her 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