ser, would as a rule give an
instantaneous decision.

"You're right. Risk a hundred thousand bushels. I think New York
Central is going to drop a point or two in a few days. We'd better go
short a point."

Laughlin could never figure out quite how it was that Cowperwood always
seemed to know and was ready to act quite as quickly in local matters
as he was himself. He understood his wisdom concerning Eastern shares
and things dealt in on the Eastern exchange, but these Chicago matters?

"Whut makes you think that?" he asked Cowperwood, one day, quite
curiously.

"Why, Peter," Cowperwood replied, quite simply, "Anton Videra" (one of
the directors of the Wheat and Corn Bank) "was in here yesterday while
you were on 'change, and he was telling me." He described a situation
which Videra had outlined.

Laughlin knew Videra as a strong, wealthy Pole who had come up in the
last few years. It was strange how Cowperwood naturally got in with
these wealthy men and won their confidence so quickly. Videra would
never have become so confidential with him.

"Huh!" he exclaimed. "Well, if he says it it's more'n likely so."

So Laughlin bought, and Peter Laughlin & Co. won.

But this grain and commission business, while it was yielding a profit
which would average about twenty thousand a year to each partner, was
nothing more to Cowperwood than a source of information.

He wanted to "get in" on something that was sure to bring very great
returns within a reasonable time and that would not leave him in any
such desperate situation as he was at the time of the Chicago
fire--spread out very thin, as he put it. He had interested in his
ventures a small group of Chicago men who were watching him--Judah
Addison, Alexander Rambaud, Millard Bailey, Anton Videra--men who,
although not supreme figures by any means, had free capital. He knew
that he could go to them with any truly sound proposition. The one
thing that most attracted his attention was the Chicago gas situation,
because there was a chance to step in almost unheralded in an as yet
unoccupied territory; with franchises once secured--the reader can
quite imagine how--he could present himself, like a Hamilcar Barca in
the heart of Spain or a Hannibal at the gates of Rome, with a demand
for surrender and a division of spoils.

There were at this time three gas companies operating in the three
different divisions of the city--the three sections, or "sides," as
they w