben would have resented this remote suggestion of
future aid. Now, instead, he was intensely pleased. The man before
him gripped his imagination. His remote intellectuality relaxed. When
he came again and Cowperwood indicated the nature of the work he might
wish to have done McKibben rose to the bait like a fish to a fly.
"I wish you would let me undertake that, Mr. Cowperwood," he said,
quite eagerly. "It's something I've never done, but I'm satisfied I
can do it. I live out in Hyde Park and know most of the councilmen. I
can bring considerable influence to bear for you."
Cowperwood smiled pleasantly.
So a second company, officered by dummies of McKibben's selection, was
organized. De Soto Sippens, without old General Van Sickle's
knowledge, was taken in as practical adviser. An application for a
franchise was drawn up, and Kent Barrows McKibben began silent, polite
work on the South Side, coming into the confidence, by degrees, of the
various councilmen.
There was still a third lawyer, Burton Stimson, the youngest but
assuredly not the least able of the three, a pale, dark-haired Romeoish
youth with burning eyes, whom Cowperwood had encountered doing some
little work for Laughlin, and who was engaged to work on the West Side
with old Laughlin as ostensible organizer and the sprightly De Soto
Sippens as practical adviser. Stimson was no mooning Romeo, however,
but an eager, incisive soul, born very poor, eager to advance himself.
Cowperwood detected that pliability of intellect which, while it might
spell disaster to some, spelled success for him. He wanted the
intellectual servants. He was willing to pay them handsomely, to keep
them busy, to treat them with almost princely courtesy, but he must
have the utmost loyalty. Stimson, while maintaining his calm and
reserve, could have kissed the arch-episcopal hand. Such is the
subtlety of contact.
Behold then at once on the North Side, the South Side, the West
Side--dark goings to and fro and walkings up and down in the earth. In
Lake View old General Van Sickle and De Soto Sippens, conferring with
shrewd Councilman Duniway, druggist, and with Jacob Gerecht, ward boss
and wholesale butcher, both of whom were agreeable but exacting,
holding pleasant back-room and drug-store confabs with almost tabulated
details of rewards and benefits. In Hyde Park, Mr. Kent Barrows
McKibben, smug and well dressed, a Chesterfield among lawyers, and with
him one J. J. Bergdoll, a noble hireling, long-haired and dusty,
ostensibly president of the Hyde Park Gas and Fuel Company, conferring
with Councilman Alfred B. Davis, manufacturer of willow and rattan
ware, and Mr. Patrick Gilgan, saloon-keeper, arranging a prospective
distribution of shares, offering certain cash consideration, lots,
favors, and the like. Observe also in the village of Douglas and West
Park on the West Side, just over the city line, the angular, humorous
Peter Laughlin and Burton Stimson arranging a similar deal or deals.
The enemy, the city gas companies, being divided into three factions,
were in no way prepared for what was now coming. When the news finally
leaked out that applications for franchises had been made to the
several corporate village bodies each old company suspected the other
of invasion, treachery, robbery. Pettifogging lawyers were sent, one
by each company, to the village council in each particular territory
involved, but no one of the companies had as yet the slightest idea who
was back of it all or of the general plan of operations. Before any
one of them could reasonably protest, before it could decide that it
was willing to pay a very great deal to have the suburb adjacent to its
particular territory left free, before it could organize a legal fight,
councilmanic ordinances were introduced giving the applying company
what it sought; and after a single reading in each case and one open
hearing, as the law compelled, they were almost unanimously passed.
There were loud cries of dismay from minor suburban papers which had
almost been forgotten in the arrangement of rewards. The large city
newspapers cared little at first, seeing these were outlying districts;
they merely made the comment that the villages were beginning well,
following in the steps of the city council in its distinguished career
of crime.
Cowperwood smiled as he saw in the morning papers the announcement of
the passage of each ordinance granting him a franchise. He listened
with comfort thereafter on many a day to accounts by Laughlin, Sippens,
McKibben, and Van Sickle of overtures made to buy them out, or to take
over their franchises. He worked on plans with Sippens looking to the
actual introduction of gas-plants. There were bond issues now to float,
stock to be marketed, contracts for supplies to be awarded, actual
reservoirs and tanks to be built, and pipes to be laid. A pumped-up
public opposition had to be smoothed over. In all this De Soto Sippens
proved a trump. With Van Sickle, McKibben, and Stimson as his advisers
in different sections of the city he would present tabloid propositions
to Cowperwood, to which the latter had merely to bow his head in assent
or say no. Then De Soto would buy, build, and excavate. Cowperwood
was so pleased that he was determined to keep De Soto with him
permanently. De Soto was pleased to think that he was being given a
chance to pay up old scores and to do large things; he was really
grateful.
"We're not through with those sharpers," he declared to Cowperwood,
triumphantly, one day. "They'll fight us with suits. They may join
hands later. They blew up my gas-plant. They may blow up ours."
"Let them blow," said Cowperwood. "We can blow, too, and sue also. I
like lawsuits. We'll tie them up so that they'll beg for quarter." His
eyes twinkled cheerfully.